Why do governments have a blind spot on colleges? The last government banged on endlessly about a skills revolution. At one point, several education secretaries ago, I recall Gavin Williamson promising to “super-charge” further education with the aim of overtaking Germany. Whatever that means.
And yet what they actually did from 2010 was allocate such a miserably low funding rate to colleges that the pay of college teachers fell further behind that of school teachers and an insolvency regime was introduced for colleges that went bust.
It is hard to imagine a less effective way of bringing about a skills revolution. The lack of investment in the college sector is one of the reasons why it has been so difficult to secure economic growth over the past 15 years. Things could and should have been different had we invested in developing the nation’s skills base.
Now we have a new government which is looking to set a different tone with the launch of … a new quango. Called Skills England it will bring together government, businesses, colleges etc to provide “strategic oversight of the post-16 skills system.”
Unfortunately, at the same time, the government has made two decisions which have left colleges feeling that they continue to be the poor relations.
First, was the fudge over the supposed “pause and review” of the previous government’s controversial plans to defund applied general qualifications, such as BTECs. This should have given colleges assurance that they could offer these qualifications in their prospectuses for next year while the review takes place.
However, Bridget Phillipson, apparently under pressure from former prime minister Gordon Brown and Lord Sainsbury, decided the “pause” would only apply to qualifications being defunded this year and not next year – leaving colleges and students with no idea whether or not these qualifications will still be available.
These are the self-same students who have been through the Covid pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis and now face the uncertainty of not knowing whether the course they may want to take will still exist in a year’s time.
This was then compounded by the school teachers’ pay announcement being soured by the lack of a funding allocation to colleges to enable them to match the award for their staff. This, of course, means that college teacher pay is likely to fall even further behind that of school teachers, making recruitment and retention yet more difficult, and rendering the goals of the new skills agency a great deal harder to achieve.
It might be that the government addresses this issue in the autumn budget and that in a few months’ time we’ll be applauding the sort of investment in skills education that is so clearly required as part of any plan for sustainable economic growth, as well as improving the life chances of students who are often from disadvantaged backgrounds.
However, it isn’t a great start, and feels like a failure on the part of the government to understand the extent to which the FE sector feels bruised, battered and undervalued.
I can’t help feeling that governments – of whatever hue – have a blind spot about colleges because, by and large, the people who make up governments don’t go to them. They tend instead to have gone down a glittering academic route, often products of Oxbridge, which is about as far away from life in a FE college as it is possible to imagine.
That’s the way that our country works. Academic superstars are the elite, progressing to the top jobs and top salaries, gracing our television screens and standing up in the House of Commons making important speeches. It was ever thus.
But it cannot continue to be like this if we are to make this a fairer and more equitable society in which skills are genuinely valued in the same way as A-level grades and university degrees, and it is only the government that can bring about that change.
Colleges need to be treated as a jewel in the crown of the education system, rather than as some sort of after-thought. This is the only way that a skills revolution will happen.
I’m sorry to say, this is because many colleges consistently let down their customers too. Talk to employers, and they rarely have a good word to say about their local college. Many also note huge amounts of Government money from programmes like the LSIF being “wasted”. In reality, this is down to one-off capital funding that provides the latest equipment, but does not fund the cost of a teacher with the latest knowledge to teach others how to use it! Increasing funding for teaching staff is not the solution. Being brave and addressing the inherent system failures to provide the right training, in the right place and at the right time is.
The LSIF is an excellent example of everything that is wrong with funding of FE – stupid, short-term, low-impact projects that skim govt funding in various directions with very minimal or irrelevant return. Just fund education properly and there would be no need for pointless initiatives, but no, make everyone chase for a pot of gold. While I grant that some colleges will have let down employers down, this is an inarguable truth, but policy has played a huge part in underpinning these instances. Whether it’s the ludicrous apprenticeship standards, the huge reduction in adult funding or the utter waste of time and effort that are the T Levels – each and every policy pushes unnecessary and frequent change into a system that is already underfunded and under-resourced. Increasing teacher pay is part of a solution by the way, I fundamentally disagree. We’ve lost several teachers back into industry over the last 2 years, each one costing us a fortune to hire and train and resource only to lose. 25% I think from memory don’t last the year (IfS source?).
As regards employers – stop with the holier than thou attitude. While the bulk are great, just as there are bad colleges there are bad employers too. Some are complete a-holes to deal with, expecting a Rolls Royce level of training for Reliant Robin levels of funding. Arrogant and entitled and sucked up to by the govt regardless. Some play with cheap labour and don’t care about the student. Some never release the student and then come back to the college and rant as to why they haven’t achieved. Some treat the kids like crap. Some want a fully-qualified and work-ready individual without the bother of contributing to their development. Some promise the earth, dragging you along and pressing your resources and don’t come through. One (very large) employer in the Midlands for example promised tens of thousands of jobs with training, making colleges change provision, invest money in facilities and desperately chase expensive staff, yet have barely come through with hundreds of the numbers promised over the last 7 years. Don’t pretend this is a one-way thing.
Finally the ‘system failures’ are exactly that. Series of frequent, intrusive political reforms that waste college time and monies and still don’t solve a problem. Every time we go through one it drains resources: NVQs. Curriculum 2000. NQF. The Diploma. QCF. Wolf Report. RPA to 18. RQF. The study programme. GCSE til 18. Trailblazers. Devolution. T Levels. L4/5 reform. L3 reform. L2 reform. ABS (now dead!). L3 review. Reform. Reform. Reform – and if you don’t conform, you don’t get paid…
A rock and a hard place….