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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