The latest announcement on simplifying funding, ‘A New Streamlined Funding System for Adult Skills’ represents a small step forward.

There is clear evidence that colleagues at SFA and BIS have listened to the sector and have found, like all new brooms before them, that while everyone will buy the idea of simplification in theory its practical application is fraught with difficulty. They note in particular the inevitable trade off between simplicity and fairness and the real danger of unintended consequences.

The result of this listening is well illustrated by the growing size of the rates matrix – in many ways the centrepiece of the simplification proposals.

The initial idea floated in the consultation document in 2010 was to have just nine rates – qualifications could come in three sizes (Award, Certificate and Diploma) and three cost bands (cheap, medium and expensive). This was rapidly realised to be too simplistic and replaced by a 20 cell matrix; Units were added to give four sizes of qualifications and the cost bands were increased to five.

The current proposal doubles this to 40 cells – 5 cost bands and eight sizes of qualification – but it is still not clear that this is the end of the road.

The paper leaves open the question of an additional cost band for the most expensive programmes; and more importantly the model does not yet cover all FE provision. According to the paper there is more work needed on how basic skills is to be treated and how the model is to apply to apprenticeships, hardly trivial matters.

Although it does not highlight the fact more work is also needed to accommodate A levels and programmes of Access to HE (unless the assumption is that the withdrawal of grant funding for over 25s at level 3 will kill this work off entirely)

The steadily increasing complexity of the proposals (perhaps why they are now called ‘streamlined’ rather than ‘simple’) is partly a reflection of reality but there are in addition some clear own goals. The greatest amount of unnecessary complexity is of course caused by the illogical separation of the FE world into pre and post-19 sectors.

It would not be so bad were the two departments and their agencies not determinedly pulling in opposite directions with DfE and YPLA looking for a stable funding system that reflects providers’ costs while BIS and SFA prefer a more turbulent framework where central agencies manipulate prices.

Indeed had BIS really wanted to simplify funding it might have looked more closely at the real simplification inherent in Alison Wolf’s proposals – a fixed sum for full time students with a very limited set of price bands.

More complexity however derives from the determinedly centralising approach of BIS officials despite all the ministerial rhetoric about setting institutions free. Even in a document on funding simplification BIS / SFA cannot resist contemplating separate rates for large employers, or complicating achievement funding (itself unnecessary) by paying half of it for those who gain employment – but only for a specified subset of students.

The centralising impulse is illustrated most tellingly however by the move to base rates on credit or learning time rather than guided learning hours which reflect teaching time.

It is inherently illogical because it is teaching time that incurs costs not learning time and a model based on learning time would have an inbuilt bias towards those subjects and those tudents best able to cope with a large element of undirected private study.

The argument advanced for credit however is that GLH is not regulated.

To the evident horror of those in Whitehall the basis for funding FE up to now has reflected professional practice across the sector; local judgements about how much support learners need rather than the theoretical assumptions of a few designers at the centre.

A concern to regulate rates mirrors the increasingly detailed regulation of eligibility also being developed by BIS at the same time as talk of new freedoms.

The suspicion grows that SFA and BIS know that a funding system based on the QCF framework does not reflect the complexity of the FE world.

Their plan however could be to use a simplified funding system to force the simplification of provision; a system that providers see as responsive but the centre just sees as messy and outside its control. If this is true then learners are sure to be the losers.
Mick Fletcher is a
consultant on Further Education

Firstly I would like to thank FE Week for the opportunity to contribute to this regular column. I’m going to start off with than the recent announcement by Sir Michael Wilshaw, HMCI, about replacing the ‘satisfactory’ judgement with ‘requires improvement’ and our proposals to introduce ‘no-notice’ inspections for the FE and Skills sector.

The main driver of these proposals is a firm belief that everyone has a right to a good education or learning experience whatever their age. I am confident, from talking to many of you over the past few weeks, that we are ‘pushing at an open door’ in this respect.

Nearly three quarters of respondents to our first consultation agreed or strongly agreed that Ofsted should focus its resources more sharply on providers who were satisfactory or inadequate.

By way of context, it is important to remember around 70% of providers in the FE and skills sector are good or outstanding.

As noted in last year’s annual report, this is a slightly improved picture overall. However, around 1.2 million learners are being trained, educated and supported by providers who are not yet good. Ofsted is determined to raise standards, and through our revised re-inspection arrangements, we aim to significantly reduce the 1.2 million figure.

Some of the detailed comments I have received to date about replacing ‘satisfactory’ with ‘requires improvement’ have been about distinguishing between providers who may be on an upward trajectory and those who may be ‘stuck’. I agree this difference is really important and equally for the inspection report to be clear on this matter.

The proposal to re-inspect provision judged to require improvement more quickly would also enable those who are on the upward trajectory to demonstrate improvement sooner than is currently the case. We want these changes to support good leadership and management.

Around 1.2 million learners are being trained, educated and supported by providers who are not yet good”

I have every confidence that the sector will respond positively to this challenge. I will continue to share good practice where we see it and ensure that our survey reports have an even greater impact. We will continue to support as many sector conferences as we can and will ensure that we release inspection related data more frequently.

You may have spotted that we have just this week published our quarterly statistics for learning and skills. Please do take a look on our website.

There are very few places I go at the moment where the topic of no-notice inspection doesn’t come up.

Ofsted is very familiar with the concept of no-notice inspections. Indeed, in the learning and skills directorate we currently have a programme of unannounced inspections for prisons and for our welfare and duty of care inspections of the MoD.

The challenge to the FE and skills sector, from my perspective, is about the logistics of ensuring inspectors are able to base their judgements on evidence gathered from a representative sample of the whole provision.

We want everyone to be 100 per cent confident that our inspectors are seeing things as they really are, and we don’t want providers wasting time preparing for inspections.

For that reason we are currently testing out the logistical challenges and reviewing the benefits of no-notice inspections through a series of pilot inspections.

The first such inspection commenced this week. I can assure you we certainly didn’t make a call beforehand to check that it was a ‘convenient time to call!’ I await the results of the pilots with an open mind, but again, I urge you to make your views known through the consultation – please head over to www.ofsted.gov.uk.

Matthew Coffey, National Director
of Learning and Skills for Ofsted.

Next year it will be compulsory for 16-year-olds to stay in education or to undertake part-time training while in work. Parliament passed a law in 2008 to raise the participation age.

This will finally take effect in 2013; two years later, in 2015, the law will apply to 17-year-olds.

Whatever you think of this reform, it is a landmark. The first plan to raise the participation age was drafted in 1918 at the end of the First World War and envisaged a system in which every young person would do some form of part-time education or training until they were 18.

Government spending cuts wrecked these plans and also delayed later proposals in the 1960s to Raise the School Leaving Age (ROSLA).

When this eventually took place in the mid 1970s, lack of planning, poor communications and the absence of a proper curriculum prompted soul-searching among politicians.

Combined with other factors, you can draw a line from the botched implementation of ROSLA to James Callaghan’s 1976 Ruskin College speech and the education reforms and National Curriculum of the 1980s.

Ministers encourage schools to teach more history; learning from history is equally important.

So what will happen this time?

The important thing to understand about the policy to raise the participation age is that it is quite likely to be a damp squib. Even before the decision to postpone the use of enforcement powers, this law was going to be difficult.

The lack of jobs and the lack of public money will all make full participation difficult to achieve”

School attendance laws place duties on parents to ensure their children attend. Compulsory participation, by contrast, is a law which forces students to take responsibility for themselves, which makes it inherently challenging alongside everything else needed to make the policy work.

Back in 2008, the Association of Colleges (AoC) listed five tests which needed to be passed to ensure the policy’s success.

These included an appropriate curriculum, financial support for those facing high costs, proper advice, transport and systems to track participation.

The Government of the day responded to our concerns and provided reassurance that things would be sorted out in the years that followed.

Time has passed and the job looks harder than it did four years ago. Unemployment, public spending cuts and the increasingly competitive education environment will all get in the way.

As we explained last summer in an AoC publication called ‘Sticks and Carrots’, the lack of jobs and the lack of public money will all make full participation difficult to achieve.

For the first time in almost 20 years, the number of 16 to 18-year-olds in education is falling.

The reduction in the number of young people partly explains the downturn but won’t help secure 100% participation.

The fact that something is difficult does not mean it should be ignored.

Rising youth unemployment and continuing economic change make it more important than ever that young people get the best start in life and do not simply drop out of the education system without follow-up.

The good news here is that many colleges are ready for the challenge. There continues to be a ferment of good ideas for re-engaging young people.

The challenge they face will be securing necessary funding and support from partners.

Meanwhile, every time the unemployment figures rise, there is a call to action. The Youth Contract is the latest example of a policy designed to tackle participation but it is unlikely to be the last.

Government will continue to come up with policies to tackle unemployment and, although it is not currently planning to use the law to enforce full participation, this does not mean it is not the expectation.

By Julian Gravatt