Don’t let the FE title fool you — higher education is far from the sole preserve of universities, despite what a government review by Sir Andrew Witty seems to be saying, explains Jack Carney.

In spring this year Sir Andrew Witty, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline and Chancellor of the University of Nottingham, was asked by government to carry out an independent review of the role higher education plays in economic growth and regeneration.

He was tasked with looking specifically at a higher education infrastructure that could deliver the government’s Industrial Strategy.

In the summer, the preliminary findings and emerging themes of the Witty Review (“Universities and their communities: enabling economic growth”) were published.

Disappointingly, the report was exclusively concerned with the contribution of universities rather than all institutions that offer higher education.

The Manchester College, a member of the 157 Group, was surprised by the omission of any mention of higher education within FE, the higher education route chosen by almost 50,000 learners a year.

This was a missed opportunity to show the truly unique and positive offer to both learners and employers from higher education in FE and took the initiative to submit a response to the review’s preliminary findings.

We have a voice too, and one that should be listened to in any debate on economic growth and industrial strategy”

The delivery of the government’s Industrial Strategy is a fundamental part of the Witty Review, yet there is no account taken of the key role that our sector already plays in employability and working with businesses — when it comes to engaging with employers locally and enabling economic growth, FE colleges have no equal.

The review’s preliminary findings see a central role for research-based universities in leading the strategy, with a growing distinction between these and the teaching universities, which Sir Andrew appears to have seen becoming increasingly private sector.

Sir Andrew looks at how universities can work with local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) and other local organisations that can drive economic growth, such as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

And our sector is way ahead of the field in its ability to engage with SMEs, including at the higher education level.

The preliminary report also seems to point to a diminished role for LEPs in the delivery of the industrial strategy, in favour of research-based universities, which seems to be out of step with the government’s policy of channelling an increasing proportion of funding through LEPs.

There may well be ways in which LEPs can be improved and adopt best practices, but what they need is our support and active involvement to ensure that there is joined-up thinking between local need and local solutions.

Could there not be, for example, an highly productive relationship in which universities play the role of economic research partners of councils alongside FE colleges, who are experienced in community engagement, employer links and innovative delivery, all of which support the LEP local regeneration agenda?

The fact is that the higher education sector is an extremely broad and varied one, and the Industrial Strategy’s chances of success are reliant on all parts of it, not just the very top
in terms of academic research, vital though that is.

Research universities, teaching universities, university business schools and higher education provision in FE colleges all have a role to play.

The preliminary findings of the Witty Review have raised a number of questions, and the concerns from our sector are certainly not the only ones that have been expressed: universities have their own issues, and these are all important debating points.

But we have a voice too, and one that should be listened to in any debate on economic growth and industrial strategy.

We firmly believe that it is up to us — our sector must take the initiative and widen the debate to make sure the FE voice is heard.

Jack Carney, principal, Manchester College

Schools weren’t the only ones frowned upon by Ofsted when it assessed careers guidance. The National Careers Service came in for criticism too and also needs careful consideration, says Stephan Jungnitz.

If you’re working in the commercial sector, perhaps the quickest way to your P45 and the dole queue is to encourage potential customers to go and shop elsewhere.

Colleges and schools compete not just with each other for post-16 students, but with training providers, apprenticeships and the jobs market.

At a time of steep reductions in funding, is it realistic to expect providers to encourage potential students to look elsewhere?

Isn’t it obvious that an independently-funded careers service is needed?

The government’s attempts to ensure all young people have independent careers guidance are woefully inadequate, as Ofsted’s recent report “Going in the right direction – careers guidance in school” concluded.

While its report was critical of provision in schools generally, there was also strident criticism of the National Careers Service (NCS) and its web-based service.

Ofsted’s report suggested the NCS website failed to strike a chord with young people, which isn’t surprising if you’ve looked at it.

If you try to find providers, most schools and sixth form colleges are absent, as are many large FE colleges.

If you search for maths in Cambridge you’ll be presented with courses at the university and FE college mixed in with opportunities in Darlington, Grimsby, Macclesfield and Stockport.

The government has taken the criticism of the website on board in its action plan, pledging to “reshape and reprioritise what is available for young people, schools and employers” and to “explore opportunities to make sure careers professionals and school staff are made aware of resources”.

However, this is a sticking plaster that does not address the crux of the problem.

Replacing personal Connexions advisers with a website clearly is not working. This is a national experiment in careers guidance that is failing.

It might be worth reflecting upon how the current sorry state of affairs has developed.

Connexions was set up in 2000 to provide a national careers service.

It employed staff to give impartial guidance to young people.

Staff had expertise, and there was no pressure to recommend any particular choice post-16.

However, services did vary substantially in quality.

Instead of addressing these shortcomings Connexions was replaced and many of its services discontinued as funding ceased.

When directed by government to focus largely on those students most at risk, Connexions lost the ability to provide proper careers support to all students.

Ofsted reported in 2010 that students in schools with a sixth form were too often unaware of the range of courses and opportunities offered elsewhere, and recommended that all year 11 students receive impartial advice about options.

Of the £105m funding for the NCS last year, most came from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and the Ministry of Justice prompting a headline in the national media that read ‘More job cash for jailbirds than kids.’

The Department for Education contributes a paltry five per cent of the budget.

There really should be resources made available nationally for independent careers advice for young people, and in particular for face-to-face discussions with an independent adviser.

It simply is not realistic to assume that schools will be able to do this.

This is a national experiment in careers guidance that is failing“

Helpfully, Ofsted published another report in March where it may have identified some resources.

In Local Accountability in Colleges it reported that ‘planning for new sixth forms has not always been sufficiently well-aligned to demand and demographics in the local area’.

It seems that resources are being frittered away on superfluous new provision when they could be used to fund good careers advice for young people.

 Stephan Jungnitz, colleges specialist, Association of School and College Leaders

The government has pledged to act over careers guidance problems in schools but, asks Martin Doel, is it going to do enough?

Not many of us can have been surprised by the conclusions of Ofsted’s report on careers advice, but that doesn’t make it any less of a concern. Nor does it mean the report should be ignored by ministers and officials at the Department for Business, Innovation
and Skills (BIS) and the Department for Education (DfE).

For those of us across the education world who warned government in 2011 that the careers advice clauses in the then-Education Bill were weak and ill thought through, we can now see the results.

Schools are under a statutory duty to secure advice from a careers service dominated by funding from the government department concerned with adult skills — BIS.

But some schools are not securing independent advice at all.

The law isn’t ideal, but changing legislation is time-consuming and often difficult so we need remedies now.

Let’s be frank about this, the DfE contribution to the NCS has been extremely disappointing”

Ofsted produced some very sensible recommendations, some of which were accepted immediately by DfE, including the need to update the statutory guidance.

But I fear that, yet again, we are going to take a few tiny steps towards assuring good guidance when what we actually need is a step change.

That is why we have launched a campaign, entitled Careers Guidance: Guaranteed, with four simple aims.

They surround firstly, inspection. Ofsted should inspect and report on the quality of careers guidance and on whether staff delivering that advice are qualified.

This would be an improvement on the new Ofsted handbook which states only that inspectors should check, “how well leaders and managers ensure that the curriculum provides timely independent information, advice and guidance to assist pupils on their next steps in training, education or employment”.

We think this could be much stronger and the provision of careers advice should be a limiting grade.

Secondly, we want to see local career

‘hubs’. Colleges, job centres and local councils should work together to ensure there is such a hub in every area.

Everyone should then know where they can go to get advice about local career options and available courses.

We also want sign-posting to the National Careers Service (NCS).

All colleges and schools should have a widget on their websites linking to the NCS website, making it as easy as possible for young people to find their way online.

But even this is essentially a 20th Century answer to the problem. We also need to think of cleverer ways of using internet search engines for a wiki generation.

Our fourth aim is the most difficult to achieve politically because it involves money. But let’s be frank about this, the DfE contribution to the NCS has been extremely disappointing.

In 2012/13, Michael Gove’s DfE gave £4.7m to the NCS, compared to £85m from BIS, £14m from the Ministry of Justice and £1.5m from the Department for Work and Pensions.

As an organisation seeking to influence Government we are, of course, very aware of the challenging public funding situation and the fact that DfE is focusing on school funding, often to the detriment of funding for the education of 16 to 18-year-olds.

So, it is not without some hesitation, but absolute certainty of its value, that I state our fourth aim as for DfE to match-fund BIS with regard the NCS.

The NCS will be able to provide a better service to school pupils, ensuring fewer end up not in education, employment, or training; and that fewer drop out of education at the age of 17 after poor choices at 15 or 16. It could also be that more that more pupils become apprentices.

Simply asking keen employers to speak to classes of 14 and 15-year-olds will help widen some horizons, but will not by itself address systemic problems in ensuring careers guidance: guaranteed.

Martin Doel, chief executive, Association of Colleges

Change is inevitable. And preparing for it and adapting to it could lead FE to a bright future despite predictions of government funding cuts and evermore specialised training needs, explains Shaun Hughes.

Of all the educational sectors, FE is widely recognised as having to change the most and evolve the fastest.

So what are the tools that can best help colleges adapt to those changes, not just now but in the future?

As the new product manager for the FE market at Tribal, my job is to manage change. But my entire career has been spent adapting to change.

I graduated in Australia as an astrophysicist, taking up various posts around the world, first in the USA and then the UK, using the biggest and most advanced telescopes to explore how the universe changes on cosmic timescales.

Funding cuts in astrophysics triggered my decision to move into IT, creating software for schools.

But even within IT, my role changed within and across different industries, from analysing systems and business needs in the telecoms sector, to now adapting the UK’s leading management information system (MIS), and to
the evolving needs of learner administration
in FE colleges.

If we are positive about change, and better, if we plan for change, we can then identify the opportunities that it presents and turn change into an advantage.

Year on year the FE sector changes in response to new regulations, funding models and the fluctuating demands of learners.

Although many of these changes have been difficult, the colleges that have adapted positively to the altered circumstances are the ones that do best.

To take advantage of new opportunities, these colleges analyse their information about learners, their curriculum choices and the fees that are charged and funded to identify the
optimum combination that results in maximum value.

To do this quickly and efficiently they need good tools, particularly an MIS that not only stores and tracks this information, but allows it to be efficiently shared and analysed.

Colleges that use these tools are those
which become most effective in this changing environment.

But how do these tools need to change in order to continue to give colleges the advantage?

Three notable trends predict the FE tools of the future.

Over the next 20 years the number of people in retirement will grow almost twice as fast as the number in employment, so funding
of public services, including education, will face continuous cuts.

Jobs will become ever more specialised and diverse, creating more niche educational needs, so the curriculum will continue to grow.

So, the only way to offer a wider curriculum with fewer resources will be to rely on Virtual Learning Environments (VLE).

How this can be done while still maintaining high quality educational outcomes will be the biggest challenge FE has ever faced.

So what are the most useful tools in a future VLE world?

While VLE content needs to be relevant and stimulating, learning is more than just digesting curriculum content.

A key skill that’s currently missing from VLE platforms is the teacher’s ability to instantly monitor student engagement and to adapt their style and pace to maximise that engagement.

Hybrid e-learning is producing similar outcomes to traditional methods because it retains the involvement of the teacher in monitoring student engagement and success.

Colleges will need tools that integrate with VLEs and automatically monitor learner engagement and even predict the learning outcomes of individuals, making this information available to teachers, learners, their parents and employers wherever they may be, and using it to adapt the learners’ Individual Learner Plans.

These tools and mobile interfaces, when integrated and working together via the MIS, will allow the teacher to work in concert with learners to focus scarce resources where they’re most needed.

The best colleges and MIS providers are already preparing for this change, and they are the ones that will turn that challenge to their advantage.

Shaun Hughes, global product manager, Tribal

Research has suggested that nearly two out of every three colleges have teachers on controversial zero-hour contracts. But says, Jane Scott Paul, many employers and employees don’t have a choice but to use them.?

Zero-hour contracts are being debated within the FE sector and wider media after research from the University and College Union indicated more than 60 per cent of colleges had them in place with teachers.

Exploitative, unfair and murky were just some of the terms used to describe the contracts which allow employers to hire staff with no guarantee of work and for individuals to be ‘on-call’ around the clock.

The arrangement means an employee only works as and when they are needed and is only paid for the hours they work.

The widespread scale of this practice across the UK economy has recently been brought to light. According to a survey of 5,000 Unite members, as many as 5.5 million workers could be on the contracts.

The contracts deny the employee important rights including the entitlement to holiday and sick pay and the guarantee of future work.

So why are employers offering agreements which offer no certainty or financial stability? And more importantly, why are employees settling for them?

In these difficult economic times, employers have been forced to make hard choices.

The public sector, including the FE sector, is having to reduce budgets dramatically.

These contracts were created to allow businesses the flexibility to respond to fluctuations in their workflow by calling on a pool of workers when they are needed.

But it is evident that the use of zero-hours contracts has extended far beyond the types of work for which they were originally designed, with those employed on these terms paying a high price.

Why are employers offering agreements which offer no certainty or financial stability? And more importantly, why are employees settling for them?“

While zero-hours contracts are of benefit to some, such as those who wish to work on an ad-hoc basis (including the retired, students who can only work at certain times of the year, or seasonal migrant workers), in practice, with their widespread adoption, the benefits of flexibility are one-way in favour of employers.

The reality is that many of those employed through these contracts find it immensely hard to plan their lives when they cannot rely on regular work and have a fluctuating income.

We need to ask if the majority of those employed on these contracts wish to be?

Many don’t have a choice. With high levels of unemployment most workers are not in a position to be ‘picky’ and have to take any offer of work, even if hours cannot be guaranteed.

The arrangements are enforced by employers who are either using them to survive or who are exploiting them to cut costs.

But life can be very uncertain for those employed through these contracts — especially for those with families.

Labour leader Ed Miliband said at the TUC conference recently the contracts had been “terribly misused”.

It seems the pendulum has swung too far towards thoughtless cost-cutting.

An offer of unpredictable hours and irregular pay is exploitative and is certainly no way to build staff morale and staff cohesion.

While money will be saved in the short-term, a long-term price will be paid if the FE sector is unable to attract and retain the talent it needs to meet the challenges and opportunities it faces.

The Association of Colleges requested good examples of zero-hours contracts. To qualify for that description, the benefits and risks must be shared equally between employer and employee. I suspect that examples of good practice will be few and far between.

David Prentis, general secretary of Unison, commenting on zero-hours contracts summoned up an alarming spectre: “They wind the clock back to the bad old days of people standing at the factory gates, waiting to be picked for a day’s work.”

This is not something we want to see in 21st Century Britain.

Jane Scott Paul, chief executive, Association of Accounting Technicians

Taking the learner voice into account is key — but the teacher voice needs to be listened to as well, says Dr Peter Lavender.

Learner voice specialists are staff we often admire, but who frequently remain invisible in professional terms, not being part of the teaching workforce.

As a college governor, you find evidence of their work in the confidence of student unions the support of corporation student members and in learner forums having the processes and skills needed to ensure that learner views are expressed and heard.

So the new Learner Voice Practitioners’ Network, launched by the National Union of Students (NUS) in June, is very welcome.

During a 2012 research study on learner voice in vocational education led by Australia’s University of Ballarat, we found that a common policy problem in Australia and England is that the state rarely defines the purposes for learner voice. This leads to uneven practice.

In the study, providers saw learner voice as important for information-giving marketing quality improvement securing equity helping students learn about democratic processes and enabling better ownership of their own education.

All these and other purposes can be seen in a ‘learner voice’ model developed by the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS), against which providers can see where they are on a kind of continuum.

There are few systems, if any, compared with learner voice, for ensuring teachers can have their views aired“

The model stimulates critical discussion of learner voice approaches and reflection on what providers are doing most effectively.

In hindsight, we could probably have described the framework along the lines of the ‘expansive-restrictive’ continuum as proposed by Professor Lorna Unwin.

It heartens me to think that much ofthe development work by LSIS, with Ofsted’s new enthusiasm for hearing what learners think about their education, has supported
the continuation of learner voice strategies by providers.

Much of the good practice in developing materials to support learner voice processes has been encouraged jointly by the NUS and LSIS the Learner Voice Awards and development materials for practitioners are good examples.

On reviewing the data in the 2012 learner voice research, I noticed a theme — a growing disquiet felt by some managers in some colleges. It wasn’t about learner voice, but about teacher voice.

One senior manager said: “It’s not learner voice that concerns me … I have real doubts about whether their [teachers’] voice is heard systematically here.”

It is not that teachers are not being heard in their teams when they speak up, but that there are few systems, if any, compared with learner voice, for ensuring that teachers can have their views aired about matters that concern them — more widely and more systematically than through trade union meetings, the local curriculum team or large, all-staff conferences.

Reviewing our systems for teacher consultation, inclusion and involvement against the LSIS learner voice model would be illuminating and should generate an interesting debate.

The key question, as it is for learners, might be: “If the ultimate goal is to ensure that teachers are fully empowered here, what would the systems look like in this institution?”

The model for learner involvement differentiates between informing learners (or teachers) and empowering them. It seems obvious to me that there should be a teacher and trainer
involvement strategy to complement the learner strategy.

The increasing attention being given to learning, teaching and assessment means that governors must have a more systematic way of hearing from teachers and their view of these things.

In a recent peer review and development exercise by governors at three colleges in the East Midlands, focusing on governance, we concluded that a key thing to get right is the importance of asking the powerful questions and hearing answers from those with powerful and informed perspectives — teachers and learners.

Dr Peter Lavender, member of the Institute for Learning, governor at North Warwickshire and Hinckley College, and former chair of the Learning and Skills Improvement Service Think Tank on Learner Voice