When professionalism stops being measured: teaching qualifications and the politics of evidence in further education

Abstract

Further education (FE) in England occupies a central position in national skills and productivity strategies, yet the professional formation of its teaching workforce has undergone repeated cycles of regulation and deregulation. This paper uses critical policy analysis, documentary methods and longitudinal secondary data to assemble a comprehensive overview of teaching qualification prevalence in FE. From a low baseline, it shows a marked rise in qualification prevalence under the 2007 FE workforce regulations, followed by a structural break after 2011–12 when qualification fields were removed from routine datasets. Subsequent workforce intelligence prioritises recruitment, turnover and vacancies rather than professional formation, leaving current initial teacher training reforms weakly grounded in longitudinal evidence. Situated within a comparative analysis of professionalism in FE, the paper argues that the erosion of qualification monitoring reflects a shift in governance priorities in which professional formation is rhetorically valorised but politically deprioritised. It treats the disappearance of qualification prevalence from sector monitoring as an empirical finding and calls on policymakers to rebuild the evidential infrastructure needed to support credible reform of FE initial teacher education and workforce professionalism.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 2026 · DOI ↗