As we all know, the announcement that the UK had decided to leave the European Union has had a huge impact, with so much happening in the 4 weeks since the news was revealed.

We now have a new Prime Minister, brought in due to the lack of other viable candidates remaining in the standing for the role. We have a new Cabinet, and a somewhat revolving door Shadow Cabinet, as well as an ongoing leadership challenge within the Labour party, reflecting the political and economic turbulence that took hold in the days following the referendum result.

We spoke on the referendum outcome the day after the result. However, as events have proven, anything longer than a couple of days pushes announcements into obsolescence in the breathless pace of change that has followed the referendum outcome.

So what can we confidently say will happen following the events of the last month?

We have a swath of new ministers in the Cabinet, relevant to our sector. We welcome Justine Greening MP as the new Education Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities and Rob Halfon MP as Minister of State at the Department for Education (DfE). Mr Halfon is widely believed to take the Further Education, Apprenticeships and skills brief from Nick Boles, who resigned following an unsuccessful backing of Michael Gove during the Conservative Party leadership campaign.

We also had clarification that the functions of the former Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in respect of Higher and Further Education policy, Apprenticeships and skills were transferred to the DfE.

The Prime Minister’s office stated that“bringing these responsibilities together in a single department will mean that the Government can take a comprehensive, end-to-end view of skills and education, supporting people from early years through to postgraduate study and work.”

This fits alongside wider machinery of government changes brought in by Prime Minster May. We cautiously welcome the change outlined above, but we’d like to seek reassurances and clarification about the budgets and funding of these departments. Will they be merged, and will 16-18 and adult learning be protected in this merged departmental budget?

We’ll presumably get more detail in the autumn statement, following the Parliamentary summer recess and Party Conference season.

We have strong indication that, unless political pressure is brought to bear upon her, Prime Minister May will not trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty initiating the UK’s departure from the European Union before the end of 2016. Initiating the Article 50 process would effectively give a minimum of 2 years before EU treaties no longer applied to the UK, effectively meaning a full ‘Brexit’ process could not feasibly be fully implemented until 2019.

With regards to European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF), current projects and process in the 2014-2020 period should be business as usual until at least 2019. After this date, we’d hope that the government backfills this budget – indeed, the former Northern Powerhouse Minister James Wharton stated at an event in Newcastle that the government would seek to backfill any EU funding shortfalls where viable. We await official clarification from the government on this.

In the interim, the education and skills reforms set out by the David Cameron-led government seem to be progressing, albeit to slightly amended timescales. Former Skills Minister Nick Boles stated that “we should continue to work on the basis that the apprenticeship levy is coming in April of 2017 as planned, and in the way it was planned”. We’ll also assume that the 3 million Apprenticeship starts target set out by David Cameron is still official government policy.

We’ve seen further continuation of the government’s reform agenda in education and skills progressing with the publication of the Report of the Independent Panel on Technical Education and accompanying Post 16 Skills Plan.

We’re also anticipating further detail on the schools National Funding Formula (NFF), with a second consultation being published imminently.

With all the turbulence and uncertainty following the Leave vote, one thing is certain: there will be continued pressure on the education and skills sector to produce skilled workers for the jobs of the future. We’ll continue to press government to provide the investment and resources for this to happen.