Staff pay is “killing” FE and T Levels are not yet a “gold standard” qualification, the education committee heard today as it kicked off a new inquiry into FE.
In the first oral evidence hearing this morning, the committee heard from college representatives, economists and FE policy experts on a range of issues concerning FE including chronic underfunding and GCSE maths and English resits policy.
The inquiry was first opened in January, which sought to explore the current reforms and challenges in further education such as pay gap between school and college teachers, maths and English GCSE resits, students’ mental health.
Here are some of the main takeaways:
‘Alphabet soup’ of FE qualifications
MPs began the hearing asking panellists what their assessment of the range of post-16 qualifications was and what can be done to improve it.
Principal and CEO of Hartlepool College Darren Hankey said FE has an “alphabet soup of different qualifications” that has been constantly tinkered with over the last few decades.
“I think there is an opportunity there to be a little bit clearer,” he told the committee.
David Robinson, director of post 16 and skills at Education Policy Institute (EPI) added: “There are three times as many qualifications within each subject area for vocational qualifications compared to academic qualifications. I think this complexity works against those who need most support that post-16 transition.”
Alice Gardner, chief executive at Edge Foundation, agreed that the landscape “can look quite confusing to a young person post-16”, adding that “some of that is a responsibility pre-16, so it’s really difficult to look at it in isolation”.
Gardner advised that school settings should be doing more to promote different career paths, which is underpinned by the Baker Clause that states that schools must allow colleges and training providers to tell students about non-academic routes.
“We’ve got quite a narrow curriculum that doesn’t encourage young people to really understand the routes and the pathways that might be available to them later,” she said.
Rob Nitsch, chief executive at Federation of Awarding Bodies, agreed with Gardner.
“I definitely think the Baker Clause is not working, it’s not sufficient,” he said.
“Where we do see it applied, it seems to work reasonably well. 16 per cent more apprenticeships in college, in school settings that actually push that.”
Parity of ‘input’ not ‘esteem’
When asked about how to achieve parity of esteem between academic and vocational pathways, Robinson said there should be more focus on “parity of inputs”.
“It used to be the case that technical qualifications were funded less than academic qualifications, despite the fact they have higher delivery costs. That has been improved in recent years,” he said.
He added that academic qualifications are more prevalent in school sixth forms where staff pay is higher than further education colleges, which teach more technical vocational pathways, and leads to deeper recruitment issues in FE.
He told the committee: “Vacancy rates in the FE sector around 10 times those that they are in the school sector. So I would rather we focus on parity of inputs. We may get closer to parity of esteem if we address some of those things, but I think parity of esteem on its own, I think can be a distraction.”
Hankey added that he didn’t really understand the issues around parity of esteem as vocational careers such as engineering, healthcare and hairdressing all need good academic knowledge.
“To be successful in a technical area, you need a good academic underpinning anyway. We could probably call all qualifications at level two and level three the same thing, because that would do away with the parity,” he said.
Are T Levels ‘gold standard’?
The committee also heard that T Levels model was “very rigid” and the T Level foundation year programme “was not doing well”.
When asked if T Levels were a gold standard qualification, as labelled by government and backed by the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review last week, Nitsch said it was “dangerous to stigmatise everything”.
“I think any qualification will have advantages and disadvantages. I think T Levels do a particular function. I think our focus should be on how we can make them work better,” he said.
He added: “The model that we’ve applied to T Levels is very rigid at the moment and I think it’s just a leap of faith to expect that to work across the whole of the economy.”
Gardner said that it would be “doing a disservice” to what could be a really useful pathway for young people to “paper over the cracks” of T Levels – the crack being high drop out rates and employer engagement.
“It feels like it’s very much in that guinea pig place and I get worried about young people being guinea pigs. We can’t afford to let any young person go through any qualification without being absolutely clear what the aims and objectives are and what they will get at the end of it.”
Robinson said his concerns with T Levels were over the scalability.
“Our research showed that retention was an issue for some students with 20 per cent of students with T levels being 20 per cent less likely to complete than students doing similar sized alternative qualifications, particularly disadvantaged students are more likely to drop out of T Levels.”
He added: “I think the transition program is definitely not gold standard, with only around 8 per cent of those on the transition program transitioning into T levels, and of those that do around the quarter drop out in the first year. So there’s clearly a lot of work to be done.”
Meanwhile, on the government’s pause on defunding BTECs to make way for T Levels, the panel agreed that it was important to retain alternatives to T Levels.
“And I think if we give young people a binary choice between T Levels and A-levels on one side, or being pushed down to lower level qualifications, and I think many more young people will end up not achieving a level three, which we know is associated with good outcomes for young people,” Robinson added.
Gardner added that for a “large majority” students that take BTECs and end up at university, retention is “good”.
‘We don’t know how well resits are working’
Regarding GCSE resits in FE, Robinson said there isn’t much evidence on how well the resit policies benefiting young people.
“We know very well that young people who pass at 16 more than progress to have higher levels of education. Fundamentally, I don’t think we know whether the same is true of students who re sit. And for me, that’s a really, really important evidence gap that we should be looking to fill,” he told the committee.
He also recommended a rethink around using the same resit policy for both maths and English.
“It may be that there’s more good practice that can be shared for literacy to improve standards across the board. For numeracy, I think probably the policy needs bit more of a wholesale rethink.”
Nitsch, who is also chair at the City of Portsmouth College, said the resit policy was an “utter nightmare” for his college.
“It has to close three out of its four campuses. It’s got 1,200 students that are due to sit do their resits, takes a whole day out of the programme, and 200 of those who’ve got SEND requirements as well, it destroys the delivery of education broadly across the college for a significant period of time.”
Pay is killing FE
In the second part of the evidence hearing, the committee heard about staff pay issues in the FE sector.
In January, the Department for Education released £50 million from the £300 million award to FE to fund staff pay rises as a one off grant.
Imran Tahir, research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimated that the grant would translate potentially to a 3 per cent increase in pay relative to what it is today.
But Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, said that would “barely going to cover any car parking charges if people are even driving to work” nor the pay gap between FE teachers and schoolteachers.
“Staff in FE have really borne the brunt of this neglect,” she said.
She added: “I do not think it is over the top to say that it is killing FE. The quality of what can be delivered in the classroom is dependent on how staff are treated. The working conditions of staff are the learning conditions of students.”
Inflation-adjusted additional funding still results in funding fall
The IFS estimated that FE would need £200 million in real terms of additional funding every year.
Tahir calculated that if the government spends the £8.3 billion on 16 to 19 education, adjusted for inflation, up until 2027-28, it would result in a 4 per cent fall in per pupil funding.
If it spends the same unadjusted amount of £8.3 billion, it would result in a 8 per cent fall in per pupil funding.
David Hughes, chief executive at that Association of Colleges said it was a “really good estimate” but said it was difficult to assess because it doesn’t factor in learner choices.
“It could be that the IFS is underestimating, because they’ll be tending to do more technical courses which cost more, and therefore the average cost per student might be higher. And I think with the labour market getting tighter as well, we might see more young people who are in work coming back into FE colleges, and that could boost that pressure on the budget.
“The spending review has to recognise those numbers, because otherwise the sector is on its knees, it will be cataclysmic.”
Pupil premium for FE ‘would make a massive difference’
The committee was urged to consider the lack of a pupil premium for FE learners, which supports looked-after teenagers and care leavers beyond the age of 16.
Robinson said in the first evidence session that disadvantaged students finish college with lower grades – usually the equivalent of one A-level grade lower – because they started with lower grades.
“We also know that at the age of 16, disadvantaged funding falls by about a third. So those same students who one day at the end of at the end of secondary school were getting a certain amount of support just falls off when they then start their post-16 education.
“We need to think about supporting those students all the way through their education, from early years all the way through to 16 to 19 and beyond,” he said.
Hughes added that there is “no reason” or rationale for no pupil premium beyond the age of 16.
“That would make a massive difference for disadvantaged students.”
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