For Advocates: Champion The Power of Specialist FE
Specialist further education (FE) has the power to transform lives, not only for learners, but for families, communities and wider society. Whether you’re a friend or family member of someone accessing specialist FE, or interested in finding out more about the vital work of specialist FE colleges, your voice can help make a difference.
By sharing stories with your friends and family or helping to spread the word online, you can help ensure that specialist FE gets the recognition and investment it deserves.
Here’s how you can get involved
1.
Share your story
Tell others how specialist FE has made a difference to your family or local community. You can do this by posting on social media using our campaign hashtags: #ThePowerofSpecialistFE, #SpecialistFEWorksForMe, #SpecialistFEWorkedForMe
2.
Celebrate success
Use our social media graphics and campaign messages to highlight the involvement of your family member’s college during the awareness week (Monday 1st – Friday 5th December).
3.
Join the conversation
Like, share and comment on stories from young people and colleges across the country to help amplify their voices.
4.
Advocate for specialist further education
Get in touch with your MP, councillor or Mayor and tell them about the fantastic work your local specialist FE college is doing to support learners in your community!
Your support helps show policymakers and the public the real impact of specialist FE – how it unlocks education, transforms lives and creates lasting impact for learners and communities across the country.
For Policymakers and Parliamentarians
Specialist FE plays a vital role in the education and skills system. It helps young people with more complex needs develop the skills, behaviours and confidence they need to lead fulfilling adult lives. It enables them to become active participants in their communities and helps address skills gaps prevalent across the country.
But specialist FE and its learners are often overlooked by policy makers. It is both a neglected area of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reform and a forgotten part of FE and skills policy. Most recently, for example, consideration of the pathways to employment needed to support 16 to 25-year-olds working at Entry and Level 1 were barely considered in the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper.
Our ambition is to see specialist FE be on equal footing in further education and skills and SEND policymaking, ensuring the sector can continue to provide transformative educational opportunities to learners with more complex needs.
We are certain that once specialist FE colleges are better understood, they will feature more prominently in national FE and skills and SEND policy and in local and regional planning. As a result, young people will be able to more easily access high quality provision to meet their needs. But to get to that point, we need champions, such as yourself, to help us gain the recognition that specialist FE deserves. We therefore invite MPs, Members of the Senedd, councillors and other decision-makers to engage directly with colleges and learners to see this impact first-hand.
Here’s how you can support the campaign
1.
Visit
Visit your local specialist FE provider during The Power of Specialist FE awareness week (Monday 1st to Friday 5th December 2025) to meet learners and staff, and learn about the difference specialist provision makes to your local community and constituency.
You can use this map to help you check if there’s a Natspec member specialist FE college in your constituency.
2.
Raise awareness
Raise awareness about specialist FE in Parliament, the Senedd or council meetings. You can do this by:
- Asking written or oral questions
- Sharing your visit to a local college on social media, using the social media graphic templates provided
- Referencing the campaign, local specialist FE provider visits or learner success stories in debates or committee discussions
3.
Show your support
Show your support online by sharing posts, videos or learner stories from the campaign using the hashtags #ThePowerofSpecialistFE and #SpecialistFEWorksForMe.
Your engagement helps bring specialist FE into the national conversation, ensuring it is recognised as a vital part of the education system and securing the opportunities that every learner deserves.