Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1160
- 1179)
MONDAY 17 MAY 2004
MR BRYAN
SANDERSON AND
MR MARK
HAYSOM
Q1160 Chairman: Surely, here is a
system that gives a lot of money to these institutions, and a
private partner who puts in a substantial but much smaller amount
of money gets a great deal of control over an institution that
really is a public institution. Is that not true?
Mr Sanderson: Do they get control?
Q1161 Chairman: Do they not? They
get a lot of say in a public institution, do they not? Would that
not worry you if you were responsible for public funds?
Mr Sanderson: I would worry if
I took what you said absolutely literally, that they had control.
For them to have some sort of influence, as long as it is contained
within the boundaries of public policy, would not concern me.
That might be quite helpful, but it does need to be directed and
within boundaries.
Q1162 Jonathan Shaw: I just want
to ask you about sixth-forms. You mentioned Kent, for example.
(We also have an excellent executive director who actually ran
away to a circus, funnily enough! No, I made that up.) What progress
do you think has been made on closing the gap between per student
funding of youngsters at schools in sixth-forms and youngsters
at colleges?
Mr Sanderson: Very little. Sixth-form
funding is pretty well guaranteed, but the numbers are in dispute.
Probably per capita—there are ways of calculating it of
course—it is about 10-12% higher for a sixth-form.
Q1163 Jonathan Shaw: You have told
the Committee and we know that you are leaving in a couple of
weeks. I do not know if you have a final meeting with the Secretary
of State to chew over the last four or five years. Will this be
one of the things that will be on your list of things to do?
Mr Sanderson: Yes. I do think
there is an area which is so sensitive here that people run away
from an honest debate, and I do not think that is healthy. I do
not know. I have no idea what the right outcome is in Kent or
anywhere else, but if you look at Kent against Hampshire, which
is an example I quote often, they have a very similar socio-economic
structure but a completely different approach to post-16 education.
There must be some learning to be gained from looking across those
things, and the debate is so sensitive that it is not held, and
I think that is a rather sad commentary on us all.
Q1164 Chairman: Can we find out why
it is not being held? That is pretty strong language. Why is it
not being held?
Mr Sanderson: Because there is
a public outcry if you go near a school sixth form.
Q1165 Jonathan Shaw: What I was going
to ask you was this: parents and communities feel great attachment
to schools as institutions. I do not pick up the same sort of
attachment and feeling towards FE colleges.
Mr Sanderson: I think that is
true.
Q1166 Jonathan Shaw: We do not get
lots of parents complaining about the run-down state of the FE
college, whereas you would do if the school was getting run down,
and there is not the celebration of a new building being opened
at an FE college.
Mr Haysom: There is always that,
the celebration at an FE college. I have been to many, and there
are some fantastic ones coming on stream. I have been really gratified
at the importance the community attaches to those.
Mr Sanderson: I do agree that
small sixth forms in schools in local communities which have been
there for 100 or 200 years attract enormous local loyalty, and
of course, generally—not always—the socio-economic
group that these parents come from is a little different to an
FE college.
Q1167 Jonathan Shaw: That is also
at the heart of it. You have said that that is on the list of
things to talk to Charles Clarke about, but you have been consulting
about future FE funding. What conclusions have you come to, and
when is that going to be implemented? I am sure that the AoC are
listening.
Mr Sanderson: I will let Mark
answer this, but we do not quite understand, if they are listening,
where they got the £1.9 billion they talk about. We are though
going to be very, very seriously stretched indeed to meet the
targets next year.
Mr Haysom: There is no doubt that,
because of the over-performance in all of the participation numbers
that we talked about right up front, there is a cost that goes
with that, and that means that we are under some pressure, and
that means that we are going to have to look very long and very
hard at our priorities. As to where we are in terms of the negotiations
on the Spending Review, I am not sure it would be the smartest
thing I ever did to share that with this distinguished group.
Mr Sanderson: We are going to
have problems, and we are victims of our own success. Every time
we put up participation, it costs us more money.
Q1168 Jonathan Shaw: One of the things
that the AoC do complain about is the lack of flexibility on their
part. You are quite prescriptive about the type of courses that
they can fund. How do you respond to that?
Mr Haysom: What we are trying
to be is not prescriptive. What we are trying to do is to work
in partnership with the individual colleges and plan in a more
systematic way what it is they are doing to respond to what it
is the community needs and what local employers need. That is
what we are trying to do, but we are having to focus more and
more on the key priorities that have been set for us. So that
is 16-18 participation, it is level 2, and it is basic skills.
They are the things that we are tasked with delivering, and so
we are having to work with colleges to do that more and more.
But we are not prescriptive in the sense of saying "You will
run a course with that number of people in it." We are not
doing that. What we are trying to do is have grown-up conversations
with colleges about the needs of the community and what they are
going to do to meet those needs over a three-year period. We are
talking about three-year planning now, and that is a really, really
important change. They are difficult conversations, they are very
difficult particularly at the moment because of the pressures
that I was just talking about, and in a funny way, we are doing
all this what I think is great stuff—and it was done before
I arrived, so I can say that without any fear—all this stuff
about plan-led funding, all this stuff about three-year planning,
and it is such a great shame that those conversations are coinciding
with this price round. It takes something away from that, which
is unfortunate.
Q1169 Jonathan Shaw: In terms of
colleges responding to the needs of the community, we are seeing
increasing numbers of students aged 14 going to colleges, and
furthermore, the announcement that we had last week of the junior
apprenticeships. That is going to place further pressure. Add
September this year with the educational maintenance allowance
which could see a 6 or 7% increase, and these are big pressures,
are they not?
Mr Sanderson: They are, and once
it has got through the social inclusion and attainment thing,
it does mean that one has to look at productivity as well, and
there will only be limited funds for post-14 education, so we
need to make sure that it is allocated properly and we cannot
afford waste.
Q1170 Jonathan Shaw: If the Government
are, as they are already, promoting educational maintenance
allowances, that is a laudable thing. We know that we have the
fourth worst stay-on rates in the OECD. Are there going to be
the places there for the youngsters to go to?
Mr Sanderson: I think so.
Q1171 Jonathan Shaw: Bryan, "first
class" is something that you say all the time, first class
this, first class that. Are they going to be third class or fourth
class?
Mr Sanderson: I am optimistic.
The Government have put a lot of extra money into this area since
we were founded. The AoC tends to say we are going to have a decline.
We are not; we are going to have rather less of an increase than
we have in the past. We are still going to have 4% extra. We must
not exaggerate. One other thing we have to do is try to attract
other revenue streams into this sector. In the skills area, as
we have already said, industry spends far more than we do on all
this, and it may be there is some re-channelling and repositioning
of some of that money, and perhaps some additional money from
other sources, which will help all this. There certainly is on
the capital, I am sure.
Q1172 Chairman: Can I push you a
bit on that? Where would that revenue come from? I have talked
to one sector skills council that has over 70% of its members
wanting a levy on the industry, and are petitioning the Secretary
of State to have a levy. Would you welcome that sort of development
if it is a consensual one?
Mr Sanderson: If it is coming
from the grass roots, that sounds just fine. There is one that
still has a levy, the construction industry. But there is also
these days, do not forget, a lot more discretionary wealth at
the very top end of our country now than there used to be. There
are now quite a significant number of people with money to spare,
either at the back end of their lives or in their legacies, and
a lot of that, if you go to the US for example, is attracted into
education in various forms. I think neither higher nor further
education here have yet started to channel some of that in the
way that they might well.
Q1173 Chairman: You are coming to
the end of your term at the LSC and I understand, but you have
been working with main partners. Do you ever go in to see the
Secretary of State—not at the end, a valedictory thing,
but day to day or month to month or whatever contact, and say,
"Look, if I had that budget, I could much more effectively
deliver"? You talked about joined-up government.
Mr Sanderson: I do sometimes talk
like that, but only on the basis that I am not going to report
it outside.
Q1174 Chairman: Okay, but would you
like to see the Government making some serious changes in the
budgets that they spend in different ways on training? You know
who I am talking about. The Department for Work and Pensions has
a massive budget delivered through Jobcentre, Jobcentre Plus.
We have large budgets flowing through other departments, the armed
forces, the health sector, prisons. How far is this joined up
enough, and should not you, as the LSC be all the time saying
to Government, "Hey, come on. This should be joined up and
this could be better delivered"? Is that part of your role?
Mr Sanderson: That is part of
our role. This is all developing. We have an enormous agenda.
We have done a bit of that but there is more to do. Getting cross-departmental
things going is not the easiest process. We have not mentioned
at all the voluntary sector, which is another one we struggle
with. There are something like 40,000 voluntary agencies who do
something with training.
Q1175 Chairman: We are finding in
this major inquiry into skills that there are so many departments,
let alone the private sector providers, which are large, the in-house
providers of the private sector, then we go through to all the
government departments, as you say, and the NGO sector, and there
is not a voice, is there? Some of us would say the developing,
maturing LSC nationally should be that voice. You should say to
the Government, even if it is in private initially, "Come
on." Bang on Charles Clarke's desk hard and say "Come
on, this can be better done."
Mr Sanderson: It needs a champion.
Things like this do. We also need a champion in the media. It
is so hard to get into the serious Radio 4 type programmes,
whereas if it is the closure of a sixth-form or a student rejected
at Oxford it is not at all difficult.
Q1176 Chairman: Do you think it is
a role the LSC could take, as it emerges and matures?
Mr Sanderson: Yes, but I had to
be very careful at the beginning to say, "This is a great
spread" and we have talked about a lot of it, and we have
to focus down and make sure we do some things, and we picked several
core things which I have tried to say to you: those we have to
hang our hats on, those we have to get moving in the right direction,
and if we do that, we will pull lots of other things behind, and
this is a long game, and then we can start to bring other things
into alignment. I think we have made that start. Mark and his
team are working very well at it. But there is an enormous agenda
out there, and some of it belongs with us but not too much. You
can stick the whole world on to us if you are not careful. We
cannot take care of the nation's social agenda.
Q1177 Chairman: We are asking you
to look after the nation's training agenda and skills agenda.
Mr Sanderson: I think that is
a very reasonable challenge.
Q1178 Paul Holmes: You said a little
while ago when we were talking about the fact that students in
sixth-forms get more money than students in FE colleges, about
10-12% more. Some of the people who run schools with sixth forms
or run sixth-form colleges will say that is perfectly fair because
they get better A-level results than the FE colleges do, so they
should get more money. Would you not agree with that in light
of what you said about the city academies, which get more money
and cream off the best kids?
Mr Sanderson: No, I would not.
It certainly is not always true, for a start. It is very varied.
Secondly, they have a very different catchment.
Q1179 Paul Holmes: You were saying
about the city academies that it is quite proper that they get
more money and cream off the best kids and do well because we
need that sort of institution. Would you not therefore accept
that argument for sixth-form financing?
Mr Sanderson: I did not say it
was proper that they got more money. I said I was not challenging
their right to exist.
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