The search has begun for Peter Lauener’s replacement as head of the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

The job of chief executive of the funding agency, which will be formed through a merger of the existing Skills Funding Agency and Education Funding Agency on April 1, is advertised through the government’s civil service jobs recruitment site.

The job, which comes with a salary of up to £142,000, is described as “one of the department’s most senior leadership roles”.

It comes after FE Week reported on Tuesday that Mr Lauener would retire as chief executive of the newly-merged SFA and EFA once a permanent replacement had been found.

That news came after FE Week exclusively revealed the moves at the beginning of March.

The chief executive of the merged agencies will be an “additional accounting officer” for “the vast majority of the Department for Education’s £66 billion programme and capital spend”.

Applications are invited from people with “successful experience as a proactive, strategic leader operating in a large and complex organisation” and “a track record of delivering demonstrably successful organisational change”.

Among the agencies’ key responsibilities are to “manage the system to operate the apprenticeship levy”, to “manage a programme of post-16 area reviews” on top of managing school funding for children up to the age of 16.

The deadline for applications is April 25, with final panel interviews scheduled for early June.

Mr Lauener, who is also shadow chief executive of the Institute for Apprenticeships, has led the EFA from its inception in 2012 and the SFA since 2014.

According to the job advert, he had “pursued an agenda of developing shared services and joint teams over the last two years, even while the agencies were in separate departments”.

Consequently, “ministers have now decided that the agencies should be merged to maximise scope for further savings and for improving the quality of customer services and the effectiveness of all its functions”.

But, as reported by FE Week, the merger has raised concerns that skills and adult education could now drop down the list of priorities at a merged agency also focused on schools.

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5 Comments

  1. I find it interesting that this role is very wide ranging, responsible for a huge budget of 66 billion pound (that’s billions… not millions).
    How many heads of training providers (Principals, Directors etc) are on a higher salary than this for a tiny proportion of the complexity or responsibility.
    The question is, is this role underpaid or are they overpaid or am I barking up the wrong tree?

  2. Hope they don’t miss some good candidates off their list because they don’t
    answer a question that is open to interpretation. Look out for the announcement of them offering the job to somebody who has no previous history of training.

    • I’m expecting someone from sales to get the job, the ESFA is clearly more about bums on seats than quality……courses are being delivered in 13.2% of the recommended minimum GLH and these clowns don’t give a stuff…….