What good departments do that others do not

Consistently the same short list.

Departments that produce reliably good teaching share features that are unglamorous and organisational. Trainers teach the same units repeatedly rather than being spread thinly. Time is allocated for validation and it is protected. New trainers are paired for a full cycle rather than briefed.

They also maintain a shared record of what learners get wrong in each topic and what has been found to help. That single artefact is the accumulated teaching knowledge of the department, it is cheap to maintain, and almost nobody keeps one.

Industry contact is arranged rather than left to individuals, which means it happens. Where it is a personal responsibility discharged in personal time, it happens for the conscientious and not for anybody else.

And somebody senior teaches. A department where the people making decisions about delivery have not been in a classroom for years will make decisions that look sensible on paper and do not survive contact with a room.

None of these requires additional funding so much as different allocation of time that is already being spent, which is why the difference between departments within one provider is frequently larger than between providers.