Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
DEPARTMENT FOR
EDUCATION AND
SKILLS AND
THE LEARNING
AND SKILLS
COUNCIL
24 OCTOBER 2005
Q60 Stephen Williams: It might be
helpful, before we write our final Report, if perhaps you gave
the Committee a note on the reductions in headcount to make sure
that like for like is being compared here. It is certainly confusing
at the moment.
Mr Haysom: Yes, we shall do that.[3]
Q61 Stephen Williams: What are the total
redundancy costs incurred by the Learning and Skills Council so
far and what is the projection of costs in your further round
of reductions?
Mr Haysom: I apologise, but I
do not have the number from the previous exercise. That was an
exercise which started before I joined, but I can provide that
information. Where we are in terms of the exercise at the moment
is that we have not actually announced the detail of that. What
we did on 16 September was to describe a new way of working, a
new model if you like, for the Learning and Skills Council and
then to launch a period of discussion on that before we got to
any final detail. It is obviously only at that detailed point
that we can then talk about what that means for individuals, what
it means by location and what it means in terms of total cost.
We are planning to make that announcement, as you may well know,
on 31 October and it would not be helpful for me to get into that
in advance of sharing it with staff at this stage.[4]
Q62 Stephen Williams: According to the
figure I have been given your organisation spent £246 million
on administration in 2003-04, the latest year for which figures
are available. You referred to a £40 million projected saving
from what you are about to do. Do you think the £200 million
on central administration gives value for money for the post-16
sector which is effectively duplicating what colleges, schools
and sixth forms do in their own governance?
Mr Haysom: If I may say so, there
are two separate questions there. I do not think that what we
do is to duplicate what our colleges and schools do. I really
do not think that is what we do and if that were what we did,
then we should not exist at all. Our job is very clearly to work
with all of the organisations we talked about before, particularly
with employers, to understand what skills needs are and then to
work across a whole area, to plan provision across that whole
area, not just on an individual institutional basis but across
the whole area. That should be the value that we add. Do I think
the £200 million is value? I think that if you look at the
progress which has been achieved over the life of the Learning
and Skills Council, it is actually very encouraging and that is
despite the fact that I do not think we have actually been quite
in the organisational shape we need to be, hence the reorganisation
talked about. If you look at all the indicators in terms of participation,
success rates and so on and so on, which I am sure you are all
very familiar with, then you would say that is encouraging.
Q63 Stephen Williams: May I move
on to some strategic questions? This Report has "strategic
leadership" in its title. On page 41 in paragraphs 2.44 and
2.45 it effectively refers to what I suspect is a Government objective
to expand choice. So you could have a sixth form, sixth form college,
further education college and now, particularly after this morning's
White Paper, a rollout of academies as well. Do you think, setting
aside education for the time being, purely from a value for money
perspective, that if you have this plethora of choices in some
urban areas such as the City of Bristol, which I represent, where
we have all of these, that is delivering taxpayers' money wisely?
Sir David Normington: It depends.
We do not just expand provision willy-nilly; we are looking to
see what the needs in the local area are, what the demand is,
what the range of provision is that we need. As we expand 16 to
19 provision, we have to take into account the fact that actually
we need a wider range of vocational provision for instance and
in some areas that is there and in some it is not. It would be
wrong to say that we just let things expand. Having said that,
some choice of institution is desirable. Different kinds of institutions
provide different kinds of options; further education colleges
often provide a very different kind of learning from sixth form
colleges or a school sixth form. It is right that there should
be more choice for learners.
Q64 Stephen Williams: Do you think
though, if the trend in the figures I have seen is right and that
more and more 16-year-olds are actually choosing to study in a
college rather than stay on at school, this expansion of choice,
which actually seems to be increasing the number of sixth forms,
is following what 16-year-olds actually want, whether they are
in deprived areas or other areas?
Sir David Normington: It is very
variable. In quite a lot of places there is not much choice in
fact, so it rather depends. There has been a trend over quite
a number of years for 16-year-olds to go into further education,
both to do A-levels and also to do vocational courses. It is very
patchy around the country and it depends what happened in previous
school reorganisations to school sixth forms. School sixth forms
in inner London for instance virtually disappeared 20 years ago
and therefore further education provision is very important. It
is very variable. It is important that there is a choice, a choice
of course and a choice of style of learning.
Q65 Stephen Williams: Does the Learning
and Skills Council have a preferred delivery model between colleges
and sixth forms? If you could start from scratch would you do
one rather than the other?
Mr Haysom: We cannot, can we?
That is the reality of that, so in a sense I am not sure what
the value of speculating on that would be. What we have to do
is deal with the reality we find on the ground in different parts
of the country. As David says, it is very variable. What we try
to do is to work with all providers there to get to provision
for the learner. It is with the learner at the heart of this and
with the employer at the heart of this that we try to come at
this.
Q66 Stephen Williams: I was not being
purely speculative. The reason I asked the question was that there
was a funding gap between sixth forms and colleges. I asked whether
you had a preferred model because at the moment the funding certainly
gives preference to schools, traditional school sixth forms, whereas
the choice for 16-year-olds, where they have a choice, as they
will in a large urban area, appears to be to go to college. So
there is a mismatch there. The question is directed at both of
you.
Sir David Normington: Yes, there
is certainly a difference in the way we fund; yes, there is a
funding gap between support for students in school sixth forms
and in further education which the Government are committed to
narrowing. We have not been doing that very fast, but that is
still the aim.
Mr Haysom: That is the direction
of travel. It sounds as though I am plugging Agenda for Change
all the time but one of the things we describe in there is a methodology
which we think would be helpful in that.
Q67 Kitty Ussher: I think this is
a question for Sir David in that the funding for the LSC ultimately
comes from you. Why do school sixth forms receive more cash per
pupil than colleges to do the same subjects?
Sir David Normington: It is largely
an historic issue. The Government are committed to narrowing that
gap. Traditionally people at school are funded at a higher level
than in further education colleges. It is just something we have
inherited and which we are trying to deal with. It is taking quite
some time to do that because you do not want to destabilise the
system by taking money away from schools. We have had problems
with school funding and therefore we both have to stabilise school
funding as well as narrow the gap with further education funding
and that will take some considerable time.
Q68 Kitty Ussher: Given that you
can see the principle, are you not frustrated with the amount
of time it has taken? Why has it taken so long?
Sir David Normington: The Government
would like it to go a bit faster and is committed to trying to
narrow the gap. It is quite difficult to say that it should be
exactly the same; it depends on the nature of the provision, the
nature of the institution. We all agree that gap needs to be narrowed.
It is very difficult; I deal with this all the time and so does
Mark Haysom. It is very difficult to explain to colleges why there
is that gap.
Q69 Kitty Ussher: You said the Government
would like the gap to be narrowed more quickly. Surely the tool
is at the Government's disposal to make it be narrowed more quickly.
Sir David Normington: It is, but
it is also a question of resources. Unless you are going to take
school funding down, then you are going to have to bring further
education funding up, if you see what I mean. That means that
it cannot all be done at once without putting extra resource in.
There has been extra resource going in but it has not narrowed
the gap very much yet.
Q70 Kitty Ussher: Would it be fairer
to say that perhaps your Department is frustrated at the length
of time you do not have resources from other parts of Government?
Sir David Normington: No, you
must not divide me from other parts of Government; we are all
in this together. I am a little frustrated by it and undoubtedly
the need to provide minimum funding guarantees for schools has
meant that it has not been possible to make faster progress.
Q71 Kitty Ussher: However, you did
say in an answer to my colleague to my right that a different
funding stream was available for academies, largely because they
were addressing kids in deprived areas. Would you not accept that
it is often the less well off kids who end up going to college
as opposed to school sixth forms? Surely the same principle should
apply in narrowing that gap?
Sir David Normington: Yes, that
is often the case. It varies from area to area according to what
provisions are available, but it is certainly the case that children
from poorer families often go to further education colleges rather
than school sixth forms. We have to do two things about that:
one is to provide more school sixth forms and encourage more of
those children to go into school sixth forms if they are able
to do it. That is important. I certainly agree that we should
try to narrow the gap further on further education funding. On
academies, they are not funded differently from the rest of the
school system. Obviously they are generally new schools, so they
get a great injection of capital at the front because we are building
new buildings. Then they are funded according to the local formula,
they are not given special treatment.
Q72 Kitty Ussher: On a slightly separate
but related point, I want to ask Mr Haysom whether, when considering
capital expenditure on colleges, which I understand you partly
fund at least, you take account of capital expenditure on schools
under the Building Schools for the Future programme. I am thinking
in particular of an example in my constituency of Burnley, where
we are very lucky to have five new secondary schools coming and
a new school sixth form centre under the Building Schools for
the Future programme which is great. However, Burnley College
feels that it will be at a competitive disadvantage and is desperate
to upgrade its own building in order to compete with the new sixth
form. Will you look favourably on situations like that when you
are allocating your own funding?
Mr Haysom: I hope what we do is
work closely with all the colleges which are in that situation
where they want to improve their estate. I know that we are doing
that with Burnley, as you are probably aware. We try to work with
them to create the right kind of environment for learners and
for employers. It is one of the things, since I have been in the
organisation, on which I have probably been banging the drum rather
more than anything else: trying to make sure that the buildings
our learners occupy and that our employers use are appropriate
for the 21st Century rather than sometimes for the 19th Century.
We are trying to invest very quickly into improving the estate.
One of the earlier questions was: what would a learner notice
if the Learning and Skills Council had not existed? I think one
of the big things in lots of parts of the country is that they
may very well still be in quite poor accommodation. There has
been a huge, huge push in terms of development of the estate and
that is something we should be very proud of. Do we respond specifically
to a competitive threat situation? What we try to do is to make
sure that we are working with all the people there to plan provision
sensibly and that kind of implication that it is naked competition
is not particularly helpful. Do we join up with Building Schools
for the Future? That is what we try to do very much and we try
to get alignment with what is going on between LEAs and ourselves
and try to bring together some of the plans. There are some quite
innovative things around the country of projects working together.
It is complex stuff, for governance reasons, as you will probably
appreciate and it is not easy; there are all sorts of planning
difficulties that you have to go through, but there are some examples
of the two coming together.
Q73 Kitty Ussher: Do you think it
is right that capital funding for sixth forms paid for under Building
Schools for the Future is 100% funded by central government whereas
colleges in the same area are not 100% funded by you?
Mr Haysom: The circumstances are
different are they not? A lot of our colleges have the opportunity
of running their business in a different way. They have their
assets which they can make work for them, they can dispose of
assets, build new buildings, they can do all sorts of different
things. I am conscious of the fact that in some circumstances
that is not the situation, but they do have greater freedom and
they are able to control their own destiny in a different way.
Where they are not, where they are very constrained in terms of
their assets, in terms of the financial health of their college,
then we do work very hard with them just to see how far we can
push the capital to get them into the accommodation they need.
Q74 Helen Goodman: Could you tell
us whether you think the strategic area reviews were good value
for money?
Mr Haysom: I think they were essential
in terms of getting the Learning and Skills Council under way.
I arrived after this had been going on for a couple of years and
I think the way that they had made sure that local learning and
skills councils worked in close partnership with all the myriad
of local organisations and partners they needed, the way the local
learning and skills councils gathered the data they needed to
be able to make assessments of their area, would all have been
much more difficult to achieve if it had not been for the strategic
area review process. I cannot answer in every circumstance whether
we think we got individual value out of that because inevitably
some are going to be less effective than others.
Q75 Helen Goodman: My understanding
is that they were published in March 2005. Is that correct?
Mr Haysom: Yes, though there were
different timescales associated with that. They were finished
at that point, though a whole raft of things had happened up until
that point. The really important thing with the strategic area
review process and the important thing that we did a couple of
years ago was to say that it was not a one-off exercise, it could
not be a one-off exercise. You cannot identify all the problems,
fix all the problems and move on. I wish that life were that simple.
What we tried to do was to take all of that learning, all of that
process and make it part of our business each year. The strategic
area review is now embedded in the business cycle to which I referred
earlier.
Q76 Helen Goodman: I know from the
college in my constituency, which is Bishop Auckland College,
that there was a degree of surprise at the funding allocations
which came two months later in May. If the strategic area review
had been a participative process, why should the colleges—and
I do not think this was unique to my constituency—have been
surprised by the funding allocations which came two months later?
Mr Haysom: Those are two separate
issues and funding allocation has never been part of the strategic
area review. The strategic area review is very much about identifying
local need and then working with partners to try to fulfil that
need. The funding allocation system is different. There is no
doubt at all that the funding allocation this year was later than
we would have wished it to have been. It goes back to my earlier
response that we do understand that colleges are running businesses
and they need to know earlier. It was not unfortunately possible
for us to announce the allocations earlier than that.
Q77 Helen Goodman: I thought the
allocations were made on the basis of the strategic area review
and obviously that is wrong.
Mr Haysom: Yes.
Q78 Helen Goodman: How were they
made? Were they made on the basis of the inspections of the college?
Was it that the best colleges received the most money or were
other criteria used in the allocations?
Mr Haysom: There is a mass of
criteria and the starting point each year is to look at the performance
of the college in prior years. You have to understand how many
students they have doing what particular kind of provision and
then you discuss how well that provision has been provided, that
is the quality of what is done. You talk about the growth rates
in the area, the demographic trends in the area. You talk about
what employers want in the area in specific provision, you talk
about things which have emerged at the strategic area review which
might say more construction ability is needed in this area and
less hairdressing in that area. A whole range of things goes into
that mix and into that discussion.
Q79 Helen Goodman: Looking at the
document which was published on Friday, there is a timetable right
at the very back of it and this suggests that even though you
produce this document now, individual providers will not get their
allocations until May 2006. In other words, the timetable is not
being pulled forward at all.
Mr Haysom: No, it is being pulled
forward. What they now know very clearly is the priorities, they
know the direction of travel and they know a lot of the funding
decisions, policies in advance. What we will do, as of the start
of the new year, is start that detailed discussion we talked about
earlier. They will get indicative allocations. The final, final,
final allocations will be in May, but they will know well ahead
of that.
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