Examination of Witnesses (Questions 540-559)
MS KAT
FLETCHER, MR
JOHN OFFORD,
MS JACQUI
JOHNSON AND
MR BARRY
LOVEJOY
15 MARCH 2006
Q540 Chairman: Some of us were with
Leach yesterday, at a discussion at the National Skills Forum
that Gordon chairs, and he was comparing a community college in
the United States with our FE delivery. In the United States one
of the great strengths was it was locally determined, ie you could
assist what employers or employees want and you could react locally.
Is that one of the faults, that there is too much drop down and
not enough being able to respond to local community needs?
Mr Lovejoy: Yes. It may have drifted
too far towards central rigidity. I would certainly agree in terms
of responsiveness to the needs of a community and course development.
On the other hand, where it comes down to questions of workforce
issues, I think it has gone too far in terms of local determination
and that is the balance that has to be struck here.
Q541 Chairman: Gone too far?
Mr Lovejoy: Absolutely. What we
have got is a situation where we can sit down and agree a framework
that will take us through a modernised pay structure, which Government
supports, employers are signed up for it, yet the problem we have
is that because of the localised notion of employers and their
ability to interpret those things we have got a complete mess
still just as we did eight years ago. As I said, 57% still are
not abiding by that. The problem about that is that brings in
another level of uncertainty which makes it difficult locally
because on the one hand colleges want to respond to their local
communities, which is good stuff, but, on the other hand, they
find that because they have got these other pressures there is
no constant policy on pay. We need some sort of constant there.
I would have thought given the fact that the workforce is the
major cost in a college, like other public services, that should
remain a constant. We are up to flexibility but in terms of other
aspects, particularly of flexible workforce, I think it has gone
too far.
Chairman: We have got to move on. Roberta
is going to take us through improving quality.
Q542 Dr Blackman-Woods: I am going
to concentrate on the participation of students in college governance.
This is probably a question to you, Kat. What do you think is
currently dissuading colleges from involving students more in
their governance?
Ms Fletcher: All sorts of different
things, I think. Certainly I think that over the last few years
college governors and senior management in colleges have become
far more interested and motivated by involving students as co-producers
in what they do. People are very much looking for practical solutions
to situations. We have had mandatory student governors on governing
bodies, for example, for the last six years and we think that
has worked really well and we have had lots of positive stories
and feedback from clerks, students, chairs of corporations, but
quite often we find that sometimes they feel they cannot find
a student governor. Our response to that every time, I suppose,
is "Possibly that is not surprising if you have not got the
system underneath that can generate students who are interested
and motivated in acting as learning reps on a governing body".
The line I always say to principals is that students' views do
not just appear out of thin air, they need time, space, encouragement
and organisation in order to be able to produce and create those
opinions.
Q543 Dr Blackman-Woods: Do you think
they have something to learn from universities? Do you think universities
do it better, first of all, and should colleges be learning from
them?
Ms Fletcher: There are things
to be learnt. It is very obvious that HE and FE are very different
things with very different priorities and different ideals and
values but there is an awful lot of money pumped into student
representation in higher education. We know that student learners
are represented at every level of universities and vice-chancellors
regularly communicate with student unions. It is a real part of
the culture and the cash that is invested in higher education.
We think we can learn from that in terms of FE because in schools
it is not just about cash, it is about government legislation.
School children have to be listened to individually and collectively
about their education, there is just a gap in further education.
I think we can create a new system that is reflective of what
FE is like and we have got practical solutions around that.
Mr Lovejoy: We very much support
that in very practical ways. For example, we see that support
of local student unions is essential to that because in practice
that gives support to those people who come through. Associated
with that is where you have got good student unions very often
you have a staff dedicated towards liaising with student unions.
That needs to be looked at very clearly because they make a big
difference. My daughter is a 16-year-old student and has got herself
involved via a liaison officer. That is a concrete example of
what needs to be done.
Mr Offord: What Foster managed
to put his finger on very ably, particularly because of the example
of the Dutch upper secondary system, was the connection between
self-assessment, self-improvement and self-regulation and the
role of learner voice, in fact learner data, in that. We gave
a workshop at the conference this weekend with Lynn Sedgemore
and what we were arguing was there is all sorts of data that is
required by inspection that can be triangulated with information
coming exactly from the horse's mouth and it is not just about
lockers and car parks, it is about "why am I doing key skills?"—that
is a favourite moan of lots and lots of articulate FE students
and "it has got something to do with funding" is what
they normally come up with, and they are dead right of course—right
the way to how their education is working for them. That is an
absolutely important source of data for a board and a senior management
team looking to improve the provision that it is making through
its local pilots. You are not going to get it adequately unless
you have a system of student representation which starts at course
level and then moves up and the governor position is the formalised
bit at the top.
Q544 Chairman: Is there a problem
with the age range? When I go to FE and see students they tend
not to reflect the age range that you get in FE.
Ms Fletcher: I do not think that
is our experience. We conducted a survey of student representation
and how representative it is of its membership and we found that
good student unions exist in a variety of institutions from sixth-form
colleges right the way through to general FE colleges and the
diversity reflects the colleges providing that there is senior
management buy-in and there is some dedicated professional staff
support that can take on that challenge of co-ordinating representation
from across courses and age ranges from the college.
Mr Offord: If you have two board
reps and start to take this seriously you find that some sort
of organic change starts to take over. More and more FE colleges
are multi-campus operations and if you have two student governors
you are more liable to find that one of them will be a more mature
student because they are on a different campus and there is a
different constituency that elects them.
Ms Fletcher: For me it is about
how the senior management view a student union. If they view it
as something that 16-year-old A-level students do then that is
what it will become. If they view it as an amateur social club
that organises discos and maybe does something about Red Nose
Day that is what it will become, whereas if you fund it, train
it, give it professional support to become the voice of the learner
in the college that is what happens and that is what the best
corporations do and they are the best student unions with the
best representation.
Q545 Chairman: Is that your experience,
Jacqui?
Ms Johnson: I am from a medium-sized
general FE college. I have listened with some interest and I think
another issue is that our students are quite focused for a short
time and often have to work. It is quite hard. We are pressuring
them to do their college work and they doing paid work as well,
so getting the time and commitment from students, even with some
professional help—I am sure we could better—is not
always very easy. They may be with us for two years and want to
go on, hard focused. In universities they have sabbaticals sometimes,
there are more opportunities for them, but it is harder in FE
colleges.
Q546 Dr Blackman-Woods: For the purposes
of this discussion we should perhaps set aside those NUS full-time
officers. What I am trying to get at is the general issue of participation.
Going back to universities, you are right to say that there is
a very formal structure, that students have a key role to play
in quality assurance systems, for example, but I would not like
us to underestimate the difficulties of that, I still think that
colleges and universities struggle to get the level of participation
in general issues of governance at whatever level. I am coming
back to the idea of your development unit. Do you think that will
help to counter some of those difficulties? Although I want your
views, it is not only about offering places on committees, is
it, because unless students are clear about the degree of influence
they have you are not going to get the culture changed. I want
to talk a bit more about what can bring the culture change about.
Ms Fletcher: I will say something
very briefly and then I will hand over to John, if that is okay,
on just one very little thing around students being able to be
involved and finding the time. A key issue for us is around the
Educational Maintenance Allowance. We think that has been a fantastic
initiative and has encouraged more people to stay in education
but currently there are colleges where if you are involved in
student representation you lose your Educational Maintenance Allowance.
For example, we held an FE lobby two weeks ago and if you came
to that you would lose your Educational Maintenance Allowance.
We had a student who lost their Educational Maintenance Allowance
because they were the student governor and they attended the governing
board.
Q547 Chairman: Who took it away?
Ms Fletcher: The LEA.
Q548 Dr Blackman-Woods: Because there
would be an attendance requirement presumably.
Ms Fletcher: They would not be
marked, so therefore they lost their EMA. We think that there
should be some formalised guidance that says if you are involved
in student representation and acting in that role you should not
lose your Educational Maintenance Allowance. I appreciate there
is a balance to be struck but I think that is something that should
be taken on. It is a tiny change but one that would impact massively
upon individual members and collective members. In terms of how
you get people involved, for us it is all very much about our
course rep structures and making sure that you have representation
at every level and different modes of representation at every
level in the college. John, do you want to expand on that?
Mr Offord: In the past we have
often been accused of trying to imprint an HE student union model
on FE but we have never tried to do that because it would be woefully
inappropriate and probably would not work except in a handful
of colleges. We do see the heart of this as being course reps.
That is the face-to-face where the learning takes place and that
is where you want to articulate your concerns about learning.
It does not take a lot to imagine what kinds of carrots and sticks
would be good news here. Colleges can no longer issue their own
certificates, that was taken away a long time ago, but they can
say that X, Y and Z student made a significant contribution to
quality assurance. That is very useful in the labour market, it
is very useful for progression, it is very useful for entry into
HE. It is also of value in and of itself—I do not want to
sound pretentious—because it is a citizenship activity as
well.
Q549 Chairman: Can we push on the
citizenship aspect because we are also interested in citizenship.
It does seem a critical time in FE, the broad student population
you get, where citizenship is very important in a broader sense,
not just in the governing of the college.
Mr Offord: Kat will probably want
to say something on this as well. The way we are trying to approach
this is giving equal weight to the quality improvement part of
it and the citizenship opportunity represented here. We are also
conscious of the fact that some people are more ready to come
forward for those citizenship opportunities than others. One of
the things we would like to see is some more targeted support
for black and minority ethnic students inside those representative
structures, we think it needs specific targeting. What we would
not want to do is make that at board level because you cannot
be too specific about governing body members. That has been a
large part of our work on this. We did try that first off with
the DfES and found that all the citizenship pot was going to LSDA
and LSDA was distributing it in a way that we could not get involved
in, although some enterprising student unions have. At City College
Norwich they managed to get hold of £6,000 worth of citizenship
funding and promptly spent it on course rep training for their
own and six other colleges. With very modest amounts of money
student unions will take off and do this and will spread it in
a way that has got citizenship as its bedrock amongst other learners
in other institutions.
Ms Fletcher: Citizenship is all
about initiating or resisting change in colleges. There are lots
of anecdotes but I know I was interested in the price of products
in my college canteen. You will hear that quite a lot from FE
students, that they got involved because of that. That was why
I got involved, because the price of chips was extortionate. What
I did was get involved with the student union and—
Q550 Chairman: Strike the word "chips"
out of the record and put "green vegetables".
Ms Fletcher: Through that I got
involved with the student union and became a course rep and through
the student union I got involved with the governing body. That
experience has changed my life around. What we do is bring people
into that organisation, give them the time, space and encouragement
to debate and decide together. Citizenship is all about us collectively
debating and promoting our values and trying to move things on.
That is what student unions do so brilliantly in HE and we know
that they can do it in FE as well just in a different way. That
has got to fit into the wider agenda about participation.
Chairman: Your autobiography could be
called Hello, Mr Chips! Roberta, your last question because
we are getting a bit tight on time.
Q551 Dr Blackman-Woods: It was quite
interesting that you brought up the EMA issue because it is a
block to FE. Do you think as a Committee we need to look at how
EMA is working on the ground? You have brought up one dimension
of it here which is quite interesting that I suspect none of us
had thought about, but generally.
Mr Offord: I think there is a
need for research about it. There is a large range of entitlement
for EMAs that are obviously different throughout the country because
30 grand in Newcastle is different from 30 grand in London as
a salary for a parent. I think it is how EMAs are perceived by
some families who are getting them. In poorer families EMAs are
perceived as being part of the dole, they are not perceived as
something specific for education. There is a lot that needs to
be analysed about motivation both within the family and for an
individual learner and I do not see anybody doing that. It would
be very useful to do that, particularly given that LSDA has done
very useful work through Brookes University and Joe Harkins' research
on the 14-16 increased flexibility programme. I would like to
see that kind of in-depth sociological analysis happening on how
families perceive EMAs and whether that could lead to improvements
in targeting and the level of the EMA.
Chairman: We are running into the time
for the next section that we must cover. I want Stephen to lead
us through it.
Q552 Stephen Williams: A quick question
on the structure of FE. One of my other committees in this place
is the Public Accounts Committee. We did an inquiry looking at
the Learning and Skills Council and the National Audit Office
report and in that report there was an extraordinary pictogram
of the different structures and organisations involved in the
whole of FE and the final report that we produced said there were
about 500 organisations involved in the delivery of FE. Do you
think there is scope for rationalisation? I assume that to be
an easy question!
Mr Lovejoy: Quite clearly we can
do nothing but agree on the amazing jigsaws that exist that sometimes
do not fit in with one another. Such developments like the new
Quality Improvement Agency we are hoping will assist in the process
of having some sort of rationalisation in bringing the numerous
institutions associated and involved in quality down to a rational
level and maybe we can have some sort of bottom line idea about
what quality is. We are hoping that will assist there. Similarly,
the inspectorate and the merging of the two, as long as we do
not throw out the baby with the bathwater so that ALI's strengths
are not lost in the merger, I think that is vital. That is the
situation with all of these things. As long as these are not reduced
and we will not lose some of those key functions, that is fine.
Obviously we did have an issue in terms of the LSC was established
and all of a sudden we hit a crisis and there was an enormous
amount of redundancies announced, et cetera. We are worried how
well thought out they are. Probably some sort of mapping exercise
needs to be done and thought out as to what are the key functions
to be pursued. We are up for that. I think Foster highlighted
that and that is something we would certainly be on board for.
Mr Offord: We were very keen on
Foster's idea of a national learning model for a variety of reasons.
There are questions about FE and whether it is a national system
that is locally provided or it is a national system that is nationally
funded. I know those two terms are similar but there is a wealth
of difference between them. One of the things that we are hoping
will happen is that a national learning model will take account
of the fact that education is not just a market, it is an ecology
as well, and a charge in one part of it impacts on a change somewhere
else. This has to be understood if collaboration on 14-19 is going
to work. The national learning model should reality test itself
against some benchmarks. We are going to have to say this because
it is echoing what Jacqui said: some policies are not sensible
and joined-up thinking. George Monoux College is a very successful
sixth-form college in North London. It has got £3.5 million
worth of new build that you can see from one side of the building
and you will also see a building site for a new sixth form for
a North London school from the other side. A national learning
plan there with more coherence about who is saying what and who
provides what to whom would be absolutely a boon to 14-19 education.
Ms Johnson: Are we going to talk
about 14-16 within the 14-19 because I would like to say something
on that now if it would be appropriate?
Q553 Chairman: Feel free.
Ms Johnson: I think this is an
issue that would benefit from a bit of thinking through. As a
college, we have been very successful at 14-16 but it is year-on-year
funding. We do not know whether we are going to be able to continue
with this. We have trained staff, we have gone into new buildings,
we have moved into shortage areas like construction, hairdressing,
which is very popular, and we have got links with 13 local schools
including two pupil referral units. Those are the potential NEETS
(Not in Employment Education or Training), are they not, the youngsters
who are not going to stay in education, and yet there is no stable
planning. We would like 14-19 yearly in a college so that you
could say, "Staff, we know that for at least three years
we are going to have stable funding". In fact, any stable
funding for three years would be absolutely excellent, but the
14-16-year-olds seem to be a particular area of concern as I understand
that the money is now going to go back into schools which can
choose or not to buy into the kinds of opportunities we are offering,
so yet again we could have a short term muddle, which would be
a pity.
Stephen Williams: I know that the City
of Bristol College teaches quite a few GCSE courses in my constituency
to people whom the school system has failed but hopefully they
are going to achieve those in the college centre.
Q554 Jeff Ennis: On this particular
point I would like to ask Jacqui if the over-achievement of student
numbers with the LSC formula-funded approach is exacerbating this
situation for certain colleges. I know Barnsley College had a
problem with that last year.
Ms Johnson: I do not know enough
detail to answer that usefully, I am afraid.
Q555 Jeff Ennis: Have you got anything
on that, Barry? Colleges have to agree the number of sixth-form
students they are going to take with the LSC at the beginning
of the year.
Ms Johnson: I could say something
about that. That happens to us in that we could grow if we had
the accommodation, if the LSC agreed that we could grow. Each
year you are having a big discussion with the LSC as to whether
or not you are going to be capped. With things like the electrical
installation I mentioned earlier, there was some cap on the student
numbers we could take, and that can impact on areas where you
say, "Surely they will teach them. There is nowhere else
for these youngsters to go", but if we have not got the buildings
and we have not got the funding we cannot pay for the staff.
Q556 Stephen Williams: I want to
put a question to Kat or John about the potential for a two-tier
system within FE between sixth-form colleges which primarily deliver
A-levels and general FE colleges which are perceived as doing
all sorts of things although, conversely again, referring to Bristol,
probably the biggest deliverer of A-levels in the city of Bristol
is the City of Bristol College which would be seen as a general
FE college. Do you think there needs to be badging of different
colleges or would that risk them not having parity of esteem?
Ms Fletcher: You are absolutely
right. We do forget that the vast majority of A-levels across
the country are conducted in FE, are they not, not in school sixth
forms, and that general FE colleges cover a wide diversity of
people. Some of that is about national brand and national reputation.
There has been a real weakness there, and I think that is for
a variety of reasons. I think it is predominantly around the fact
that, sadly, most of the people who have positions of responsibility
in the Civil Service or in governments have not been to a further
education college and I guess their children do not go to a further
education college and therefore there is a confusion about what
it is and what it does. Often there is this focus on it being
about adults who come back and do these courses et cetera and
not what it actually does, and I think there is a lot to be done
around the brand of FE. There is potential around a two-tier system
and that is one of the things that we have been quite concerned
about in terms of funding and reputation.
Mr Offord: A lot of the arguments
are very well rehearsed, are they not, about what you need to
get into a school sixth form or a sixth-form college? It is always
your five good GCSEs and the NUS has a particular problem with
five good GCSEs and the ditching of Tomlinson. It is colleges
like Bristol that are big enough and are in a sense the monopoly
provider that can offer the flexibility to bring back in what
was ditched, unfortunately, from Tomlinson, particularly the "stage
not age" approach. You can develop and build a course, and
it is not only happening at Bristol. There are very interesting
examples going on with the new UCAD diploma at Newham College,
which we have on our website, showing that you can bring back
what was lost. There is a huge lack in the curriculum for something
like this, which a general education diploma post-16 for that
46% that do not get the five good GCSEs. You can have that kind
of provision within a general FE college. It can be the straight
down the line academic kind and it can also be the kind for those
young people who have not got the five good GCSEs but need a mix
of general and specialist education to move on and progress.
Q557 Chairman: But, John, is there
not a problem? I know my own FE college, Huddersfield Technical
College, has two pre-eminent sixth-form colleges on the same hill
and they definitely say, "We do not see it as a two-tier
system. We see ourselves as focusing on the vocational sector.
We know the people up the hill can do A-levels better than we
do. We know the University of Huddersfield do HE better than we
do. We have got a very tight mission on what we want to do."
Surely that is okay, is it not?
Mr Offord: Yes, it is. That is
the George Monoux example, and if I can continue about that one,
they have done a deal with Waltham Forest College down the road
that Waltham College would not do A-level work any more. They
would handle the specialist education and that works fine. What
does not help is that a school sixth form is going to start up
in competition to that already established useful provision.
Ms Fletcher: It is not about how
the colleges see each other. I think we recognise that vocational
education is a valid and very useful part of what we do. One of
the things that we were so pleased about around the Tomlinson
proposals was that they would take away that distinction between
academic and vocational and level out the playing field and say,
"These things are equally valid, equally important to what
we do. They have very different skill sets, there are different
teaching methods, there are different ways of developing people
but they are just as equal as each other". That would have
broken down some of that traditional elitism around academia and
that is one of the things we were so pleased about around Tomlinson,
that it would challenge that idea.
Ms Johnson: I have to come in
on this one. A-levels are not taught better in schools than in
FE colleges. There is a lot of evidence that the value that is
added to students in FE colleges is better than in most schools.
The other thing I wanted to pick up on was, do you remember Curriculum
2000 when students were going to be able to do some vocational
courses and A-levels? In my college we do that. Students regularly,
because they have not necessarily yet decided exactly what they
want to do at 18, do a vocational course like a national certificate
with one or two AS-levels and take them through to A2. Once you
separate A-levels from vocational courses you deny all those students
those opportunities. Real parity of esteem comes, I think, with
teachers who can say, "Hang on: I teach vocational, I teach
A-level". I personally teach vocational courses and A-levels,
and I know that those students are of the same standard and they
can go on to higher education. I will absolutely stick up for
all those students and say they are just as good as those students
who say, "I just want to do four AS's and four A-levels".
They have different skills but the economy and employers need
them just as much, sometimes even more.
Q558 Stephen Williams: I will come
back a little bit to the LSC bureaucracy. They have said to us
in the past that they might reduce their annual data collection
of profession. Other people have said that would be a mistake,
and in fact I noticed, John Offord, in your introductory remarks
that you lead a skills audit of FE, so do you think it would be
a mistake if the LSC were to cease an annual collection of data
about the FE workforce?
Mr Lovejoy: It is not a question
of who does it as long as it is done, and it needs to be done
by a single agency. It needs to be quite clear. We have not got
enough detailed information about workforce in FE. It is unbelievable.
I know that Foster was gobsmacked, if I can use that term, in
terms of where we were on that. We think that it is essential
that if institutions are getting public money they should be required
to give particular information about how they use it. That includes
workplace development and workforce data. It is also an essential
tool for human resource planning and we do not see any contradiction
there. We have had what we feel were some quite productive discussions
with the Minister over this and we are hoping that at last there
is some movement around that and that in fact there will be data
collected but, more importantly, that the data is produced in
a way that is useful. I can understand colleges every year churn
this stuff out but it is how that is produced and how that is
accessible to everyone that is vital.
Q559 Stephen Williams: That data
may educate a workforce development strategy. Do you think the
DfES is doing enough to build a workforce development strategy?
Mr Lovejoy: To date, no, but Foster
has highlighted this and we are hoping that the FE White Paper
brings this up. There is an enormous need. What we are hoping
for is that this is put into reality. Some time ago you may remember
that the teaching pay initiative was established, in 2001. That
was successful in the sense that it delivered things on the ground.
It was successful because we involved all the stakeholders—AoC,
DfES and the trade unions. What we are calling for is a similar
mechanism to devise that workforce strategy. We should be involved
in that and that can be rolled out. One caveat, of course,
on all that is that it will not work unless it is funded and inevitably
that has to be addressed. At the moment lecturers are not able
to access adequate time in order to do even initial teacher training
once they are on the job. We pick that up consistently through
the surveys we do, and that is essential.
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