Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-199)
SIR ANDREW
FOSTER AND
DR ROBERT
CHILTON
16 NOVEMBER 2005
Q180 Mr Wilson: We have touched on
resourcing before, but do you have any evidence that quality in
the FE sector is closely connected with funding or the alternative?
Sir Andrew Foster: There are two
things. One is a general response, having spent a year doing this
work and 18 months before. Impressionistically, I do not think
there is a strong relationship between the two.
Q181 Chairman: Between funding and
performance?
Sir Andrew Foster: Yes. Bob and
I both have the experience of having done really quite a lot of
reviews where we have actually quantitatively been able to demonstrate
that there is not a direct relationship between funding and performance.
So I am saying two separate things. In a range of public service
studies I have done, I have regularly seen that there is not a
direct relationship. We have not done this work in quite that
way here, but my impression is that there is not a direct relationship
between the two. I would say there is a stronger direct relationship
between the quality of leadership and performance than there is
between the level of funding.
Q182 Mr Wilson: Just moving on then,
it seems from the report that you would like failing FE colleges
to go through a sort of similar process to failing schools at
the moment. They get a notice to improve within one year, I believe,
and they are obviously helped during that period to do that?
Sir Andrew Foster: Yes.
Q183 Mr Wilson: From what the AoC
have said, they are not very happy about this idea of contestability
after that period if they do not get any further. Will not allowing
other colleges or private providers to take over these chunks
of inadequate provision de-motivate staff and colleges give a
negative picture to the various stakeholders?
Sir Andrew Foster: It could do,
but the prime principle that I am standing for is that the learners'
needs come first and that, frankly, having had several years when
failing colleges have not been attended to just is not good enough
as far as I am concerned. So that is more important than anything
else. I therefore, though, say give a period of a year of intensive
development. That is quite a big opportunity in its own right
and anybody who really wants to, I think, should be able to make
some change during that time. If you then had a period of inspection
for this to be established, a period of development, that already
means you have gone on for a year plus whilst learners are not
getting a good service and I actually think that then looking
to see whether another college, a voluntary provider, a charitable
provider or a private sector provider could in this small number
of cases run things is the least that learners deserve. So I would
stand by what I have put in this report. The other thing I would
say to you is that there is a lot of static around in the AoC.
People like myself have been saying this over the last 24 hours.
I reckon the very fact that this now exists as a possibility will
change the motivations in some places. It is my experience in
public services that development phases go on for very long periods
of time. I have quite often seen, when competition gets introduced,
that you get really quite quick change in some situations.
Q184 Mr Wilson: You said there that
a year is a big opportunity, but do you really think a year is
long enough to turn around a failing college or department? What
is your evidence for that?
Sir Andrew Foster: There certainly
is evidence, I think, in some of the schools that that has happened
and I have certainly seen in local government through the comprehensive
performance assessment process that when you get really rapid
leadership and action you can see significant change.
Q185 Mr Wilson: Okay. Just sticking
with the evidence point, what evidence can you point to which
suggests that the closure or the takeover of departments leads
to better quality in the long run? Where is the information for
that coming from?
Sir Andrew Foster: The argument
about closure would be a last resort. Closure would have to be
that there was not a need for the service, so I am not arguing
because somewhere underperforms it should close. I am arguing
you should find a provider who can provide the service as long
as there is a case for that.
Q186 Mr Wilson: But if you cannot
find an alternative, presumably you have to close?
Sir Andrew Foster: Ultimately,
yes.
Q187 Mr Wilson: Just following on
from that, who are you suggesting should have the final decision-making
power to close?
Sir Andrew Foster: I am suggesting
that should be in the hands of the Learning and Skills Council.
Mr Wilson: Thank you.
Q188 Chairman: Andrew, do you really
mean private when you say "private", because when we
read that in the White Paper in terms of schools becoming independent
trusts within the state system, and foundation schools, we were
hastily reassured by the Secretary of State that she meant private
trusts, not private companies? You actually mean private companies
like Capita?
Sir Andrew Foster: No. There are
about a thousand private providers of different sorts of training
services. I do not mean the bigger firms like Capita, I mean firms
who are already providing these services and in the process of
this review I met these people. They were not the major focus
and their response to me was to say, "Colleges spend quite
a lot of time complaining about the level of funding they have
and what their capital provision is. If you ever gave us the opportunity—they
have much more capital than we do, they have much greater funding—you
would find our ability to make something of some of the situations
which people have complained about for a long time. We already
run these services, we are set up to run them," and in fact
at the press conference we had earlier this week we had some private
sector providers there saying, "We believe we could run these
services well."
Q189 Chairman: So the sorts of companies
which run religious education, for example, those sorts of companies?
Sir Andrew Foster: Yes. There
is quite a number of them, but a lot of the press coverage has
focused on private providers. I am also saying that the excellent
colleges which currently exist, of whom there are many, could
equally be doing that and I think there is just the sense that
you could quickly get another good college or an established provider;
and you clearly would not give it to a poor one, you would give
it to one where you had good quality evidence that they ran services
as they are at the moment. So it is not an irresponsible suggestion
at all for an excellent college or an excellent established provider,
when you stand a chance within one or two years of turning something
around which for the last five years has not run very well.
Q190 Chairman: Sir Andrew, I certainly
do not see that as an irresponsible suggestion. I think it is
irresponsible of the press with a good report like yours only
to focus on that one element.
Sir Andrew Foster: Yes, that was
the sadness of it.
Chairman: You will know that the other
day we had the Learning and Skills Council here, which spent £10.5
billion of our taxpayers' money, and not one member of the press
bothered to turn up.
Q191 Jeff Ennis: One supplementary
question on this particular line. I presume, Sir Andrew, that
TUPE would apply to employees then in the colleges which were
taken over by private providers?
Sir Andrew Foster: That would
need to be looked at thoroughly and in detail, but my expectation
is that it probably would. We had proposed to the Government that
this is a prospect. Clearly, if the Government is interested the
full detail of how you achieve it we would need to look at it,
but my expectation would be that what you have said is true.
Q192 Jeff Ennis: In a setting within
an authority, for example, that was fully tertiary where they
did not have any sixth form provision, if you had a situation
whereby the ceiling fell in, shall we say, and the college failed
the inspection, would this not cause an enormous upheaval for
the students who were halfway through courses?
Sir Andrew Foster: You would obviously
have to try and make contingency plans about how you managed it,
but it is important to understand this is a relatively small-scale
proposition. There are 389 colleges and 37 have been in this category.
At the moment it is 16. So you have got to think that by the law
of averages some of those 16 are going to turn themselves around
and then you are going to have a contestability review. There
is a danger—not that I am saying you are doing this—that
it gets a disproportionate amount of emphasis. I think the level
of attention it will get from the people locally, if it motivates
them to work things through more quickly, has got to be in the
public interest as far as I can see.
Q193 Chairman: Could I just push
you on where contestability comes from? Could I find that in the
dictionary? Did you invent this word?
Sir Andrew Foster: No. We must
walk in different circles. It is in quite regular use—
Q194 Chairman: It is a new one on
me. It is interesting. You did not mint it yourself?
Sir Andrew Foster: No.
Q195 Chairman: I had a colleague
once who said to the clerk, "Go away and mint me some new
cliche«s," or something.
Sir Andrew Foster: Why do we not
call it "competition" then?
Chairman: I like "contestability".
I am trying to do a Melvyn Bragg on you!
Q196 Mr Chaytor: Chairman, we call
it "contestability" because the DfES officials did not
like "competition"! Sir Andrew, where there are clear
examples of poor quality provision, either in a college or in
a particular department or a section of the college, is it the
nature of the management or is it the structure of the ownership?
Sir Andrew Foster: I think it
depends, but my first instinct is that the nature of the management
is the most regular, but it could be the second as well.
Q197 Mr Chaytor: If it is the second,
if your argument is that contestability is inevitably going to
drive up quality then why do you not recommend that other areas
of provision (i.e the middle of the road sorts of areas) are subject
to contestability as well?
Sir Andrew Foster: I think because
I viewed it as being a way of challenging and discovering with
those places which are already doing very poorly what can be discovered.
I do raise similar questions for what is called "coasting"
and I think you would need to see from the experience of doing
this for the first few years how effective it was. It clearly
has a chance of being extended if you found it was successful.
Q198 Mr Chaytor: You are very critical
of the existing audit and inspection regimes being too top-heavy,
and the quality control regimes also. In an area, for example,
such as work-based learning the inspection reports show consistently
that is one of the weakest areas of college provision, but they
also show that private provision of work-based learning is also
very, very weak. If your argument for contestability is to hold
water then what kind of quality control mechanisms do you think
should be in place for the private providers who are going to
come and take in some of the weakest college provisions?
Sir Andrew Foster: Bob may want
to speak about our general thinking about inspection, but you
would have to have the same scrutiny proposals. We are actually
arguing for a change in scrutiny because, as you know, at the
moment we have ALI, we have Ofsted, we then have advice being
given from the LSDA, from the QIA and from the LSC and we argue
for a rationalised approach to that and frankly we argue for not
just looking at inputs but looking at what the impact is of what
is happening. Relative to the way scrutiny has developed in other
public services, these days in other public services if you look
in local government at how the overall council is run, the corporate
governance system, frankly the system which exists in FE is not
only fragmented but it is very traditional.
Q199 Mr Chaytor: You are very attracted
by the American community college model of self-regulation. How
long do you think it would realistically take for us to move to
that kind of system in Britain from the very heavy top-down model
we have at the moment?
Sir Andrew Foster: With the American
system, if you have studied it at all, community colleges had
a terrible reputation 10 or 15 years ago and over the last 10
or 15 years they have put themselves on a better footing by having
a stronger link with their local communities, but then they have
been very much better at advocating their case very much around
the economic needs of the area. The other thing they have done
is to develop a peer review and self-assessment scheme. But your
question was how long will it take. I think it could take five
to 10 years before you actually got there. I am arguing that you
should be even tougher on the under-performing and you should
over a period of three, four or five years start to give increasing
freedoms to those who are doing well. Clearly, what you would
do is you would not let anybody be in a peer review self-assessment
system until you were feeling very confident that they were excellent.
So you would gradate it over a period of time and you would never
let anybody migrate to that until you were clear that they had
good standards. You will see from the model that we explain in
there that we met the people who did it in and around New York
and they were saying, "If you fail these you are going to
go out of business."
Mr Chaytor: That is my next question.
Is that realistic in the British system? There are big cultural
political differences here. Is it realistic that a whole college
serving one town can simply go out of business and come to a grinding
halt?
Chairman: David, while you were out Jeff
was thinking the unthinkable in Barnsley!
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