The funding system for young people with learning disabilities changed a year ago, leaving “post code lottery” in its wake. Kathryn Rudd outlines how this has led to a campaign called A Right not a Fight.

A parent of a young person studying at the National Star College summed up the issue in one line when she said: “Young people affected by disability have the same right to choose the learning environment they need and deserve, exactly as those without a disability do.”

This is the central crux of A Right not a Fight, a campaign established by students studying at specialist colleges across the UK and supported by Natspec (The Association of Specialist Colleges). Students believe that gaining access to a specialist college should be a right, not a privilege accorded to those who are able to stand up to the system and fight for a place.

A student said: “If my special needs can be met better in a specialist college, I shouldn’t have to settle for a non-specialist college locally.”

This isn’t a criticism of mainstream colleges, which suit huge numbers of young people with additional needs, but a simple statement about being able to make an informed choice about their own future.

A year ago the funding system changed. Instead of a central pot of funding allocated for young people with complex needs, the money has been devolved to individual local authorities (LAs). This has led to a postcode lottery of funding based on geography, rather than need.

The National Audit office says that the benefits of specialist support can save £1m over a young person’s lifetime

Some LAs have blanket policies about not funding placements out of county, others have said they consider the specialist colleges in their county as out-of-county providers simply because they are not maintained by the LA, while a few are duplicating existing high quality provision as close as 10 miles away from existing high quality specialist colleges.

Young people and their parents are telling us they have no choice, they are not given information about specialist colleges and if they do find out about specialist colleges they have to be turned down by every local provider first, regardless of whether they are clearly not able to meet their needs.

One young man hoping for a place in September has now had to be turned down by five local providers. His mother said it confirmed his view that he was a “second class citizen”.

There is a perception that this is because specialist colleges are expensive, however there is no data which supports that assertion. In fact, the National Audit office says that the benefits of specialist support can save £1m over a young person’s lifetime.

One LA recently commissioned a place at a general FE college which was £10,000 cheaper than a place at a specialist college. But the specialist college costings were for 24/7 residential education and personal care for 36 weeks a-year.

The GFE college option was a day placement. It did not include all the support requirements stated in the young person’s learning difficulty assessment. Those costs would still need to be borne by the LA, from another pot. However, the LA did not recognise the additional costs as different departments only looked at the costs from their own budget.

Young people and their families are desperately hoping that when the Children and Families Act becomes law in September 2014, it will redress the balance and make sure that the views and wishes of young people and their families are finally heard — but so far the signs are not promising.

Our students are calling on the government to ensure they gain good information, that their wishes are at the heart of planning and that they are not, in the words of a parent “prisoners in their own county”.

This month, scores of young people and their supporters including MPs and peers came together to launch A Right not a Fight. The students set up a support wall so that they could say what specialist colleges meant to them. One student wrote: “It’s a chance to be the person you’ve always wanted to be in your life”.

Kathryn Rudd, principal of National Star College and chair of the Association of Specialist Colleges

With the Tories and Labour coming up with strategies to help young people off JobSeekers’ Allowance and into a job or back to the classroom, Mark Corney assesses the importance and implications of such policies.

The Conservatives and Labour are squabbling over who came up with an 18 to 21 ‘earn or learn’ strategy first.

Political squabbling aside, FE needs to become familiar with the 18 to 21 age range, and fast.

The focus on the age of 18 is explained by the fact the Coalition has decided to take forward Labour’s policy of raising the participation age to the 18th birthday from September next year.

The 18th birthday is when the duty to participate ceases but the current right to claim Jobseekers’ Allowance (JSA) begins.

The rationale for concentrating on adults until their 22nd birthday, however, is more complex to explain.

‘Earn or learn’ strategies are based on increasing the number of young people in full-time education or in jobs, preferably combined with apprenticeships or part-time FE and higher education.

The read across between full-time education and employment relates to what young people live off — in full-time education and training they receive maintenance allowances and in work they receive wages.

Obviously, it is easier to ensure that every 18 to 21-year-old rather than every 18 to 24-year-old is ‘earning or learning’ because the age group is smaller.

Equally, the cost of funding provision and maintenance will be lower — an important fact given the deficit remains greater than the combined Department for Education/Department for Business, Innovation and Skills budget.

Crucially, however, policymakers have a good base to introduce an ‘earn or learn’ strategy for 18 to 21-year-olds because 40 per cent are in full-time education compared to only 10 per cent of 22 to 24-year-olds.

Participation in full-time FE is less than 230,000 — with half of them aged 18 — because there is no maintenance support.

Participation in full-time higher education, meanwhile, is around 950,000 because maintenance loans and grants do exist and this despite loans of up to £9,000.

Importantly, about 80 per cent of full-time students in higher education are aged 18 to 21. The decision to remove the cap on student numbers in full-time higher education in 2015/16 is integral to the Coalition’s 18 to 21 ‘earn or learn’ strategy.

Alongside this measure to increase participation in full-time education by 18 to 21-year-olds above 40 per cent, the Coalition is implementing policies to increase the number in employment — but not studying full-time — beyond 37 per cent.

Expanding apprenticeships from the age of 18 should be seen as part of the ‘earning’ part of ‘earn or learn’.

Yet, there is a clear clash between expanding apprenticeships as part of
an 18 to 21 ‘earn or learn’ strategy and expecting employers to make significant mandatory cash contributions to 19+ apprenticeships.

This leaves 18 to 21-year-olds who are unemployed. Even though 200,000 claim JSA worth £57.35 per week there are a further 100,000 who are looking for work, but not eligible for the dole.

By the time of the general election, the Coalition is bound to join Labour in focussing on 18 to 21-year-olds without a level three.

And the reason will be simple enough — abolition of JSA, and in return for undertaking full-time training of up to 12 months, 18 to 21-year-olds will receive a Youth Allowance.

Clearly, the Coalition parties must consider whether unemployed 18 to 21-year-olds on the Youth Allowance should be expected to take out fee-loans for level two and level three courses given the consultation from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills consultation to extend loans to all adults.

Similarly, Labour should rethink its policy on means-testing the 18 to 21 Youth Allowance of £57.35 per week.

The party is reading across from maintenance grants paid to full-time higher education students and JSA grants paid to unemployed young people.

Since full-time higher education students living at home with parents earning more than £42,000 receive no grant and 18 to 21-year-olds on full-time training courses would receive no Youth Allowance.

What should be remembered is that every full-time higher education student living at home irrespective of parental income is entitled to a maintenance loan of £2,800 per year or £54 per week.

Mark Corney is a policy consultant

More than £3.5m of public money was paid out by 23 principals to Gazelle group of colleges, FE Week revealed in edition 107, where it was also highlighted that the highest-paying individual college dished out £642,000. The editor’s comment went on to question the wisdom of such spending in light of the fact no independent research had been published looking at what, if any, benefits that membership of Gazelle brings. Stella Mbubaegbu CBE responds on behalf of Gazelle.

We are taking this opportunity to set out in some detail what we believe Gazelle delivers and why colleges have chosen to align themselves with the common goal of developing an entrepreneurial and enterprising culture and practice.

The Gazelle Colleges Group is a not-for-profit membership group, and I am writing in the capacity of elected chair. We are a democratic group where both the leadership and spend are collectively debated and determined.

The Gazelle impact has been real for our colleges

Here we seek to set out the facts as they stand on investment within the group. Above all we want to be clear about the aims and objectives of Gazelle — and essentially it is to help colleges create more vibrant learning environments and experiences for students, and to prepare for a challenging financial future where enterprise and new revenue growth will be necessary to help compensate for loss of public funding.

The primary impacts and benefits of Gazelle are the sharing of knowledge, enterprise competitions, leadership development, entrepreneur network, curriculum development and commerciality.

So firstly, knowledge sharing and the organised and coordinated sharing of innovation, training and research across 23 colleges. We have six cross-college working groups in areas ranging from curriculum development to commercial growth, teaching and learning, marketing and student experience and science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem).

This shared activity is producing major benefits, including a model for Gazelle Stem centres, pioneered by South West College, now adopted by two additional Gazelle colleges with more to follow.

Secondly, on enterprise competitions, Gazelle has encouraged and enabled significant student engagement in national enterprise competitions and in a range of social enterprise activities. In the past three years, students from across the college network have participated in both the Market Maker Challenge and the Pantrepreneur social enterprise competition.

These are essential to the motivation and development of students, equipping them with skills, experience and confidence that traditional qualifications alone cannot.

Thirdly, leadership development and since 2012 Gazelle has been working with Babson College, America’s leading business school for entrepreneurship, to co-create a leadership development programme in which 90 staff have now participated. Indeed this has been evaluated in considerable detail by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), a supportive report we will invite the ETF to make more widely available.

Fourthly, entrepreneur network. Gazelle has developed an exceptional network of business leaders and entrepreneurs for the benefit of our member colleges. Our colleges are challenged to grow income and create new markets and to this end we are working with people who have experience at the highest level. Contributors to Gazelle events and reports have included Confederation of British Industry (CBI) director-general John Cridland CBE, Patisserie Valerie owner Luke Johnson and former Dyson chief executive Martin McCourt.

Fifthly was curriculum development
and more than 60 curriculum leaders at Gazelle colleges have completed world-class training and development with university and college practitioners from around the world.

The learning from this activity has already manifested itself in quite radical curriculum reform in many Gazelle colleges, increasing relevance and reducing costs to students.

Finally, commerciality. The development of the Gazelle Learning Company model is helping to create both a realistic commercial environment in which students learn vital business skills, and also new revenue streams for colleges through employer partnerships and enhanced recruitment potential. We are working with the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, the CBI and the ETF on an independent evaluation of this.

Gazelle’s overriding ambition remains to equip colleges and students alike for a fast-changing world and we welcome an honest dialogue on how this is to be achieved.

We do not pretend to have all the answers, but are confident that the Gazelle impact has been real for our colleges and that the group and its aims will continue to flourish in the years to come.

Stella Mbubaegbu CBE, chair of the Gazelle Colleges Group and principal of Highbury College, Portsmouth

Time to budget

Further education is a funny place to be at the best of times, but this time of year it’s always testing and leaves most principals mentally exhausted, not to mention bereft of humour.

The budget of course and, sadly, the more-often-than-not resulting cost savings that prove necessary along with the dreaded reorganisation and redundancies.

There has been much said and written of late about the fate of colleges up and down the land slipping from lofty heights either because the finances have gone to pot or Ofsted grades have worsened — and in some isolated cases both.

Indeed even the mighty 157 Group has had its casualties. So when last week I received, as all principals and chairs of governors did, a letter from FE Commissioner Dr David Collins, it read as a gloomy reminder of what can and is happening to colleges.

Let’s face it, it’s a tough and often lonely job being a principal — constantly being reminded of what fate lays in store for you should you fall from grace.

Loans opportunity

The current adult funding regime and methodology has been geared to save the government money, of course, however the introduction of 24+ advanced learning loans is in my view an opportunity for most colleges to increase income to offset the decrease in adult funding.

There is a downside however, and the process and, critically, the time it takes for the decision on the loan is not always as smooth and quick as it should be.

What’s clear is that loans are the shape of the future for most adult funding and I suspect the gap that currently exists for 19 to 24-year-olds will soon be plugged.

I like the loans system — it puts the emphasis on the college to be more competitive and customer-focused, which can’t be a bad thing in my view.

Gazelle

The recent FE Week article on Gazelle got me thinking. While almost without exception most principals aspire to create a culture and ethos of entrepreneurship for students and indeed the college itself, does it really require paid membership to a group to do this?

Money is tight for everyone, but handing out significant sums of public money to become a member college seems to be slightly perverse in a sector where sharing good practice, collaboration and expertise is the norm — or is it?

I’m not sure who really benefits although to be fair and balanced, some of the member colleges have been cited by our cheery friends from Ofsted as improving.

Adult Learner’s Week

I couldn’t go on without saying how pleasing it was recently to see the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) pull out all the stops for Adult Learners’ Week.

Well done David Hughes [Niace chief executive] and the team and thank you.

My own college put on a range of activities and events and what was genuinely gratifying was the passion and enthusiasm of everyone who took part.

Adult learning changes people’s lives. It transforms individuals and families and enables them to accomplish so much. I feel so humbled when I meet and see people from all walks of life, ethnicity, religion, and gender trust the college with their futures.

We should lobby harder for adult leaning and protect the funding going forward — it’s our duty to the future generation of adult learners.

Budget, again

Well, one more board meeting for the year — the final budget ready; hopes and dreams for the year ahead; many happy and successful students finishing up; and, staff looking forward to the well-earned holidays. Which reminds me, I really must book something soon.

Principals, enjoy your summer — you also deserve a rest. Forget about Mr Gove, Dr Collins, politicians and policy-makers. Worry not about Ofsted (well, at least for now) and forget the finances… oh, by the way, how are the application numbers looking?

See you in September for another fun-packed year.

The Secret Pricipal features on the last Monday of every month