26 May 2000
Consultation papers on the creation of a Learning and Skills Council (LSC), which will replace the Further Education Funding Council in April 2001, pledge that the future funding system will exemplify 'the principles of transparency, objectivity and simplicity'.
Jargon such as 'units' and 'average levels of funding' and 'tariff' will disappear, even though the sums colleges receive from the LSC will continue to be based on the numbers of students taking courses and their achievements. 'This will be a funding system in which money follows the learner,' says the paper on funding through the LSC.
The new system will come into force in 2002 following a transitional year in 2001/02. While it will be based on a national formula in the same way as the FEFC's, funding will revolve around just five programme blocks. Colleges will no longer need to consult a database of qualifications and check up to 200 different unit values to claim money for each learner.
Julian Gravatt, director of policy and administration at Lewisham College in London, said the reason the FEFC's system is so complex is that it had bowed to pressure from colleges and incorporated formulas to take account of different costs, including the bills facing specialist institutions such as agricultural colleges.
'The LSC will only be able to keep it simple by being a bit unfair,' he said. 'It will be interesting to see whether people will buy up to the fact that there is virtue in being simple.'
Martin Penny, spokesman for the College Finance Directors' Group, doubted whether the new system would be any simpler just because some terminology had disappeared. 'Without introducing unfairness, I don't see how you can end up with something that is clearer or more transparent,' said Penny, director of finance at Huddersfield Technical College.
Local authorities will receive funding for school sixth forms through the LSC from 2002/03 as a first step towards creating a level playing field for funding all post-16 education and training.
Malcolm Wicks, minister for lifelong learning, said no school sixth form would be worse off, providing that they maintain pupil numbers.
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