Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-223)
SIR ANDREW
FOSTER AND
DR ROBERT
CHILTON
16 NOVEMBER 2005
Q220 Mr Marsden: I would agree with
you absolutely. I would only say that I think we have a great
deal more to do before we reach that nirvana.
Sir Andrew Foster: Yes, we do.
Q221 Mr Marsden: I would hope that
you would use your good offices with the university sector to
promote that position.
Sir Andrew Foster: There is a
range of vice-chancellors involved in this whom I have had conversations
with who are enlightened enough to see that frankly the notion
that FE was working-class kids' education is one for yesterday
and deserves to be dumped. That is what needs pushing all around
here and that is where high-quality expectation is not around
whether you have a contestability review, it is actually about
making this a real quality experience for a whole variety of reasons.
Q222 Chairman: Sir Andrew, where
colleges and universities attempt to get together as one joined
institution most of those attempts have ended in failure—Huddersfield
and Doncaster, Bradford and Bradford College. Do you regret that?
Sir Andrew Foster: It does go
back to some of the questions you were just raising. I think some
of them work really quite well, but there have been problems.
Another medium term vision you could draw is, why do we actually
fund FE and HE separately? Look at Scotland. I went on a trip
to Scotland. It was absolutely fascinating to me. Okay, it is
a smaller country and it has many of the benefits in that regard,
but they actually do their funding together. Now, that starts
to open up a whole different set of things. I could give you a
medium to long-term picture. If you wanted to bring these walls
down you would actually start talking about funding them, but
it takes you again back to the point which Bob was making about
why we do not view all of these things in a more open way and
it takes us back to how the Department manages these things, the
Permanent Secretary's role.
Q223 Chairman: Sir Andrew, it has
been a good session. We have enjoyed it and we have learned a
lot. Just before you go, in terms of your 10 or 11 years heading
up the Audit Commission, we are a scrutiny committee and we share
that role with the Audit Commission. Do you think there are ways
in which Select Committees can work better in the scrutiny process
than we do at the moment?
Sir Andrew Foster: I think it
is the more that you get all different sorts of ways of engaging
with people so that you get to know the informal stuff, and I
am sure you have mechanisms whereby you do that anyway through
people who work with you, but the more that you can get opportunities
to meet and understand in both a soft and a hard way so that you
are not only in this sort of forum, which has strengths and joys
to it as well as limitations.
Chairman: That was very diplomatic, Sir
Andrew! Thank you very much for that and thank you, Dr Chilton.
Thank you very much indeed.
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