The Principal that counts - Lisa O'Loughlin big interview

When Lisa O’Loughlin says people see her as a ‘change-maker’ that is something of an understatement.

As a leader in further education, with a significant national profile, Lisa continues to take on the challenge of change as she strives to make a real difference.

Her work over the last two years has included making a major contribution to a vital national review of the education curriculum, while leading one of England’s top-performing college groups through a name-change and a bold new strategy.

And while doing all that Lisa, who received a CBE in the King’s New Year Honours list, has faced and overcome breast cancer with all the grit and determination she has shown throughout her professional life.

Sitting in her office in the Nelson campus of the newly renamed East Lancashire Learning Group (ELLG), she smiles as she says: “I’m not someone who likes to just sit and hang about. I’m not a ‘peacetime’ principal by any means. I like it when there’s a lot on, it’s what drives me.”

She has certainly packed a lot in her career so far. Brought up in Wigan, her father was a joiner who also played Rugby League for Leigh and St Helens, and she was the first of her family to go to university, studying media and business management at Manchester.

That led to an early career in media production with a corporate video company.

Lisa’s introduction to teaching and the world of further education came when she was asked to cover a class at a local college.

Before that teaching was not on her radar.

Enthused by the experience, she went on to get her teaching qualification from the then University of Central Lancashire. A post teaching TV production at Blackburn College, which had its own cable channel, followed.

“I had a fantastic time and loved it,” she says.

Over the next decade Lisa moved up through the management structure to become deputy principal before moving to Manchester College, becoming its principal in 2014.

Transformation and change were the two big ticket items on her desk as she took up the role. The college had 17 campuses across the city but lacked any curriculum strategy, she explains.

“Huge” changes were needed and by 2019, with its transformation strategy heading in the right direction, the college group was rated ‘good’ in every area.

Lisa also discovered the financial challenges of the system very quickly. “You have to generate enrolments every year.

If you don’t, you don’t get the money. The funding follows the learner and it’s a competitive market.

She adds: “The group CEO came from the private sector, from BT, and I learned a lot from him and the exec team. Apart from me, the executive team were all pretty much from the private sector and that was where I developed a genuine commercial understanding.”

During her time in Manchester, she also worked closely with the city-region’s elected mayor Andy Burnham on the skills agenda.

Collaboration was key, she explains, in the work to meet the needs of employers and 16-18-year-olds.

Lisa says: “Andy Burnham had an ambitious vision to create an integrated technical education system, with levels of specialism, making sure each part of the region had the skills it needed.”

When the work on the project was properly launched she stepped away and made the return to east Lancashire in 2023 as the new principal of the then Nelson and Colne College Group, motivated by the idea of new challenges and a return to Lancashire.

She explains: “I had a fantastic team in Manchester and felt like I’d done everything I could. It was time for me to get out of the way and let my deputy get on with it. I love Lancashire and wanted to come back and really make a difference.”

However, shortly after moving to east Lancashire she found herself facing a very different challenge, when she was diagnosed with grade three breast cancer. “I’d only been here six months,” she says.

Bouts of chemotherapy and immunotherapy followed the diagnosis. There were setbacks on her road to recovery. In Christmas 2023 she found herself in hospital with Sepsis, her immune system “shot”.

Now clear of the disease, the 53-year-old mother-of-one, who is married to artist husband Jamie Holman and lives in Lancaster, says: “It’s a difficult journey but I wouldn’t be as frightened of it if I had to do it again. The support you get from the nurses and consultants is just fantastic.

“I was told early on that there was a positive prognosis. The diagnosis is a lot to take in. You have to process it and really dig deep into your resilience.”

One side-affect of the treatment is her hair,once blonde and long is now short and dark.

“I went into chemo with hair like my mum and came out with my dad’s,” she jokes.

More seriously she adds: “I’m a positive, glass half-full person. When I came back to work, I was ready to be a normal, functioning human being again. Coming back was a real positive for me.”

She certainly hit the ground running. For the last 12 months, she has faced the pressure of helping decide how to overhaul the national curriculum and assessment system as one of 12 members of a government-appointed panel.

She was one of only two panel members who represented FE and reveals she felt a “big burden of expectation” in the role “because FE colleagues and learners needed us to get this right”. She also speaks of the intensity of the exercise.

It published its report in November and Lisa says: “It marks a defining moment for post-16 education and for every young person preparing to take their next step into further study, training or work.

“For colleges and training providers, the proposals speak directly to the heart of what we do. Its recommendations are practical, balanced and ambitious – and show a deep commitment to equity, opportunity and excellence for every learner.

“The review lays the foundations for an education system that equips every young person to achieve, to lead and to thrive.”

The new national curriculum will be implemented in full from September 2028.

Lisa says: “I am particularly proud of the strengthened focus on maths and English progress, the value placed on technical and vocational routes at Level 2 and 3, and the recognition of enrichment, confidence and transferable skills as core to a rounded education.”

At the same time as working on the panel she was leading her college group’s transformational name change project.

It follows major investments made on the back of strategic plans – all designed to offer more to students and employers, with more to come.

Part of that drive has been to improve the group’s technical education facilities, with a particular focus on the Accrington campus.

Lisa says: “We carried out a strategic review which began in 2023. One of its findings was that 700 students from Accrington were travelling outside Hyndburn for their technical education and most of those were commuting for more than 40 minutes. We needed to do something to address that.”

To enhance its offer to students, ELLG has embarked in a major multi-million-pound investment programme to create “game-changing” Industry Innovation Hubs (IIHs) centring on a range of subjects including engineering, digital and health.

She says: “We’re incredibly excited about the equipment and environment this substantial investment has allowed us to provide for our students. We have made these investments because we know it is what the area needs.”

ELLG is currently working in partnership with other colleges in the region to deliver the North West’s Technical Excellence College for construction.

And it also developing a partnership with Lancaster University as it looks to further raise the profile and scope of its academic learning.

In March it was officially ranked as the number one Further Education (FE) College in England for A-Level progress. It is also the only college in England to have been rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted for two decades.

The university partnership will enable ELLG to secure guaranteed places on a range of degree courses and guaranteed interviews for medicine for students who want to study at Lancaster.

A programme of summer schools is planned.

The next stage of the strategy is to launch East Lancashire University Centre and East Lancashire apprenticeships.

Lisa’s workload is not showing any signs of easing. She also sits on Lancashire’s new skills advisory board, which is helping to guide the recently formed combined county authority.

And, as she explains: “The ELLG transformation strategy is a five-year plan. We’re nearly three years into it and we’re already thinking ahead to the next one.”