Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1180
- 1196)
MONDAY 17 MAY 2004
MR BRYAN
SANDERSON AND
MR MARK
HAYSOM
Q1180 Paul Holmes: I think you were
a bit more positive than just not challenging their right to exist.
Unintended consequences: when the LSCs are looking at local colleges
and saying "We want to get value for money and we have got
to sharpen up," one of the things is to say, "We need
to judge how successful you and your courses are in terms of the
number of students who complete a course, the number of students
who get various grades and so forth." One of the unintended
consequences of that, which happened in schools with league tables
as well, is that colleges start to filter out people. They say,
"We're not having you on this course because you might not
succeed." Yet are these not the very sorts of people that
you have been set up, as you were telling us at the start, to
try and overcome that learning gap?
Mr Haysom: What we are also saying
to colleges right up front is "We want you to increase participation."
Mr Sanderson: That has always
been our top line. That is the first point: increased participation.
The work most of these colleges do to get disadvantaged and disenchanted
people in is quite remarkable and they deserve a lot of credit.
Q1181 Paul Holmes: Is there not a
big contradiction here? How are you going to get those people,
like with the circus skills, if you are saying "You have
to draw these people in but we are going to penalise you if you
have higher drop-out rates in the process"?
Mr Sanderson: You have got to
make allowance. We do not say to a college or a school that has
a very class ABC1 clientele; we do not give them the same targets
as we give to a deprived area in Hackney. We adjust for their
student body.
Q1182 Paul Holmes: So you feel you
do enough?
Mr Sanderson: We try to set them
individual targets which are just within reach from where their
base is.
Q1183 Paul Holmes: Again, that is
not what the Association of Colleges says.
Mr Haysom: I think again we are
on a journey with this one. There are some contradictory things
that happen in the system. We are all aware of that. We are trying
to work those through, which is again going back to what we were
talking about with the three-year funding. That is why, to my
mind, it is so important that you can actually talk to them on
a different level about a different set of objectives. I think
that is very important. But it is not perfect at the moment and
we are continuing to work through that.
Q1184 Paul Holmes: Finally, another
glitch in the system. When you look at things like Modern Apprenticeships,
depending what level people are at, they could be looking at funding
that is coming from HEFCE or funding that is coming from the LSC,
and the Engineering Employers' Federation have criticised this
and said, "We have this nightmare network of different people
to go to and different regulations and different funding streams."
What can be done about that?
Mr Sanderson: Plus or minus 12%
of HE is done in FE colleges, so there is an overlap there. It
does not seem to be all that confusing. We work with them.
Mr Haysom: It is a similar kind
of discussion that we were having earlier about 14-19, with a
line being drawn somewhere. You are always going to have some
of these issues. I have to say, within apprenticeships, I think
it is probably more at the margin, and we would fund the great
bulk of that.
Mr Sanderson: It arises when somebody
starts to do a level 3 and suddenly they are so bright they go
to graduate level.
Q1185 Mr Chaytor: You have both spoken
about competing objectives for the organisation. Nevertheless,
you have said your absolute priorities are 16-19, improvement
in level 2 qualifications, improvement in basic skills and growth
in apprenticeships. If we are going to bring about this cultural
revolution in the nation's attitude to training and continuing
education, is it not the senior management and middle management
levels that need to be driving that forward, and do you think
there is a risk you are ignoring the training of senior/middle
management at the expense of just trying to get more and more
people up to level 2, whereas if we had more investment in the
training of senior management, it would happen automatically?
Mr Sanderson: The only answer
to that is you have got to do it all. If we start with the Prime
Minister's much-quoted 50% into higher education statement, he
has no chance of getting that unless we succeed with our level
2 and level 3. At the moment only about 52% come out at level
3. So you need all of it, and it is a sort of escalator of educational
attainment, which all has to be working for any one to work.
Q1186 Mr Chaytor: Are you satisfied
that in the typical British company of whatever size we have a
management culture that puts the right emphasis on this?
Mr Sanderson: Yes, sure.
Q1187 Mr Chaytor: Therefore why do
we have so many people without basic skill qualifications and
without level 2?
Mr Sanderson: In a business, there
is a heavy focus on delivering senior management, and they will
attach great importance to that. They are much less likely to
be concerned in most businesses, in my experience, with the lower
end, except in so far as they teach them the skills necessary
to not fall foul of the customer in the local store or whatever
it is they are training for. They will do a very narrow set of
training.
Q1188 Mr Chaytor: Why do we have
so many skill shortages then? There must be something lacking
in the understanding of senior management.
Mr Sanderson: Because historically
our schools have not delivered basic skills.
Q1189 Mr Chaytor: Why have our senior
managers not done something about this then by training in the
workplace?
Mr Sanderson: They would say that
they are already paying their taxes and that, rightly or wrongly,
they are entitled to expect people coming in to them who can read
and add up.
Q1190 Mr Chaytor: What I am trying
to get at is that there must be a disconnect somewhere. If you
are laying the blame at the door of the schools for not producing
sufficient numbers of school leavers with basic skills, you are
also saying that we have skills shortages in certain areas—basic
communications, for example—but you are saying also that
you are satisfied that the management level understands the problem.
There is a gap somewhere.
Mr Haysom: I think what Bryan
was saying was that senior management are good at training middle
management for senior management but less good when it comes to
training at lower skills. I think that is what he was saying,
and particularly less good at training for skills with portable
qualifications, so that someone could actually build a life and
a career.
Q1191 Mr Chaytor: Just pursuing the
point, the Committee has been interested in this operating and
financial review procedure that is due to come on stream next
year, the guidelines from the DTI. Is this an opportunity for
the Learning and Skills Council to really build into the objectives
of all companies much greater priorities on in-house staff training
and the training of less skilled people?
Mr Sanderson: It is, but it will
have to be done by seduction and encouragement.
Q1192 Mr Chaytor: Is there a role
for the LSC to bring about that encouragement?
Mr Sanderson: Yes, the education
role certainly.
Q1193 Mr Chaytor: Is there any specific
work or preparation that has been done for that?
Mr Haysom: I am not aware of any
work that is being done on that. It is something that has been
discussed a little bit in my early months. It is something that
we are going to have to be very careful about. I think a lot of
businesses would already complain about the burdens placed upon
them, rightly or wrongly, so we would have to take business with
us, and it is very important that we do so. It is certainly something
I will take back and have a look at again.
Q1194 Chairman: Post Enron and other
scandals in the management of big global companies, you would
not reduce the regulation, would you?
Mr Haysom: No. All I am saying
is that you have to be careful about how you add to it.
Mr Sanderson: More regulation
is not necessarily better regulation. Enron were a bunch of crooks.
Q1195 Mr Turner: Can I just focus
on Mark's answer to David's question, which I think was why management
are not doing this training? You said they were not, but you did
not, I think, focus on why. Could I suggest, and you can perhaps
comment on this, it is because there are not sufficient incentives
for them to do so. If they have portable skills, they may go off
and work for someone else. It is easy to get work permits for
people who can come in who are already trained. What is your comment
on that?
Mr Haysom: It is such a broad
question, is it not? I know of a lot of companies that actually
do a very good job in terms of training of their employees, and
others that do not, and their reasons for doing so are many and
various. A lot of it will be about pure bottom-line focus.
Mr Sanderson: All the evidence
that I know of, and I have a lot of experience of this, is that
the more you train your staff, the lower the turnover is, not
the other way round. People are motivated if you give them training.
Q1196 Chairman: Bryan Sanderson,
this is your last opportunity in your present role as you come
before this Committee—we may see you in another role perhaps
some day. Is there anything you want to leave us with in terms
of what your aspirations are for the future?
Mr Sanderson: Yes. Firstly, to
say thank you. I am not a sycophant, but this Committee is very
helpful; you have just the right balance between challenge and
debate, and I am grateful for that. It has been very helpful.
I just leave you with one thing that I have not mentioned. I think
in the more constrained funding that is clearly on the way to
us there is going to be, abbreviating it and putting it in essence,
a very sharp choice to be made as to which of our enormous range
of activities we do not fund. An awful lot of it is already prescribed.
The schools can hardly be touched. We are, in a way, a microcosm
of the whole education project, where it looks enormous but in
fact about 95% of it is pre-allocated. My concern is that the
people who are going to suffer are the ones at the lower end of
the spectrum, where they tend to be in the more discretionary
areas, where we are trying to bring people into education, and
where we are trying to get these adults back who have missed out
and so on. I think that would be very sad indeed.
Chairman: Bryan Sanderson, thank you
for your attendance today. We wish you well in all your other
activities. Mark, we will be seeing you on a regular basis.
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