‘Qualifications don’t produce good teachers’

The new teaching and training qualifications for the FE sector dominated  discussion at the latest Westminster Education Forum last Thursday. Shane Mann reports 

Changes in sector regulations were outlined in the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) report last month entitled Teaching and Training Qualifications for the Further Education and Skills Sector in England.

It also introduced new teaching qualifications that awarding organisations and higher education institutions are devising for introduction in September.

Discussion of these changes and what they mean for teaching standards were examined by an FE sector panel made up of Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, Rob Wye, LSIS chief executive, Norman Crowther, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ national official for post-16 education, Ian Pryce, principal and chief executive, Bedford College and Sue Crowley, chair, non-executive board, Institute for Learning (IfL).

Mr Wye started the session by discussing the changes.

“It is clear from our research that excellent teaching and learning is dependent on excellent teacher training and excellent additional CPD,” he said.

“One of the findings in the Lingfield review was that the structure of qualifications for teachers and trainers was too complex; that it needed revisiting and reformulating. LSIS has undertaken this work in recent months and has found that what employers actually wanted was a simple structure that meets their needs. That is what has been developed.”

Mr Doel commended LSIS for its work, saying: “Teaching standards and qualifications are not an end in themselves.

Martin Doel, chief executive of the AoC

“I think they’re actually a very useful thing, but I do believe that they don’t need to be mandatory. I am certain that the guild will take LSIS’s work forward on that basis. The flexibility of the qualifications produced is useful as a benchmark to aim for, and for employers.”

He added that teaching qualifications “do not produce nor guarantee good teaching and student outcomes”.

“Good teaching is necessary but not a sufficient condition for guaranteed good student outcomes,” he said.

“It’s a pre-eminent part of what colleges and providers could and should provide in terms of good student outcomes.

“There is a difference between occupational and professional expertise as a teacher. There are complex support systems within colleges — learner tracking, engagement of industry and knowledge management — which are all important and critical to student outcomes.”

I want my students to be taught by the most skilled people that I can find”

Ms Crowley said that practitioners wanted teaching qualifications to remain mandatory.

“We consulted widely with our membership and they were clear that they want an entitlement to teacher qualifications and they would be happy that regulations were maintained,” she said.

“It’s important that we think about whether you need to be qualified. How will those that come in to the profession feel when working alongside those that have qualifications? Will they have a second-class status? I don’t know of another profession where regulations for qualifications have been revoked. It’s quite remarkable.”

However, Mr Pryce argued that the sector should focus more on the vocational skill of the individual; whether a candidate could teach or not should be up to individual organisations, not the government.

“I want my students to be taught by the most skilled people I can find, I don’t want the government to be involved at all because the quality of my staff is a matter for my organisation and it’s a source of competitive advantage,” he said.

“The idea that the government tells me I can employ people that have certain qualifications actually offends me. The government should look at our outputs not our inputs.

Rob Wye, LSIS chief executive and Ian Pryce, principal and chief executive, Bedford College

“I also don’t understand why the taxpayer should be expected to fund professional qualifications for teachers. And why we allow awarding bodies that are not professional teaching bodies to create them. We need to be attractive to those highly skilled bricklayers and engineers and have to be able to convert people from industry into teaching without them losing time or money. That dual professionalism is the jewel in our crown.

“In our sector we have a compliance model of continuing professional development, whereas the Quality Assurance Agency talks about scholarly activity and people doing research. It’s a continuum and we’re on the wrong end. We’re fixated at the CPD end, we’ve got to shift that focus and stop counting hours.”

Featured image caption: Sue Crowley, chair, non-executive board, Institute for Learning

Magnum head shares his skills

More than 100 photography, art and media students at Dudley College had a rare treat when documentary and art photographer Martin Parr, UK head of the Magnum Photo Agency, talked about his experiences and work over the past 30 years.

He described how photaography had changed since the 1970s and how his career had been driven by passion.

“By being obsessive, you strive to be better than anyone else; you look for more interesting subjects and take more pictures. You might need to take a lot of bad pictures to get a really good one,” he told students.

Ben Gamble, Dudley College manager for art, design and media, said: “It was a privilege to have Martin share his work and experiences with our students.

“This is one of the many ways we give our learners a competitive edge and exposure to the realities of working in a creative industry.”

Featured image caption: Dudley College photography students with Martin Parr. From left: Ruth Gadd, Gina Ho, Charlotte Coddling, all 18, Laura Kennet and Lizzie Dunn, both 17

Minister visits new £33m campus

It was a day of firsts when the leader of the Welsh government visited a new £33m campus. First Minister Carwyn Jones met the first learners to study at Coleg Gwent’s state-of-the-art Blaenau Gwent Learning Zone.

As well as construction, the campus, which opened in March, offers courses in art, media, IT and independent living skills.

Mr Jones said: “The investment in this new facility aims to improve learners’ experiences and choices, as well as provide greater access, increased participation and improved standards. Many of these aims are already being achieved just months after it opened its doors.

“We want places of learning in Wales to inspire learners of all abilities. It is clear from the enthusiasm of the students and the wider community that this new Learning Zone is doing just that.”

Featured image caption: First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones, Coleg Gwent deputy principal Guy Lacey and plumbing student Tori Lee, 18, at the new campus

LEPs can articulate the needs of business

The 39 local enterprise partnerships really do want to raise skill and employability levels as a fundamental to driving local growth, says David Frost

Perhaps one of the most dispiriting aspects of working with local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) is that skills and employability feature at the top of all of their agendas. But if the 39 LEPs are to have responsibility for driving growth, they will be hampered if they do not raise skill levels, particularly employability skills, in their areas.

Why is this dispiriting? Because we have spent billions trying to resolve it. We had a huge focus in the decade to 2007, but much went on before this. A litany of agencies and acronyms: the training boards, the MSC; The TECs; the LSC — and all the others in between.

All were supposedly set up to resolve the endless mismatch between the skills that employers needed and what was being provided locally, and a real concern that many young people were leaving education deeply unprepared for the world of work.

We seem to have made little progress on this central issue.

LEPs, after a slow start, are now very much the focus of the drive to promote growth. Lord Heseltine’s report, No stone unturned, gave real stimulus to the LEP network.

This was further built on by the Autumn statement in December and the Budget in the spring of this year. LEPs are the only game in town at present in respect of economic development.

What is clear is that the business and civic leaders understand the scale of the skills issue; they know that it is too late to sort these problems when a young person is 18.

There is a need to work in schools, just as there is a need for flexible and high quality work experience. There is a need for impartial and quality careers advice, which will be delivered in an increasingly non-traditional way. And there is a need to market the benefits of increasingly high quality apprenticeships.

FE will have to show the added value it is giving to young people in return for the substantial levels of funding that providers continue to receive”

Too many young school-leavers go on to higher education, which is not providing them with the opportunities that they were led to believe would result from choosing this route.

That is why employers have become such strong advocates for the University Technical Colleges and, increasingly, the studio schools that are sprouting up across the country.

FE has a vital role to play in an era of greater focus on vocational education. Equally, FE will have to show the added value it is giving to young people in return for the substantial levels of funding that providers continue to receive. LEPs will have a deep interest in whether course provision is geared to the needs of employers and whether there is a real understanding by management within colleges, of local business and employer skill needs over the coming years.

This will have to be more than LEPs having a seat on a college governing body and more than an FE principal being on the LEP board.

We are at a crossroads. We have a real opportunity to make a once in a lifetime change.  LEPs can articulate the needs of business in respect of skills. They can then influence local provision – and they should be able to do this through financial levers and the single pot.

But they must be deeply engaged with business themselves, all business. They have to encourage companies to train and they have to lead and co-ordinate provision.

I know that the 39 LEPs are up for this challenge and really do want to raise skill and employability levels as a fundamental to driving local growth. We move at increasing pace towards a very interesting future.

David Frost, chair of the Local Enterprise Partnership Network

Finding the right blend

It’s early days for massive open online courses (Moocs), but do they have a role in FE, asks Peter Kilcoyne

Funding cuts have had an impact on staffing levels at Worcester College of Technology (WCT) as in most FE institutions.

As a result we decided early on to develop our online learning provision so that we could continue to offer high quality learning, despite tighter budgets.

The debate around Moocs — which I spoke about last month at the ConnectEd conference in London for online learning specialists — has piqued my interest as we already have a strong online learning presence.

In fact, we are delivering two models of blended learning that I believe have important lessons for the sector.

The first of these is the adult enterprise model, based on 50:50 blended learning.

It is allowing learners at 30 providers around the country to gain OCN qualifications with all of them accessing a common learning platform.

Content is written by subject experts and ‘e-learnified’ by the content development team at WCT.

The large number of providers funding online content development means that
it is of far higher quality than one college could achieve.

And learners benefit from the courses’ flexibility as they have to participate in only half as many face-to-face teaching sessions as they would through a traditional model.

This is particularly useful for people who want to start their own businesses with a number of demands on their time.

Our second model is personally accountable learning (PAL). Fifteen per cent of all full-time level two and level three courses are delivered online through PAL packs.

These are generally Moodle-based courses containing learning content, learning activities and assessment activities.

The classic Mooc model of one or a small group of tutors supporting thousands of learners is, in my view, not appropriate for FE”

Teachers are supported in building the packs by WCT’s information and learning technology and study centre staff. Where possible, we use embedded video content from, for example,  YouTube, TED or open educational resources already available on the internet, so reducing preparation time for teachers.

Since implementing this model of delivery alongside a number of other changes under new principal Stuart Laverick, overall college success figures have improved 2 to 4 per cent, proving that we are maintaining and even improving on our provision.

Does this mean Moocs can have similar levels of success?

Moocs are popular in higher education and have been generating a lot of excitement. However, the classic Mooc model of one or a small group of tutors supporting thousands of learners is, in my view, not appropriate for FE.  Learners in our sector need far more support than can be offered through such a delivery model.

Blended learning models work as students still get face-to-face support and classroom-based teaching, something that is not available from your standard Mooc.

I do see it may have some uses though, perhaps for additional activities for A-level students to stretch their learning or even for staff who can undertake further study as part of their professional development.

But, for me, our work at WCT provides good evidence that blended learning alongside strong face-to-face support can deliver an exciting learning experience that engages students, improves flexibility and helps us to deliver “more for less” in the present challenging funding environment; without the need for Moocs.

Peter Kilcoyne, ILT director at Worcester College of Technology

Minister beams over college enterprise

It’s early days in the new relationship between FE and local enterprise partnerships, but how they will now work together was the centre of discussion at a London conference. Chris Henwood reports 

Further education and its place at the centre of local “entrepreneurial ecosystems” was the theme of a conference organised by the Gazelle Colleges Group.

Skills Minister Matthew Hancock, Confederation of British Industry director general John Cridland and Pearson UK president Rod Bristow were among the speakers.

There was also representation from local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) with Dr Ann Limb, chair of the South East Midlands LEP (pictured below), addressing the conference, with David Frost, chair of the LEP Network.

More than 100 delegates, from colleges up and down the country, were at the event, held in the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) base in central London on Tuesday, May 14.

CBI director general John Cridland

Mr Hancock said: “Enterprise needs to be embedded in the way a college operates. We have provided freedoms and flexibilities to give autonomy to leaders.

“I want to see strong leaders with strong governance and, of course, held to account firmly by Ofsted and the searchlight of accountability and data and publication of results.

“That enterprise will improve results on the ground rather than a system where the minister tries to dictate what happens.”

Dr Limb, a former principal and chief executive of Milton Keynes College and Cambridge Regional College, spoke on strengthening FE relationship with LEPs. “The big issue is how you work with employers to get them to demand training and skills that can be delivered for their benefit, for the benefit of the individual and for the benefit of the country as a whole,” she said.

Enterprise needs to be embedded in the way a college operates”

She added: “LEPs and FE have some real opportunities working together and yes, we’ve got to develop that relationship first. Obviously, LEPs are the body of the moment — only three years old, or thereabouts. They are responsible for setting strategies for driving economic growth.

“We will have the majority of EU structural funds starting next year allocated to us. Therefore it will give FE the opportunity to work with LEPs to dip into those funds.”

A summary paper from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, with the 157 Group and Gazelle, was handed out for consultation.

It said that the three believed “that to create an environment where colleges and businesses truly engage requires a step change by both colleges and business”.

Among the questions the paper posed were ‘what are the big strategic changes required to enable colleges and businesses to build a long term and sustainable working relationship at a local, regional and national level?’

Visit www.ukces.org.uk/fe_business by June 30 to respond to the paper.

Featured image caption: Skills Minister Matthew Hancock

Q&A with Dr Ann Limb

Are LEPs ready for the responsibility for single funding pot?

Undoubtedly. What they would like to make sure is that government departments, including Business, Innovation and Skills particularly, are really lobbying to peel it away from central government control so that it can be properly bid and the local needs of the college and the employers can be met.

Does the adult skills budget need to be ring-fenced to protect it from spending on other LEP concerns?

Protection is perhaps not the verb I would use. Does the plan that the LEP produces — the strategic plan, the skills plan, the inward investment plan — ensure that adult skills training is at the heart of what it does, is the way I would phrase it.

If it does, then the money will flow to that need. So certainly adult skills training needs to be included and all LEPs would do that because the workforce that we have at the moment needs to have greater skills than it’s got and that’s what employers
tell us.

Should FE representation on LEP boards be mandatory?

If you start to mandate anything, you move away from the kind of entrepreneurial, innovative arrangements that should be in the DNA of the way we do things.

The education sector is a board member of my LEP and I certainly think you must have a local and national asset on the board. The way to do it is to regard the FE sector as a key public sector player and just have them there automatically, which is what we do.

Is there a danger that LEPs could see responsibility for skills as a hindrance?

Absolutely not. The skills issues are as critical as infrastructure issues to the success of UK plc. The LEPs are driven by the need to create jobs, to create new businesses, and to create homes for people to live in — just putting money into infrastructure will not deliver that. There is a separate governance arrangement now, a local transportation body, that oversees the infrastructure arrangements across a LEP.

That will have its money to deal with that. My LEP has a housing delivery fund and I would see us having a skills delivery fund — each fund earmarked for activities that are equally important.

Consider all the options

The institutional bias towards a university education is unfair on young people, says Spencer Mehlman 

I am not against universities. They are incredible places for learning, with some of the most interesting and enthusiastic teachers you could ever meet. For many young people they will be the “right” next step. But the drive towards university that omits the raft of valid alternatives enrages me. That’s categorically unfair on young people and, for me, borders on a national scandal.

One statistic has shocked me more than any other during my time working with young people who are looking at their future careers. It didn’t make much of a noise in the press, but I believe that it reveals the extent of the problem young people are facing.

It was revealed in a City & Guilds survey that showed that in careers discussions 75 per cent  of 14 to 19-year-olds had been told about university, while  only 49 per cent had been told about apprenticeships and 48 per cent about other vocational qualifications.

Who is to blame? I believe the genesis is from Tony Blair’s seemingly random pronouncement in 1999 that 50 per cent of 18 to 30-year-olds should experience higher education. No one has ever quite established why this 50 per cent target was so important, other than to note that it made for a choice soundbite.

Parents will base their advice on their own experience but university is no longer a guaranteed ticket to a great career”

Since then (and arguably before), schools have promoted university education as the premier destination for their leavers. Against a backdrop of hugely inflated costs and rising graduate unemployment, the result is drop-out rates of anywhere up to 29 per cent.

What makes this all the more reprehensible is that the churn towards university continues despite study after study suggesting that continued education and qualifications in other non-university settings provide similar benefits in terms of earnings, employment and longevity.

And it’s not just our schools that are institutionally-biased towards universities. Parents too are to blame – in our experience, only a small enlightened proportion advise their children against going to university, or even make themselves aware of the alternatives. I appreciate that parents will base their advice on their own experience and on historic views, but the goalposts have most definitely shifted and university is no longer a guaranteed ticket to a great career.

So what is so alluring about the supposedly honeyed substance of university education that keeps schools and parents relentlessly spooning it to our young people? I believe that it’s confusion; it’s the ghost of a generational memory from a time when university was inspiring, intellectually elitist and probably much more fun. It’s also the negative perception of vocational qualifications (“aren’t they for plumbers?”) that results in an anachronistic snobbery that blinds people towards an honest evaluation of all the options.

Shamefully, the university experience these days will cost many students more than £50,000 . . . an investment that comes against a backdrop of graduate unemployment of 19 per cent.

How can we get this vital message out to the young people? How can we get the scales to drop from the eyes of parents, schools, careers advisers, headteachers, politicians and educationists alike and create a platform for all young people to learn about all valid “next steps” after school or college? I’d love your thoughts.

Spencer Mehlman owns www.notgoingtouni.co.uk.

In search of a lost art

Curriculum design was a critical and well developed skill that FE staff once placed at the centre of their professional expertise, says Lynn Sedgmore. It’s time it was again…

The freedoms and flexibilities of New Challenges, New Changes and the more recent Rigour and Responsiveness in Skills, have given colleges greater opportunities to be responsive to the priorities of learners, employers and communities, stimulating them to review their curriculum offer as well as their current capacity for curriculum development and redesign.

Yet, in an environment where funding and quality assurance have been driven by a focus on qualification success rates, and where funding pressures have limited the appetite for experimentation and risk-taking, this capacity for curriculum development and redesign may often need to be rediscovered and redeveloped.

When I entered FE in the early 1980s, curriculum-led staff development and the art of curriculum design was a critical and well developed skill that we all placed at the centre of our professional expertise.

Recently I have heard many calls for a rediscovering of what this means in this period of autonomy and freedoms.

A recent 157 project, supported by the Learning and Skills Improvement Service, examined the challenges and opportunities facing FE colleges in amending and aligning their curriculum offer. It offers some insight from the experiences of seven college-based action research projects.

A culture of innovation and experimentation, with a strategic commitment to give staff the time and resources needed to support curriculum change, are vital”

This new publication, Curriculum ReDesign in Further Education Colleges, is available on the 157 website.

Responsive curriculum obviously needs to be based on the identified needs of the ‘curriculum-user’, that is, learners and/or employers. Multiple ways of engaging with curriculum users are vital to ensure training and skills needs are correctly identified, as well as to ensure deeper relationships with users to support effective and responsive curriculum development and delivery.

Many of the  action research projects — looking at curriculum content, delivery methods, infrastructure — highlighted developing staff capacity as the starting point for enabling effective change; staff need to have the necessary confidence and skills to be able to be innovative and make changes to current provision.

A culture of innovation and experimentation, with a strategic commitment to give staff the time and resources needed to support curriculum change, are vital.

As well as having a clear ‘plan’ for their curriculum initiatives, with objectives and expected outcomes, many colleges adopted a whole-college approach, ensuring that the changes were perceived as a definite organisational strategy, with common approaches/protocols across all areas.

As well as supporting the development of staff capacity to innovate, the action research projects also highlighted that colleges need to critically review their structures, including their staff contracts, staff utilisation protocols and cross-college communications, to develop mechanisms that enable them to identify and respond to needs in a more timely way with high quality provision.

This may involve implementing a range of ‘solutions’, including developing new roles for staff, developing effective cross-college links and supporting improved relations with external partners and stakeholders.

With government drives to coordinate skills planning at local and regional levels, curriculum development and redesign may become more complicated, possibly requiring multiple providers to work together to plan and develop an area’s curriculum.

The 157 Group is keen to work with others to support curriculum change and to support the sector in responding to the clear challenges of demonstrating responsiveness and accountability to learners, employers and communities.

Lynne Sedgmore, executive director of the 157 Group

The K College catalogue

The provision, debts and estate of a troubled Kent college being split up and sold off in pieces have been laid bare in a catalogue for what has been described as the first sale “of its kind in the UK”.

The full extent of the debts — and assets — at K College are listed in a sales prospectus from the Skills Funding Agency (SFA), Education Funding Agency (EFA) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

It lists a fixed-rate loan of £10m with maturity in 2038 and a shorter-term loan of £2.9m at the college’s Tonbridge site; a fixed-rate loan of £1.8m at its Ashford site and a fixed-rate loan of £500,000, both maturing in 2024.

This open competition signifies a bright future for both students across Kent and our own staff.”

Seven parts are on offer. There’s 16 to 19 provision in Dover, Folkestone, or Ashford, Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells grouped together; apprenticeship and 19+ provision in Dover, Folkestone, or, again, Ashford, Tonbridge and Tunbridge together; or HEFCE directly-funded provision at Ashford and Tonbridge.

Fifty providers have already signed up to attend open days, on May 22 and 23, at two of the college’s five campuses.
Principal Phil Frier said: “There is a lot of interest from other colleges, training providers and universities in bidding for the work currently operating across all five towns.

“This is great news and ensures the continuation of the college’s provision for the foreseeable future.

“This open competition signifies a bright future for both students across Kent and our own staff.”

The break-up comes after the college, formed following a merger between West Kent College and South Kent College in 2010, ran up multi-million pound debts and was issued with a notice of concern by the SFA.

Mr Frier later conceded that the merger, which took place before he was in post, hadn’t worked and proposed splitting the college in two.

He suggested one half should incorporate the Dover and Folkestone campuses; the other Ashford, Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells.

The proposal was approved by Skills Minister Matthew Hancock after an independent review.

The college will continue until July next year when its work will be taken over and renewed by a new provider or providers.

Bidders will “need to demonstrate” they had taken into account the “financial liabilities” set out in the prospectus, which also outlines conditions for repayment of SFA advances. It asks potential bidders if they’re interested in either provision only or provision and assets [buildings].

The chief executive of the SFA, with the EFA, will lead the tendering process — described by a K College spokesperson as the “first competition of its kind” in an FE college — and will decide winning bids.

The first open day is in Tonbridge. The second is in Folkestone.