On International Women's Day 2026, West Herts College Group CEO, Gill Worgan CBE, reflects on her experiences throughout a career in Further Education.
Following her recent visit to St James' Palace to collect her CBE for services to Further Education, CEO Gill Worgan sat down to discuss the experiences of women in FE and reflected on her career path and the outlook for young women in 2026.
For much of her career, Gill Worgan CBE believed she had “over-achieved”.
Not because she wasn’t capable. Not because she wasn’t delivering. But because, as a woman rising through senior roles in further education, she carried a persistent feeling that she was somehow fortunate simply to be there.
“I’ve had to unlearn the feeling that I shouldn’t really be in this job,” she reflects. “I used to say I’d been lucky. But you’re not lucky; you work hard, you invest in yourself and you earn it.”
It’s a sentiment other women in FE leadership have shared with her.
Despite the sector being rich in female talent, confidence does not always rise in proportion to responsibility. Worgan, who recently received a CBE for services to further education, argues that imposter syndrome among women in leadership is something she has experienced personally and observed in conversations with peers – not simply an individual challenge, but often cultural.
“To be successful as a woman in leadership, from my experience, you have to be really good because it’s not very forgiving,” she says. “You have to stand out. You have to be strong.”
Her point is not that women lack ability. It is that in leadership conversations, she has often encountered women who internalise higher expectations and harsher self-scrutiny.
In a sector under sustained funding pressure, policy reform and accountability pressure, leadership has never been more exposed. And yet, Worgan believes education remains one of the most powerful places to influence change.
“Leadership in education is a privilege,” she says. “You can widen the road. You can create opportunities that go beyond what people expect.”
At West Herts College Group, one of the region’s largest further education providers with campuses in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, that leadership philosophy is visible in outcomes. The College has strengthened employer engagement, expanded progression pathways and embedded a culture that prioritises attainment and aspiration. For Worgan, those are not competing priorities; they are inseparable.
It means resisting the temptation to operate purely within policy lanes – qualification delivery, progression metrics, economic growth targets – and instead using leadership influence to build confidence, resilience and aspiration in students who may not arrive with a clear “line of sight” to their future.
“There are young people who know exactly where they’re going,” she says. “But there are many who don’t have that clarity or don’t believe they can go very far. We have to flex the curriculum in ways that restore resilience and self-worth.”
The same philosophy applies to workforce culture.
Worgan speaks openly about the responsibility of senior leaders to build trust, not as a soft value, but as an operational necessity.
“If you don’t have a platform of trust and integrity, you lose the dressing room,” she says, using a football analogy. “And once that’s gone, everything changes.”
Trust, she argues, is what allows leaders to navigate difficult decisions in volatile times, particularly when financial or structural pressures demand unpopular choices.
As the sector reflects on gender equality this International Women’s Day, Worgan believes the conversation must move beyond celebration into system-level reflection.
Confidence gaps among women, she believes, do not begin in leadership roles; they begin far earlier.
“Start leading as soon as you can. Don’t wait until you land the job,” she advises young women. “Lead in your friendships, your hobbies, your community.”
Her view is that leadership is not conferred by title. It is built through permission – often self-permission – to act.
And perhaps the most powerful insight of all is that when women stop describing their success as luck, the culture of leadership shifts for everyone.
Image: Gill Worgan collects her CBE for services to Further Education at St James' Palace.
