K College was created from a merger of South Kent College and West Kent College. It is now being broken up and sold off. Interim principal Phil Frier explains why two shouldn’t always become one

I have never been keen on mergers. I have been involved with two and on the edge of another, and they don’t seem to deliver the solution that many hope for.

The problem lies in the assumption that a change in structure and an increase in size will lead not only to more sustainable and financially viable colleges, but also to higher quality teaching and learning, and improved student success rates.

Don’t get me wrong, there is evidence that some merged colleges have done better than their antecedents, but only where there has been an understanding of the need to ensure the ‘human-sized’ elements and underlying educational focus remain.

Mergers have often been the result of the egocentric ambitions of Skills Council chief executives, and, more latterly, principals and chairs of governors, often driven by financial rather than educational motives.

Mergers don’t always bring financial efficiencies — in fact, many have increased costs without improving teaching and learning, as managers are distracted by setting up cross-college systems.

While there is nothing wrong with establishing common core values, standards and expectations, the drive to create the merged college often ignores the difference in local cultures and the need for college campuses to be rooted in their communities.

The need for local leadership is often ignored too, as the commitment to control from the centre takes hold.

Mergers are not the sole choice for failing colleges — new management models should lead to more imaginative solutions. We are a creative sector. Do we really need to fall back on to ageing corporate business models to solve our problems?

Even the word ‘merger’ is not helpful since it implies that the character and personality of the existing colleges will be merged to form a more androgynous corporate body.

The language of ‘merger’ in FE has also been devoid of creativity with its references to ‘type A or type B’ unions.

Come on guys, many of us are supposed to be a reasonably capable, intelligent group of baby boomers. For the sake of the current and, perhaps more importantly, future students, let’s try to find some solutions that are more educationally orientated, and more in harmony with people and with the local communities that colleges serve.

The strength of FE colleges has always been that we are in tune with the heartbeat of our towns and cities. Most technical colleges were developed by the local borough or town councils to serve local industry, facilitate local employment, and to provide opportunities for young people and older generations to discover the life-changing wonder of education and qualifications.

Isn’t it time we developed more innovative federal models of organisation that allow us to keep local contacts while still providing financial capacity, high quality facilities and a learner-centred focus.

In some ways, college merger is a bit like the old adage about money; it makes your life easier, but doesn’t necessarily make it better. An educational organisation should always focus on providing the best learning environment; for me that means learning in a well-resourced, supportive place with good teachers within a human-scale management structure, where locally based managers have the autonomy to make local decisions.

Some of the best organisations in the world recognise that they can be big enough to be financially viable, but small and human enough at the point of contact for the client. I am rather hoping that the dinosaur age of the one-dimensional merger debate is over.

Phil Frier, interim principal at K College, Kent

Want to read more? Chris Henwood looks at the broader picture on college mergers here

FE will continue to lurch from funding crisis to funding crisis until purchasing power is put in the hands of learners and employers, says Tom Bewick

FE budgets are under severe pressure, so what better time to rethink how to protect learners, employers and communities from the cuts. I’m always staggered about how accepting the sector is of the way in which its multi-billion pound budget is carved up.

Savings and efficiencies must be made. But why is there no debate about turning the  whole funding model for FE on its head?

A good way to illustrate the status quo is to think about how things were once centrally planned in the Soviet Union. Production, whether it was bread to put on the supermarket shelves or tractors to bring in the harvest, was organised at the level of the ‘commanding heights of the economy’. These involved bureaucrats whose sole purpose was to concoct ludicrous targets: distribute the roubles via complex funding formulas and generally flatter their immediate bosses with the sheer indispensability of it all.

You could apply the same description to the current world of FE. It has a top-down, rigid, and seemingly indispensable funding model for no other reason than a group of highly paid civil servants telling their ministers that it needs to be so. Why should perestroika come to FE when the people in charge have no Gorbachev to lead them? The sector will lurch from crisis to crisis, until there’s a revolution in how our society puts real purchasing power in the hands of the learner and employers.

The sector will lurch from crisis to crisis, until there’s a revolution in how our society puts real purchasing power in the hands of the learner and employers ”

The government could do three things: attack the massive waste amongst the bureaucracies that serve FE; move to a universal system of skills accounts for all post-16 learners; learn from other countries.

Anyone looking at the accounts of the Education Funding Agency, the Skills Funding Agency (SFA), the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, and the Student Loans Company (SLC) will straight away spot areas for savings. Why do we need so many quangos in this space? The total administration cost for the SFA last year was £131m, and at the UK Commission for Employment and Skills it is more than £6m.

To put this in perspective, the running costs of these bodies alone would fund the opportunities of tens of thousands of young people a year.

Let’s change this so that every young person is given a skills account card when he or she reaches 16. The state would deposit the amount each learner or employer is entitled to, in terms of taxpayer support and according to Parliamentary-agreed funding rates. Unlike the versions of learning accounts that have been trialled to date, these cards would be managed on contract to the private sector. Any fraud or abuse would fall on the card issuer, not the government.

The real point is that purchasing power would be placed in the hands of the consumer of learning. At a stroke, it would get rid of the need for most of the institutions that have grown up around adult education. Indeed, the general public could be issued with shares in the new Learning Bank, bringing common ownership of an apparatus that would be accountable to real people instead of Whitehall’s pen-pushers.

The government also could learn from successful models abroad where the best approaches to vocational education and training are not centrally planned — Germany, Switzerland, South Korea, Singapore, and even India all have decentralised funding models. The US has community colleges, where the local learner and business is sovereign. Perhaps the best thing we could do with the current FE funding ‘system’ in England is not to have one at all.

Tom Bewick ,director and chief economist at the International Skills Standards Organisation 

College governors should consider merger only as a last resort, says Matthew Hancock. He explains why

There have been far-reaching changes in the 20 years since colleges in England were incorporated. Since 2010 we have striven to create a more diverse sector that is open and transparent to its users, and that delivers higher standards of provision and choice to learners, employers and their local communities.

As a result, governing bodies are more directly accountable to their communities than at any other time. This fact should be the main driver for any changes to their delivery model.

The unprecedented freedom that the current government has given colleges has set a direction for the sector from which there can be no turning back. As part of their strategic thinking, colleges can consider changes to their business models at any time.

It is important that they are open and transparent whenever they do so, recognising that openness offers all sorts of new types of partnership opportunities that could benefit learners and employers. The recent case of K College, where a prospectus has been published, shows how an open and competitive approach can lead to significant interest from those that might not have been considered otherwise.

The starting point for change therefore should be an assessment of need and consideration of the full range of models that might best meet that need.

Merger, one of the most extreme options, has too often been the knee-jerk reaction.

The thinking behind such decisions is quite easy to understand; for example, where a weaker college has merged with a stronger one or a small college has joined a larger competitor. The same process happens in business all the time, on the assumption that larger organisations are more resilient than smaller ones, as well as better able to realise economies of scale. But in the case of colleges, the evidence that larger institutions are more efficient or of higher quality is, at best, equivocal.

The starting point for change should be an assessment of need and consideration of
the full range of models that might best meet that need”

What is undoubted is that the result of one college serving an area previously served by two often reduces learner choice and the challenge that flows from competition.

When I wrote to chairs of governors in February I made clear that merger should be an option of last resort.

Indeed, before embarking on structural change, colleges must undertake a structure and prospects appraisal to ensure that the needs of learners, employers and the community are considered, as are all the options for meeting them in new ways.

Where change is contemplated, it is not unreasonable to expect colleges to consult early to hear views of stakeholders and customers, including bodies such as local authorities and local enterprise partnerships.

If a particular partnership model is clearly the preferred alternative, it follows that any actions to find a new partner should be undertaken openly and competitively, allowing the best option to be identified. It is not acceptable for colleges only to think of merger.

The new freedoms and flexibilities open exciting options to colleges, allowing innovative solutions to local needs. The range of opportunities for colleges have become wider and wider in recent years.  For example, many colleges are now providing higher education, sponsoring university technical colleges and academies, or considering enrolling students from the age of 14.

As part of encouraging greater diversity and innovation, the government is always keen to explore how new entrants might enter markets. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is currently looking at whether there is a case for encouraging different types of provider to secure incorporated status in FE.

Matthew Hancock, Skills Minister

Want to read more? Chris Henwood looks at the broader picture on college mergers here

Eilis Bond tells why Plymouth’s finalists in the recent Brathay Challenge were determined to banish stereotypes surrounding apprenticeships 

Work has gone back to normal after a hectic and crazy six months leading up to the recent Brathay Challenge final, a national competition aimed at boosting the profile of apprenticeships.

As part of the challenge, our team felt that it was time we banished the stereotype of apprenticeships as long hours of making tea and doing all the jobs that no one else wants to, for very little pay or recognition. We took the opportunity to shout about the great opportunities that apprenticeships can offer and how they can really be used as a stepping stone to start a career.

To get our message out to as many young people as we could, we hosted a Young Person’s Day in Plymouth’s Guildhall. We had a month to organise this huge event — nowhere near enough time  — and had to put 110 per cent into getting it ready.

Forty-nine training providers, employers and colleges wanted stalls so the team had to organise a floor plan, complete a risk assessment, ensure that all stalls who needed power had access to it, and ensure that every stallholder received the same level of customer service. This customer service was vital as we want to run a Young Person’s day every year — the stallholders wouldn’t come again if they felt it wasn’t worth their time or that they didn’t receive the level of care that they expected.

In the month leading up to the day, every member of the team learnt a lot about event planning and about their own organisational skills. That is the best thing about Brathay in my eyes — every one of us has gained a lot from the competition, from confidence, to a huge range of skills that are transferable to our workplaces, to really great friends.

We got fantastic feedback from the more than 2,000 young people who came through the doors. Most had heard of apprenticeships at some point, either in school, at the job centre or through careers advice, but none really seemed to understand what they were and what they could mean to them, let alone grasp the idea that you can achieve the equivalent of a university degree while you are in the work-place, earning money and gaining skills.

We felt that it was time to banish the stereotype of apprenticeships as long hours of making tea and doing all the jobs no one else wants to”

Plymouth has a large number of unemployed young people, which is why events such as our Young Person’s Day are so important. Everyone who came left the Guildhall with genuine job opportunities, apprenticeship offers and opportunities to return to education. We had asked each of the stallholders to promote their current vacancies, opening up so many opportunities to the young people that they may not of thought of before.

For instance, I had never thought of business administration. It was only after a year of doing door-to-door sales in typical Plymouth weather that I realised office work would better suit me as I don’t enjoy working outside!

With the help of so many fantastic taster sessions and work experience opportunities, the young people in Plymouth have great options to ‘try before you buy’ and really work out what they want to do with their lives. We spend most of our lives at work, so why not enjoy it? I do.

Eilis Bond, 20, is a business administration apprentice in Plymouth City Council. She is also a Brathay Challenge team leader. The challenge is organised by the Brathay Trust charity and supported by the
National Apprenticeship Service 

Rather than pressing for funding powers, LEPs and local authorities could have greater impact by focusing on the quality and relevance of what is offered by colleges and other providers in their areas, says Andy Gannon

Local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) and local authorities have their eyes on adult skills funding, arguing that taking decisions locally would be more effective than the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) regime. But how might this work?

There are two forms to the argument. One is the Heseltine case for a single funding pot in which adult skills is pooled with other budgets and then redistributed locally. The other is that the funding powers of the SFA should be delegated to LEPs, so that different choices are made in different areas.

It is not at all clear how a single pot, managed locally, could benefit adult skills. To increase investment in skills simply requires LEPs to control other budgets from which resources might be vired. Putting adult skills into a single pot would simply let local decision-makers reduce skills spending  — and boost other budgets.

It isn’t the case that adult skills funding has less potential to generate growth than schools or higher education funding — indeed, it is more directly focused on that than other areas of education. Is is because the SFA has less political clout than other education funding bodies?

What, though, of the other argument — the bid to exercise some or all of the SFA funding powers at a local level. The implications become clear if we consider the different elements of funding separately.

There is a case for giving greater scope for LEPs to indicate that certain qualifications are important locally and should be funded in their area”

Is it suggested that each LEP should introduce its own funding formula and set its own rates? This would be bad news for large employers and any provider that works across LEP boundaries. Moreover, since SFA funding seeks to underpin an effective market by reflecting necessary differences in the cost of provision, there would need to be lots of local duplication of effort to develop a similar evidence base on costs or, more likely, sets of rates, giving rise to all manner of perverse incentives.

Is it the SFA role in setting allocations that is sought locally? It’s hard to imagine that the government would want to abandon the rule that funding should follow the learner.  The alternative — funding places whether or not there is real demand for them — risks wasting resources.

Or is it the eligibility rules that those in favour of localism have in their sights? It would be difficult to vary the rules on individual eligibility; rules on residence, for example, are the province of the Home Office. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills couldn’t fund under-18s whatever locals thought, but, by the same token, couldn’t see whole cohorts of adults ruled ineligible in one county while welcomed next door.

So is it programme eligibility that might be varied? It would be odd if, after years of trying to bring order into the convoluted world of vocational qualifications, the government should stand back and allow local bodies to remove such coherence as exists. There is perhaps a case for giving greater scope for LEPs to indicate that certain qualifications are important locally and should be funded in their area, but that could readily be done by signalling to the SFA. It doesn’t need the creation of 102 new funding bodies.

LEPs and local authorities have a chance to influence provision by providing information about the labour market. They could get involved in assessment, helping to give robust evidence of competence to local employers and providing valuable feedback to trainers and trainees. They could develop  a vision for the development of skills. Any of these would surely make more difference than replicating the current funding mechanism over the country.

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

Prompted by last week’s FE Week front-page report of bullying at the National Farrier Training Agency, Suze Clarke tells how students led the development of Middlesbrough College’s zero tolerance policy

It’s a sad reality that bullying can permeate just about any human scenario — and FE is no exception.

As the largest provider of post-16 education and training in the Tees Valley, with 12,000 students and almost 900 staff, Middlesbrough College has a responsibility to both its students and the community it serves to provide a safe and supportive learning environment.

We are proud to uphold a zero tolerance policy on all forms of bullying and harassment, and to have become the first FE college nationally to achieve the Bullying Intervention Group (BIG) award in 2012.

But how easy is it to maintain effective anti-bullying practice in a constantly evolving, diversifying and inclusive environment?

FE, by its very nature, is a melting pot of diversity, with different ages, cultures, needs, abilities, beliefs and attitudes converging in one learning environment. Our anti-bullying policy and practice must therefore reflect and be sensitive to this. The volume and diversity of our student body means that safeguarding measures must protect them in other settings or workplaces too.

When it comes to something as inherent to human nature as bullying, a focus on prevention rather than cure is often the most effective approach”

The challenges of tackling bullying in FE come from not only the physical and logistical differences, but also the complexities that stem from managing it in an adult environment, where bullying  can often stretch beyond the college campus.

Middlesbrough College achieved the BIG award on the basis of our whole organisation approach to tackling bullying — clear communication between students and staff, policy and procedures that realistically reflect an FE setting, and an emphasis on embedding a culture of mutual respect and tolerance.

The student voice has been key. The students’ union (led by an elected, paid sabbatical officer) and student-led initiatives such as the bullying prevention group, awareness campaigns, and a peer mentor scheme, mean that students take ownership of targeting bullying and have a say in how we should deal with it.

Our decision to apply for the award was not motivated by a particular problem with bullying, but by our pride in stating that we take a proactive, institutional and fair approach to dealing with it. This positive message resonates with students, parents, staff and visitors.

Less reliance on public funding has resulted in the evolution of FE into an educational ‘marketplace’ in which students have become the consumers.

While we are forced to acknowledge this shifting climate, corporate necessity perhaps at times distracts from our raison d’être; students and lifelong learning are and should remain at the heart of FE.

Mike Hopkins, Middlesbrough’s principal, mirrors Ofsted when he says that a safe and supportive learning environment is fundamental to achievement. “It’s so important to us that our students know that they are in a ‘safe’ environment,” he says. “Too many have experienced difficult lives with poverty being the defining feature. If students feel secure, including from bullying, they have every chance of achieving way beyond even what they expect of themselves. ‘Work hard, be nice’ summarises very well what Middlesbrough College works hard to achieve.”

Further education is about equipping students with the core life skills to improve employability and prospects. But it’s also about instilling social values. Middlesbrough’s Skills 21 programme has given our anti-bullying practice the platform to really embed this culture of respect throughout the college.

When it comes to something as inherent to human nature as bullying, a focus on prevention rather than cure is often the most effective approach.

Suze Clarke, student liaison coordinator, Middlesbrough College