Ministers are scoping out how to ensure education providers benefit financially from any future use of pupil data by artificial intelligence systems.
The rapid rollout of generative AI such as ChatGPT and Google Bard has prompted a scramble across government to harness the technology’s power, but also to guard against any risks.
Such “large language models” could quickly process huge amounts of data, which experts say could help schools to understand their pupils better and analyse the impact of innovations.
Third-party organisations, including private companies, can already request data from the national pupil database for analysis.
The development of more and more sophisticated AI systems could make this analysis easier. However, ministers are understood to be concerned about any use of pupil data to generate profits for private companies without any benefit for schools, colleges and pupils.
Baroness Barran, the minister leading on AI for the Department for Education, told FE Week’s sister publication Schools Week that ministers were “absolutely thinking about all of these issues”.
“It wouldn’t be truthful to say that we’re clear on what principles we will follow, but obviously, we are extremely sensitive and aware of the use of individual or aggregated pupil data. That’s clearly a real priority that we get that right”.
DfE probes data ownership and value
Barran said ministers were asking “a number of questions”, including on ownership of the data and “what’s it worth”.
“It’s about as complicated as anything I’ve ever looked at. But we’re working with people who are experts in data ethics and privacy, to really think through these problems.”
Ministers this week launched a call for evidence about the future use of AI in education, having already issued guidance for schools and colleges on how to combat issues such as cheating.
Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, told London Tech Week on Wednesday that AI was “transforming the world”, and that education must not be “left behind”.
Niel McLean, the head of education at BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, said there were potential benefits to using AI and pupil data.
“If you build up a really large data model, and you train it using the pupil level data, then you can use that data model to help you understand your students as whole people.
“Everything matters. Their attendance matters, their performance matters, all those sorts of things. You’ve got a better sense of them as individuals. AI can do that. It can just help you just know your learnings better.”
But he urged ministers to think about “four Ps”.
“There’s an ethics of purpose – what you’re actually using this to do? There’s an ethics of processes – how is data handled? What’s the confidentiality? How secure is it? There’s a people side. You want the people doing it to be professional, and feel they’re accountable.
“The fourth P that came to my mind is the payback. Having a clear public benefits statement about giving that data to this entity, what does it deliver? And it shouldn’t just be financial return. It should be something that improves things for young people.”
But the DfE already faces questions about its approach to data-sharing.
A damning audit by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in 2020 found the department broke data protection laws in how it handled pupil data. The full report still hasn’t been released.
It was also reprimanded over a “serious breach” that allowed a company providing age-verification for gambling companies access to the personal information of millions of young people.
Jen Persson, from the campaign group DefendDigitalMe, said the department should “publish the evidence of today’s data reality before getting ahead of itself with imagined futures. The 2020 DfE ICO audit must be published in full, with a timeline for what remains to be done.
“And the DfE must commit to giving families control over the current commercial re-uses of their own and their children’s information from the millions of named records in the national pupil database, that few know exists.”
The popularity of apprenticeships has soared since the introduction of the levy in 2017. Nevertheless, it is disconcerting that neurodivergent individuals who are keen on pursuing these opportunities have limited accessibility. To fix that, we need to start by shedding light on the challenges they encounter.
But what of the 15 per cent of the population thought to be neurodiverse. Education settings have been working to improve their inclusiveness over decades, but there is still plenty of scope for improvement. In addition, apprenticeships involve employers, many of whom have never engaged in this kind of work. Are they ready to meet the standards we set, let alone to help us to keep driving those standards up?
The first thing to note is that neurodiversity varies from person to person and represents a spectrum of needs, from hidden disabilities to more severe impairments. Across the sector though, our current programmes to support learners to find apprenticeship opportunities remain intrinsically very generic. Indeed, my experience indicates that they are broadly devoid of factoring in the spectrum of needs of neurodivergent learners.
A one-size-fits-all approach is clearly inadequate when addressing the needs of neurodivergent learners. These individuals require personalised guidance and support to make informed decisions about their education and career paths beyond their FE studies.
Another key barrier is systemic. Higher-level apprenticeships are to all intents and purposes off-limits for many neurodivergent learners who have completed level 3 vocational courses and struggled to achieve a grade 4 at GCSE or a level 2 in functional skills for maths, English or both.
A one-size-fits-all approach is clearly inadequate
Mencap has suggested that, where there is no industry standard regarding English and maths, neurodivergent learners’ abilities to meet the requirements of the job should be re-assessed. This is certainly an area where FE providers could work with employers to increase access. In the meantime, however, many neurodivergent learners remain ineligible for the level 3 and higher apprenticeship opportunities due to rigid criteria.
A third barrier that could be removed very quickly relates to support networks. Lack of tailored support and industry standards often result in neurodivergent learners turning to their parents or other sources for guidance and support into work, but these support networks can be limited – not least with regards to the information required to navigate the complex apprenticeships system on a level footing with their peers.
According to Scope, the disability employment gap is 29 per cent. This is even more pronounced for neurodivergent learners from disadvantaged groups. As a recent Guardian article highlighted, people from BAME backgrounds continue to face barriers to accessing apprenticeships – even without learning difficulties.
The rise in the popularity of apprenticeships, and the distinct advantages these qualifications confer, require us to think carefully about how our improving culture of inclusion can grow to encompass the specific demands of these qualifications.
But there is a lot that we can and should be doing to customise our support structures in FE settings to offer personalised and sufficient assistance for neurodivergent students. We must establish policies that guarantee equal access to support and guidance for every learner, based on their unique needs.
And we must work with employers to make apprenticeships more inclusive. Big employers like Microsoft, Ernst and Young, JPMorgan Chase, and GCHQ are at the forefront of this work, but the many SMEs who form the backbone of apprenticeships and the economy need our help to follow suit.
The growing popularity of apprenticeships is a success story for the sector and for the economy, and we must ensure that this success is shared with every young person irrespective of needs.
A longstanding college governor, college cleaning supervisor and a PE teacher are among sector figures named in the King’s first birthday honours list for services to further education and skills.
More than a dozen leaders from the FE and skills sector were named in the honours list, including one CBE, three OBEs, seven MBEs and three BEMs.
Mark White, who recently retired from the Education Training Collective’s governing board after 27 years, took the CBE.
His first role in further education was as a governor at Billingham’s Bede Sixth Form College back in 1995, and he has also served as chair of the Stockton Strategic Education Board. Over the years White has also chaired numerous AoC boards, including AoC sport and the AoC’s governors council.
Mark White
“I am thrilled and humbled by this award. I have worked with wonderful, dedicated people and, to me, this award recognises and celebrates the value and importance of our essential further education sector,” he said. White previously was given an OBE in 2016.
An OBE goes to Clare Howard, the chief executive of NATSPEC, the representative body for specialist colleges, for services to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.
Clare Howard
Howard said she was “speechless and a bit stunned about receiving the honour”.
“The only way I can understand it is to see it as recognition for all those thousands of dedicated people who work in specialist colleges or with students with SEND across the FE sector,” she added.
“This also wouldn’t have happened without all the people at work and home that have supported me; the credit and my thanks go to my colleagues in the Natspec team, my board, students and staff of every college, and my family.”
Two college leaders scooped OBEs for services to further education.
Pat Brennan-Barratt, chief executive and principal of Northampton College, said the OBE has “humbled me beyond words”.
Pat Brennan-Barrett
“Working in education has been a great privilege,” she added.
“Over time I have worked with the most extraordinary colleagues, whose talent and enthusiasm has been inspirational.
“In FE everybody plays a part. It’s not one individual who makes a difference but the part you play in a team. I am constantly amazed by the rock-solid professionals who work in colleges. Those who go the extra mile.”
White is joined on the honours list by his former colleague Philip Cook, who left his post as CEO of the Education Training Collective last August, and who has been made an OBE.
“I feel very proud but also lucky,” Cook said. “My family have been incredibly supportive throughout my career, and I have been fortunate to have worked with many talented and kind colleagues over the years.”
Multiple skills sector figures also picked up MBEs, including Gillian Eaton, the director at Sporting Futures Training in Stevenage, who said she was “immensely proud” to receive the MBE.
“The value of apprenticeships is immense and whilst we face challenges, we must strive to ensure that apprenticeships continue to fulfil the purpose for which they were developed,” she added.
Lloyd Thomas, future workforce skills & capability lead at Co-operative Group, also received an MBE which he said was a “reflection of not only my work but the support from hundreds of colleagues I’ve worked with across the years”.
“Apprenticeships and vocational qualifications are integral to ensuring our communities thrive and are opening doors every day for people from underrepresented groups who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to fulfil their potential.”
British Empire Medals (BEMs) meanwhile were awarded to three individuals including Pauline Franklin, cleaning supervisor at St Brendan’s Sixth Form College in Bristol.
“I’m just absolutely blown away, I don’t think it can get any better,” she said.
“It’s been 35 or 36 years that I have worked here, it’s a very very nice place to work. Being given this award, I can’t thank Marian [Curran, the college principal] enough for putting me forward – what an honour.”
Andrew Green, a physical education teacher at New College Pontefract in West Yorkshire, said he was “amazed” to get a BEM.
“This will be dedicated to my fantastic colleagues, parent volunteers and wonderful family, who have supported me over the years,” he added. “It has been a privilege to work with thousands of youngsters in schools, colleges and the local community. Providing opportunities for children and young people to develop their skills and achieve their potential has always been a great pleasure and honour in itself.”
The full list of FE and skills honours (click to enlarge):
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham recently unveiled plans to introduce a Manchester Baccalaureate (MBacc). Its aim is to shift the city’s educational focus towards more technical subjects. Where the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) sets learners up to progress onto A-levels and from there typically on to university, the MBacc is intended to dovetail with a more vocational route in post-16 learning, including T-levels and progressing through the skills sector.
The MBacc is a good example of what can be done by local authorities like Greater Manchester using the new powers granted to them through devolution deals. It promises to better match the skills demanded by jobs to the supply of relevant qualifications, and not just nationally but in a way that reflects local idiosyncrasies. Burnham’s seven proposed ‘career gateways’ are calibrated to the strongest areas of the Greater Manchester economy.
With its focus on the 14–19 age bracket, the MBacc also breaks somewhat away from the ‘state of play’ in policy discussions around technical skills. It recognises that the path to higher technical qualifications is laid early in our educational trajectories. It also represents the best-developed positive alternative so far to the EBacc framework, long criticised for its academic skew.
By tying together 14–16 secondary education provision with the early stages of post-16 tertiary learning, the MBacc creates a smoother pathway through the complex ‘climbing frame’ of qualifications. This joined-up way of thinking about vocational learning pathways means learners can more easily navigate the step up into training and upskilling after school. Apprenticeships or vocational certificates and diplomas are no longer add-ons or afterthoughts to school-age learning, but a natural and pre-planned continuation.
Yet despite these clear areas of promise, the MBacc does not really touch some of the most fundamental problems of our education system.
Writing in these pages, Burnham was quick to say that he did not envisage EBacc and MBacc as ‘two rigid, parallel routes but an approach with as much commonality as possible’, with plenty of opportunities ‘to switch between the two’.
Our system needs deeper integration
He is right: our system needs deeper integration and it is crucial to elevate technical training to the same status as academic study. But the MBacc’s presentation as an alternative to the EBacc looks set to perpetuate the false rivalry between these two learning ‘tracks’. The proposals are open for consultation, but it is unclear whether enough groundwork has been laid to set up a genuine alternative. And besides, schools will continue to be held accountable for EBacc results.
Meanwhile, what is missing from the proposals is any consideration of what happens after learners leave the 14–19 age bracket. Many of the skills they need are precisely those offered by the MBacc qualifications. It is vital to combine growing the workforce of the future with refreshing, updating, or expanding technical skills among the workforce of today. The MBacc, in other words, must fit into a much larger programme of lifelong pathways in technical learning and skills training.
A final missing piece in the MBacc proposal is the voice of learners. It is hugely promising to see such strong support for the scheme from businesses, colleges, and the combined authority. Yet the scepticism among learners towards the ‘Welsh Bacc’ hangs over the MBacc like a shadow. Stakeholders will have their work cut out to ensure the MBacc has the visibility and take-up appeal it needs to succeed and that careers advisers can avoid presenting it as a poor relation.
If Westminster can learn anything from the MBacc proposal, it is that its EBacc calculation (and with it Achievement 8 and Progress 8) is increasingly out of step. It should include more technical options, giving learners more choices between and across academic and vocational subjects for longer.
And for local authorities with devolution deals, fostering local education partnerships that allow learners to ‘mix and match’ academic and technical learning could be just as productive as the MBacc, without the fanfare.
Greater Manchester can justly claim to be leading the way towards a new approach to technical learning. But for all its innovations, it does not obviate the need for much larger structural changes.
Workload has sped up for college boards recently. Accountability agreements, LSIPs, annual conversations with DfE, external governance reviews. Meanwhile, worries about quality, finances and big estates plan (more on these later) haven’t gone away for many, maybe even most.
You’ve been worried for a while that something could go wrong. Then something does. DfE conducts an assessment through the FEC team and its last recommendation is a commissioner-led Structure and Prospects Appraisal (SPA). That’s it. You’ve lost control of your future.
How did it come to this? The board is split, maybe feeling blindsided. It’s not really much use now, but you’re having strained conversations about how you could have headed off this situation.
The answer to that question is a college-led SPA. A SPA is a process to follow if you are considering anything from major structural change to a significant alteration of your delivery model. It doesn’t have to be focused only on merger.
Outcomes of a SPA might include federation or looser collaborative models, withdrawing from or locally merging key areas of provision or, of course, no change at all. If you’ve got a nagging doubt that your college could be vulnerable in future then trust your instincts. Get ahead of the curve and get answers for yourself. Run a SPA through a committee that reports to the Board.
At the very least, it will be useful as you approach your next annual conversation with the DfE. Something in the back pocket. It’s ten years ago now, but the business, innovation and skills department (DBIS) published guidance for colleges on how to conduct them that is still relevant.
Another good reason to do this is that reclassification could still result in further centralising behaviours from DfE in response to almost palpable anxiety around colleges’ financial grip. Now feels like the right time for colleges to take back some control.
I believe the two London Colleges I chaired between 2018 and 2023 were well served by commissioner-led SPAs. They were in almost uniquely difficult circumstances, but merger was the necessary outcome for both. Nevertheless, I do sometimes wonder what their alternative futures might have been if they had determined to take control of their own destinies.
Get ahead of the curve and get answers for yourself
When I think back to the huge pressures on executive and non-executive leadership through those years, I also wonder what steps leadership in colleges local to those two colleges could have taken collaboratively to preserve, enhance and protect the leadership bandwidth that we know is so precious in the sector.
Just as important to protect are the people who embody that bandwidth. One of the main worries for chairs today is their duty of care to their principal and chief executive. The association of colleges is rightly speaking up about these pressures. Collaboration and mutual support are surely central to the response, however it’s formalised (or not).
The DBIS guidance details a few triggers chairs should consider for commissioning a college-led SPA. Interestingly, it doesn’t prominently pick out large capital estates schemes. In my experience, however, any significant capital scheme should almost automatically warrant board consideration of a college-led SPA. It’s no coincidence that my last detailed estates conversation with a college leader segued imperceptibly into musing about merger.
The role of the board, and the chair in particular, is key. Harder-edged structural changes that come about outside of intervention are invariably driven by the chief executive, sometimes communicating with DfE/FEC. It is all conducted in highly private, perhaps deliberately non-transparent ways. That’s understandable, but chairs and boards really need a greater role up front.
Perhaps I am just tripping over process, but I believe it’s important (and uncodified) process. In local and regional contexts, college-led SPAs could be discussed transparently first by chairs, and then commissioned to chief executives by chairs and their boards.
To work, it would require groups of like-minded chairs and boards, prepared to put aside competitive instincts. But that should be achievable. After all, they are the essence of the corporation. Ultimately, they own the blueprint for FE education and training delivery in their local areas, and do so in the best interests of all students and their whole community.
Previous Job: Director of Finance & Corporate Services, The Housing Ombudsman
Interesting fact: As a linguist, Gillian has lived in both Spain and France and, when a student at university, used to earn a bit of extra cash by making and decorating wedding cakes
Michael Wood Williams
Chair, Gateshead College
Start date: April 2023
Concurrent Job: In house corporate counsel and investor
Interesting fact: Michael worked as a professional skier and climber for ten years in the Austrian Alps
More than 140 students from 51 colleges will have their work displayed as part of a national exhibition that explores the theme of sustainability.
The online exhibition was launched this week by the Sixth Form College Association and features hundreds of films, paintings, podcasts and music pieces. More than 600 young people from Sweden were also involved through their Pengar! project alongside 146 students from UK sixth form colleges.
“Pengar” means “money” in Swedish, and exhibition explores “how the dynamics of money, finance and sustainability are connected, in the past, the present and the future”, association chief executive Bill Watkin said.
“The detrimental effect our relationship with money has on human systems, our planet and all living beings is becoming crystal clear,” he added. “Money is a tool – abundance or lack of it orchestrates our dreams and aspiration, as well as our fears and nightmares. Ultimately it affects our future.
“Pengar! is a project that calls for action, to use money with discernment and wisdom, in service of all living beings and our planet.”
Sixth form art focuses on rewilding, plastic pollution and cost-of-living
Students took on some of the most pressing challenges facing humanity, such as sustainability, the need to rewild and modern slavery. Woodhouse College’s Harerta Tesfay is one of those whose art, called “Bigfin Squid and it is plastic”, on display.
Tesfay said the message of the piece was to call on humans to adapt to “live sustainable lives and combat global warming”, just as squid can use their chromatophores to change colour in threatening situations.
“‘Bigfin Squid and it is Plastic’ represents polluted oceans and how beautiful creatures like squids, who live so far from humans, can be affected by pollution. To live sustainable lives, we must adjust our way of living so that we can save our planet from global warming,” Tesfay said.
Romany Jarrettrock’s piece, “Fast Food”, features a woman with her head in her hands surrounded by empty McDonalds cartons. Jarrettrock, who is a fine art student at Richard Huish College in Taunton, Somerset, said that, without the convenience of fast food, you are only left with the “damage it causes” to bodies, the environment and life in general.
“The detrimental effect our relationship with money has on human systems, our planet and all living beings is becoming crystal clear”
“It is only when we remove the layer of convenience that we notice the obvious wrongs of this industry. These damages are what I have intended to portray in my painting, to make you look closer to notice the wrongs.”
Charlotte Clowes’ “Submerged” artwork meanwhile comments on the “devastating use of water in the fashion industry” It features a photograph of a person in a dress submerged in water in a swimming pool.
“Its ambiguity reflects the conflict of young people’s feelings around our planet’s future, with elements of feeling suffocated and helpless, being dragged down by our obsession with clothing, yet also expressing hope that we are still within reach of safety,” Clowes, from The Blackpool Sixth Form College, added. Though the confines of the swimming pool “suggest security and even the possibility of rescue”, they also surround the person in a “man-made environment of treated water far removed from the natural world”.
Ian Pryce believes FE “hasn’t been good” at telling the story of how 30 years of college independence from government changed it “out of all recognition”. The chief executive of the Bedford College Group, is determined to redress that in his final FE Week interview as he approaches retirement.
There is a perfect synchronicity to how his career matches that 30-year golden era.
Pryce, 64, started out in 1992 at the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC, forerunner to the Education and Skills Funding Agency), just as it was launched to replace local authorities in distributing funding to colleges.
He is now entering retirement as colleges have been reclassified as public sector entities and, as a consequence, lose the borrowing and spending freedoms independence has given them for three decades.
Pryce believes independence made the sector financially prudent and unleashed a wave of innovation, but fears reclassification will reverse those advances. He sees this as a “serious mistake”.
Ian Pryce, Bedford College Group
The surreal interview
Pryce’s career in FE began with a very different sort of interview; in a desolate building with one other person present and no furniture. So strange was the set-up that Pryce “wondered if it was actually something real”. In the middle of a room sat Sir Robert Gunn, the chair of the new FEFC who Pryce had previously worked under at the East Midlands Electricity Board. Pryce had never set foot in a college before (aside from a concert), but Gunn persuaded him his new venture – to create a new national college sector – would be “really exciting”.
It was the start of a career journey for Pryce, who went on to become one of FE’s longest-serving leaders with 24 years at the helm in Bedford.
His previous role had been as a financial controller for East Midlands Electricity, which put him in good stead as an FEFC regional finance director, as both roles were “about freeing people up to be in charge of their own institution”.
Like colleges, Pryce had also quit the world of local government finance. His first job was as a trainee accountant under Derek Hatton, deputy leader of Liverpool City Council, when finance officers were tasked with trying to keep the city afloat by any means – including leasing car parking meters to a bank in Japan.
He recalls how when colleges were first “released from the shackles” of local authorities they were keen to distance themselves from their former gamekeepers. There ensued a “rupturing of relationships”, later regretted.
Ian Pryce in his younger years
Financial freedoms
Prior to independence, colleges’ funding was a patchwork quilt across the country with some getting five times more per student than others (the winners were those best at negotiating with their local authority).
Pryce slammed this as “clearly unfair and a bad use of national resources”.
Among the “transformative changes that we now take for granted” is the concept of funding following the learner through the national funding formula, which Pryce credits with creating fairness.
The mandate from government was for colleges to boost their numbers. But that growth had to be “very financially efficient”; “growth money” came at a “lower marginal rate”.
Pryce said it felt like “we were trying hard to give colleges the freedoms given to the old polytechnics”, which had just been made independent universities. Whereas college leaders previously lacked choice over which courses they could run, they were handed “significant control over their curriculum, their strategic intent…and were involved a lot in defining quality.”
Crucially, colleges were given control of their own assets, enabling them to “knock their buildings down, build them up and borrow on them” which facilitated the sector’s rapid growth.
Crucially, they could borrow from banks to “accelerate” projects.
Pryce believes college buildings “significantly improved” in the 10 to 15 years after incorporation while schools – which remained beholden to the purse-strings of government – had some “very poor” estates.
It wasn’t all plain sailing. College leaders now required new skills in how finances and estates were managed, and how colleges should market themselves. Some thrived, others did not. But the new corporate culture made colleges “more responsive” to what students wanted.
There was also a “lot of competition” in those early days between colleges in some of the big cities. “People were stealing each other’s students because they could. The government didn’t mind that, because they wanted that competition on quality.”
Ian Pryce with Gordon Brown
Feeling valued
Pryce believes the still prevalent myth that colleges are for those who “didn’t do well at school” and are mainly about “evening classes” was truer in those first few years than now.
But when the Blair years began in 1997, just after Pryce joined Bedford as finance director, government funding taps really started flowing, with “a big drive on community engagement and adult education”.
Colleges sat under the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills between 2007 to 2009, and being tied in with innovation and universities gave them “a lot of engagement” with ministers.
Then in 2010, their mandate to widen participation was turbocharged when the education participation age was raised from 16 to 18.
Schools didn’t lower their entry criteria to more pupils; it was colleges that went on to become the most popular destination for 16 to 18-year-olds.
It was in the 2010s, when colleges lost their “special status” and became “providers”, that the tide started turning on them.
Per student 16 to 18 funding fell by 14 per cent in real terms between 2010–11 and 2019–20, and the government became more “hands-on” in its management, but without the nuanced understanding of colleges to do so effectively.
Ian Pryce
Treated as schools
Since FE was handed to the Department for Education in 2016, Pryce believes the government has treated colleges “too much like schools”.
Reclassification “seals a change to treating us like a big school”, whereas under incorporation colleges were treated as “small universities, which we are”.
He points out that contrary to perceptions, most college students are not 16 to 18; “the average age is about 40”. And whereas schools average 400 students, colleges have about 10,000.
He credits education secretary Gillian Keegan and skills minister Robert Halfon with being “certainly on [FE’s] side”. But nowadays, he believes that “almost doesn’t matter” because if the Treasury says no, “that’s the end of the game”.
Pryce also believes that Keegan’s own, relatively positive experience of having done some form of an apprenticeship has led her to overly focus on that agenda. “The danger that if you know too much about a subject then you don’t take in some alternative views.”
He questions what the government “really wants” from colleges now, other than “just giving employers what they want” which fills him with disillusionment. “I don’t know what that means anymore.”
Possible benefits?
Pryce reluctantly admits there could be upsides to reclassification. One is “the possibility” colleges could be brought under similar overall teacher pay thresholds as schools, which would mean more generous pay awards.
Staff salaries were “cut back hard” under independence, and Pryce believes lecturers are now “fed up” with seeing their school counterparts being paid £10,000 more than them.
Another potential upside is that reclassifying colleges as public assets distinguishes them from private training providers, which he says are not “assets for the community” in the way that colleges are.
“Rightly, they can pick the things they want to do, whereas we should always serve the community first…therefore we should be funded differently. Being classified differently to private training providers might help us with that.”
Ian Pryce
Fears over reclassification
But Pryce believes there are many more downsides to reclassification.
As he understands it, the purpose behind it was to give the government the power to dismiss a college principal and governing body. But it has become a “classic sledgehammer to crack a nut” with its myriad of other consequences.
Pryce knows of one college group that has recently taken a loan from the government under the new public sector borrowing arrangements, but has “only been given enough to keep afloat”, creating a “financial headache”.
Banks used to ensure colleges were borrowing more than they needed. Now colleges will have to put in bids to the government for capital funding. Pryce warns it will be the bigger colleges with established bid teams – like his own group – that will benefit, rather than those with the greatest need.
There is also a “fear of interference” from civil servants who “generally don’t stay in jobs very long”, which will lead to less innovation.
And time-pressed civil servants will be hard-pushed to respond to all the requests that will come from colleges. After all, colleges now have to seek permission for severance packages, and for ex gratia payments, even of small amounts, which “slows things down” and “takes away that freedom to manage”.
Pryce also fears the government is not putting “anything like enough aside to even maintain” the £10 billion of college assets, which means some buildings could become “unsafe” over time with neglect.
College finance teams are also now facing the dilemma of how to treat surpluses that are “not really ours”. And there is the “tricky” challenge of bringing accounting timelines in line with the government’s.
He also questions whether the sector will be able to retain quality governors. “What’s the attraction of being a governor, if almost every decision you want to make has to be rubber-stamped by department officials who perhaps don’t know much about FE?”
Principal changes
As he departs after 24 years as chief, Pryce cannot imagine any college leader today being able to stay in the job for as long as he has.
“If I started now I would have been sacked about three times on the way! People were pretty forgiving. You don’t get many chances to make mistakes any more.”
But he leaves the sector with his reputation still high – and his musical talents noted (he once performed Dolly Parton’s Jolene dedicated to Justine Greening, the former education secretary).
The £10 million budget he had when he started is now £80 million, and his 250 staff list has grown to 1,800. Pryce found colleges “absolutely fascinating” when he started out, and still does today. “I’ve always liked being in the centre of stuff.”
The government’s apprenticeship and technical education quango has committed to reviewing “high priority” occupational standards this year.
The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) this week published plans to simplify the skills system, in the form of its “A Simpler Skills System” report.
While the proposals were light on tangible new actions to simplify the system, the highlight was the launch of a new occupational maps “service”, which aims to make it easier for people to check out options to “train for a job then progress to senior skills levels on tablets and mobile phones”.
Alongside this, the institute said it would use “big data to rapidly identify where change is needed to support the economy, streamline the way we work with employers to develop occupational standards, and prioritise reviews of those standards where change is most needed”.
An occupational standard is a description of an occupation. It contains an occupational profile, and describes the “knowledge, skills and behaviours” needed for someone to be competent in the occupation’s duties. They are used to design apprenticeships, T Levels and, increasingly, new technical qualifications.
IfATE’s report pledged to review standards in occupations “identified as high priority where updates are needed to support emerging skills, so that more people secure the skills they need to be successful in a future economy” this year.
Chief executive Jennifer Coupland said the institute was working through exactly how many standards to review with the Department for Education.
She told FE Week: “We have a matching tool which takes into consideration all sorts of criteria such as regulatory changes, and whether there have been any technological changes. And the combination of those features pushes the standards to the top of the list for review.”
