Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-140)

TUESDAY 1 APRIL 2003

DR ROGER BENNETT, MR DAVID LAWRENCE AND MS JUDITH NORRINGTON

  120. So the Department of Transport and the Department for Education need to be working much more on the issue of the transport needs of students in rural areas rather than seeing rural transport simply as a matter of providing a bus to take somebody to the market to shop? They actually need to be very specific about the problems of student access.
  (Dr Bennett) Can I just make one point on that? It is choices. You have got two choices: we can either increase funding to get the transport infrastructure from rural villages and towns into main campuses better and properly funded, or do colleges persist with the outreach provision where there is duplicity of resource and the risk that the community do not access it?
  (Mr Lawrence) I would strongly stress to you that it is access to employment and education. Quite often we are relying very heavily on this issue of transport into urban areas for employment and the issues we were discussing earlier about participation rates in rural areas. The poor level of aspiration we have got in a large number of our youngsters and, I have to say, the older population as well in rural areas is about not being able to get to employment easily. In Norfolk we are fairly convinced that the two go hand-in-hand. We have had some limited success in addressing it.

  121. The problem is that if you deliver the education aspect, if people still cannot get to the employment then—
  (Mr Lawrence) They do not do it.

  122. Finally, on the question of transport, I wanted to touch on the issue which I have certainly come across, which is not the 16-19 age-group but is adult learners and the difficulty—and sometimes the impossibility—of actually getting on to any sort of education. Often it is only a few hours a week on a course to try and make people employable when they are living in very scattered rural communities.
  (Ms Norrington) I think for everything that has been said for the 16-19 population you can almost write it larger for the adult population. We have a similar problem wherever you look. If you look at support funding, there is less of it for adults. There is less funding for a whole range of opportunities. I think it is an even bigger issue.

Mr Jack

  123. Have you had drawn to your attention any models that address some of the issues you have put before the Committee in evidence so far from abroad, particularly thinking about transport issues, where somebody has got a better solution than we have got?
  (Mr Lawrence) We have been given a whole variety of solutions through moped-loan schemes to community car schemes, and everything else. I am not sure how many have come from abroad. The trouble with most of them is that they are good in parts. You need a level of infrastructure there to start with, and that has been the bit that has been a challenge. Secondly, the cost of administrating them has been so great that we have had to make a choice between putting that money into infrastructure or having a go at slightly different activities. The local transport partnerships have done some quite innovative work. I have to say a lot of it has focused on shopper buses for the older age groups rather than transport to education.

  124. What proportion of students who attend rurally based FE colleges come on a daily basis and what proportion are residential?
  (Mr Lawrence) I do not know that we could answer that for you just like that but we certainly have got access to that information. We can provide it for you.

  125. The reason I ask that question is because it is clear that there are some rurally based establishments which, if you like, have got not just a local but a national reputation for particular types of course, whereas others have a broad spectrum of training opportunities. Access, in a way, for a college that has got a broad range of general courses on a day basis is a more important issue, I would think, than a college that has a stronger residential element for a national reputation course lasting over, say, three years or longer.
  (Mr Lawrence) I think if that were the case most of us would now have, probably, a significant element of both, particularly in the land-based institutions because you would be forced into a position where you have been trying to protect important specialisms locally but then have very small volumes of people so you have to widen the catchment. Equally, we are doing work that meets local community needs or local industry needs. Certainly in my institution's case, the volume would be through the day students very substantially.
  (Dr Bennett) I think it is about strategic focus. You have got local catchment, you have got regional catchment, and you have got national catchment—indeed, you have got international catchment. Residential specialist land-based colleges, of course, would hit all four. General FE colleges do hit all four but the majority hit the local and regional because most of FE—and mine is a classic example—is a community focused college. So our mission, basically, is about the local and regional people of the town and North Lincolnshire. That is where we come from. The vast majority of students that come to my college come on a day-to-day basis.

David Taylor

  126. Have we got time, Chairman, to develop this area of residential provision? In your submission, in paragraph 22, you make one or two points that I would like to ask you about. I think, Dr Bennett, you said you were the principal of a land-based college at one point earlier in your career. You acknowledge that the Government has addressed some of the funding concerns by the introduction of residential bursaries for students but you seem to suggest that that has been largely wiped out by the cost of complying with the new inspection arrangements under the National Care Standards Commission. What new expectations are there because of those standards? What is the scale of costs that a typical college might be facing?
  (Mr Lawrence) I may as well kick off because I am still dealing with that particular issue, so I speak from very recent experience. I think there are two things for us: one is at the moment there is not and has not been for many years any support for the management and supervision of under-18 students in residential accommodation. There has been support for their maintenance costs and quite clearly what is being brought more into focus, particularly through the Care Standards Act, is our legal responsibilities for those students while they are there. The only answer I can give you is to quote my own institution where it has cost me another senior member of staff to work with students on a regular basis. My staffing costs for under-18 students has risen by £30,000 this year and I have spent nearly £100,000 worth of capital on making my buildings comply (or I am in the process of) with the Disability Discrimination Act and the Care Standards Act together, because the two are linked to some extent, in terms of the requirements I have. I think our big concern is predominantly about under-18 students where not only have we got a more focused legal regime that is governing what we do—and clearly the responsibilities are very transparent—we have also seen a big increase in the volume of that activity and less older age-group students in. For example, in my institution, over 70% of my residents are under 18. That is a real challenge for you when you are receiving no funding for it.

  127. So the standards represent a physical element in relation to the accommodation. Are you saying or suggesting that the minimum standards for residential accommodation in FE are gold-plated to a degree?
  (Mr Lawrence) Well, there are definitely not gold taps! When you look at it you think "My goodness me, 43-odd recommendations. Surely we do not need as many as that", but when we have gone through them I do not think we have got much of a problem with most of the recommendations, it is just formalising a lot of the practice that most of us were doing. There are some I would moderate if I had a chance but I guess that has always been the same. I do not think we can argue about doing the right thing for these young people. Some of the individuals we have are from disadvantaged backgrounds. I think we do a particularly good job of working with them. They need substantial supervision but we are not being funded for it, and that does not seem right.
  (Dr Bennett) What is the value of residential accommodation to the learning experience? If the value of residential accommodation is high and it is proven and it makes a difference, then residential accommodation is needed and it will enhance the educational experience of any learner that accesses it. If that is the case, then the compliance to the National Care Standards Act in all residential colleges, not just land-based but all specialist residential colleges, will have to aspire to them. Again, that will not be a quick fix and nor should it be; it will have to be incrementally achieved with the funds that are made available. To me, the crux of that matter is what is this Government's view of the value of residential accommodation to the learning experience? If that is as it is now, then the funds would have to be found to support the residential Care Standards Act.

  128. In eight days and 36 minutes' time the Chancellor will be levering his Presbyterian frame to its feet and telling the nation how he plans to dispose of the £400,000 million largesse that the taxpayer has, more or less, reluctantly provided to him. There will be a proportion of that which is no doubt earmarked for FE and a proportion of that which ought to go to residential land-based colleges. What is the best use of any increment of money that might be available, briefly?
  (Dr Bennett) I think to answer the question I posed. Does it make a discernable difference? Ask yourselves that question. If it does, and we have enjoyed very, very good success in the land-based sector through residential qualifications, then it will make a difference and anybody who can go through the process it will have made a difference.
  (Ms Norrington) Perhaps it is also important to add that many of the other forms of specialist colleges, particularly those with specialists for students with learning difficulties and/or disabilities, are also rural based. There the question is very pertinent because we are looking there at developing what is known as the extended curriculum or the 24-hour curriculum, where you are working the whole day and part of the evening with students in a real life situation which often has its focus on farming, horticulture, working with horses—and a whole range of other activities—which provide opportunities to move, in many cases, to genuine employment opportunities later on.

Mr Jack

  129. Judging by the work that goes on at Myerscough, it is closely involved with local economic partnerships working to reshape the rural economy in that part of Lancashire. More generally, do you think that the colleges that we have been discussing so far do have and should have that wider role?
  (Mr Lawrence) I am absolutely certain they should have. I agree, I think there are some of us who, because of the nature of our areas, have already been able to play a bigger role than others. I believe we should all be encouraged to do so. Clearly, our whole job is about giving a large proportion of our industry to students and a lot of these colleges were (mine is an example) set up at the end of the last War to do exactly that. We need to do it again and we need to be in that position. For me one of the most substantial opportunities is to blur the edges of what is, at the moment, business advice and what is training. For me one of the big opportunities is to develop more effective links between business advice and the training activity, where some of the individuals receiving the training actually do not necessarily realise it is what it is. In other words, you are giving them a development experience rather than necessarily any training.

  130. In that context—it is a very interesting thing you said—what relationship should colleges therefore have with Regional Development Agencies as opposed to Learning and Skills Councils?
  (Mr Lawrence) I think I can answer that by describing what we have done in the eastern region as an example. In the eastern region five colleges who are involved in this area of work have worked together in collaboration with the Regional Development Agency to address this particular issue. We have set up a hub in each county that is assisting in providing that advice and we have provided mentorship for individual farms. Some of us have then gone a step further—and again we come back to this local and strategic rural agenda—and what we have done in Norfolk is an example of what one can achieve working with the county council, district councils, business links and the LSC as well as the Development Agency. We employ six advisers based at the college which I manage, we have helped over 240 farmers, we have pulled down nearly £500,000 worth of Rural Enterprise Scheme Grant in Norfolk and created 33 jobs, pulled down £141,000 worth of Redundant Farm Building Grants. So we can do really good things with this. The key issue, for me, with it is that we desperately need to push if we need the funding to have the time to do that work.

  131. Who pays for the advisers that you mentioned?
  (Mr Lawrence) It has been a combination. I have a reputation for not writing cheques out, so the college has not written out many cheques! It has done all the work, it has provided the resources for that to be based in, it has provided lecturers to assist with some of that work and the funding for most of it has been a grant from the Development Agency, farm business advisory service money that has been incorporated within this idea and contributions from all the district councils. The other advantage of this is we have been providing advice to the district councils themselves. One of the big hurdles, as we saw it, for farmers wishing to diversify their businesses was getting planning permission.

  132. You describe quite a comprehensive and, indeed, complex series of relationships to deliver rural regeneration in the context of rural education. Coming back to where this Inquiry is coming from, do you feel that Defra has contributed anything to the development of the very interesting approach that you have described to me a few moments ago?
  (Mr Lawrence) They have been engaged in it. Without their involvement through grant-aid type of activity you could not make much progress because you could give advice but you would not be able to help people.

  133. You said grant-aid.
  (Mr Lawrence) Rural Enterprise Scheme Grants, in particular, to the recipients. I am not sure that there has been a strong enough involvement in the development of what we have come up with.

  134. They have not, themselves, taken any kind of strategic overview? If it has a strategy element you put it into the context of the RDA, and the RDA reports to the DTI and not to Defra.
  (Mr Lawrence) In fairness to them, they have been having that discussion collectively. I am going to come at it from a not politically correct viewpoint probably and say I am interested in the practicalities of this. Where we have been most successful, all of the players, including Defra, having been sitting round the table and we have actually said "These are the issues". Admittedly they were not there at the beginning of that process because it came from a local base.

  135. The reason I asked that question is because Defra are supposed to be responsible, together with the rural Tsar, in rural-proofing policies and rural-proofing does not just mean it is a nod and a wink, it means let us think about it. Do you notice much evidence in the area you have described of rural-proofing? Countryside Agency input? Defra input?
  (Mr Lawrence) We have had some Countryside Agency input. We have involved them in the process, as we have Defra, but it has been, by design, a locally-owned process, working back upwards through to a regional process we have now put in place, rather than starting regionally and working the other way round.

  136. Sometimes there is great value in that type of initiative not being dominated by some grand national plan. Would you prefer it that way rather than to have things being dropped on you?
  (Mr Lawrence) Yes, I would. I think there needs to be an involvement—perhaps there needs to be a framework to which you are working. The one bit of the national plan that is desperately needed is if you are going to do this type of work—and you are right it has been exceptionally complex to set up, though it is not actually that complex to operate—there are lots of little bits of money from everywhere. There is a good advantage to that: everyone owns it and they are committed to making it work, which I think is right. The problem is that no one is giving long-term commitment in terms of funding and you need the money to enable that sort of dialogue to carry on. I believe the colleges, in particular, have got some strengths to bring to that. We are not actually directly interested in a large number of the bits of that jigsaw but we happen to be quite a neutral puller-together of all of it. I believe it has worked particularly well, and some of the evidence I have given shows some of the benefits we have achieved. I am convinced personally that in the longer-term, using that advisory work and allying it closely to the education training provision we have will make a significant difference to the understanding and aspiration of our local industry. That is why it is so beneficial to have it all under one umbrella.

  137. I think, Chairman, if I might say, it might be quite useful for Mr Lawrence to jot down this example. It is a very interesting model you have described to us. Whether it occurs elsewhere we do not know, but it might be interesting to see a little more detail.
  (Mr Lawrence) I know it occurs in Cornwall, which has Objective 1 money and they do rather more than I can afford to do.

Mr Drew

  138. Just to bring our remarks to a conclusion, we spent some time yesterday afternoon taking evidence on our own Inquiry looking at broadband in rural areas. How can further education colleges, not just in terms of broadband but in terms of the wider IT strategy, really begin to bring value into their communities, given that you will be one of the first sectors to be linked and you will have expertise that a lot of businesses would probably die for in terms of trying to get that conversance with IT. How can you develop the strategy?
  (Dr Bennett) Again, it is not something that is going to happen too quickly. It is all about funding. It is about how much funding is going to go into it; it pre-supposes that people and businesses out there do want to come in and take advantage of it. At my particular college we have a branded subsidiary company that, by any other name, is a full-cost training arm. We engage with SMEs, larger employers in the town and the wider North Lincolnshire in in-company training, in-service training and so on. We use high-tech materials to facilitate this. That is fine, but it is whether we can keep engaging these companies and these people to actually send their managers in—we do a lot of manager training—to come and take access of that on our campus. Other than that, we are actually rolling it out into companies and taking it out into companies. So we are doing what we can but we have got to ensure that the demand is there, because to actually invest in IT infrastructure, as you will all be aware, is a black hole; it really is a huge amount of money to invest. If we have got the funding there we can invest in it, but the colleges at the moment need assistance to drive that particular agenda. One of the people that we work with, who is next door to me, is a telecoms company, and we work with them. They give us every assistance they possibly can to help our particular agenda along, but that is just one example of one college self-help, if you like, trying to move the IT agenda forward.

  139. Do you get any help outside DFES for the installation or operation of IT?
  (Ms Norrington) No. There have been various analyses over the time on the amount of equipment that colleges have and it is something that we have raised issues about—that there are, for example, laptops available for teachers in schools. We have not had comparable opportunities in further education. So the infrastructure and its cost is a real issue.
  (Mr Lawrence) Going back to my previous answer, I think there is an opportunity for us to be involved in some of that work, for example, through the advisory service that we have been operating. If an individual business needed help with IT under our rural banner we can access business links support for that work, and I think it is important to have the right sort of letter-heading attached to some of this for some people to engage with it. Certainly I would love the opportunity. I am based in a rural area, I have broadband by microwave and I think it would be quite an interesting exercise to look at how I could spread that out to more local businesses. It is not in my remit, it is not in the funding that I have and there are all sorts of hurdles to doing that. Clearly, one of the issues for us from a rural perspective locally is we do not seem to have had the level of investment in infrastructure for a very long time.

Mr Mitchell

  140. You mentioned in your evidence that there has been a 20% under-funding of colleges for some time and you said that the consequences of this are difficulty in attracting staff and difficulty in retaining staff. Can I ask whether those consequences are worse in a rural area than in an urban area? Do rural colleges suffer from a particular disadvantage in staffing?
  (Dr Bennett) I have absolutely no doubt about that. Having worked in both an urban college and one rural college and one semi-rural college at North Lindsey, I have absolutely no doubt about that. Can I give you an example from my institution? I advertised for a senior management post before Christmas. We did not appoint. I have advertised for an assistant director post recently, we have had two enquiries for packs for that particular post. I do not know what the problem is but we can all make assumptions based on peer evidence and all the rest of it, but the reality is, do people want to come into my part of the world where my institution is? Yes, the housing is okay because it is cheaper housing, but people coming in with families—professional people, lecturers, managers—they are looking at schools and, if they live outside the town, what it is like for access for spouse, etc etc. There is a whole raft of issues but without any shadow of a doubt I think being in rural areas we are disadvantaged in terms of getting good quality staff.
  (Ms Norrington) I think the same is also true for posts that actually relate specifically to countryside activities.
  (Mr Lawrence) I think the more specialist the job becomes the harder it becomes. So, for example, in my institution we have been trying to recruit a manager and it has taken six months to do, and we have never had more than one applicant following an advertisement. It almost goes back full circle to where we started our evidence: there are still significant skills shortages even in the mainstream areas and some of the rural industries, and we are finding it very hard to recruit into them. Certainly in terms of college salary levels, compared to what is paid in industry, we are very constrained.

  Chairman: Thank you very much. I hope that you can send us those two items that we asked about—your project and about figures. Thank you again, it has been most useful.





 
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