It’s wrong that nobody knows if the adult skills fund actually works

“It is very nice of you to tell Aidan that you will tell him about things. We are the scrutiny body here, and we are saying to you loud and clear that we would like to know more about these things.”

This pointed rebuke from a London Assembly member to Greater London Authority (GLA) officials still resonates with me six months after I addressed the assembly on the mayor’s adult skills fund (ASF).

At that December session, I raised concerns about how little we know about the delivery and impact of the capital’s £345 million programme. Those concerns are not unique to London. Across England, both devolved and non-devolved ASF allocations suffer from a lack of transparency and accountability amidst evidence of substantial budget underspends.

Unlike apprenticeships, where comprehensive data is available from national to individual provider level, we know remarkably little about the outcomes of ASF-funded provision. There is ample data on learner participation. But scant information exists on job outcomes or progression. In London, the GLA’s Learner Survey attempts to fill the gap. However, small-scale survey extrapolations are a poor substitute for robust performance data.

This opacity matters. Sector leaders frequently point to the overall decline in the adult education budget since 2010, but when the Treasury looks for evidence to justify more investment, it finds little to support the case. Without hard outcomes, officials are left unconvinced.

Caretakers of decline

Even before the local elections attention in government had turned again to the ASF, with senior cabinet members demanding that all departmental programmes demonstrate value for money as part of the so-called “Plan for Change”. Labour’s Growth Group of MPs has since accused ministers of being “caretakers of decline”, while another Labour MP warned that “we cannot afford to let stale institutions, cautious regulators, pressure groups or vested interests stand in the way” of reform.

Adult skills funding may not have been the immediate target of those criticisms, but it absolutely should be part of the conversation. Skills policy was central to the prime minister’s recent proposals to reduce immigration. Yet the ASF remains poorly understood and weakly monitored.

Calls for reform are nothing new. The Leitch Review in 2006 set out a clear direction for demand-led funding. But resistance, including from civil servants, has kept much of the system unchanged. Today, it is hard to defend a multi-million-pound programme, delivered almost entirely through grants, with so little public accountability.

The London Assembly agrees. Members have rightly demanded access to provider funding agreements, which might show whether large college groups are held to the same job outcome targets as independent training providers on the GLA’s framework and we should know what the outcomes are. Politicians in other regions should make similar demands and not accept spurious references to commercial confidentiality as an excuse.

Demand-led advantages

The case for making the ASF more demand-led has long been established. In a recent FE Week profile, Isle of Wight College principal Ros Parker noted that after advertising courses in carpentry and welding, the college received 500 applications overnight. It had to close applications early due to overwhelming demand. More provision is now planned for the autumn. But a genuinely demand-led, roll-on-roll-off system could have allowed the college to respond faster.

ASF funding agreements should align more closely and transparently with the sector priorities set out in Local Skills Improvement Plans, especially now that mayors co-own those plans. The mayors’ offices should be thoroughly scrutinising the work of the combined authority officials in this regard.

The current grant allocation system for post-19 provision should be phased out and Lord Blunkett’s call to revive individual learning accounts deserves serious attention. The Department for Education has confirmed that mayors could use ASF to pilot such schemes. Proven models already exist internationally and the technology to deliver them is readily available.

In February, Sir Sadiq Khan announced that he would “start to change the way London commissions adult education” to make it more employer-led. We await the details, but there is hope that long-overdue reform may finally be on its way.