07 April 2006
The FE white paper rightly recognises that adults and young people have different learning needs. But more needs to be done to provide adult learners with greater choice and lighter-touch planning
Few people take much notice of further education white papers. The metropolitan media sends its children to sixth forms and universities, not the general further education college down the road.
Only The Times managed to muster much interest in the government's latest plans for FE, and that was because the cost of art classes and Buongiorno Italia might go up, not because standards in colleges might improve.
But the white paper contains some important policy developments. It confirms the extension of free tuition for advanced level courses up to the age of 25, as the Institute for Public Policy Research recommended in a report last year.
The new adult learning grant will be rolled out, and demand-led funding will be extended to most provision within a decade. Meanwhile, the Learning and Skills Council will acquire zero-tolerance powers to intervene in failing colleges.
Local authorities also get the lead strategic role over 14-19 learning. Although councils have little experience of work-based training, they are best placed to lead the planning of education and training for young people. They have democratic legitimacy and the ability to integrate planning across a range of services for young people. The local LSC arms have neither.
The 47 local LSCs were created because the then education secretary, David Blunkett, was hostile to regionalism but did not want to squeeze FE colleges back into local government.
Local LSCs have never taken root in the landscape of English public services, a fate they share with other units of government created by Whitehall in preference to those shaped by history or local democratic decision-making. The white paper signals their death knell.
The LSC has regrouped its operational capacity at the regional tier, with local teams working directly with providers. It has effectively shaped itself to be open to whatever institutional arrangements eventually emerge from the tussles over city-regions, the Lyons review of local government and the future of the Greater London Authority.
This makes tactical sense, too, as nobody in Whitehall is clear how reforms to the architecture of sub-national levels of government will pan out.
These structural debates make more sense when viewed through the prism of the different needs of young people and adults. Hitherto, the government has promoted markets and competition in the 14-19 system, and planning for adults. The precise reverse should be the case.
The white paper marks a belated recognition of that fact, with the return of learning accounts and the stripping out of layers of bureaucracy.
Courses for adult learners and business should follow choices, with only light-touch planning. Provision for young people should be more directive. This stage of learning is one in which breadth, as well as specific knowledge and skills, are required.
England has always been an outlier in international comparisons of the content and structure of initial post-compulsory learning: more permissive on the curriculum than other countries, with less distinction between the provision offered to young people and adults.
We are now moving slowly in the direction of a greater differentiation, and this should be pressed further - not because the general FE college offers lower standards, but because there are pedagogical, pastoral and infrastructural improvements that can come with more of an age-related focus.
Whoever has responsibility for adult skills, planning should be limited and choice expanded, allowing colleges and other providers to serve the market.
The white paper remains Janus-faced on this issue. There are still references to plans from all sorts of bodies, as if this constituted demand-led learning. Employers and adults, not proxy representatives, should shape demand for skills and learning.
Chancellor Gordon Brown's signature on the white paper, alongside those of Tony Blair and Education Secretary Ruth Kelly, signals not just a co-operative spirit necessary in an era of transition, but Brown's specific interest in further education.
The sector featured strongly in his Budget speech. But astute observers note that closing the funding gap between state and private schools will run through the Comprehensive Spending Review. This will make it that much harder to close the funding gap between FE and schools to which the white paper refers.
The review will be eye-wateringly tight, and it just got harder for FE colleges. Nonetheless, the Labour government has been kind to FE, despite the legitimate concerns of lecturers and college management.
It has invested in the sector and now stated its ambitions clearly for the coming Parliament. Skills are a driver of social justice, and FE colleges are the engine room.
Nick Pearce is director of the Institute for Public Policy Research
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