The world of publicly-financed FE is a diminishing one. Andy Gannon makes the case for defending the sector from further government cuts with a new, morality-based dialogue.

So, perhaps unsurprisingly, the adult skills budget faces a cut of around 15 per cent.

It goes without saying that this is regrettable — we all know that adult skills is a key area of work for FE, and of vital importance if we are to get more people in work and productive in their lives.

In an excellent article in the New Statesman recently, John Elledge bemoaned the lack of public outcry at this decision, but this is not news to those of us working in the sector.

Perhaps more cuttingly, he criticised sector leaders for not shouting more loudly, adopting, as many have done, the ‘it could have been worse’ line.

What such criticism fails to acknowledge is that we face a stark choice as a result of this and other recent funding decisions about the kind of sector we want to be part of in the future.

It is true that, in the past, we have perhaps tugged our forelocks a little too quickly and bemoaned being done unto, but I wonder if our current situation signals a desire that we can be at the forefront of new developments.

There have been plenty of voices recently urging the sector to be less reliant on public finance. From Vince Cable to David Russell, the message is becoming ever clearer — don’t dwell on where your money came from in the past, just go out and find some new money.

Whether it be from muscling in on apprenticeship trailblazers, embracing employer ownership pilots or actively supporting new types of school, FE leaders with a bit of nous are already ahead of the game.

The era of ‘survival of the fittest’ both financially and in terms of quality is clearly upon us

Whatever your personal view of its rights and wrongs, the era of ‘survival of the fittest’ both financially and in terms of quality is clearly upon us.

And I am sure that the entrepreneurial spirit of many FE leaders will ensure that a great many are not only very fit, but also survive into longevity.

There is, however, another side to all this. A criticism that, some would say, could more fairly be levelled at FE sector leaders is that they are obsessed with the detail of policy change.

If schools or universities were targeted, their leaders would talk as loudly about the impact on education as they would about the impact on institutions. They would not hesitate to take a moral stance on the very purpose of education itself.

It seems to me that FE talks rather more often about what we do than about why we do it — and therein lies a big difference.

I know that we have teachers and leaders who care passionately about why they go to work every day, but that part of our voice is not very loud.

I am, as yet, unsure whether that leads to, or results from, the apparent belief of policymakers that the way to improve things in FE is to constantly tinker with minutiae, rather than revisit the very purpose of the whole enterprise. Either way, it’s not healthy.

So, where adult funding is concerned, let us quietly get on with the business of making our institutions survive financially — yes. But let us also engage in some loud discussion about moral principles.

It is surely wrong for adults to have to pay for a basic level of education — let’s say up to level two — when the main reason for their not having it is failings in the school system. There is a case we can argue with conviction, not because it protects FE, but because it is morally right.

It would, at least, give us a starting point for an adult discussion that we, with justification, should be leading rather than falling victim to.

Andy Gannon, director of policy, PR and research, 157 Group

A government consultation on apprenticeship funding reforms is looking at making employers pay towards training. Kirstie Donnelly explores the implications.

All 16-year-olds are different. All of them have different talents and different goals in life.

Some, for example, are naturally academic and suited to classroom learning. Others, as we all know so well, are better suited to practical learning. These are the ones who should be given the opportunity to start an apprenticeship.

So I was alarmed to learn the government’s technical consultation on apprenticeship funding, published this month, and its proposed changes to the funding of the 16 and 17-year-old apprenticeship system that could potentially undermine or severely damage it.

According to the proposals, apprenticeships for 18-year-olds would remain fully-funded (for the time being, at least), but employers would have to part-fund apprenticeships for 16 and 17-year-olds.

No decision has been taken, but as the Association of Employment and Learning Providers and others have cautioned, moving from full funding to a new approach risks apprenticeship uptake.

And it seems to me these proposals would create a two-tier system, putting apprenticeships for 16-year-olds on a different standing to those available to 18-year-olds — which is surely another way of saying that 16 and 17-year-olds shouldn’t really be doing apprenticeships in the first place, but should be staying in school.

This hardly matches the rhetoric we heard from the government during National Apprenticeship Week, emphasising the value of vocational routes.

How will we ever end what Education Secretary Michael Gove called ‘the apartheid at the heart of our education system’ if the system portrays apprenticeships at age 16 as inferior to A-levels?

How will we ever end what Education Secretary Michael Gove called ‘the apartheid at the heart of our education system’ if the system portrays apprenticeships at age 16 as inferior to A-levels?

Nobody is suggesting young people should be discouraged from academia. I just want people to have the opportunity to choose the route that’s right for them, not be pushed one way or another.

Make no mistake, this choice matters. I don’t need to tell you that plenty of 16-year-olds thrive as apprentices, and gain skills that make them work-ready — which, given the levels of youth unemployment in this country, mustn’t be undervalued. Apprenticeships are a lifeline to social mobility, and should remain so.

But I’m also worried about the impact this will have on employers — the very people we rely on to drive apprenticeships forward. My biggest concern is that if employers have to bear the cost, will they even bother to hire apprentices at this age?

And, especially if apprenticeships for 16 to 18-year-olds are to be run along different lines, are we adding yet another off-putting layer of bureaucracy? Okay, larger businesses will probably be fine, but what about small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — the bulk of the UK business community?

A fifth of small business owners plan to take on one or more apprentices in the next 12 months, according to the Skills Funding Agency — but if the government makes the funding structure too complicated it risks jeopardising any progress we’ve made.

To me, these plans are just another way for the government to slice more funding from the FE sector, when instead they should be investing in it.

History shows us that during a recession, the companies that succeed are the ones who invest.

Investing in apprenticeships, including for 16 and 17-year-olds, will help this country come out on top.

It’s important to remember that these are just proposals. But if they do come into effect in 2016, it’ll be yet another change in a sector that is crying out for stability.

I think it’s fair to say that at the moment, apprenticeships don’t have the credibility they deserve. In fact, we haven’t had a vocational and apprenticeship system that we could be truly proud of for more than 30 years. Get the system wrong now and we risk years’ more upheaval.

Our apprenticeship system has the potential to benefit so many, but endless tinkering, and no farsighted consideration of the consequences will only damage it in the long run. Far better that we choose the right approach now and focus on making it great.

Kirstie Donnelly, UK managing director, City & Guilds

The extension of the apprenticeship grant for employers may have provided the main source of budget attention for FE, but Mick Fletcher looks at how else the sector might have been affected by Chancellor George Osborne’s announcements.

In a pre-election budget, designed to win votes through devices like cutting the bingo tax, FE was never going to feature strongly and, sure enough, it scarcely featured at all.

It’s true that the chancellor talked of boosting apprenticeships — something that is always good for a round of applause — but the so-called ‘boost’ consisted only of keeping the existing grant for those small and medium-sized enterprises that take on younger apprentices and meanwhile the Education Funding Agency gave the game away by planning for fewer numbers in 2014-15 than in the current year.

To assess the real implications for the sector one has to look beyond the headlines.

Rather than looking for what the chancellor said about FE institutions directly it might be better to look at what the budget, the autumn statement and the associated economic outlook means for actual and potential students — what is the indirect effect?

The picture is relatively clear, if bleak.

Despite welcome signs of an economic upturn in some sectors there will be a continuing squeeze on real wages; the key measure of GDP per capita will not return to pre-2008 levels until at least 2017.

At the same time there will be a continuation of deep cuts in the safety nets provided by the state affecting those in and out of work.

Colleges will need to focus more on how to help people to pay for learning rather than helping them avoid paying

Although there is an increase in private sector jobs a high proportion have been part time and temporary, and outside London overall employment growth remains weak.

Youth unemployment remains stubbornly high and would be higher still if 16 year old Neets had not been relabelled as truants, making them, and not the government, appear responsible for their fate.

The major implication of this is that the need for FE will grow at the same time as the ability of individuals to access it will diminish.

Improving their skills is the best way for individuals to escape insecure employment, but state subsidies for anything beyond the most remedial types of education are set to reduce and possibly disappear.

Colleges will need therefore to focus more on how to help people to pay for learning rather than helping them avoid paying.

It means making imaginative use of loans, which up to now some institutions have effectively ignored, but also challenging policies that deny adults the ability to access learning in small, affordable bites.

It means thinking about affordability in FE in the way in which the sector has embraced that concept when delivering local, accessible HE.

Interestingly the budget included a dramatic relaxation of the rules around the use of pension funds making it no longer mandatory to buy an annuity and trusting individuals to plan their finances.

In the same spirit it might be time to revisit the idea of allowing individuals to access part of their pension before they retire to fund retraining a or a change of career direction.

Proposals for apprenticeship credits and childcare credits delivered through dedicated accounts suggest that it may be worth looking again at ideas around learning accounts as a means of supporting individual investment.

The more favourable treatment of older people should lead FE strategists to think again about how to encourage inter-generational transfers to support learning.

Adverse circumstances are a spur to creativity and the next few years may well see such imaginative new ways of making FE accessible.

These new ideas however, and the detail of funding agency policy, should not be allowed to obscure the big picture.

Strategic leaders will need to address the implications for their institutions of a future in which much of FE is no longer seen as a public service, but as a private good; in which demand is potentially strong but increasingly instrumental, and affordability for low paid workers is key.

Mick Fletcher is an FE Consultant

The government has already downgraded Functional Skills more than three years before they are fully replaced in the apprenticeship programme by GCSEs. Roger Francis makes the case for viewing the qualifications as equal again.

Few people would deny that the UK faces a huge skills crisis.

Nearly 50 per cent of the adult working population has the level of maths competency expected of an 11-year-old and probably cannot interpret their own pay packets.

Moreover, a raft of surveys last year from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development placed the UK close to the bottom of global tables for maths, English and science in developed countries.

In those circumstances, and with UK companies constantly reporting an inability to find staff with the relevant skills, it almost seems churlish to criticise a government initiative aimed at addressing the problem.

Yet that is exactly how a wide range of experts across the sector have responded to the governments’ proposal to replace Functional Skills (FS) within the apprenticeship framework with A to C grade GCSEs from 2017.

The government’s position appears to be that it wants GCSEs to be adopted as the “gold standard” and that leaving FS in a similar position would cause confusion and detract from that long-term aim.

So FS, which up until six months ago was positioned as an equal alternative option to GCSEs, has now become a “stepping stone”.

This instant downgrading appears to have taken place without any consultation with the relevant stakeholders and without any statistical analysis of the impact of FS on competency levels.

However, in setting out that strategy, I believe the government has failed to recognise the very real differences between vocational and academic career paths.

FS were developed specifically for people who chose the former. Many of the learners whom we support have already failed their GCSEs in maths and English and achieve the equivalent FS qualifications not because they are easier or because they are merely “stepping stones”, but because they are more relevant to their job roles and to situations they meet in everyday life.

The vast majority of learners on apprenticeship programmes do not need to know about quadratic equations and have an intimate knowledge of the novels of John Steinbeck.

Instead, they need to be able to quickly calculate the value of a 20 per cent discount, to be able to contribute effectively to a team meeting and to deal sympathetically with a customer complaint.

Those are skills which it is almost impossible to develop within the strict confines of an academic qualification.

The government clearly hopes that a revised GCSE will become an aspirational target for young people, but aspirations have to be realistic and achievable as well as challenging and with nearly 50 per cent of learners currently failing to achieve an A to C grade in maths and English, there is a real danger that we will disenfranchise the very people whom we should be supporting and encouraging.

Having already closed off an academic career, we are now telling them that the vocational pathway is no longer an option either unless they can achieve a qualification which they probably consider irrelevant and unobtainable.

My other concern is that FS is being side-lined before any credible evidence has been obtained as to its impact.

Surely we need some thorough research and analysis before effectively ditching a qualification which employers and practitioners alike believe is genuinely raising standards and competency levels?

It was very pleasing to read that the government is listening to employer feedback and re-evaluating the proposed grading scheme for apprenticeships.

I would urge it to adopt a similarly flexible approach on FS and allow employers to set new standards which retain the option of FS or GCSEs.

By all means continue to develop the standards for FS and evaluate their effectiveness, but let’s not consign them to the Museum of Ancient Qualifications when employers, practitioners and experts across the sector are voicing their almost unanimous support.

Instead, let’s re-position FS as the “gold standard” for vocational training. That will surely give us a much better chance of tackling the current crisis and providing employers and learners alike with the skills they so desperately need.

Roger Francis, director, Creative Learning Partners