Almost nine in ten full Ofsted inspection reports for FE providers returned either ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ grades in May.
And all but one of the 13 monitoring reports published this month produced ‘reasonable’ or ‘significant’ progress ratings.
The education watchdog originally paused the publication of all further education and skills reports on the 20 March due to the ongoing pandemic.
They had planned to release them only when teaching returns to normal, but later decided to publish them sooner if requested by individual providers. The first of the pre-Covid reports were published on 5 May.
Since then, 17 full inspection reports have been released in which two ‘outstanding’ and 13 ‘good’ grades have been handed out. The remaining two were ‘requires improvement’ grades. In addition, nine short reports have been published where providers have retained a grade two.
Chichester College Group received grade ones across the board from inspectors who lauded leaders and managers for successfully developing a strong “collaborative culture between the campuses, particularly within teaching, training and learning”.
Similarly, Ron Dearing UTC was judged ‘outstanding’ in a report that did not include one line of criticism as it was dubbed a “guiding light in the education sector”.
Five FE providers were graded ‘good’ after previously receiving ‘requires improvement’, three of which were adult and community learning providers.
This also included Lancaster and Morecambe College after Ofsted found that leaders have “created a clear vision for the college” by “reshaping many elements of the curriculum offer”.
Essex-based independent learning provider Central Training Academy Limited also improved from a grade three to a two. It was praised for preparing learners for employment “very effectively,” and taking their existing skills and knowledge into account.
Prospects Training International Limited, which trades as Geason Training, received one of only two ‘requires improvement’ ratings this month in its first inspection.
The provider was previously found to be making ‘insufficient progress’ in two out of three themes in its early monitoring visit, which led to the government paused its ability to recruit learners. A grade three means this suspension can now be lifted.
While Prospect’s newly appointed leadership team recognised that the curriculum was “not fit for purpose” and has overhauled its content, the inspectorate said “there is still much to do to strengthen the provision further”.
UTC Swindon also received a grade three from Ofsted which reported that the quality of education is “not yet good enough”.
It found that outcomes at the end of sixth form have been low in recent years, with current pupils doing much better but “still not achieving as highly as they should”.
The most critical report to be published in May was for independent specialist college Fir Tree Fishery CIC. Inspectors found the new provider making ‘insufficient progress’ across the board in an early monitoring visit which has led to the government pausing the college’s ability to recruit learners.
The education watchdog claimed leaders and managers have “not developed a coherent, well-designed curriculum that meets the needs and interests of learners”.
In contrast, two independent learning providers, Fitch Learning Ltd and Itec Training Solutions Ltd, were found to be making ‘significant progress’ across the board after their early monitoring visits.
Lambeth College also received two ‘significant progress’ grades in a monitoring visit following a grade three report while Richard Taunton Sixth Form College was graded ‘reasonable progress’ in every assessed area in its own monitoring visit after a ‘requires improvement’ rating.
Ofsted, which has suspended all routine inspections until further notice, previously told FE Week it was sitting on 50 FE and skills reports that had been completed before the Covid-19 outbreak.
Thirty-nine of these, from inspections that took place prior to lockdown, have been published this month in total.
Boris Johnson has given colleges the green light to begin their wider reopening to students from 15 June after announcing the government’s “five tests” for easing lockdown were all being met.
The prime minister said today that the country can now make “limited and cautious” changes, including that primary schools can begin welcoming back pupils in reception, year 1 and year 6 from Monday.
He then added: “A fortnight later on 15 June secondary schools will start to provide some face-to-face contact time for students in years 10 and 12.”
The Department for Education later confirmed to FE Week that this includes first year college learners, who are equivalent to year 12s in schools, on all two-year vocational study programmes, GCSEs and A-levels, as well as apprentices.
Colleges had been preparing to begin their wider reopening from 1 June but Johnson announced a two-week delay to this last Sunday.
The DfE said at the time that a “more cautious approach is being taken for FE, as for secondary students relative to primary”, which “reflects that these groups are more likely to travel longer distances to college and to use public transport – and once in colleges they will mix more with other groups”.
Around a quarter of students eligible to start returning to college are allowed in “at any point”, the DfE added.
Today, 28 May, was the key date the government had set to decide whether or not to ease lockdown measures, including the wider reopening of schools and colleges, based on progress against their “five tests”.
The five tests, which Johnson said today are all being met, are:
Protect the NHS’s ability to cope. We must be confident that we are able to provide sufficient critical care and specialist treatment right across the UK
See a sustained and consistent fall in the daily death rates from COVID-19 so we are confident that we have moved beyond the peak
Reliable data from SAGE showing that the rate of infection is decreasing to manageable levels across the board
Be confident that the range of operational challenges, including testing capacity and PPE, are in hand, with supply able to meet future demand
Be confident that any adjustments to the current measures will not risk a second peak of infections that overwhelms the NHS
Apprenticeship starts for the month of March 2020 are down by a quarter while April plunged by 72 per cent on the previous year, new government data has revealed.
Monthly provisional figures for both of those months were published by the Department for Education this morning and show the huge impact that the Covid-19 pandemic is having on apprenticeship recruitment.
They show there were 19,600 starts in March 2020 compared to 25,600 in the same month in 2019.
The latest reported data for April 2020 shows just 7,000 starts compared to 24,800 in April 2019. However, it is important to note that last year’s figure was taken from a later data return than April 2020.
Opportunities for young people were hit the hardest last month as starts for under 19s plummeted by 87 per cent, and starts at level 2 dropped by 83 per cent.
The data for April chimes with the findings of an FE Week survey that was first to reveal the dramatic impact of the coronavirus crisis on apprentice starts.
The DfE states that it is key to note that in “normal circumstances” the first time a month is reported on it may “typically represent only two thirds of the starts providers go on to report later in the year”, so care should be taken with the data for April as “interpretation of the level and particularly comparisons with other periods risks being unrepresentative”.
Today’s data release also includes figures from 23 March, when lockdown started, to the end of April. Just 13,020 apprenticeship starts have been reported so far between those dates, around half of the 26,330 reported for the same period at this point last year.
The DfE said that Covid-19 has resulted in the closure of colleges and some employers are unable to start or continue apprenticeships as planned.
“Apprenticeship data for recent periods is always subject to a large degree of underreporting but, during the nationwide lockdown due to the pandemic, reporting will be further affected by collections remaining open on a voluntary basis to help reduce burden on the sector and employers,” they added.
Responding to the latest figures, Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Mark Dawe said: “After yesterday’s pre-pandemic figures showing an increase in the number of young people who are NEET, today’s data is extremely worrying for young people who were looking to start an apprenticeship or traineeship this year.
“The prime minister is absolutely right in saying that apprenticeships should play a ‘huge part in getting people back into the jobs market’ but the big problem is that Downing Street and the Department for Education are not singing from the same hymn-sheet.”
He added: “A large drop in apprenticeship opportunities for young people is already hitting a fragile infrastructure.
“The prime minister’s ambition for the importance of apprenticeships, which is shared by many commentators and the Labour Party, can only be realised if DfE ministers finally smell the coffee and become supporters of the sector through actions rather than words.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “While the impact of the coronavirus is still becoming clear, we are supporting employers, apprentices and training providers during this challenging time so people can continue to access high-quality apprenticeship opportunities.
“It is encouraging to see that even in these challenging circumstances, many employers still recognise the value apprenticeships can bring to their businesses.”
As reported by FE Week last month, the DfE is currently consulting on how to “repurpose” their monthly apprenticeship data releases in light of Covid-19.
The department said today that they “continue to seek your feedback on the type of breakdowns of most useduring this period, such as national apprenticeship starts by age, level and individual standard etc, so we can consider going forward and in light of data quality assessments”.
Mark Dawe is stepping down as chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers to head up a major subcontractor to colleges.
He began telling staff today that he is set to leave the role this summer after leading the membership organisation for four years.
Current chief operating officer, Jane Hickie, has been promoted to become managing director as part of a new structure at AELP.
Dawe will stay on in an advisory role but will join The Skills Network full-time from August – a well-known independent training provider based in North Yorkshire that delivers mainly short online courses funded from the adult education budget and European Social Fund.
He said there is “never an easy time to leave a role like this” but the “opportunity to be part of the transformation of education delivery was too much to resist”.
“It has been a fantastic journey for AELP and its members during a period for me that started a year before the apprenticeship levy’s introduction, has included many challenges whether they be AEB procurement, apprenticeships standards and assessment development, non-levy funding, or through to the battle for survival during the Covid crisis,” Dawe added.
“AELP has established the importance of apprenticeships, work based learning and independent training providers at the heart of employers and government thinking, although we will never have to stop reminding them of that.”
The Skills Network was founded by Mick Cox in 2009. In 2018/19, the provider was a subcontractor to 48 colleges with contracts worth almost £10 million in total.
The firm was rated ‘good’ by Ofsted in 2018 which inspected its direct delivery of distance learning courses to around 400 adults, not its subcontracted provision.
Education and Skills Funding Agency data shows the provider currently has its own non-levy apprenticeships allocation of £191,000 and an advance learner loans contract worth £486,000.
The Skills Network’s most recently published accounts, for the year ending July 2018, show a turnover of £14.3 million and 184 staff.
Hickie will assume most of Dawe’s responsibilities at the AELP from mid-August. The organsiation said she will be supported by a “more hands-on approach” taken by their recently strengthened board with the formation of a policy and funding group of members and other experts, chaired by Stewart Segal.
Dawe will sit on this group and Simon Ashworth as AELP’s chief policy officer will continue as the senior management lead for policy and funding matters.
AELP chair Martin Dunford said: “The board and I acknowledge everything that Mark Dawe has achieved for AELP and our members including the fact that AELP’s profile has never been higher.
“We wish Mark every success in his new role and we are delighted that he will still be lending his experience and expertise to AELP’s new policy and funding group.”
Hickie added: “I join Martin and the board in wishing Mark well in his new role and the AELP staff will undoubtedly miss his very positive approach which has helped drive the organisation forward.
“A strong team at AELP is part of Mark’s legacy and this will give me great confidence in leading the organisation during the immediate post-pandemic period.”
Prior to joining the AELP, Dawe was the chief executive of exam board OCR for five years.
He had a stint as a college principal before this at Oaklands College, and is a former deputy director for FE and adult basic skills strategy at the Department of Education after joining the civil service in 2003.
Dawe started out his career by qualifying as a chartered accountant at KPMG having read economics at Cambridge University. He joined Canterbury College, becoming head of corporate services in 1994.
Aside from his current role as boss of the AELP, he is on the board of WorldSkills UK as well as the ESFA advisory board, Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education’s quality alliance and the DfE’s apprenticeship stakeholder board.
The prime minister has said he will “look at the idea” of giving young people aged 16 to 25 an “apprenticeship guarantee”.
Boris Johnson made the commitment this afternoon after stating that apprenticeships “are going to play a huge part in getting people back onto the jobs market” from Covid-19.
He was taking questions from MPs on the government’s Liaison Committee, in which education select committee chair Robert Halfon warned that “we are in danger of destroying our dream of building an apprenticeship nation” as a result of a sharp drop in apprentice starts due to the pandemic.
Halfon then asked: “Will you consider introducing a guarantee offering every young person from 16 to 25 a guaranteed apprenticeship providing they can get their qualifications from level 2 right up to degree level?”
Johnson replied: “We will be doing everything we can to get people into jobs and I will look at the idea of an apprenticeship guarantee.
“I suppose it is something that we would have to work with employers to deliver, we would have to think about the funding of that but this is a government that has done some pretty astonishing and creative things with helping business in the last few months and that is the kind of thing we could well consider.
“We are going to need to take exceptional steps to help our young people into work and we will.”
Later in the session, Stephen Timms, chair of the work and pensions committee, raised the idea of an apprenticeship guarantee again and asked the prime minister whether he’d agree that “we are going to need some pretty radical measures to tackle unemployment after the crisis”.
Johnson responded by saying “yes and that’s why I think Rob’s idea, this apprenticeship guarantee, is so attractive”.
“What we have done is we have put our arms around every worker and helped them keep their job but businesses, they may need support in the coming months as they get back on their feet in taking people on and we’ll need to think about how to help them.
“At the same time, look let’s face it, this country does have skills deficit, we do have a productivity gap still.
“This might be the moment, Stephen, when we really start to try to tackle that and use this crisis to address some of these issues.”
He added: “I can assure you that the Chancellor and I, and everybody, we’re looking at all this stuff very closely and we’ll be wanting to come forward in June, early July with much more about how we get employment going again, how we get the economy restarted but for now it is very important we focus on defeating this virus.”
It is not clear exactly how an apprenticeship could be “guaranteed”. FE Week has asked Halfon for more details.
Labour has accused the government of failing to make a “serious attempt” to answer AELP’s claim that the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s supplier relief scheme was “unlawful”.
Shadow education secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey and shadow apprenticeships minister Toby Perkins have expressed their “disappointment” today in a joint letter to education secretary Gavin Williamson that urged him to “abandon what appears to be a very flimsy case for excluding levy funded apprenticeships from the relief scheme”.
The lawyers challenged the government’s decision to exclude apprenticeships funded through their digital system, which officials claim is a contract with the employer and provider, stating that the ESFA’s alleged failure to comply with Cabinet Office guidance “displays a multiplicity of legal errors” and “an abuse of power”.
The government responded on 14 May and concluded that it is “not accepted that the relief scheme is unlawful on any of the grounds alleged by the AELP (or on any other grounds)”.
The GLD’s main claim was that it is “not arguable that the funding agreement between the ESFA and Suppliers delivering levy funded apprenticeships amounts to a ‘contract for services’ within the meaning, and for the purposes, of PPN 02/20”.
It added: “The contract for services in this arrangement is plainly between the suppliers and the levy paying employers who receive the training services delivered by those suppliers. This contrasts distinctly with the position of suppliers that support non-levy paying employers, and who deliver services specified in a contract directly with the ESFA.
“It follows that the ESFA is a contracting authority within the scope of PPN 02/20 with respect to suppliers holding contracts to deliver apprenticeship provision to non-levy paying employers, but not with respect to suppliers delivering apprenticeship provision to levy paying employers.”
AELP chief executive Mark Dawe told FE Week the GLD’s letter “really avoids the issues and just rebuts the argument”, adding that the response from AELP’s lawyers “is they don’t think that the government’s case has been made”.
The AELP board is now being consulted over whether to pursue legal action against the government.
Long-Bailey and Perkins have also been left unimpressed with the government’s response and are now calling for urgent action.
“I wanted to say how disappointed I was that a letter sent to your department has had no substantive reply to many of the issues raised,” their joint letter says.
“Neither the GLD nor the DfE have made any serious attempt at all to answer the case that it is a misinterpretation of the Cabinet Office guidance to suppose that levy funded apprenticeships are excluded by the guidance. It is simply wrong for the GLD to claim that no contract exists between the ESFA and the provider for levy funded apprenticeships when in fact there is what the Education and Skills Funding Agency calls a ‘legal agreement’ between them.”
Long-Bailey and Perkins went on to say they “do not accept that there is any justification for the department to not extend that arrangement to those who supply to apprenticeship levy funded apprentices too”.
“The government should recognise that many providers heeded the advice of the ESFA’s leadership when the levy was introduced that they should concentrate on building up business among levy payers and understand that this explains why only a limited number applied for non-levy relief and why levy funded apprenticeships now account for two-thirds of the market.
“Why should they be ‘punished’ for heeding official advice and being prudent about their finances?”
The letter continues: “As the DfE recognises that it has ‘a legal agreement’ with apprenticeship providers, and as those apprenticeship providers that are providing levy funded apprenticeships are doing precisely what the government requested of them, there seems to be an economic, moral and legal case for the government to provide this support, and we call on you to provide it forthwith.
“Therefore we urge you to abandon what appears to be a very flimsy case for excluding levy funded apprenticeships from the DfE’s relief scheme, extend the scheme more widely and get behind the independent training providers and colleges wanting to continue to deliver apprenticeships and skills for people who are going to desperately need them in the coming months.”
Click below to read the letters from the relevant parties in full
The government’s response to a consultation that outlined plans to overhaul subcontracting rules in further education has been delayed by a month.
Officials in the Education and Skills Funding Agency had planned to publish their decisions in May, but they announced today that their outcome will now be released in June.
In their weekly update, the agency explained this was because responses to the consultation were allowed up to the end of March – two weeks after the official closing date of 17 March – in “recognition of the fact that at that time providers were urgently addressing issues relating to the Covid-19 outbreak”.
The subcontracting consultation was launched earlier this year after the ESFA’s boss, Eileen Milner, sent a sector-wide letter warning she will take strong action against any provider that does not play by their rules, following a number of high-profile scandals.
When the call for views got underway in February, the ESFA said it was aiming to “eliminate subcontracting that is undertaken for purely financial reasons”.
Ten recommendations followed, including a percentage cap on provision of 25 per cent of a provider’s ESFA post-16 income in 2021/22, and further reducing that percentage to 17.5 per cent in 2022/23 and to 10 per cent in 2023/24.
It also proposed that where the aggregate value of a subcontractor’s delivery exceeds more than £3 million of ESFA funded provision, the agency would make a referral to Ofsted for the subcontractor to be subject to a direct inspection.
Another key recommendation was to introduce “stronger criteria for subcontracted provision delivered at a distance”, stating that as a “broad rule of thumb”, partners should be no more than one hour away from the prime contractor by car.
Further plans include stricter controls on the circumstances in which the whole of a learner’s programme can be subcontracted, as well as tighter oversight of sport related provision as it is a “particular concern” to the ESFA.
A new “rationale for subcontracting” requirement as part of provider subcontracting declarations is also in the works. Providers could need to “state the educational intent for entering into subcontracting arrangements and that governors and boards have agreed this”.
The consultation stated that “entering into subcontracting arrangements for financial gain” will not be considered as an acceptable reason for doing so.
FE Week analysis of ESFA data shows that subcontracting accounted for £650 million in government funding for adults in 2018/19, and the practice fully or partially funded 25,230 students aged 16 to 19 at 587 subcontractors.
The ESFA’s plan was to start implementing subcontracting rule changes at the start of 2020/21 but none surfaced in the draft adult education budget rules published at the beginning of this month.
Ministers are considering taking colleges back into government control, as revealed last week in these pages. But, Jess Staufenberg asks, was incorporation ever what it was cracked up to be?
There is a rising anxiety in the heart of government about the lack of intervention powers when colleges are failing. That’s what FE Week reported, in an explosive story, this month.
Perhaps ministers are muttering because, as the devastation of coronavirus comes swiftly on the heels of funding cuts, they’ve finally decided they can’t bear to watch any more colleges hit the financial buffers. Anyway, they’re looking to bring colleges under increased control, we heard.
More government involvement could mean further education colleges, which are officially categorised as in the “private” sector because of their borrowing and spending freedoms, are re-classified as in the “public sector”, like schools are.
The body responsible for this decision is the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which has criteria for whether an institution belongs in the public or private sector, and includes them in the national balance sheet accordingly. The ONS has announced no plans to re-assess the status of colleges – yet.
So in what way might the government “take ownership of colleges”, as FE Week reported? We spoke to three colleges leaders who remember the last time “ownership” was a clearly definable state: pre-1992, when colleges, their budgets, recruitment, courses and capital projects were all controlled by the local authority.
As of 1 April 1993, all further education and sixth form colleges – but not adult education service institutions – were incorporated, or removed from local authority control. Could the current government go the whole hog and return to that era? If so, what was it like and what could we learn from it? Ministers considering any changes would do well to listen closely.
I’m all in favour of local democracy, but they would tell you how to do things
“You often didn’t find out what your budget was going to be until halfway through the year,” sighs Adrian Perry, faintly amused, down the phone. Now a consultant, in 1988 he was principal of Shirecliffe College in Sheffield and from 1992 of Lambeth College in London.
“I’m all in favour of local democracy, but my criticism was they would tell you how to do things – what grade staff should be on and who to appoint and so on. It should have been the other way around. They should have told us what was needed and we would work out how to deliver it.”
Moving past strike action was tricky for college principals because the town hall was often in support. “The trade unions were very close to the local authorities. I had five strikes in one year.”
There were about 390 colleges back then, many led by men unimpressed with their lack of choice over which courses they could run, according to Dame Ruth Silver, now president of the Further Education Trust for Leadership. She was a clinical psychologist working for the civil service between 1982 and 1988, who joined Newham College as vice principal in 1986.
“That’s when I discovered, for the first time, people talking about getting the hell out of local authorities. I was taken aback by the hurry to get out.”
As a Scot, Silver was a believer in municipality and local democratic accountability – unlike many principals whom she attended meetings with. “They were vile complaining sessions in some cases.
“The complaint on the whole was about not being allowed to run the courses they wanted. The local authority wanted the colleges to do unemployment courses, for example.
“But lots of the college leaders didn’t want to do that – they wanted to be the old-fashioned technical colleges and have apprentices, who were better behaved. They had lots of difficult young people and they didn’t have the staff to deal with them.”
Yet Silver admits some shady political decisions were made in town halls. In 1991, the year before incorporation, she moved to Lewisham College.
“I remember the college had a leaking roof and the money went to the borough, who didn’t spend it on the roof. Instead they transferred it to Millwall Football Club! That happened a lot, political projects came first or schools came first.”
College leaders were “curtailed” by two main factors, explains Silver: elected politicians’ links to the trade unions, and that “school was compulsory and so elected officials paid more attention to schools because that’s where the votes were”.
But there was a serious upside to having a layer of government work closely with colleges – coherence of offer.
Before moving to Newham, Silver had worked at Southwark College under the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), which was cross-borough and less tied to particular town halls.
This broader, regional level of government allowed for a post-16 sector whose institutions worked together, rather than in competition.
“ILEA was planned strategically. It was a lovely model, every borough had a college and people could go to any college in London. If you wanted to do art, you could go to the art college, or fashion there was the fashion college. ILEA would give you travel tickets to get to any college.”
The scramble to compete for other institutions’ students was not nearly as pronounced, and learners were supported to access a wide range of institutions.
They had lots of difficult young people and they didn’t have the staff to deal with them
Then a series of changes happened in quick succession. Margaret Thatcher’s government passed the Education Reform Act in 1988, ushering in “local management” of colleges and schools whereby local authorities were required to delegate certain decisions, such as staffing, to education leaders.
Soon after polytechnic colleges demanded the same independent, incorporated status as universities which John Major, who had taken over a year earlier, awarded them in 1991.
“The polytechnics disturbed the nest,” says Silver. “When college principals saw polytechnics had become universities and gained independence, lots of them wanted that too.”
It was something of a false analogy, explains Perry. “The polytechnics were national institutions, but colleges were local institutions, and that sometimes got forgotten. One of the drawbacks of incorporation was the withering of local collaboration.”
But the move brought a different kind of coherence: the creation of a national sector where spending rates in colleges began to vary less wildly between localities.
“Before incorporation, nationally there were enormous differences in the unit cost of efficiency,” continues Perry. “Some colleges cost almost twice as much per student as others. Incorporation brought a ‘levelling’ in spending. Convergence, it was called. The idea was to have a fierce incentive for growth while driving down costs. It also created a national sector: we were in the same circulars, in the same league tables, for the first time.”
The first of April 1993, when colleges became ‘non-profit institutions serving households’ (NPISH) belonging to the private sector, wasn’t exactly “VE Day”, laughs Perry, but there was considerable support among college leaders.
“It was quite something, the increased autonomy – commissioning building work was a very heady freedom.” He remembers attending a reception with Major who asked them, ‘isn’t it great to be free?’ Yet soon reality began to bite.
“Not long after we got a circular telling us how to behave. It was that Thatcherite thing: all God’s children have targets.”
Dame Ruth Silver
Silver is more disparaging of the “freedom” she regards as mis-sold to the sector. “There is a lie in society that FE has had all the freedoms. We were still part of the public pension purse. We couldn’t run a surplus or borrow without government agreement. I once heard someone say, ‘we have as much freedom as a Marks and Spencer provider’ – every product has to cost the same and look the same. I think freedom is a myth.”
“It wasn’t as wonderful as was always made out,” concedes Perry.
“But efficiency and flexibility improved very sharply. The substantial increase in management autonomy was on the whole a good thing – it meant identifying problems, like why one course had lost half its students while another one had kept them all.”
The new regime also came with a range of new actors to enforce it. The Further Education Funding Council (FEFC), which would go through various iterations before becoming today’s ESFA, dished out funding and also launched a new inspectorate for further education, unlike the generalist HMI inspectors.
Making the same body responsible for funding and inspection sounds pretty dodgy, but having a dedicated inspectorate was a no-brainer. “This was a very purposeful inspectorate who could actually say what was good practice in construction!” says Perry. “Undoubtedly it had a sharp sting, but it was worth doing and people did prepare anxiously.” Completion rates of courses began to climb.
There is a lie that FE has had all the freedoms. I think freedom is a myth
But incorporation took many scalps, and the scars of repeated industrial action from frustrated, underpaid lecturers from that time arguably run deep in the sector to this day.
Susan Pember, now policy director at HOLEX, a professional body for adult education, joined Enfield council in 1986 and was responsible for administering four colleges before becoming principal at Canterbury college as incorporation arrived.
“It was exciting, really exciting. I loved running the college independently – I would have hated having shackles.”
But, as a former local authority official with budgeting and HR experience, Pember was in a “unique position” to take on the vast role of college principal, now labelled “chief executive”.
“For many principals who’d had people in the local authority doing all the finance, it was a huge shock. There was a big turnover of principals in the first five years, because the job was much bigger than they thought. We also had to make a lot of redundancies.”
She adds that during the period 1992 to 1998, the sector became “incredibly bureaucratic, some of it self-generated by principals who were very nervous and brought in lots of rules”. Teaching staff, as is often the case with change, bore the brunt.
Both Pember and Silver made the most of incorporation by appointing experienced people into HR and finance roles so they could get on with supporting lecturers and learners, and also maintaining local authority links rather than putting them out in the cold.
For instance, Pember appointed the chief executive of Canterbury city council to her governing body. But in the national picture many lecturers were unhappy.
The new Colleges Employers Forum had appointed controversial chief executive Roger Ward, a man who had already taken on the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education over the polytechnic sector, a move which showed it would be taking a hard line with the unions.
In 1994 alone, 100 colleges went on strike over new contracts and the abandonment of the ‘silver book’ for pay and conditions.
Financial crises hit numerous colleges: in 1995, 1,500 full-time and 8,000 part-time posts were lost, and in 1996, 3,500 full-time posts were lost.
“Dash for cash” scandals hit throughout the 90s and by 1999, 20,000 full-time lecturers had been lost since incorporation. In their place, flexible contracts and efficiency drives had created a “gig economy”, says Perry, with “days on and off, rather than the old steady promotion up to a good salary”.
Debts were also piling up as colleges grappled with their new freedoms.
From 1997, generous funding under Labour made this less of a problem. But co-funding rules for borrowing in that period made later budget cuts more devastating, explains Pember.
“Before incorporation a college couldn’t borrow. Afterwards it was part of the criteria, and once Labour came in it was a co-funding model. For every pound you got in funding for capital, you had to borrow a pound, using your reserves or going to a bank. So if you were doing a £20 million project, you had to find £10 million yourself. That’s when debt really began to build up. As soon as austerity measures came in, you’ve got this huge debt and no means of paying it off.”
The latest figures from the Association of Colleges put collective college debt in 2016-17 at £1.25 billion. If colleges are brought into the public sector, it will be a lot to add to the government’s books. The bill from coronavirus is going to be so high that ministers perhaps care less than they used to.
Around the same time, more colleges moved away from local links, according to Pember. “About 10 years after incorporation, colleges stopped thinking local and started thinking regional or national. Many of them didn’t feel they needed any form of local accountability. The mantra gradually became that colleges are business, not community services.”
The ambiguous status was reflected at departmental level, where no one seemed quite certain how to categorise colleges. In 2007, they were in the Department for Innovation, University and Skills and by 2011 they were in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Yet despite being parked here, in 2010 the ONS reviewed the status of colleges and decided that the government actually had enough control to re-classify them as in public sector.
“No sooner had that happened than the coalition government moved colleges into the Department for Education and passed the 2011 Education Act which removed the need for colleges to seek government consent before borrowing and limiting intervention powers. The question persisted: who owned colleges? The ONS promptly moved colleges back into the private sector, but the answer still wasn’t quite clear.
The mantra gradually became that colleges are business, not community services
Indeed, the years that followed the 2011 Act read like a timeline of attempts to claw back an element of control.
The FE commissioner role arrived in 2013 to lead commissioner intervention where crises were already happening and also steer area reviews in a stalwart attempt to prevent them. The commissioner’s latest annual report shows 13 colleges were in intervention last year, higher than the year before.
“Administered college status” was introduced that meant “colleges will lose freedoms and flexibilities while they are turned around”.
In 2017, the number of colleges running out of cash prompted the Technical and Further Education Act, which extended commercial solvency laws to colleges and allowed the education secretary to appoint a special administrator to take over an insolvent college. Freedom was clearly a conditional scenario.
Yet, the fascinating fact is none of the three leaders FE Week spoke to would gladly give control back to local authorities.
“They cannot go back to how it was,” says Silver. “Pre-1992 doesn’t fit a modern world. There was a great deal to be critical about under local authorities – political wheeling and dealing.”
What has been lost, however, is proper local and regional collaboration. “The great thing back then was you sat around political tables as a sibling. That doesn’t happen any more – organisations won’t go to the wall for each other.” She suggests a collaborative “21st century version that’s designed regionally”.
The others come up with astonishingly similar solutions.
“My line would be some sort of regional education service for planning across an area,” says Perry.
Pember says a layer of local government needs to be regularly holding colleges to account for their area. “My view of the future is to cover the rest of the country with the equivalent of Mayoral Combined Authorities, so there is regional accountability to the mayor. It would be to bring in a much stronger scrutiny side. There should be an elected member who is asking that question: ‘what are you doing for this area?’”
The suggestions sound much like the ILEA structure Silver remembers as having been effective almost 30 years ago.
They want an extension of regional government checks and balances, but not of central or local government control – and certainly not full ownership.
In a way, ownership of the sector has been so slippery to define since 1993 that it’s difficult to say what conditions must be met to say the government does or does not own it.
The return of local authority control for spending and recruitment would certainly suffice, but that seems highly unlikely, particularly not under a Conservative government and when the sector’s leaders were largely opposed to that set-up when it was in place.
Yet, as Pember points out, the government has been increasing its powers over the sector in the last few years to the extent that she thinks ONS re-classification is inevitable. “They’ve ratcheted it up to the point where I think that colleges will fail ONS private sector classification”, she tells me.
The other possibility, of course, is that successive governments have always kept and extended enough powers over colleges that the “dream” of 1992 was never fully realised, and now it’s just a case of admitting publicly the government actually owns colleges. The charade of independence is more of a headache than it’s worth.
Either way, the tussle for ownership of FE continues. But a solution, taking inspiration from the regional pre-1992 structures, might be out there.
