East of England

Happy New Year! I hope your break over the festive period was wonderful and restorative. Thank you to all the colleges for your warm Christmas greetings and kind messages of thanks and support. We very much appreciated them and wish you the very best for 2026. We definitely have another busy year lined up for us!
Congratulations to our East region AoC Beacon Award finalists for 2025/26:

• Cambridge Regional College, finalist for The Careers & Enterprise Company Award for Excellence in Careers and Enterprise
•  Harlow College, finalist for The Edge Award for Excellence in Real World Learning

Assessor visits are taking place this month, with winners being announced on the 3 March 2026 at the House of Commons. We wish you the very best of luck!

It was great to see FE leaders recognised in the New Years Honours list including: Nikos Savvas, Chief Executive of Eastern Education Group who received an OBE for Services to Further Education and Andrew Barnes, former Chair of Governors at City College Norwich who received an MBE for services to further education.

These awards are all a fantastic recognition of the impactful contributions colleges make in their communities and the education sector as a whole – well done to our East Region Colleges!

Continuing with the theme of celebrating, Colleges Week 2026 will take place from Monday 2 March to Friday 6 March 2026. Our theme this year is “Skills For All” and we are already looking forward to hearing what exciting activities you have planned for the week. Further information and resources can be found here and if there is anything we can do to support you with this celebratory week, please do get in touch.

We are keen to use these regional monthly newsletters to celebrate success in the region, therefore if you have anything you’d like us to share in future editions, please email pal.sohi@aoc.co.uk.

Network Meetings

As always, we have another round of regional events planned for this term that I look forward to seeing you at.

East Chairs’ Network
Tuesday 13 January 2026
8.30 – 9.30am (online)

East Finance Directors’ Network
Tuesday 13 January 2026
11am – 12pm (online)

East HR Professionals’ Network
Tuesday 13 January 2026
1 – 2pm (online)

East Governance Professionals’ Network
Wednesday 21 January 2026
1.30 – 3pm (online)

Best wishes,
Amanda Winnick
Area Director (East)