Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1100
- 1119)
MONDAY 17 MAY 2004
MR BRYAN
SANDERSON AND
MR MARK
HAYSOM
Q1100 Jeff Ennis: So it is quite
a formal structure to some extent, is it?
Mr Haysom: Yes, but if you are
going to make these partnerships work you need a formal structure,
and I think built into each sector skills agreement as they come
on-line is the role that we play in that.
Mr Sanderson: They are our customers,
so we have to set up an administration response to their needs.
Q1101 Jeff Ennis: So they are all
willing participants, shall we say?
Mr Haysom: I do not feel able
to comment whether they are all willing participants. I would
hope so, because otherwise I do not think they would get licences.
I think, as Bryan says, inevitably there are going to be some
that are further advanced than others.
Mr Sanderson: Some of the older
industry constructions that everybody always mentions are very
well embedded and well established, and, not perhaps surprisingly,
some of the newer industries, or ones that we think of as newer
industries, the services industries, are less well established.
It is perhaps unfortunate that those are the big employers, hotels
and leisure, retail and health, there are umpteen millions of
people and they are perhaps lagging a bit behind things like manufacturing.
Q1102 Jeff Ennis: How key are the
sector skills councils in terms of delivering and being the vehicle
for reducing the skills gap?
Mr Sanderson: The learning works
if the industries they purport to represent give them the right
resource of people and influence, and that is variable. The jury
is still out.
Mr Haysom: I think, in terms of
what I was describing earlier about this being demand-led, they
are critical now, there is no doubt. They have got to be able
to describe what each sector wants. I think for us in the LSC
to rely totally on that though would be a mistake; so I think
that one of the things we are quite smart at is accumulating knowledge,
information, at a local level, at a regional level, in conversation
with other people at the RDAs as to what the requirements are
for those areas, so it is bringing together all of that intelligence,
but the sector skills councils, they are set there right at the
heart of things and we will be looking to them to—
Mr Sanderson: We are interested
to make sure that we have a single database which is universally
recognised by the sector skills councils, by conservatives in
RDAs and whoever else we have got in education, so we grow out
of one database and we do not waste our time arguing whether data
is right or wrong, which I think is what happens quite a lot now.
Q1103 Chairman: So the sector skills
councils are potentially good partners.
Mr Sanderson: Yes.
Q1104 Chairman: What about all the
others. This Committee has already started to get information,
even at the region level, about the complexity of the different
organisations that have been set up dealing with bringing together
people in the skills area. It is really confusing. If you talk
to employers in a region like mine, you stumble over all sorts
of people. The Regional Development Agencies have got committees,
not only RDAs, but you have got your own, then you have got the
regional assemblies and some regions have got theirs, and then
you stumble over the 104 that were originally set up in terms
of the learning partnerships and they are different to the learning
strategy.
Mr Sanderson: They all have similar
names as well.
Q1105 Chairman: They all have similar
names. I had someone from the Engineering Employers Federation
in Yorkshire saying to me, "If I went to half the meetings
I would not do anything else", so it is very confusing?
Mr Sanderson: It is confusing.
Of course, I have not got the answer. All I can say is we have
always seen it as a key part of our role to get right in the centre
of this debate and be the translator so that a business can ring
up the local Learning and Skills Council and say, "I have
got this issue or this issue; who is the appropriate body, other
than you?" We ought to be able to answer, and we do not have
the power to get rid of all these bodies, but at least we should
be a good translator.
Mr Haysom: If I could again add
to that. One of the things that has surprised me coming into this
is just how many organisations there are at every level; and I
think you are right, Chairman, that the further you go down the
pyramid the wider the base. There are more and more. I talk about
number of people with their fingers in this particular pie and
they all want a piece of it; and it really does, I think, get
in the way of progress. One of the things we are trying to do
with the LSC is to take a leadership role in trying to get people
clear about who we need to partner with; what is really going
to make a difference; let's get some priorities set into this
and really work hard on those relationships. If that means sacrificing
some other relationships, so be it, because you cannot do everything
because you would do nothing but just sit in meetings, as you
rightly said.
Q1106 Chairman: Brian Sanders, you
are one of the most senior managers in our country. I have known
you a long time and I suspect that, like trimming a hedge, someone
might go round some of these organisations with a scythe and get
rid of some of them; but, as you are not able to do that, why
have you not had something that was a kind of personal hot-line
for employers to say, "If you have got a problem about training.
Pick up this phone and we will tell you." "If you want
to take on some apprentices—
Mr Sanderson: I like the idea.
We will take that away.
Q1107 Chairman: Is there any help?
This is what my people say. There are so many people out there
and they end up paralysed because of the choices and the complexities,
and they say, "Well, we just get on with it."
Mr Sanderson: You ought to be
able to ring up a local LSC, and I know that does not always work.
Mr Haysom: You ought to be able
to ring up Business Link, because that is in the contract.
Q1108 Chairman: Could we not have
a hot-line so everyone knows. One interesting thing—I do
not know if it works yet—Yorkshire Forward has introduced
a hot-line for Members of Parliament. "Pick up that hot-line
if you want to know what the hell this 7% is being spent on."
Your idea is a good one, perhaps it should be applied to skills
so every employer and employee can pick it up and say—
Mr Sanderson: This is 24/7, is
it, this hot-line?
Q1109 Chairman: Hopefully.
Mr Haysom: I think you will find
that in certain parts of the country it already exists.
Q1110 Chairman: Let us start with
within business hours. But, take my point in complexity—
Mr Haysom: Of course, you are
right.
Q1111 Chairman: If it is ruled out
there, it is getting in the way of delivering training, is it
not, and skills?
Mr Haysom: You are right. It is
a good idea.
Chairman: We are moving on to Helen,
who will ask much more sensible questions. We are moving to working
with LEAs.
Q1112 Helen Jones: The area inspection
14-19 provision we have seen so far stressing the need for a common
strategy. In some of those area inspections the reports have made
it clear that there is not a sufficiently shared view of what
targets should be, what the priorities should be and how it should
be delivered. Can I ask you, given that you are working with LEAs,
who are elected LEAs, and the Learning and Skills Council can
be dealing with more than one LEA who might have different priorities,
what do you see as the difficulties in those relationships and
in providing a proper structured system of education and training
for young people, particularly in the 14-19 age group, and how
would you go about solving them?
Mr Sanderson: Firstly, we are
not responsible for 14-16.
Q1113 Helen Jones: No, you are not,
but bearing in mind I am asking the question, Bryan, because we
are now developing a 14-19 strategy and, if we are going to have
a strategy that goes right through that age group, the link between
the post-16 and 14-16 has to be made. So, I am sorry, I know you
are not responsible for it, but it does have to be coordinated?
Mr Sanderson: It does have to
be coordinated. We have offered a view on this welcoming the 14-19
approach. To us the 16 divide line seems out of date and giving
all the wrong messages. People want to be rethinking where they
are going to go at 14 and then staying on much later than 16.
We would probably all agree on that. So we do welcome this, but
as for the relations with the LEAs, there was not a universal
roar of approval, of course, when the Learning and Skills Council
was created from the LEAs, and I should know. I think we have
got through most of that. Most local Learning and Skills Councils—maybe
all, but I am not sure about that—have an LEA representative,
at least one, and sometimes more than one. That is not a perfect
answer because, as you rightly said, many of them have several
LEAs within their remit. On the other hand, it is useful to have
a powerful combination with different stakeholders on it to support
the local authority if they are in alignment, as we nearly always
are these days, but we do offer the prospect also, which is more
sensitive but much needed in many areas, of bringing local LEA
school council areas together for a common strategic approach
across boundaries which are, frankly, quite often artificial.
Getting Leeds to talk to Bradford or Newcastle and Sunderland—as
it happens, they are both within local LSCs—can be an advantage
and quite a lot of education problems are not solved within the
geography of a particular local LEA. So I would say now, you may
have a different view, but on the whole the relationship with
the LEAs are going to become quite good. I certainly do not get
the mail I used to.
Mr Haysom: I have to say, my experience
since I have been involved is that there are very many examples
around the country of good collaboration between LEAs and LSCs,
but there are some structural issues, are there not, because all
of those collaborative models rely on goodwill; and where there
are, I do not know, let us think of capital expenditure, alignment
of our capital expenditure and LEAs and the schools for the future,
all of that activity, that is a clear example where goodwill alone
is not necessarily going to be enough to give effect to the changes
that we need. So I think there does need to be a good look at
some of those issues to see how we can work much more closely
on the LEA side.
There is a range of other areas that, again,
at the moment are working through goodwill, but you cannot always
rely on goodwill to see you through.
Q1114 Helen Jones: I think you have
touched on something which is quite important, because as we move
towards changing the curriculum, if that is what we are going
to do, and we see increasingly young people going out from schools
to colleges, for instance, you see much more co-ordination of
timetables, you see young people going out from schools into the
workplace in some places, there are clear issues about revenue
and capital spending, are there not, which follow on from that?
What changes do you think are needed to the structure if Tomlinson,
if that is the way we go, is eventually to be implemented?
Mr Sanderson: Tomlinson, by my
reading of it, does not really address the funding very much,
neither the capital nor the revenue front. I am not sure I should
be drawn into writing Tomlinson Mark II, which I think is going
to come along. We certainly do have to address these issues. There
has to be—and I go back to my mantra really—some very
clear accountability there, and it is going to have to be a body
which encompasses workplace learning, the FE college if there
is one, and the local schools that are in the 16-18 area all in
one go. All that is for somebody else to decide but it does have
to be a single body, I think.
Q1115 Helen Jones: Absolutely. Mark,
would you like to comment? If there are difficulties working with
LEAs, when you try to co-ordinate colleges and schools as well,
all of which have their own governing bodies . . .
Mr Sanderson: There is a case,
for example, in an area I know best, where most of the Northumberland
people go to Newcastle for their post-16 education. There are
big problems.
Mr Haysom: You are right that
it is not just funding issues that need to be thought through
in all of this. There is a whole set of governance issues as well,
and how these institutions are actually going to work together.
As I say, there are some really interesting things happening round
the country, which, again, we can come back and give you some
examples of, but they are all about goodwill and collaboration
and, as I said earlier, you cannot rely on that, so there has
to be a different solution.
Q1116 Helen Jones: Can I just take
you on from that? We mentioned earlier the role of RDAs and my
colleague David Chaytor was asking about that. I think probably
the Chairman of the Northwest RDA, unless I am dreadfully misquoting
him, has the belief that RDAs should have a much more proactive
role in delivering skills.
Mr Sanderson: You are under-stating
it.
Q1117 Helen Jones: Yes, I probably
am, and I notice no-one elected him either. What is your view?
What is the correct, appropriate role for RDAs in this, and how
should they properly liaise with the LSCs?
Mr Sanderson: I think the RDAs
should be involved in skills agendas. That is for sure. Some of
them are regional. Some of them though—and they need to
be careful—are not. If you are sitting in Carlisle and are
reporting to Warrington, that is not much more relevant than reporting
to London, or Penzance reporting to Exeter. I do not know the
ideal size of an educational unit for planning and implementation
purposes, but it is probably, I am quite sure, much nearer the
local Learning and Skills Council type of geography than it is
the regions, which are big and diverse. Yes, there is a regional
role; I can quite see that. If you are going into the aerospace
industry, you had better make sure that you have got Bristol and
the Southwest region involved in producing the skills needed for
it, but I come back to my earlier point: the accountability for
the spend and the funds allocated has to be very clear; it must
not be a fudgy committee with this and that body involved. Learning
and Skills Councils are performing well now and I think they should
continue to have that role.
Mr Haysom: I think Bryan is absolutely
right, and there are eight probably very good models of RDAs working
with LSCs around the country now, and it is all built around the
regional skills partnership, and then there is one that we are
just working through the detail of. We have eight working reasonably
well, some working very well in fact, and one that we are still
seeking to reach final agreement with.
Mr Sanderson: The relationships
with the RDAs on the whole have been excellent. For the most part,
the staff involved in education and skills—the voluntary
staff anyway—are the same; they are also on the learning
and skills councils.
Q1118 Chairman: You used the word
"fudgy", Bryan. Were you not being a bit fudgy when
you responded to Helen Jones about Tomlinson? Here you are, one
of the most powerful people in the whole learning and skills area,
and you were being a bit fudgy. Come on—what do you think
about the way Tomlinson is going?
Mr Sanderson: I think he is absolutely
right with the access to education for all, which is the underlying
principle, he has got in there. Getting across this ridiculous
16-year-old boundary, breaking down the barriers between vocational
and academic learning, which are unique to Britain, and even perhaps
England—you do not find them anywhere; you certainly do
not find them on the continent anywhere; it is all such nonsense—are
all absolutely on the right track. I applaud what he is trying
to do; it is just a little short of detail on the implementation
of some of it.
Q1119 Valerie Davey: In terms of
the LEAs, I want to go back to your original comment about the
motivation, which you are bringing to the LSC, of the culture
of change. How far do you think that culture has changed in LEAs
as a result of your work? Let us be quite specific.
Mr Sanderson: That is a really
tough question. There is no role model LEA, is there, really?
They are an extraordinarily varied lot. I do not think I can answer
that. I can only say the ones that I have come across are working
rather well with us, and we have on the national Council John
Merry, who is head of Salford Council, who is a bit of a spokesperson
for them as far as we are concerned nationally, and that has worked
very harmoniously all along. I think as we have worked through
it a lot of the suspicions have obviously been removed. Has their
culture changed? No, I do not think so. Probably not, but I do
not know.
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