The bad news is that the number of part-time learners in HE is plummeting. The good news (for FE colleges) is that it’s a chance to develop more business, says David Hughes

Higher education does not usually command many column inches in FE Week. However,  it was concerning to see how little coverage there was across the media about last week’s report from the Higher Education Funding Council for England setting out some stark numbers, not least a 40 per cent reduction in part-time learners in HE since 2010. This means that 105,000 fewer adults are benefiting from higher-level learning this year.

It also confirms the fears that led us to publish a special Adults Learning Extra at the start of March in which senior people in further and higher education talked about the anticipated reduction and considered what could be done to address it.

Put simply, we are worried because this drop will result in fewer opportunities for adults to develop their talents and fill high-level jobs, which will have both an economic and social impact.

We know that participation and achievement in learning at all levels are unequal and that many people miss out on learning, despite their abilities.

Every year Adult Learners’ Week pays testimony to the long learning journeys people take from no qualifications to a degree.

This current reduction shows that this year there is even less hope for those who want to get into learning in higher education. The result is less social mobility and less social justice.

This is a hot issue in higher education, but all FE colleges should think about their response too, learning from the range and scale of what is already happening in colleges.

We know that participation and achievement in learning at all levels are unequal”

Outside the Open University, most part-time higher education learners want and need to learn locally so that their learning can fit in with their earning and family and caring commitments.

But many universities have stopped offering part-time study, something that, for me, represents an opening for others to fill. I do not believe there are 105,000 fewer people wanting to learn this year; in fact, I believe that there are more. It’s just they have not been offered the opportunity that will encourage them to take the plunge.

FE colleges are well-placed to offer those opportunities – and many already do. Counter-intuitively the introduction of advanced level learning loans for adults aged 24 and over will open up a market that the more creative colleges will no doubt mine.

Colleges should not overlook this area of potential growth. In most areas, Year 13 cohorts in schools will be getting smaller over the next few years (because of low birth rates in the 1990s and 2000s), and colleges are well-placed to offer both FE and higher education places part-time, flexibly and at a lower cost for adults as replacements for full-time young people.

It may be a demographic quirk, but this is not something for the short term. The need will grow as the economy gets back on its feet.

Colleges willing to expand or move into this market might also find their conversations with the emerging local enterprise partnerships a little easier too.

This is an opportunity for colleges to develop more business and to meet need. It is also an opportunity that has positive social and economic benefits and one that will go down well with employers, stakeholders and potential learners.

I shall watch the stampede with interest and the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education will happily support in any way we can.

David Hughes, chief executive of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education  

The contradictory rhetoric around vocational courses has done much harm; students’ achievement needs to be revealed and celebrated rather than downgraded, says Eddie Playfair

Dolores, Emma, Neneh and Rebecca all have something in common; they are high-achieving vocational students.

With 44 other students at Newham sixth-form college (NewVIc), last year they achieved the highest possible grade, a triple starred distinction in their extended diplomas: in business, performing arts, engineering and sport respectively.

Some also achieved high grades in an additional A-level and all four went on to university. Thirty-eight of their classmates also progressed to university, including Russell group institutions such as University College London, King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London and Nottingham University.

Dolores, for example, is now studying international management at the School of Oriental and African Studies with a year abroad.

The qualifications they obtained will give these young people the opportunity to pursue interesting and valuable professional careers in dance, theatre studies, surveying, aeronautical engineering, accounting, law, sports science, architecture, tourism and marketing … to mention just a few.

Their success is built on the intensive and challenging vocational programmes they followed; courses requiring the development of deep levels of professional knowledge and mastery. To achieve such high grades, they will have produced outstanding assignments, projects and portfolios that demonstrate the application of extensive knowledge and a broad range of interconnected skills. This is why so many universities value the excellent preparation they offer for many applied degrees.

But it is about much more than these 48 students. There are many others like them. More than 400 students at NewVIc achieved vocational qualifications last year; 377 progressed to university. The overwhelming majority were black and minority students living in so-called deprived postcodes.

We are proud of these achievements – as are the students. We celebrate the confidence, creativity and mastery that they have demonstrated. But is this pride echoed by our politicians and is the celebration reflected in our national media?

Sadly, the tone of the national conversation about vocational qualifications is more often distrustful than celebratory; questioning their quality and rigour, making unflattering comparisons with A-levels and implying that they are less challenging because they have less external assessment. Substantial and demanding programmes have been confused with smaller or less stretching ones, sending out a message of low quality.

Look at, for example, the changing treatment of vocational qualifications in national performance tables. For 2012, the points tariff for extended diplomas (equivalent to 3 A-levels) was arbitrarily reduced, despite the universities’ admissions service, UCAS, maintaining the grade equivalences (eg, Dist* equal to an A* grade at A-level and Dist. equal to an A grade).

While A-level performance has been picked out in the tables, vocational achievements remain hidden in a broad category of ‘A-levels and equivalences’, making it hard to see their success.

These national tables are an important signal about what we value. The message seems to be: ‘vocational is second best’. So much for parity of esteem.

It’s time to really value vocational learning. The latest government proposals to reform vocational qualifications are a welcome attempt to clarify which qualifications are ‘high value’, whether ‘occupational’ or ‘applied general’.

The sooner these ‘high value’ vocational qualifications get the seal of approval, the sooner the many thousands of brilliant students such as Dolores, Emma, Neneh and Rebecca can get due recognition for their achievements.

Eddie Playfair, principal of Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc). He is the London principal representative on the Sixth Form Colleges’ Association council

The Budget didn’t have a lot to offer FE. It’s the spending round and possible cuts that have to stay top of the agenda, says Lynne Sedgmore

All eyes in FE were on key indicators in this year’s Budget: how might savings hit the skills budget, how much money might go into the ‘single pot’ and how might employers get funded more directly to engage in apprenticeships. On Budget Day, there was little additional detail.

So, it seems, that there is still a lot to play for. The promise of more cuts in the spending round has to remain uppermost on our agenda. Efficiency and pay restraint can only go so far. It is the adult skills budget that is most under threat.

Any reduction in funding for under 24s could lead to the reality of a lost generation through increasing youth unemployment. Sixteen to18-year-olds have the comfort of the raised participation age to protect them; the picture is less assured for the over-24s.

In response to the Richard Review, the government said that it expected employers to show their commitment through what they were prepared to pay for, and that is only right. Colleges must ensure that what they offer is attractive to employers and their adult employees to encourage this commitment.

Adults trying to fund their own learning may find themselves with more loans, and we have yet to get a real sense of the impact that this year’s loans introduction will have on adult learning take–up.

Perhaps the time has come for us to offer an alternative solution that may be more attractive than loans? Or should we make more of a case for HE funding to be reviewed to create a more level playing field for all those in education beyond 19?

We must make sure that we are the preferred choice to offer the training that new employees will need”

We know that the ‘single pot’ has two real problems. First, that skills could be fighting for precedence over potholes and houses and, second, that local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) may not be mature enough – or organised enough – to deal appropriately with this funding.

The announcement of the Witty review into how universities can offer help to LEPs is welcome – and we will all, I am sure, be pushing for the FE voice to be heard in this forum too. As the spending round materialises we must show that colleges are engaged in effective partnerships already, are strategically engaged in discussions around skills needs, and are vital to the future of the partnerships.

And if, as it seems, the employer ownership pilot model is the way that direct employer funding will go, then we need to be a key element in its success, with colleges and other FE providers featuring prominently within the supply chain, not just as deliverers of a commissioned training service, but as key players in the design and implementation of the project.

The Budget gives significant support to employers wishing to take on staff. We must make sure that we are the preferred choice to offer the training that new employees will need.

The Budget did reaffirm that the government believes apprenticeships are critical to growth, and the CBI, among others, clearly believes that the skills system we have is fit for purpose to deliver high quality training.

Our challenge now, if we are to protect the public funding that will continue to be available for adult skills development, is to demonstrate that the proposed devolution of funding can only work properly with the essential involvement of FE at every level.

Lynne Sedgmore CBE, executive director, the 157 Group

Broad-based adult education that stretches minds, stimulates aesthetic delight and gives people the chance to change their lives is increasingly under threat, says Alan Tuckett

Helena Kennedy’s clarion call 15 years ago to widen access in FE had a major impact on colleges, as did John Tomlinson’s 2004 report on inclusive learning and Sir Claus Moser’s 1998 report on adult literacy.

Literacy survives, but where is the energy that shaped provision for adults over 25 in the years after incorporation?  In higher education, there is a campaign to protect the study of humanities and social sciences.  In schools there has been a healthy reaction to pressures to narrow the curriculum.  But where is the same mobilisation in further and adult education?

The rot set in a decade ago when Train to Gain, the first of the almost annual skills strategies, was introduced.  Public money began to shift from training that adults chose to take part in, to training that government felt adults ought to take part in.

While provision for 14 to 19 and 19 to 24-year-olds expanded, funding for anyone over 25 flat-lined and then reduced.  So did participation.  Step by step, funded learning opportunities have shrunk back to apprenticeships (surely too often Train to Gain recycled), basic skills and level two qualifications.  Adult loans are only the latest boulder in the way of adults wanting to change their lives through learning.

Don’t get me wrong – I am in favour of good vocational education for adults – but there is more to life and learning than work, important though it is.

Adults also have been marginalised in HE, despite the demographic imperative for an adult workforce to keep up to date.  Woe betide you if you change career and study in HE at a level at or below the level of qualification you gained for your first career.

Adult loans are only the latest boulder in the way of adults wanting to change their lives through learning”

And what used to be called liberal studies – the chance to negotiate the curriculum, to explore and make sense of what is happening in the world, and to reflect on how to influence it – has all but disappeared from public service provision for adults.

Confident and experienced learners have, of course, found ways of organising learning for themselves, as the massive take-up of MOOCs or i-Tune U courses illustrates.  But the dynamic heart of adult education – combining the pursuit of social justice through second-chance learning in a context where people of different backgrounds and experience can share experience and find mutual understanding – is under threat.

Broad-based critical adult education that stretches the mind, stimulates aesthetic delight and encourages people to make themselves anew is an important facet of a civilised society, as are cinemas, libraries, art galleries and sports stadia.

But adult learning is more than just a good in itself.  It is good for mental health, both in preserving good health and offering a safe arena to rebuild relationships after a period of illness.  It prolongs an independent active life.  Adults who learn have a measurable and positive impact on their children’s educational performance.  And the major challenges facing us – climate change, obesity, new and fairer ways of organising our economy, living together in increasingly diverse communities – all involve adults in understanding what is involved, and sharing effective solutions.

You would think that given its powerful catalytic impact, all policymakers would be clamouring for more investment in opportunities for adults to make sense of the world.  But they don’t.

We had better make enough noise, so that they will.

Alan Tuckett, president of the International Council for Adult Education, a visiting professor in lifelong learning at Nottingham and Leicester universities, and a governor of Cornwall College

Former House of Commons Education Select Committee specialist Ben Nicholls is head of policy at London’s Newham College. He writes exclusively for FE Week every month

Michael Gove, easily the naughtiest boy in the class in many teachers’ eyes, got himself into trouble again last week. But this time he might be feeling a bit unfairly treated as he was taking the rap for a colleague’s misbehaviour.

The Education Secretary was hauled back in front of the Commons education committee over concerns about his special advisers’ alleged bullying attitudes towards staff at the Department for Education, and if the defensive tone of his letter to the committee’s acting chair, Pat Glass, is anything to go by, he wasn’t entirely happy about it.

The bullying issue is clearly important. But other than that it’s difficult, perhaps, to work up much interest in this story. Outside the Westminster-Whitehall village, ministers’ special advisers – or SpAds – seem pretty irrelevant.

It’s easy, in fact, to agree with Sir David Bell, once permanent secretary at the department and now Reading’s vice-chancellor, who said last year that he “cannot get excited about the issue of special advisers, having worked with quite a few.” He argued that they are “an important part of our system” but are “only small in number compared with the department as a whole”.

Sir David is undoubtedly right, but SpAds are, as he noted, “very powerful”, which might lead – as Gove’s recall suggests – to them getting a little big for their boots. Concerns exist, too, that SpAds might be part of a growing ‘politicisation’ of the civil service.

But of arguably more concern is the provenance of whatever advisers are closest to ministers. Are the political advisers closest to our own political servants (let’s not go with masters) and experts in the fields they advise on? Are the civil servants involved? And, most important, what should the balance be?

Concerns exist, too, that SpAds might be part of a growing ‘politicisation’ of the civil service”

Sir David has argued that the current system ‘requires’ that civil servants are generalists, and there are plenty of advantages to this. It means that experts bring a useful degree of outsiders’ scrutiny to issues; further, it means that civil servants are recruited not for specialist knowledge, which arguably ought to be condensed at the front line where it is needed, but for more general skills that are transferable between departments and jobs. In theory this means the system is efficient and well-organised.

This said, though, Sir David’s former colleague Jon Coles – now heading the United Learning Trust – argues that a strength of the department is “its ability and willingness to bring in very senior practitioners from outside and to have civil servants going outside… so that there is a proper understanding of life in the education system in the department”.

The department itself lists several such appointments in a recent report – including ex-headteachers Charlie Taylor and Elizabeth Sidwell – and has promised to consider “how to increase secondments into the department”.

This opportunity might provide particular scope for FE, offering as it does a breadth of provision rarely found in schools, sixth forms or universities, and which might prove useful to the department and its (rightly generalist) civil servants.

And yet the department rejected the call of the Commons education committee, in 2011, to appoint chief advisers on education and children’s services, and its first round of non-executive directors following the election included more representatives from the financial sector than the world its policies impact on.

At a time when politicians themselves are so mistrusted, these questions of the gap between the front line and the back office are critical, particularly if – as I pleaded in my last column – we are serious as a sector when it comes to engaging with the policy development process.

It’s time to end the inequity that means more than 103,000 16 to 18-year-old college students miss out on a free school meal, says Nic Dakin

If you’re 16 or 17 and in a school sixth form, you can get a free school meal; if you’re at an FE or sixth-form college, you cannot. This simply isn’t fair.

As a former principal I know how important it is for students to have a meal during the college day. There is a direct correlation with better motivation, attendance and achievement.

That’s why I’ve been a keen supporter of the Association of Colleges’ No Free Lunch? campaign.

I’m not alone. MPs from all political parties supported my ten-minute rule bill (a parliamentary device to raise an issue and put pressure on the government) to right this wrong.

As a result, the government now understands the strength of feeling about the issue. So much so that it has moved away from the argument that it could not do anything about it because colleges did not have the kitchen facilities.

A clear nonsense, but that’s what it said. Now it is saying that the schools don’t get the extra money when everyone knows it was consolidated into their base budget some time ago.

More than 103,000 16 to 18-year-old college students miss out on a free school meal as a result.

Worse still, 13.3 per cent of college students are from more disadvantaged backgrounds, compared with 8.3 per cent of school students. This means that those with the greatest need are suffering the greatest disadvantage.

This unfairness is causing real hardship to colleges and their students, especially now the education maintenance allowance has been scrapped.

It will only get worse if the participation age is raised.

The chaotic fragmentation of post-16 education is another reason to right this wrong. It cannot be right that a student at the Hackney University Technical College can get a free meal, while the student at Hackney FE College – they share a campus, remember – cannot.

And if that injustice isn’t enough, consider this: funding per 16 to 18-year-old is lower than in other stages of education.

In 2012/13, funding per full-time 16 to 18-year-old will average £4,543, while funding per secondary pupil aged 11 to 16 will average £5,576.

Those with the greatest need are suffering the greatest disadvantage”

It’s hard to believe that it can really be 22 per cent cheaper to educate a 16 to 18-year-old compared with a younger child.

Interestingly, once the same student goes on to university he or she will have an average £8,000 spent on them for a teaching week of around 14 hours.

Unlike schools, colleges have to pay VAT on revenue spending and buildings. The new academies are almost identical to colleges in their legal status, but are exempt from paying VAT on most of their purchases.

There is no rational reason or argument for this difference.

And what’s more, academies currently get their insurance costs back from the government; colleges do not.

Finally, it’s worth noting that unlike all other education institutions, sixth-form colleges get no quality improvement funds.

I worked in post-16 education for 30 years so know how hard people in the sector work and what a great job they do.

But they are being asked to perform more than miracles now. It’s not surprising that the number of experienced principals deciding to retire is reaching epidemic proportions.

But what matters is treating our young people fairly.

While the government seems content to sprinkle money around liberally on its pet projects of free schools, university technical colleges and the like, public money is being wasted on inefficient, unproven structures.

Meanwhile the FE sector — with its track record of success and innovation — and its students are being starved.

The students, their colleges and UK plc are missing out.

Nic Dakin, Labour MP for Scunthorpe and member of the Education Select Committee