Manchester shows the possibilities and limitations of devolution

Andy Burnham’s inaugural speech as UK prime minister in July reaffirmed his commitment to deepening devolution. And his experience as mayor of Greater Manchester, the region whose devolution settlement is the deepest in England, illustrates the possibilities – and limitations – of what this might mean for tertiary education.

Burnham also signalled continuity with the post-16 education and skills White Paper, published in October 2025 – the ambitious proposed reforms included a more unified post-16 system, designed around pathways that serve both individual aspirations and local labour markets.

This matters for widening participation, in particular: when funding regimes, accountability frameworks and institutional incentives pull in different directions, it is not the well-advised student with a clear route to university who suffers. It is the student weighing an apprenticeship against a college course against a degree, in a system that offers no mechanism for comparing them honestly and no opportunity to move between them without starting again.

So what could a devolved education and skills system achieve? We already have evidence that national policy can accommodate local context. Through extensive and inclusive consultation with students, employers, experts and educators, the recent Curriculum and Assessment Review redeveloped the national curriculum, now running up to age 19. The curriculum applies to all providers at school and college level, but the review extended the flexibility within it for institutions to design and develop content relevant to their own student cohorts and local labour markets. This simultaneously recognises the importance of pedagogical expertise in designing curricula and the value of employer insights to inform content.

Similarly, the Quality Council for UK Higher Education, through a consultative process spanning the four nations, sets the quality code for higher education. This forms the basis for all subject benchmarks while maintaining institutional freedom to develop programmes in tune with their academic expertise and research priorities.

Yet there remains a big challenge in overcoming the brake that any degree of centralised authority imposes on genuine local innovation and adaptation to specific educational needs.

Greater Manchester has had more opportunity than anywhere else in England to test whether devolution can resolve this, not only because of the extent of the powers devolved to it (which include adult skills funding) but also as a result of the personal drive Burnham displayed in the role. But the overriding lesson is that the solution cannot simply be a question of replacing one hierarchy with another, nor creating a system where the mayor is owner of the decisions for education. Rather, it is about finding the appropriate scaffolding and organisational infrastructure to enable genuine collaboration across policymakers, educators and employers. Regional mayors must be co-convenors of the conversation, enabling, amplifying and lobbying as needed.

In Greater Manchester’s case, the policy infrastructure has included an established forum for universities and further education colleges, a new Civic University Board and other cross-sector leadership groups. But as revealed by two serious, recently published analyses, goodwill alone cannot overcome the structural conflicts that surface whenever institutional interests, learner choice and regional economic priorities collide.

Key issues identified include persistent competition for learners within and across both further and higher education. This, of course, is linked to the fact that funding incentives reward recruitment to particular institutions, rather than collaboration to meet regional needs; there is no mechanism to arbitrate between institutional autonomy and system coherence at a regional level. Because of all this, collaboration depends on the willingness of institutions to sometimes act against their own immediate interests. Some do, but a system cannot be built on the assumption that all will.

The devolved nations offer a useful contrast. Wales has established Medr, a single tertiary regulator with a remit spanning universities, colleges and apprenticeship providers – the kind of unified oversight that England’s fragmented regulatory landscape cannot currently deliver. Scotland’s regional outcome agreements, meanwhile, tie funding to place-based objectives in a way that England’s national frameworks do not.

Neither system is perfect but both demonstrate that when government commits to treating post-16 education as a single system rather than a collection of competing sectors, different things become possible. The question for England is whether devolution to combined authorities can achieve something comparable within a system whose national instruments and institutions were not designed for it.

There is a further tension that purely place-based thinking cannot resolve. Higher education is national and international by nature – and students’ geographical mobility is closely entwined with social mobility. A student from Salford who returns from a London university with capabilities and networks they would not otherwise have acquired is not a failure of place-based strategy. This is exactly how higher education is supposed to work, and any serious post-16 system must account for this. The goal is not to trap students in their region of origin but to ensure that every region offers pathways good enough to attract and retain talent – and that the students who leave do so by choice, not because nothing coherent existed where they were.

We see four prerequisites for a sensible and genuinely place-based approach. The first is the provision of complete and honest data covering all post-16 provision – not just the institutions that sit within existing governance structures, but sixth forms, independent providers and alternative provision as well. A plan needs to enable both sufficient unanimity of purpose and diversity in application, while still being efficient.

Second, we need mechanisms for resolving the tensions between institutional competition and regional planning. These must be co-designed with institutions, employers and learners but also carry defined authority – not just convening power. 

Third, a new relationship with central government is required that goes beyond the mere devolution of operational flexibility. This should genuinely address how and where authority over the design and coordination of post-16 pathways best sits. And it should define who is involved regionally, including key employers as well as local education providers. This sharing of authority over system architecture must come alongside the devolution of powers over funding to ensure the devolved authority is meaningful.

Fourth, whatever we do, we must protect quality. This is an area of current focus for the Office for Students and the Quality Council, and this agenda needs to develop ways for regional arrangements to operate to national and international standards and to ensure that no learner is underserved. England must emulate Scotland’s and Wales’ focus on evidencing quality enhancement.

The lessons learned from Greater Manchester, taken together with what the devolved nations have already built, point in a clear direction: if we want place-based tertiary education, we need to build the instruments that make it possible. The current ones were designed for a different system – and no amount of local ambition can compensate for national architecture that, however inadvertently, works against it.

Nic Beech is vice-chancellor of the University of Salford.

Fran Darlington-Pollock is executive chief adviser to the vice-chancellor at Salford.

John Blake is director at the Post-18 Project and professor of social innovation and public policy at Salford. He was previously director for fair access and participation at the Office for Students.