Further problems

25 Mar 10
The government is offering commitments on skills training for young people at the same time as making wholesale changes to the structure of further education funding. Can this be done at a time of severe cuts, asks Stephen Court
By Stephen Court

25 March 2010

The government is offering commitments on skills training for young people at the same time  as making wholesale changes to the structure of further education funding. Can this be done at a time of severe cuts, asks Stephen Court

Big changes are on the way for the complex world of English further education. The sector’s funding body, the Learning and Skills Council, is being consigned to the quango scrapheap at the start of April.

In its place will be two new agencies – the Young People’s Learning Agency and the Skills Funding Agency. The YPLA will fund and support councils, which have taken over responsibility for all 14–19 education provision. The SFA will fund colleges for adult skills provision. In between the national and local levels, the regional learning and skills councils are going, replaced by sub-­regional and regional planning groups, which will include councils and regional ­development agencies. 

Sounds complicated? That’s only part of it. Don’t forget that, in England, further education straddles two government departments – Ed Balls’s Department for Children, Schools and Families and Lord Mandelson’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Meanwhile, councils, colleges and other education providers are getting ready for a National Commissioning Framework on planning and procuring education and training for 16 to 19-year-olds. Colleges are also getting used to: a new national body promoting apprenticeships; a new qualifications regulator, Ofqual; and a qualifications and credit framework to be fully operational by the end of 2010.

Then there is the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, a newish advisory body. Last week, it published England’s first national skills audit to identify trends in future demand –  something Mandelson said could be ‘the most powerful tool that business and industry have’ to communicate their demand for skills.

And then there’s the new FE quality outfit, the Learning and Skills Improvement Service, along with a new college inspection regime, which has recently been set up under Ofsted.

Little wonder that Conservative MP Brian Binley, of the Commons business, innovation and skills select committee, said during an inquiry into the new ­system: ‘I have never heard of such a b­ureaucratic mess in all my life’.
And the whole applecart could be upset if the Tories form the next government. They have said they want to  re-establish a further education funding council, cut the employer-led Train to Gain ­programme and cull education ­quangos.

The stakes are high. Public spending in England on further education colleges for those aged 16-19 will be £4bn in 2010/11 and  £4.5bn on skills for those aged 19 plus. The government is planning for 1.2 million 16 to 19-year-olds and 3.4 million in the 19-plus group to be in further education (­excluding school sixth forms) in 2010/11.

A great deal depends on the FE and skills sector getting it right. Mandelson, whose department funds non-university 19-plus education, says: ‘Skills are a key part of our plan for economic recovery and, as such, an urgent challenge. This country’s future can only be built by educated, ­enterprising­ ­people with the right skills.’

Iain Wright, minister for 14-19 reform and apprenticeships, says: ‘There are still too many young people who remain disengaged from education, employment or training and the gap in attainment persists between those from the most disadvantaged background and their peers.’ Giving councils responsibility for all provision to age 19 and for 19 to 25-year-olds with learning difficulties ‘presents an historic opportunity to bring services together around the needs of all young people’.

The government has a lot of commitments it needs to meet through FE. Its ‘September Guarantee’ promises to offer a suitable place in education or training to every 16- and 17-year old who wants one. And the ‘January Guarantee’ offers a training place to all 16- and 17-year-olds who were not in education, employment or training in January 2010. Furthermore, learner numbers will increase in 2013 by raising the age of compulsory education to 17 and then to 18 in 2015. Meanwhile, the sector has targets of raising the proportions of 19-year-olds with level 2 and level 3 qualifications by next year.

But although colleges are independent organisations, their freedom and flexibility is limited. They are not permitted to transfer funding between that received for 16 to 19-year-olds and funding for adults. Following cuts announced in last year’s Budget, the FE and skills sector is having a funding reduction of £340m in 2010/11. Further pruning was announced in the 2009 Pre-Budget Report. Adult responsive providers will receive only between 75% and 90% of last year’s funding.

Sally Hunt, the general secretary of the University and College Union, which represents college lecturers, says: ‘Many of the courses likely to be affected are skills-for-life programmes, designed for people with few or no qualifications in literacy and maths.’

The Association of Colleges, which represents college heads, forecasts job cuts of 7,000. Last month, the association said: ‘We firmly believe that allowing colleges to be more flexible in the way they are permitted to use their funding streams could mitigate the effects of these cuts.’

While ministers have said the new structures is more efficient, Martin Doel, chief executive of the AoC, last month told the Commons BIS select committee: ‘Money will be arriving from a range of agencies which colleges will have relationships with, from business through to the RDAs, through to local authorities, to the Skills Funding Agency, to the Young People’s Learning Agency... this does not look very streamlined.’ In particular, having separate sources of capital funding will make it harder to plan infrastructure schemes.

Colleges fear they could lose some of their autonomy, and lose out to schools under the new local system of control. Ioan Morgan, principal of Warwickshire College, told MPs: ‘The structural changes might make decision-making in terms of 14 to 19-year-olds quite difficult because if that funding is in the hands of local ­authorities there may be other decisions, competing interests, schools and others, that might detract from the ability of a college to be funded adequately.’

The two new funding bodies have sought to reassure the sector. Peter Lauener, chief executive designate of the Young People’s Learning Agency, told MPs: ‘We have put in place the basis for the single account management system, which is the biggest change and a significant ­simplification of the ­arrangements with colleges.’

Geoff Russell, chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency, added: ‘We are inextricably bound because, if we do not work together on the funding, young ­people will not have delivery vehicles for their training and education and if the SFA and YPLA do not ensure funding is balanced out in a sensible way, colleges fall over. We have to work together.’

Fine words, but the next two or three years – against a backdrop of funding cuts – will show how well the structure of FE’s brave new world works in practice.

Stephen Court
is senior research officer at the University and College Union

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