Briefing note from the Association of
Colleges (PAC 00-01/96)
BRIEFING TO IMPROVING STUDENT PERFORMANCE:
HOW ENGLISH FURTHER EDUCATION COLLEGES CAN IMPROVE STUDENT RETENTION
AND ACHIEVEMENT (HC 276 SESSION 2000-01)
IMPROVEMENT OF
TEACHING QUALITY
AND ADDRESSING
RECRUITMENT AND
RETENTION DIFFICULTIES
The Association of Colleges (AoC) has in membership
almost every college of further education and sixth form college
in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Our sector has over four
million students, including many more 16-19 year olds than schools.
Since incorporation in 1993, there are now more than a million
more students in the sector, while at the same time, unit costs
have declined in real terms by some 30 per cent.
AoC is concerned that this outstanding record
may be disregarded in what are proper questions about how the
sector maintains continuous improvement in its service to students.
It is in the interests of all colleges to succeed, not only because
that is how our funding system is geared, but because our management
and staff care deeply about improving their students' life chances,
whether they are young or adult, employed or unemployed. It should
be borne in mind that 25 per cent of our students come from the
15 per cent most deprived wards in the Country.
AoC's position on teaching quality and student
recruitment and retention issues is summarised below. A more detailed
statement on the intersection of these issues with pay is attached
at Annex 1. In view of the Committee's earlier interests in these
matters, we have also taken this opportunity to set out AoC's
policy in relation to the Department for Education and Employment's
proposals to make certain changes to colleges' arrangements for
audit. AoC would be pleased to provide more detailed briefing
on any of these matters to the Committee.
SUMMARY POSITION
All the available evidence suggests that FE's
success rates compare reasonably with those of other lifelong
learning providers. FE data is more comprehensive and more publicly
available than the data from schools and Higher Education. However,
the limited data available suggests that completion rates for
A level students in schools, at about 88 per cent, are almost
identical to those for general further education colleges and
sixth form colleges. In Higher Education, HEFCE data shows that
despite much greater selectivity in recruitment and higher levels
of prior attainment, full-time degree success rates average about
77 per cent. In work-based learning, even with the less rigorous
definition of success adopted for Advanced Modern apprenticeships,
only 45 per cent of those leaving achieve the intended NVQ Level
3.
DfEE data show that there is little difference
between schools and colleges in terms of value-added. The crucial
difference is actually in the prior attainment of the intake.
For any given level of intake, the output is much the same, regardless
of the type of institution.
Given the better quality of FE data than that
of other sectors, there have yet been recent improvements to colleges'
data collection. These have shown an upturn in retention and achievement,
suggesting that the underlying performance levels have been underestimated
in the past.
FE serves a student population which is very
largely adult and receiving little or no financial assistance
from Government: FE students receive £200 million of student
support compared with £2 billion for HE students. Even its
poorest 16-19 year olds have only recently, through Education
Maintenance Allowances, been brought into the beginnings of a
universal and comprehensive student support system. Students do
not complete for many reasons, such as financial or domestic pressures,
or because they find a job. AoC has also long taken the view that
unitisation of the curriculum would be of great benefit to our
students, since it would enable them more precisely to target
the learning they wish to achieve—many do not want a whole
course, or indeed a qualification at the end of it. Essentially,
non-completion is a complex matter, not always negative, and the
causes of it cannot always be laid at colleges' doors.
FEFC Inspection reports have consistently shown
that some 94 per cent of lessons in colleges were rated as at
least satisfactory—exactly the same proportion as in schools.
Nevertheless, AoC is fully supportive of Government policies constantly
to improve teaching and learning quality in colleges and is directly
engaged in taking these policies into colleges. We have been working
closely with Government and the recognised Unions to develop an
acceptable framework within which individual colleges can address
teaching quality, recruitment and retention, through providing
incentives to staff to improve and reward their professional effectiveness.
AoC's statement of our principles are set out at Annex 1.
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
IN FURTHER
EDUCATION
AoC is concerned to emphasise that the overwhelming
majority of colleges are well and transparently managed. The handful
of cases which have attracted and which may continue to attract
media attention are the legacy of franchising arrangements put
in place under the previous administration within a wider funding
environment of deep year-on-year efficiency squeezes. Such cases
may therefore be viewed as a legacy of the past rather than an
on-going problem. In addition, while we doubt that there is any
significant relationship between colleges in financial difficulties
and poor performance, it is a fact that even now, despite all
the additional demands on the sector, colleges are only funded
at 1997 levels, the sector as a whole is trading at a deficit
but rather carrying an accumulated trading deficit and a number
of colleges are categorised by the FEFC as financially weak. These
data reflect the financial pressures placed upon the sector in
the past. They do not reflect individual colleges' ability to
manage themselves competently.
AUDIT ARRANGEMENTS
In consultation both the Association and a substantial
majority of colleges within the sector opposed the proposal to
allow FEFC/LSC to assume responsibility for the audit of college
financial statements. The Association similarly strongly opposes
the proposals now set out in Article 20(3)(b), in the revised
instruments and articles of government, that it believes that
such a change would constitute a serious erosion of college autonomy.
Specifically, such a shift in responsibility would tend to undermine
one of the major statutory responsibilities of the corporation—that
of taking full responsibility for the financial affairs of the
college. In doing so it would place corporations in a different
position from companies and other independent organisations, including
employers and private training organisations in receipt of Council
funding.
Our more detailed position on this proposal
is set out at Annex 2 (attached).
ANNEX 1: AOC:
TPI PRINCIPLES
Improvement of Teaching Quality and Addressing
Recruitment and Retention Difficulties
The Association with DfEE and trade unions of
National Joint Forum (NJF) have developed the Teaching Pay Initiative
which provides a framework within which individual colleges can
address teaching quality, recruitment and retention issues and
provide financial incentives to staff to improve their professional
effectiveness.
College Principals should be allowed to determine
within the framework and guidelines which elements of the Teaching
Pay Initiative are most appropriate for its colleges to address
the aforementioned.
The allocation of funds to both General FE colleges
and Sixth form colleges in year one should be apportioned equally
and on a pro rata basis to mainstream FE/HE funding allocation
giving all colleges the opportunity to address the Standards Agenda.
The Board of the AoC is aware that thus far
the allocation will be £50 million in year one and £100
million in year two and awaits an agreeable announcement in year
three, which it hopes and expects will be in the region of £200
million.
The Board of AoC believes that it is essential
that pay of staff in colleges is for, just and based upon comparable
payments to schools staff to address the Standards Fund Agenda.
ANNEX 2: AUDIT
The Association supports the assumption of responsibility
by FEFC (and in due Course LSC) for the appointment of auditors
for college ISR/ILR returns. Indeed, it has seen a number of advantages
in such a change, in that it believes it will give colleges greater
assurance about the validity of final funding claims, should allow
queries to be resolved more quickly and thereby reduce uncertainty
for colleges. For these reasons the Association has no objection
in principle, subject to the comments made below about the wider
implications for the audit of ISR/ILR returns made by other LSC
providers, to the inclusion in the new Article 18 of a duty on
college corporations to co-operate with persons appointed by the
Council to audit ISR/ILR returns (although it does not believe
that such an explicit statement is strictly necessary, since to
our knowledge there has been no case of a college declining co-operation
with FEFC, and the Council has in practice a range of powers which
can be deployed to compel co-operation were such a situation to
arise).
In consultation both the Association and a substantial
majority of colleges within the sector opposed the proposal to
allow FEFC/LSC to assume responsibility for the audit of college
financial statements. The Association similarly strongly opposes
the proposals now set out in Article 20(3)(b), in that it believes
that such a change would constitute a serious erosion of college
autonomy. Specifically, such a shift in responsibility would tend
to undermine one of the major statutory responsibilities of the
corporation—that of taking full responsibility for the financial
affairs of the college. In doing so it would place corporations
in a different position from companies and other independent organisations,
including employers and private training organisations in receipt
of Council funding.
In addition, exercise of this power would place
each college corporation in a position where its choice of accounting
policies, and through this the overall management of its financial
affairs, would need to be the subject of agreement with external
auditors accountable not to the corporation itself, but to the
Council. That would place the Council in the position of being
able to exert control over corporations individually or collectively
as to the manner in which the financial management of the college
is conducted, and would result in a very significant change in
the relationship between the Council and colleges. The Association
does not believe that Parliament intended, either in the Further
and Higher Education Act 1992 or the Learning and Skills
Act 2000 that the Council should exercise the degree of control
over autonomous corporations this would imply.
In addition, the Association would note that
no rationale is offered in the current consultation for taking
such powers, nor to our knowledge has the Department made any
case elsewhere to justify the major shift in the relationship
between the Council and college corporations which this proposal
would engender. In the view of the Association a change of the
magnitude proposed would require both a substantial case in justification,
and a very full consultation on the merits of the proposal which
would allow college corporations an opportunity to consider the
implications in detail. While recognising that Article 20(3)(b)
is drafted in permissive terms, the Association does not believe
it acceptable to confer on the Council a general power to act
without some consideration of the circumstances in which that
power might be used. As currently drafted, the power could be
used by the Council either in relation to an individual college,
or to a class of colleges, or in relation to the college sector
as a whole. For the reasons given above, the Association believes
it would be unacceptable for the Council to appoint auditors for
college financial statements for the sector as a whole or for
any particular category of college. While circumstances might
arise in which there could be justification for such an appointment
for a specific college, in the absence of any description of those
circumstances, the Association does not believe the case for a
general power has been made. The Association would point out that
were an individual case to arise, if indeed the Secretary of State
has powers to make the proposed change (on which we comment further
below), it would be open to him to impose such a provision as
an amendment to the Articles of Government for that specific institution.
It would further note that no case has yet arisen in the FE sector
in which it has been shown that such action would have avoided
the problems which have arisen (indeed, the original FEFC proposal
made no such case, but rather rested on the interaction between
audit arrangements for ISR/ILR and college financial statements).
Consistent with this concern, in the Association's
view to bring this proposal forward in the context of the current
consultation on revisions to college Instrument and Articles of
Government pays insufficent attention to the wider issues which
will arise for LSC in relation to the audit of funding claims
for provision delivered by employers, private training providers,
local education authorities, schools and others. The Department's
own consultation paper Raising Standards in Post-16 Learning
set out as a design principle for the new LSC system a requirement
that all suppliers of education and training would be subject
to the same degree of rigour in assessing the quality of their
provision. No indication has been given that the Department would
expect LSC to exercise control over the appointment of external
auditors for the full range of bodies to which it provides funding.
Nor in the Association's belief is it possible to come to a sensible
judgement as to how this principle can be realised in practice
in advance of consideration of the full range of issues involved.
In its view, it is - at the very least - premature to introduce
a major change in the arrangements for college audit until these
contextual issues can be properly assessed. We would note in addition
a further question which will need to be resolved in due course,
which links to the proposed Article 18, about the arrangements
for auditing ILR returns for the wider LSC-provider constituency.
Moreover, having taken further legal advice,
the Association would question the legal validity of the proposals
now incorporated in Article 20(3)(b). In essence, it continues
to believe, as it did in relation to the original FEFC proposal,
that the absence of any explicit power in primary legislation
for LSC to take over responsibility for the audit of college financial
statements, makes any assumption of such power through secondary
legislation of doubtful validity. In particular, it believes that
there remain questions as to whether the subsidiary powers of
LSC are sufficiently widely drawn to permit such a move. Nor is
it convinced that the Secretary of State has himself sufficiently
wide powers to include such a major change within delegated legislation
such as the Instruments and Articles of Government, in the absence
of specific approval by Parliament.
March 2001
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