Colleges across the country have been hit with industrial action as staff took part in strikes over pay.

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) manned picket lines after eleventh-hour talks with the Association of Colleges (AoC) failed to result in an agreement.

It is understood that among the colleges affected this morning were Lesoco (formerly Lewisham College and Southwark College), Blackburn College, Hull College, Redcar and Cleveland College and City of Liverpool College.

The strike was called, the union claims, after “a series of below-inflation pay offers from the association since 2009 mean FE lecturers have seen their pay cut by more than 15 per cent in real terms”.

And, following a pay offer of 0.7 per cent this year, the union balloted its members in FE colleges in England. More than two thirds of those who voted (71 per cent) backed strike action. The union had been seeking a 5 per cent deal.

Sally Hunt, UCU general secretary, said: “The strength of support for this action by staff has meant it has not been business as usual.

“Staff have reached rock bottom with massive pay cuts over a long period yet they see their institutions ploughing money into new buildings and giving those at the top six-figure salaries.

“What we are asking for is a modest and affordable pay rise to reward those who are the backbone of our post-16 education system and who have made it the success story it is today.”

The UCU strike vote came despite the AoC having reached agreement with Unison, AMiE, ATL, UNITE and GMB through the National Joint Forum.

Emma Mason, director of employment policy and services at the AoC, said: “Since 2010 government funding to colleges has reduced by 25 per cent. “UCU’s industrial action risks damaging the education and training of students, undermines the reputation of colleges both locally and nationally and places an undue burden on non-teaching staff and non-union members to take measures to minimise disruption to the student experience.”

She added: “The pay recommendation for 2013/14 is for a 0.7 per cent increase and £282 for staff earning £14,052 or less and increases the recommended minimum hourly rate to £7.45 in line with the UK Living Wage.”

College staff were joined in strikes by university colleagues, who were in their own national pay dispute. Staff from higher education institutions were, according to the UCU, offered a 1 per cent pay rise this year, despite their pay falling by 13 per cent in real terms in the last four years.

A spokesperson for the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, which represents and negotiates on behalf of universities as employers, said: “Our 150 participating HE employers confirmed that the pay increase offered is sustainable, fair and final.”

Main photo: Lesoco (formerly Lewisham College and Southwark College) staff take part in national demonstrations over pay. Photo by Nick Linford

After an exhausting few days, Association of Colleges chief executive Martin Doel shared his thoughts with FE Week editor Nick Linford.

The pair talked all things conference in a 45-minute webinar, sponsored by Tribal. Here are some of the key moments.

Nick Linford: So, we heard from the president of the Association of Colleges, Michele Sutton, who was shortly followed by Skills Minister Matthew Hancock.

There were two main things that came out of that. Let’s start with careers advice, and the Careers Guidance: Guaranteed campaign. How’s that going, and what vibes did you get about this from Mr Hancock?

Martin Doel: There are students who start courses inappropriately in schools, and then have to transfer to a college. So we are paying for longer training/education than young people need and affecting their futures, because that advice is leading them to the wrong choices for them. That’s the personal, social and human impact.

I think we’re getting movement. This is sometimes, I think, how things get changed. At that one stage, we get back from the Department for Education [DfE]: “There isn’t a problem with careers education.” So, no problem … or the DfE doesn’t think there is. Then suddenly you get this select committee saying: “There’s a problem.”

Then you get Ofsted saying “there’s a problem”. There’s an acceptance there is a problem.

Ofsted-reported colleges need to be judged on the effectiveness of the careers education they are providing.

Ofsted ought to be asking “have you invited partners into your school to actually give young people the widest range of choices?”

NL: We need to see Ofsted reports that are very critical where that doesn’t happen.

MD: That would be the turning point — clear accountability.

As far as I’m concerned, Ofsted has put careers advice and guidance in special measures — declared it inadequate. When they declare a college to be inadequate, they go and re-inspect in a year’s time.

NL: Let’s switch a little bit —Mr Hancock … did say the apprenticeship funding will go to employers. What’s your view on this reform, and do you think it’s going to happen?

MD: The consultation is still out, so clearly the minister may have made his mind up.

Mr Hancock could do these things theoretically, but practically it’s a whole other world. You can make proposals in Whitehall — most people think Universal Credit, in a sense, is a good idea. It’s one allowance. Doing it? It’s hugely different.

What we’d do, is we would approach it in a very careful, considered way. If it were with PAYE, I would struggle to see how you can do a pilot.

NL: We potentially have a minister here who wants a very significant change on his watch, it relates to the treasury, which is his background, and the chance is fantastic — if it’s successful. But they are not around forever, and what sort of mess may we be left in if we do get wholesale change?

MD: I am very concerned about that. I mean, we have corresponded about it … I am concerned about not only the idea, but how you implement an idea. If the employers are getting the money directly, they’ve got all the same accountabilities, the same audit requirements, the same quality requirements for them to actually do it.

NL: We had Business Secretary Vince Cable make an announcement on capital. It sounded to me like it’s not new money but there’s an opportunity to get colleges to get their hands on it sooner.

MD: I am assuming people know that there is a problem with cash flow between this year and next year. I imagine that was achieved in the face of a lot of opposition.

NL: Tristram Hunt, our new Shadow Education Secretary, has announced that, in office, the Labour Party would introduce something called Institutes of Technical Education. In a sense it would be a badge, wouldn’t it?

 

MD:The word ‘technical’ connected to a college has a long history, and you still go to some towns and they still talk about ‘the tech’ — the technical college. It’s got a ring, it’s something you might recognise from the sector, so… it’s interesting.

The UK Commission for Employment and Skills is meant to be a social partnership, I think it is, but it needs to involve all its partners in deriving whatever criteria they might come up with in the proposals. I think they could probably go to no better source than Frank McLoughlin’s review from the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning.

He came up with four criteria for good vocational teaching and learning, which are: dual professional staff, industry-standard facilities, a clear line of sight to work and a two-way street of continuing conversation with industry

NL: The core point here is: is the system broken? These are very radical proposals … it’s a very big system and we are not starting from a blank piece of paper. So if it’s not broken, the question is, how radical does it need to be? And some of these things look quite concerning, unless you think we need a huge shake-up. Do we?

MD: No. I would argue that any college doing its job right, which is the very, great majority of all colleges, should be able to represent themselves, should they wish, as an institute of technical education.

NL: So, onto this closing speech. You had this metaphor of the ‘burning platform’.

MD: Yes … creating a burning platform. There is a tendency, if you want to get change, to create an emergency. A crisis. Children being failed! Young people being failed! We’ve got to do something — NOW! [The conference] was refreshingly absent of that. There wasn’t a lot of criticism about what colleges were doing.

NL: Let’s look at one of these — we’ve just had these new numbers from the DfE, saying colleges are failing young people who nearly get their English and maths GCSEs.

MD: Many colleges tell me, even if the student has got GCSE grade C, their functional numeracy isn’t good enough to start their vocational programme.

Employers recognise GCSEs, only GCSEs are testing the wrong things. So what do you do? Do you call it functional skills, key skills, which doesn’t get the bite with employers, or do you actually go back to the qualification and use that?

I actually think there is a lot of room for, say, breaking the GCSE down into two and calling it pure and applied maths. If a young person doesn’t achieve the applied part of the maths GCSE by 16, then it’s the college’s job to get them through applied maths. That’s what the OECD report was actually reporting — that functional numeracy and literacy was not of the required standard. Getting kids to bang their heads against the wall for 11 years, and then giving us the job to keep banging their head against the wall for another two years, thinking something different is going to happen seems a bit nonsensical to me.

Employers tell us contradictory things. They want GCSE maths and English. But they want numerate students in order to do a job and apply their skills. Let’s go back and think about what we’re producing, and actually use their time best at 16 to 18 to meet the needs of employers.

NL:What’s the highlight for you?

MD: The ‘do we have too many hairdressers?’ debate — I was really pleased that it wasn’t about ‘do we have too many hairdressers?’ It was about vocational education, and its core.

There were two elements. One, student demand doesn’t equal employer need. If someone turns up at college… at Bridgwater College, who are doing really great work with the nuclear industry … and says, “I want to do performing arts,” it’s no good telling them that we’re doing nuclear engineering, that’s what we’re open for today, because they would either become disengaged or they would just go somewhere else. So, you know… it’s that breadth of opportunity that we do need. Every college wants every young person to have the most prosperous and most stretching career that they can have. Colleges, I think, work as hard as they can to reconcile student demand with employer need. You don’t do it on your own. It’s a co-operative enterprise. And it’s actually something you achieve over time. So just saying, “There are too many hairdressers, do me more engineers,” it doesn’t work that way.

The other thing that came out very strongly … is what I call ‘education through the vocational’ — developing transferrable skills so the student may progress into other areas. I was interested in the audience. Emily Maitlis, the presenter, asked how many people in the audience are doing the career for which they trained, and if what they started is where they ended, and just about no-one put their hand up. Everyone put their hand up and said, “I ended up somewhere else,” which I didn’t expect.

You know, universities over-train huge numbers of archaeologists against what the museum sector requires — and they don’t seem to be questioned about that. This is not just so simple as to say, “too few engineers, too many hairdressers.” Let’s work together to match the needs of the employer, and get student demands shaped to where the nation needs it.

This is a whole system change. Taking one part of the system, which is colleges, and holding them to account solely for this isn’t the answer.

It’s about funding mechanisms, it’s about accountability mechanisms, advice and guidance, about employers articulating better what their offer is, it’s about social media.

It’s about the media portraying certain activities as attractive to women… we’ve got a deficit of women engineers in this country.

Download your free copy of the FE Week 16-page highlights from the AoC conference 2013 supplement, sponsored by NOCN.

Click here to download (16 mb)

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The Shadow Education Secretary, Tristram Hunt, chose the Association of Colleges conference as the venue for his first speech since taking on the role in early October. He used to opportunity to outline policies laid down by his party’s Skills Taskforce in its second report, entitled Transforming further education: A new mission to deliver excellence in technical education. Here are extracts from his pre-prepared speech along with some of the key recommendations from the Skills Taskforce report, published on November 21.

In government, it will be an early and vital priority to rebuild our careers service for young people.

They are being failed at the moment — and we can see the social and economic consequences all around us.

And these failings particularly hurt vocational education — where the routes to qualifications and accreditation are often harder to decipher.

I want to make it very clear that raising the status, the standing and the standards of vocational education will be a signal task of Labour’s time in office.

It is why I chose to come to this conference to give my first speech as Shadow Education Secretary.

For there can be no transformation of vocational education in this country; no change in the fortunes of the forgotten fifty per cent; no improvement on social mobility, without the hard work and dedication of the people in this room.

If that were not already clear, then the shocking findings of two recent reports — from Alan Milburn on social mobility and from the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] on our numeracy and literacy skills — have made it so with devastating emphasis.

When social mobility has ground to a halt; when older age groups have better numeracy and literacy skills than our young people; and when the long tail of underperformance wags hardest in the 14 to 19 age range; then none of us can afford to be complacent.

But this is not just about social justice. It is also a matter of absolute economic urgency.

Just as in 1997 we saw that higher education expansion was vital for our future competitiveness we now realise how vital vocational excellence is for the same reason.

Byzantine funding regimes; perverse incentives; shambolic co-ordination; central government and its agencies have a lot to answer for when we consider the proliferation of qualifications and the breadth of provision.

Where academic rigour is strong it is absolutely right that colleges continue to deliver A Levels and send students to higher education.

But the most important thing we can do to deliver vocational excellence is to bring about a transformation in apprenticeship provision, both in terms of quality and quantity.

But this is not just about social justice. It is also a matter of absolute economic urgency

We will say to business: ‘If you want a major government contract you must provide apprenticeships for the next generation’.

But we will give employers more control over skills standards and funding.

And we would guarantee quality by ensuring that apprenticeships are all level three or above qualifications and last a minimum of two years.

Of course mandating that apprenticeships should be of level three standard does not remove the need or demand for level two qualifications.

But that is what I would call a real traineeship.

Indeed, the truth is that too many apprenticeships in this country are delivered at a level that would not be recognised as an apprenticeship in places like Germany.

And in far too many cases they are a cover for the repackaged re-training of existing employees.

But changes to apprenticeships are only one half of the equation.

Alongside delivering the off-the job training component of apprenticeships, this must be where FE applies its focus.

Alongside compulsory English and maths, our Tech Bacc would be accredited by business and contain a work experience requirement.

However, a gold-standard must be seen that way by all — by parents, businesses, colleges and, most of all, by young people themselves.

So the Tech Bacc must only be delivered by highly qualified lecturers, who understand how to tailor curricula and pedagogy to the needs of learners and employers.

So I can announce today that as part of Labour’s new mission for FE, colleges who demonstrate strong performance in specialist vocational teaching; strong links with local employers; and high quality English and maths provision would be recognised as specialist Institutes of Technical Education.

And only Institutes of Technical Education would be licensed to deliver our gold-standard Tech Bacc and the off-the-job component of apprenticeships.

What is more, to make absolutely sure that business buys-in to our gold standard, we will take advice from the UK Commission on Employment and Skills responsible for determining the exact criteria for awarding the licenses.

With this comes a renewed focus on English and maths.

Numeracy and literacy are the most basic 21st century skills. Contrary to the government, we think it is right to follow the lead of our international competitors by making English and maths compulsory to 18 for all students.

And part of the answer certainly lies with improving teacher quality. Better teaching equals better standards.

So, unlike the Government, we would require that all FE lecturers hold a teaching qualification and because English and maths is so important to our educational performance, we would ensure that all
FE teachers hold a teaching qualification at level two or above in English and maths.

We would allow the Education and Training Foundation to set tough minimum standards on qualification and CPD requirements for teachers in FE colleges.

And we would improve vocational excellence by ensuring that teachers spend a period of time in their industry each year, developing their specialist area.

 

Download your free copy of the FE Week 16-page highlights from the AoC conference 2013 supplement, sponsored by NOCN.

Click here to download (16 mb)