Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480-499)
MR MAURICE
SMITH, MS
PENNY SILVESTER,
MR DAVID
SHERLOCK CBE AND
MR JOHN
LANDERYOU
16 JANUARY 2006
Q480 Mr Chaytor: They do not have.
Ms Silvester: There is no requirement
that they do and they are moving towards that.
Q481 Mr Chaytor: Do we know what
proportion of the existing workforce has that initial teacher
training qualification?
Ms Silvester: I do not have those
statistics with me; I can come back to you with those if you would
like.[1]
There is a move to improving the numbers that get it and also
around improving the quality of that initial teacher training
they are receiving. Foster mentioned up-dating and the need for
secondment to go back out into the industry to keep up with those
skills and I think that is a good point.
Q482 Mr Chaytor: That is expensive.
Ms Silvester: It is expensive
and it is also finding time for those staff to be able to go back
out to do that. Mind you, in colleges now people do not have the
length of holiday that they used to have and many colleges use
that time for the lecturers to go back to get some up-dating.
Q483 Mr Chaytor: A lot of the emphasis
in the Foster report on the workforce development side is not
so much about teaching but more about management. He makes a big
play of the small proportion of senior managers who come from
outside and sets this target of training 50 new people from outside
every year. Does that chime with your experience as well or is
this something that Ofsted would have drawn attention to?
Ms Silvester: The fact that most
managers are actually from the FE sector itself?
Q484 Mr Chaytor: Maybe there is a
degree of inbreeding there. Is this fair criticism?
Ms Silvester: It is very true.
Most of the senior managers within colleges have come up through
the sector themselves. However, many lecturers in FE have actually
had experience in industry before they came in so therefore if
they have moved up through the lecturing route, through middle
management and senior management, they do actually have some industrial
background or business experience behind them. It is maybe not
as incestuous as you are saying.
Q485 Mr Chaytor: He is talking about
the senior management being pretty inward looking and he makes
references to bringing more people in from outside and adopting
the best practices of other public services.
Ms Silvester: Some colleges have
brought senior managers in from outside. It has not always been
the most successful because they do not understand the intricacies
of the business.
Q486 Mr Chaytor: This would not necessarily
be something with which Ofsted agree wholeheartedly.
Ms Silvester: What we would want
to see is good quality managers in those posts who understand
the sector and who are committed to driving up the quality within
colleges.
Q487 Mr Chaytor: On the whole question
of workforce development one of the problems is that nobody really
knows the figures because the data collection has been a bit haphazard.
What do you or any other members of the panel think about this
question of data collection of workforce development? We had an
evidence session last week where there was a bit of a tussle about
this as to who should be collecting the data. I see that Foster
suggests it could be the Higher Education Statistics Agency or
it could be the LSC; the LSC seems reluctant to carry on doing
this work. Should the body that collects the data be the body
that is responsible for driving the workforce development strategy
and, if so, which body should it be? If not, why not?
Mr Sherlock: I would have thought
it should be the LSC; the LSC is the strategic body for the sector
and I cannot see any reason why it should not do it. I think it
is in the best position to add some impetus to the collection
of the data. We have been working on the "collect once, use
many times" principle since the beginning of this cycle in
2001 and LSC data are fairly reliable and getting better. In colleges
we would rather have them more up-to-date than they are but they
are getting better and I cannot see any reason for changing now.
Mr Landeryou: I would say it should
either be the LSC or Lifelong Learning UK who you took evidence
from last week. The important thing is that we actually have a
view of the post-16 workforce as a whole. At the moment we have
the reasonably good view of the FE workforce and further education
colleges; we have almost no information about the people teaching
in adult community learning or work-based learning or learndirect.
We do need a sector-wide strategy that goes much broader than
FE if we are to truly inform our view of the labour force. There
is a lot of movement between the different components of the sector,
particularly at the teaching level.
Q488 Mr Chaytor: Your view is that
the LSC should collect the data and Lifelong Learning UK should
be responsible for the workforce development strategy.
Mr Landeryou: I think it is equally
plausible that Lifelong Learning UK could collect data although
they lack the same direct strategic levers that the LSC can bring
into play.
Chairman: Have you had discussions with
your colleagues in these other agencies and given them a bid of
a prod? Otherwise we will have to look to the Department to sort
it out. It is much better to sort it out amongst friends.
Q489 Stephen Williams: Up until the
summer of 2004 some pilots for employer training were studied
by the Institute of Fiscal Studies and have been reported on recently
in the Times Education Supplement as well. The IFS reported
that only about 10-15% of the training was effectively additionality
on top of what would have been provided anyway, so 85% of the
training would have been provided by the employer without a government
subsidy. Does that match up with your understanding of what is
going on in the sector as well?
Mr Landeryou: Probably not as
starkly so as that. I think there are probably two factors that
play into this. Whenever a new initiative is announced large companies
tend to be better placed to take advantage of it immediately,
simply because they are part of networks, they have their feelers
out and they have the staff in place to be able to exploit the
opportunity. There is also a not unnatural desire on the part
of those leading those initiatives to actually get participant
numbers up, get them through the system and get the system working.
I think as we now move into the national roll out of what will
now be Train to Gain there are two important safeguards that need
to be put into place and, indeed, are planned. One is this notion
of brokerage between employers and learning providers. Providing
that brokers are targeting to actually bring it to the market—SME's
for example that are not normally those that will take up training
as immediately as the bigger businesses—then we should start
to see less of that displacement activity that we were talking
about. It is very important that brokers are charged with that
rather than pure volume. It is also important that the way in
which Train to Gain, established locally, allows for a diversity
of learning providers in the market so that some of the smaller
private organisations who have been very good at interacting with
SMEs can actually bring those sorts of businesses to base in the
same sort of way.
Q490 Stephen Williams: Train to Gain,
as I understand it, has a £700 million budget for the next
two years which may be something my other committee, Public Accounts
Committee, will want to look at in future. The National Institute
for Adult and Continuing Education said that it might make more
sense to invest government money on adult learning in general.
Is that something you would support?
Mr Sherlock: We would certainly
support investment in adult learning and I think it is, shall
we say, counter-intuitive to see a greater and greater reliance
on adults to keep the workforce going over the next few years
and to be seeing apparent cuts in the funding of adult learning.
That does not seem to be a good match. I think our experience
of the effectiveness of ETP when it was at the pilot stage and
Train to Gain now is that actually some very good work is going
on. It seems to us that there is a complementarity between apprenticeships
which are capable of preparing people for a career or changing
a career if we were able to get in more adult apprenticeship funding,
and Train to Gain which is in fact a much more short term business
of training somebody for a particular job. I think as a range
of complementary tools they seem to us to be pretty effective.
Q491 Chairman: It is a pretty damning
report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, 85-90%. Even 50%
would be worrying. Are you shrugging off the Fiscal Studies report?
Mr Sherlock: I do not think we
are shrugging it off but it is not something that we have the
data to either agree or disagree with. However, behind that whole
question the 500 pound gorilla standing in the corner is getting
a much more worked through relationship between employers and
the state and individuals in terms of who pays for what. One of
the things that concerned us, just harking back to the whole business
of merging, was that one was beginning to see employers come forward
and take an active role in the provision of learning which certainly
we felt was something that could be developed in order to answer
that particular question, the "who pays for what" question.
I think we can pick that up again, but it remains a priority which
is the only way in the long term of tackling the kind of problem
that Mr Williams raised.
Q492 Helen Jones: We have received
quite a lot of evidence about adult training courses having their
fees increased or being chopped altogether. In your inspections
what have you picked up about what is happening in those kinds
of courses and have you given any advice to Government resulting
from that?
Mr Sherlock: It is bit early really.
We have heard a lot of anxiety about what might happen; what we
have not yet seen is any obvious impact in terms of the quality
of the programmes or, indeed, the number of people on those programmes.
Q493 Helen Jones: Do you accept there
have been fee increases in a number of areas?
Mr Sherlock: Yes.
Q494 Helen Jones: Does that not by
itself reduce adult learning opportunities for those who are not
so well off?
Mr Sherlock: I think so, or it
may do. I think, however, a plausible case has been made that
as a proportion of the costs the fees are still very low. I think
that to increase it in a random kind of way does not seem to me
to be a satisfactory way forward. We do need clearer ideas in
principle about who should pay for what, who should receive subsidies
at what level and so on and so forth. I would much rather see
the whole thing done in a proper national debate about the way
that adult learning should be funded rather than seeing it emerge
piecemeal from funding pressure.
Q495 Helen Jones: Let us have a look
at that because you referred earlier to adult and community learning.
Foster suggests that a lot of that might come under the remit
of local authorities, but there are an awful lot of other courses
which adults take which they take for the pure enjoyment of learning.
I wonder if Mr Sherlock or the Chief Inspector has a view on what
should happen to those courses. Are we really serious about having
lifelong learning or not?
Mr Sherlock: One of the most visionary
things we have seen since 1997 was the Green Paper The Learning
Age and I think it is regrettable that we have yet to see
that followed through into hard policy. I certainly believe that
there is a huge social role to play for learning for its own sake.
If you look at the quality of adult and community learning the
best of it tends to be in things like family learning where there
is a very much more direct relationship between the provision
and the local community where adult community learning providers
have taken real account of local needs and sought to address them—very
often through the agency of the local authority so there is a
democratic dimension—then the quality of the work tends
to be higher than where you see it as something which is simply
repetitive and the same group of people are doing the same sort
of programme year in year out. We would want to see that connection;
I think it is important but it does not mean to say that learning
for its own sake should be pushed out of the equation.
Mr Smith: I would agree with my
colleague. In advance of the hearing I pulled out a quotation
that said, "We want an educated workforce as well as a skilled
workforce" and although Foster concentrates his comments
on skills and employability I think there is a very strong case
that learning for learning's sake and education for education's
sake for the whole community is an important aspiration. I agree
with David that that requires a coherence between a number of
partners and stakeholders within a community and I think that
government policy in relation to the use and opening of schools
for that purpose is a worthy one. I would laud that and think
that this is something we would aspire to. I am not quite sure
how much of that is the business of the inspectorate, but it is
the business of educationalists and we should aspire towards it.
Q496 Mr Marsden: Chief Inspector,
I would concur with your overall philosophical sentiments there
and I would also go with the fact that it may not always be specifically
the role of inspectors. What I would like to press you on are
some of the areas of unintended consequences which are now being
revealed in the wake of this capping which your inspections, particularly
of FE colleges, may throw some light on. The Foyer Federation
which you may know provides training and support and accommodation
for young people who have been socially excluded have reported
countrywide and certainly in my own constituency of Blackpool
have reported to me that they are unable to get funding for Gateway
courses because the LSC has not seen this as a priority. Incidentally
I understand this is something which pre-dates the new capping
proposals. In addition, there is an area of soft skill courses
not least in terms of people who have taken an access course at
FE in the hope of going into HE. The Association of Colleges and
other bodies as well have produced statistics to suggest that
FE colleges are actually increasing in some cases three or four
times the amount on the back of these new government and LSC directives
the costs for those courses. To what extent have you in your inspection
processes seen some of the unintended consequences of these things
that fall through the gaps?
Ms Silvester: The courses for
disaffected young people who have dropped out of school are something
that FE colleges have picked up. I have looked at a lot of work
looking at young people who have fallen out of school and who
have ended up with various training providers and have ended up
in FE colleges and are doing a good job. The focus on 14-16 within
FE has actually grown dramatically as you may well be aware of
the last few years and it is certainly providing a real opportunity
for young people to re-engage who have been out of that for some
time. It is happening in pockets; if they happen to be picked
up in an area where there are relationships with FE organisations
and where there is the will from the local authority or others
to fund it. In terms of the soft skills under the new funding
arrangements, it is still quite early days to see what is happening
since the new LSC funding arrangements have been put in place.
Q497 Mr Marsden: I accept you may
not have inspected since, but there have been a whole alarming
succession of announcements which have been monitored and collated
by the Association of Colleges which is being scrapped and dropped.
I quote again from TES last week: "Two thousand IT
college places going at Brockstead College. Range of subjects
including massage and electronics disappearing at City College,
Norwich. Cuts in childcare support at City of Bristol College."
There is quite a long list now.
Ms Silvester: Obviously if the
funding is not available then colleges have to re-focus in particular
on the basic skills for adults and on Level two first time courses.
It is something we can certainly monitor and keep an eye on to
see the effect it is having.
Q498 Mr Marsden: When I looked into
this area in my constituency—particularly the Foyer area
and some of the other related issues—many of these funding
issues problems have come around section 98 funding which is all
other provision. In the past when you have done your inspection
of FE colleges do you specifically inspect for how effective colleges
are in respect of section 98 provision?
Ms Silvester: We look at the range
of curriculum that is on offer and therefore look at the needs
of the local community and whether they are being met or not.
We look across the whole piece, the local community, the needs
of learners and the courses that are available within the college
and we will comment if we feel that there are areas that are missing
from the curriculum.
Q499 Mr Marsden: Chief Inspector,
in the light of the concerns that the Committee and others have
expressed and in the light of the particular issues that I have
raised in respect of section 98, are these areas which, in your
inspections over the next 12 months and as you develop a new inspection
regime, it would be possible for you to focus particularly on?
Mr Smith: I am sure they are and
I have been very interested in your questioning. I think particularly
the shape of the new Ofsted with its wider role in terms of the
childcare role for the Commission for Social Care Inspection would
lead us in that way. Going right back to Helen Jones' first question
of the session, the Foster Report recommended—and if I may
refer to his words in paragraph 229—that inspections should
have "a strong element of area assessment and community"
(I miss a word out) "impact". I think this is exactly
what you are getting at here. These are issues, they will not
be specific to Blackpool but they will be specific to areas where
particular courses meet the needs of that community. As David
highlighted earlier it is so important that these are coherent
within a community and meet the community's needs. Helen Jones
was referring to the different types of demand you will get from
St Helens and Manchester et cetera; we do not have that breadth
of inspection methodology at the moment. We do not go out and
do a needs analysis of the community or each institutional inspection.
Of course that will add to our responsibilities and at a time
when we are constantly being bombarded with demands to constrain
our responsibilities by Foster in the same breath, so to speak,
then we do find ourselves a bit between a rock and a hard place
I am afraid.
1 Not printed. Back
| 
