Enacting generative AI policy in english further education colleges: tensions between national ambitions and institutional realities in vocational education and training (2023–2025)

This paper critically examines how national policies promoting generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) are enacted within English Further Education (FE) colleges between 2023 and 2025, with a focus on vocational and technical education. Drawing on documentary analysis of national policy, regulatory texts and institutional materials, the study is informed by policy enactment theory and a social justice lens. The study identifies a persistent gap between ambitious national discourse (emphasising personalised learning, workload reduction and workforce preparation) and uneven institutional practices. Documentary sources on a small number of early-adopting FE colleges indicate benefits such as administrative time savings and enhanced feedback processes, but significant barriers remain, including limited access to professional development, concerns regarding assessment malpractice and unequal institutional capacity. Critical scholarship suggests that failure to enact technology with substantive policy, institutional and practitioner guidance can accentuate existing inequities, particularly in rural or under-resourced contexts. The paper supports arguments that GenAI, frequently framed as a democratising innovation in vocational education, may instead intensify structural divides without equity-oriented policy support, and concludes by proposing clearer regulatory guidance, capacity-building measures and differentiated funding as conditions for more just and sustainable GenAI integration in the FE sector.