Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-299)
DR JOHN
BRENNAN, MS
PAULINE WATERHOUSE,
MR ALAN
TUCKETT AND
MR COLIN
FLINT
28 NOVEMBER 2005
Q280 Mr Chaytor: Is there a direct
relationship, therefore, between the quality of those colleges
that have been a cause of concern—John, I think in the AoC
memo you referred to 4% of colleges now deemed to be in difficulty—and
the level of their financial instability?
Ms Waterhouse: There can be.
Q281 Mr Chaytor: Is there?
Ms Waterhouse: Yes. If you take
a section like construction, for example, where frequently colleges
have underperformed in particular curriculum areas, construction
is one of those areas where it may be a problem. Part of the problem
may well be because of an inability to recruit staff from the
construction industry because basically the salaries on offer
in further education are not sufficiently attractive. That is
one of the reasons; I am not for one moment saying that is the
whole reason. The reason for why curriculum areas, why sections,
departments or whole colleges fail is multifaceted, it is very
complex, and it would be naive to try to just say you can account
for it by looking at one factor alone.
Mr Flint: I would agree with Pauline,
but I think there are other issues as well. If we are to assume
that the funding situation is not going to change dramatically
in the near future, then I think we have lost. I think there needs
to be attention in some colleges to leadership and management.
I think Foster is right to highlight that as a problem, though
I believe the figures that John has given us today. I do not think
it is a serious problem across FE, but it is a serious problem
in a very small number of colleges, and linked to that is the
whole workforce development. I think FE has probably, across too
many colleges, neglected the kind of workforce development that
is necessary, as well as the issues which Pauline mentioned about
the difficulty of recruitment. There is not enough consistent,
coherent policy about industrial placement for people lecturing
in technical areas. That is linked to recruitment as well and
to pay, but it can still be addressed without burdening the purse.
Then there are two others: I think there needs to be an inspection
regime which is developmental and supportive rather than punitive.
I think too much of it in the past has been punitive. There needs
to be less inspection and less messing about with colleges, frankly,
and more encouragement to develop good practice in leadership
and workforce development. A fourth one to mention is I think
colleges have lost control of the curriculum in a way that when
I was a principal, in the early 90s particularly, we developed
OCN courses to meet the particular needs of particular groups
of students. We have lost all of that now, and I think there is
a demotivation of college lecturers as a result. Colleges need
to get some more strategic control of the curriculum, and I think
that will motivate staff and help in the whole process of improved
quality.
Mr Tuckett: One of the things
Government has done really well on Skills for Life is to create
a national platform of minimum training and competence for people
to be engaged in the work. The same, but slightly differently
structured, around Success for All, and the curriculum building,
mentoring and coaching roles built into that I think point towards
the kind of curriculum focused exciting development in the territory
rather than just institutional structural debates about the way
to go.
Dr Brennan: I wanted to make two
points just to complement the points that have already been made.
One is about perceptions. The Committee kept coming back to this
question and the media focused on the question of quality. The
reality is that quality is at a pretty high level overall. Let
me quote you a couple of statistics just to illustrate the point.
Completion rates are one of the measures that we would use to
assess whether institutions are delivering the right outcomes.
On the most recently available data, college non-completion rates
for 16-18s was 17% and for 19s-plus 15%. For universities, a comparable
figure was 14.4%, marginally worse in FE, but not hugely so. Just
for comparison, in the work-based learning sector, the non-completion
rate was 54% in the most recent year. I make the point that I
think we need to put this in perspective. There are issues around
quality, quite rightly, and the Committee is right to focus on
them, but let us not get this out of proportion. I think one of
the things that is also not well understood in this debate is
some of the complexities of institutional provision. If you normalise
institutional performance success rates for the different patterns
of provision that they deliver, what you end up with is quite
relatively narrow variations in performance, not huge variations
of the kind which the raw league tables would suggest. I do not
think we understand sufficiently well in terms of research and
professional practice what drives some of those differences, why
it is that long Level 2 course performance rates are relatively
low compared with Level 3, for example, and I think much more
work needs to be done in order to provide a better research base
to address those issues if we are going to drive performance up.
I think that is important work which needs to be done if we are
to secure that kind of long term commitment to continuous improvement
that we all want to see. We should see it—to emphasise this
point—against a background of a system which is not performing
at all badly, and in some respects is performing exceptionally
well. Satisfaction rates among learners are higher in FE than
they are in HE and higher than in almost any other public service.
We need to understand those aspects of quality and performance
to put alongside some of the criticisms which people have been
wanting to make.
Mr Tuckett: And higher for adults.
Q282 Mr Chaytor: The evidence suggests
that the quality is gradually improving year on year, the number
of colleges and difficulties are reducing themselves, but my next
question is, if that is the case, is that not the result of the
very stringent inspection and auditing systems that you have been
critical of? Would the year on year improvements in quality over
the last seven or eight years have taken place without a pretty
oppressive mechanism bearing down on the colleges?
Mr Tuckett: I once went to Sweden
for Malcolm Wicks to do a conference with the Swedish Education
Minister. He said to me in the quiet of the moment, "Why
do you spend so much time on policing the system rather than developing
it?" I think there is not an issue about the value of external
observation—
Q283 Mr Chaytor: But the previous
40 years have been spent on developing it, surely? The argument
can only be sustained about policing the system since incorporation.
Mr Tuckett: When does the quality
we are concerned about become variable? Behind your question is
an assumption that since we started auditing it more heavily—
Q284 Mr Chaytor: Because nobody was
measuring it beforehand.
Mr Tuckett: They were. They were
not measuring it as intensively and we did not have quite such
a dominant metaphor about the use of public money needing to be
captured by audit regimes. I think there is no doubt that ALI,
because they have had a developmental as well as a reviewing process,
have been a positive force in the system. It is the question about
how much of the investment you spend in that way and how much
you spend on empowering people who teach and learn in the system
to have confidence to peer group review and to develop the work
together. There are real resource choices about where you strike
that balance.
Q285 Mr Chaytor: Can I ask John,
what parts of the existing auditing and inspection regime would
you dismantle?
Dr Brennan: I think David has
asked a very fair question in all of this. I think the emphasis
upon improving data collection and improving measurement in the
system has been hugely beneficial; I have no doubt about that.
I equally agree that inspection is an important component in the
process, both to provide public reassurance and to provide a stimulus
to institutions. What I would say, though, is if you look at the
inspection profiles across each of the three cycles which we have
now been through since incorporation, they are not very different
between each cycle. Individual institutions will have moved about
a bit within those frameworks, but the broad profile is very similar
across each one. I think there is an important question to be
asked about how frequently you have to go and pull up the roots
to check that everything is all right. The issues are about the
frequency, the extent of the depth of inspection and measurement,
and so on, in the system. I think we should be moving towards
a system in which there is a lighter touch in respect of those
activities and those institutions which are seen to be broadly
performing pretty well, but a much tighter and sharper intervention
in those areas where we know there are failings. I think the system
should move to that kind of model of operation rather than a model
which requires that every institution be subject to a detailed
and comprehensive set of evaluations through inspection or in
other ways all the time.
Q286 Mr Chaytor: Foster goes further
than that, does he not, because he suggests the idea of self regulation
amongst groups of colleges? Would you go so far?
Dr Brennan: Certainly, we would.
AoC will be taking those kinds of ideas forward. We are engaged
in a consultation now with the membership about taking that kind
of proposal through, and we will be putting those proposals to
Government, to LSC and to a variety of other partner agencies
as a basis for taking the system forward.
Mr Tuckett: With the caveat that
the workforce development proposals in Foster also go forward
so that we really enable staff to take those challenges on.
Chairman: Stephen, you have been very
patient.
Q287 Stephen Williams: I want to
take you back to a limited range of questions as well about leadership
in the sector and just an observational idea Andrew Foster had
about the funding debate. When he was here, he used a phrase that
FE was the neglected middle child in education between schools,
and that higher education gets huge amounts of both political
attention and, as the Chairman was alluding to earlier, media
attention as well. Who do you think should be the champion for
further education? Should it be the Learning and Skills Council,
which we have mentioned already, or should it be the Association
of Colleges or somebody else?
Dr Brennan: If I can offer you
an alternative formulation first before trying to answer the question
directly. I would not see us as a neglected middle child, I would
see us rather as a—
Q288 Chairman: Spoilt!
Dr Brennan: —strong and,
perhaps, relatively silent elder brother who can be relied upon
when a problem arises to get in and sort it out, because I think
that has been the history of further education: give us a task
and we get it sorted. We deliver the things that are asked of
us.
Q289 Chairman: You missed your vocation,
you should have been a diplomat.
Dr Brennan: To try and come to
Mr Williams' question a bit more directly, advocacy is an important
issue in all of this, and I think ministers have failed to act
in that capacity. If you look, for example, at the press releases
which DfES put out for the current year, I think there are 95
in respect of schools and nine in respect of FE, and the tone
is often noticeably different between schools and FE in terms
of the wording. I think ministers do far less than they could
do to promote the system. I think LSC has done relatively little
to promote the system, despite the fact that it has a statutory
responsibility to promote learning. One of Foster's recommendations
is that we do some serious work to address this issue of reputation
and begin to develop a new strategy to tackle it. AoC is certainly
up for that, and we will want to work with our partners to do
it. I do think there are a range of responses which are required.
If I may say so, Chairman, I think one of the responses lies in
your own hands, that you started at the beginning of this meeting
by drawing attention to the fact that there was little or no press
interest in this, I would suggest that there may be an opportunity
for you to call some representatives of the press before you.
Q290 Chairman: It has already been
addressed. It is in hand, as they say. Does anyone else want to
come back on that question? Colin, you are the most experienced
of all four members; you have been in so many different aspects
of this world.
Mr Flint: I have certainly worked
in it a long time. I think Government ought to give some consideration
to there being a minister for further education. It is important
enough to merit that. I was thinking of the Foster Review and
there is a wonderful quote from Stephen Fry, page seven, saying
that after a ruined first attempt at education, something along
the lines of " . . . Norwich City College saved my life and
FE is one of the great unsung successes of British society".
If we could pick up that kind of message, which is true, and Pauline
knows, and every principal knows, that we change people's lives
every year because we are working with a very imperfect education
system still. We still have not solved the problems of secondary
education and this Government is failing again because it should
have embraced and endorsed the Tomlinson recommendations in full
with a glad cry. Until we do that, we are going to keep an academic
vocational divide and further education is going to be picking
up the pieces and will not be understood by most ministers, most
Members of Parliament and most of the middle class. That is our
problem.
Ms Waterhouse: If I may add to
what has been said. I would agree with the point about a minister
for further education, but I also think what would be helpful
is if there was more longevity of service in terms of people staying
within that particular post, because I would imagine that no sooner
has somebody mastered their brief, like certain post-holders in
the past, than they have been moved on. This does not help. This
does not help the service and it does not help colleges at all
in terms of being understood and valued.
Q291 Stephen Williams: I am glad
the two of you have taken up this suggestion of a minister for
further education. That was something I put to Sir Andrew when
he was here and he ducked it. John, I noticed you were slightly
more reticent about whether you thought there should be a minister.
Dr Brennan: Sorry, I did not understand
that you were asking the direct question. Yes, we would advocate
the same position, that clarity of responsibility at government
level would go a long way towards helping the system operate in
a more efficient way because at the moment the division of responsibilities
among different ministers means there is a lack of clarity and
a lack of focus often on the issues which matter.
Mr Tuckett: I think you have a
really difficult challenge. The political logic and the economic
logic point in different directions. The political debate is acutely
anxious about how children's opportunities get shaped and so on.
The economic logic points you in quite a different direction,
and probably colleagues in the media react more quickly to those
short-time excitements of the political logic, but the championing,
I think, clearly needs to happen in a variety of places. That
was why we were very pleased to see the LSC given a duty to promote
and why we were disappointed to see the participation target drop
because that would highlight the role that post compulsory further
education plays in opening opportunities to anyone in society.
The real problem we have got in the territory is not championing
an argument about where public resources go, but overcoming the
problem that too many people learn early and really well that
education and training are not for the likes of them. If you cannot
overcome that challenge, we cannot create the learning society
which, in the end, underpins all our political parties' concerns
for the future.
Q292 Stephen Williams: A more specific
question on the Learning and Skills Council: Sir Andrew Foster
in his report was supportive of their agenda for change,
do you share his enthusiasm?
Dr Brennan: Quite simply, agenda
for change is a helpful step forward in terms of focussing
LSC much more strongly upon a series of issues, which undoubtedly
have been problems within the system. I think it is yet to be
seen what the real effect of that programme will deliver. I think
we will want to work with LSC to try and deliver the objectives
which have been set. I do not think that in itself addresses many
of the bigger questions which Andrew Foster was seeking to address
in his report, so I do not think in itself it is a complete answer
to the issues that we now need to tackle.
Mr Flint: We would say the same
thing as we said about Foster, that agenda for change is
important, but if the LSC is looking at the challenges it has
got to confront over the next five to 10 years, when the bulk
of the people they are willing to support into learning are adults,
it is not a very well geared system just now, and that is not
an issue which is confronted or highlighted in agenda for change
at all.
Ms Waterhouse: What is useful,
coming out of agenda for change, is the restructuring of
the LSC so that it will take us towards the path of self-regulation
which Foster touches on in his report. Undoubtedly there is an
issue, and there has been an issue, of colleges, like my own,
being micro-managed by the LSC in a wholly inappropriate way.
The move towards slimming down numbers of staff at the LSC and
the move towards a greater regional focus will help us to have
a more intelligent joined-up dialogue with the Regional Development
Agencies to look at our regional economic strategies and to try
to interpret those properly at a local level without constant
and endless interference in day-to-day affairs, which is not appropriate.
I think that is helpful. The other thing which needs to be mentioned
about agenda for change as well is the focus on the business
orientated aspect of college work, which is not dissimilar to
Foster's emphasis upon employability and employee skills. That,
though, needs to have a greater coherence and linkage with what
colleges have already achieved through the Centres of Vocational
Excellence because, basically, the Action for Business or the
new accreditation or Kitemark which agenda for change puts
forward for colleges is all very well, but it needs to link up
with these national skills academies and the CoVE network as well.
Q293 Stephen Williams: Chairman,
if we have time, I would like to ask one final question on Andrew
Foster's idea for a national learning model in his report, which
he said should be published annually and should span schools,
FE and HE. Colin earlier referred to the fact that people in this
country think that education is free, and Pauline mentioned the
difficulty of getting employers to make a contribution to education
as well. Do you think this national model which would be updated
every year is a helpful suggestion and do you have any ideas as
to how it should be built up?
Mr Flint: It depends on whose
model it is and how it is drawn up. One of the things that is
not in agenda for change, and it is not really an area
in Foster either, is a proper recognition of the need for a continued
widening of participation. We still have very large numbers of
people not engaged in learning. Unless the model includes that,
then I think we will go on failing to meet the needs of many of
the population and in the end of the economy.
Ms Waterhouse: I think the National
Curriculum model has got to look coherently across both the secondary
and the FE sector so that, in actual fact, we are not proposing
to open school sixth forms in areas where, as I mentioned earlier,
the Learning and Skills Council is unable to fund the capacity
that already exists. I think, therefore, this need for coherence,
taking into account the demographics as well, is what is absolutely
essential; presently that is absent.
Q294 Mr Marsden: You have all endorsed
the idea of a dedicated FE minister, but one of the things any
such minister would have to tackle would be the continuing ignorance
and slight disdain from certain elements of the HE sector for
the amount of HE that is delivered via FE. I want to ask you very
specifically, therefore, about the question of portability and
recognition of qualifications. What can we do, what should Government
do, to improve a situation where more and more HE is being delivered
by FE colleges, but so far there has been a limited engagement
by the HE sector and particularly, perhaps, by some of the more
traditional universities?
Mr Tuckett: I did not say that
about FE because I think a lifelong learning policy is what we
need in which further education qualities have a profoundly central
role to play. It is the work that matters, the opportunities for
the people. There is no doubt over 15 years, if you look at HEFCE's
thinking around what lifelong learning networks might work to,
we shall see a blurring of the edges between further and higher
education. My view is that a tertiary system will have the same
reputational challenges you currently see between post-92 universities
and other ones.
Q295 Mr Marsden: HEFCE have not moved
very far. We had them slightly dragging, twitching and screaming
when they came to the Select Committee on it, but they have not
moved that far.
Mr Tuckett: No, they have not,
but in time we cannot imagine we will not go down that route because
the boundaries are too complex. The bigger challenge is how we
talk about schooling in Britain and FE, and it seems to me that
is the good argument for the question you were asking us about
what Andrew Foster said.
Q296 Mr Marsden: I would like Pauline's
view on that because she is at the sharp end of it.
Ms Waterhouse: I think through
the development of the Lifelong Learning networks we are beginning
to see universities taking a much closer interest in progression
pathways. I think the Lifelong Learning networks, although they
are in their infancy at the moment, are part of an answer to the
question which you have posed, Gordon. That is the first thing.
The other thing is that every university now, it appears to me,
is increasingly taking an interest in how to develop its widening
participation strategy. Certainly, in my own patch, if we take
Lancaster University, of whom we are an associate college, there
is an increasing interest in wanting to develop, through colleges
like mine, progression into higher education on the vocational
side, which it is acknowledged by traditional universities FE
colleges are better served to deliver in terms of that agenda.
I feel more optimistic than you, and I think there is an increasing
recognition by traditional universities that they can deliver
their widening participation agenda through the relationships
they have with their local FE colleges.
Q297 Mr Marsden: John, have you had
a bevy of Russell Group vice-chancellors beating on your door
saying, "mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, we really need
to do more with you, understand your qualifications and make our
portability simpler?"
Dr Brennan: If I have, I have
not noticed. I think your question is very fair. There is a lot
that can be done to articulate the progression routes, the relationship
between qualifications, to build links through Lifelong Learning
networks, and so on, between universities and FE institutions
and to be clearer. I think in the past HEFCE have tended to fudge
the issues around what proportion of HE, and what kinds of HE,
are delivered through the FE system, and so on. I think there
is room for considerably greater clarity and support in policy
terms for all of that. I think if we go down that road, then it
does begin to address many of these issues about widening access
to higher education.
Mr Flint: If I may add three very
quick points. Firstly, if foundation degrees were given to FE
to develop rather than to universities, there would be a lot more
of them. Secondly, access courses are in danger at the moment
because of the problems about couses categorised as "other
provision" and about the funding, and access has been one
of the great successes of the last 10 years. Thirdly, Andrew Foster
took some examples from the American community colleges, but I
do not think he took enough. The integration of community colleges
and universities in America, the two year and four year colleges,
is a very good example which we could easily follow. He should
be examining that as well, and so should we.
Q298 Mr Chaytor: From the FE point
of view, what are the best things about the new Schools White
Paper?
Dr Brennan: That is a very interesting
question. From the point of view of institutions who are themselves
independent, the idea of trust status, and so on, which gives
schools greater independence is obviously not one that we are
unsympathetic to. Although, I think in saying that, one has to
recognise that it can be challenging managerially to operate entirely
on your own and challenging in terms of leadership demands because
you have to be responsible for the totality of your institutional
activity and performance. We would not suggest that it is necessarily
an easy road to go down, and it is not at all clear that many
schools are thrilled about the prospect of going down that road.
Where I think we are more concerned is about the messages which
are encouraging institutional independence, about competition
in the system, about the undermining of a planned approach to
the development of provision and the changing responsibilities
in respect of school organisation. It is not clear how that is
going to work in a way which will ensure that you get planning
of 14-19 provision in a coherent sense. I think we want to see
all of those issues teased out in the debate which follows the
White Paper and addressed in the mechanisms that the Government
is going to create. I think without that then we just move into
a much more competitive environment in which the idea of collaboration,
which I think is a strong theme of what the Government is encouraging
the system to do, will go out the window because institutions
find it difficult to collaborate and compete at the same time.
Competition tends to undermine commitment to collaboration.
Q299 Mr Chaytor: It is going to make
it more difficult to build on the Tomlinson agenda, accepting
Colin's point that there was not a outcry about the totality of
Tomlinson, there was half an outcry and there is an opportunity
to look at it again in 2008. Are you saying the White Paper is
not going to progress the Tomlinson principles which the Government
has set out?
Dr Brennan: I think we would certainly
have questions about, whether it will deliver that. If it fails
to do so, then we would be deeply concerned about the movement
of the system if we start to undermine that idea of an integrated
and coherent approach to offering a range of learning opportunities
at a local level.
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