Further education workforce wellbeing: did Covid actually change anything?

This paper considers wellbeing in the context of those working in the further education (FE) sector in England and how this has been affected by the Covid pandemic. There has been a growth of research into the impact of the pandemic on the workforce in the higher education sector (Hadjisolomou, Mitsakis, & Gary, 2021; Wray & Kinman, 2021) and some considerations for schools (Fotheringham, Harriott, Healy, Arenge, & Wilson, 2022). However, research that examines the FE sector’s workforce, an education sector which is often considered under-resourced, can be lacking. Our empirical research seeks to begin to address this gap and provide a unique contribution through the replication of a pre-pandemic national FE workforce wellbeing study commissioned by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF, 2019). The current study uses the same scale framework as the 2019 study to assess the wellbeing of FE sector employees. The results from 347 responses show that the pandemic had a negative impact on the wellbeing of employees, but employees drew upon their resilience to cope with increasing demands in the sector.