Further along

It is hard to believe that Success for All, the long term improvement strategy for further education, has just marked its third birthday. Much has been achieved in that short time, both in terms of a steady rise in standards and how the sector feels about itself.

None of this would have happened without the enthusiasm and commitment individual colleges and providers have shown to working with the government, the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and other agencies to achieve better outcomes and experiences for both learners and employers. The reality is we cannot impose improvement in a top-down fashion - it has to be led by the people whom it affects.

One of the highlights of 2005 was colleges meeting success rate targets two years early. The rate has risen from 59% in 2000/01 to 72% in 2003/04. That was backed by a strong rise in success rates across the sector - for instance, a 10% rise in the number of work-based learning providers in the same period. This is testimony to the effort all providers have made to focus on raising quality.

As we enter a new phase of Success for All, the priority must be to help average and poor performers to take rapid action to approach the levels achieved by the best. That means closing the gap in performance between providers and disparities in achievement between subject areas.

The Quality Improvement Agency, which is to be established in April this year, will simplify quality improvement and hand more responsibility to providers for assessing their own quality. Working with the LSC, it will ensure that unsatisfactory provision is a thing of the past by 2008.

Top quality teaching, training and learning are fundamental to the transformation of the sector. Our 600,000-strong workforce is getting real help to achieve improvements in outcomes such as this. Colleges and providers now have exciting new teaching, training and learning resources. There are 1,500 subject learning coaches - with another 1,500 due to begin working by the end of the academic year - who are helping to develop the skills of their colleagues. The Centre for Excellence in Leadership has so trained more than 5,500 people.

We now need to get to the position where the further education sector is one in which everyone involved - teachers, trainers, managers, leaders and support staff - can find satisfying careers.

There is a palpable sense of self-esteem among people working in the sector. The number of individuals nominated for Star awards in October - for contributions to the further education sector - was, at more than more than 3,500, more than double the entries in the previous year. The work of Lifelong Learning UK, the new sector skills council for the learning and skills workforce, will further champion the professional status of people who work in FE. By 2010, we want all college teachers, except for new recruits, to be fully qualified.

There is now a true, nationwide network of our best institutions. The LSC has played a pivotal role in establishing 350 Centres of Vocational Excellence - superb examples of the sector and employers teaming up to offer cutting edge vocational training - and more than 60 learning providers with Beacon status, a recognition of excellence, all sharing their good practice with their neighbours and raising standards. What is more, the LSC-led strategic area reviews process is ensuring that the pattern of provision is meeting demand, and that we all have a deeper understanding of local needs, issues and priorities.

Three years on from the announcement of the Success for All programme, in November 2002, there are new challenges to meet. We have developed specific action plans to cater for new target groups of learners in line with government priorities. For instance, at 14-19 this includes developing teaching and learning resources for college staff including the subjects covered by the new specialised diplomas. And we are contributing to the number of 19-year-olds who achieve level 2 qualifications through the overall quality improvement programme for the sector.

The sector deserves great credit for taking the Success for All mission for improvement forward and the progress made so far. But we cannot rest on our laurels. There can be no home for weak and middling performance and we want to do more to support many more providers to become excellent.

The priorities laid out in our annual report for 2004-05 set the path for national partners to continue working with everyone in the learning and skills sector to improve quality. We are now looking forward to the secretary of state's response to Sir Andrew Foster's report, which will help to show the way forward in the next phase.

· Jane Williams runs Success for All at the DfES.