Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
DEPARTMENT FOR
EDUCATION AND
SKILLS AND
THE LEARNING
AND SKILLS
COUNCIL
24 OCTOBER 2005
Q120 Mr Bacon: What were the circumstances
which meant that it was so late they did not get enough notice?
Mr Haysom: What we were trying
to do very much at that time was to balance the budget, to make
sure that we were making that money work as hard as it possibly
could for us. We were looking for ways in which we can reduce
the impact on the sector. We were working through a whole complex
series of issues there and one of the proposals that we had was
to say "Okay, we can do this thing to get a one-off benefit
in this particular year".
Q121 Mr Bacon: But it leaves the
colleges having less money.
Mr Haysom: No, it did not; it
led to a timing issue at one particular point in the year.
Q122 Mr Bacon: Some colleges had
to borrow money to cover the difference. That is what it says
in paragraph 2.14. May I just read this out? It says ". .
. some colleges may experience cash flow problems in the first
quarter of 2005 and may even have to borrow money to see them
through. Colleges we visited and the Association of Colleges were
concerned that colleges had only learned of this major change
just before the start of the 2004-05 academic year.
Mr Haysom: Yes and it was late.
We worked through a complex series of measures and it was late.
Q123 Mr Bacon: My question was: why
was it late? They do need to know.
Mr Haysom: It was late in terms
of the decision being taken that we could actually proceed on
that basis.
Q124 Mr Bacon: You told them that
they could only have this much money and they had to cope with
it somehow basically.
Mr Haysom: That is the nature
of life, is it not? We know that we have a finite resource, we
are doing our best to make that resource stretch as far as possible.
This was one way we could do it and we had to go through a process
to make sure that was a legitimate way of doing it. We decided
it was and it was late in the day; we would have preferred to
have done it early. We had to help four colleges during the year
as a consequence of that decision; only four. We lent them money
on a short-term basis to do that.
Q125 Mr Bacon: You would hope in
future to be able to give colleges much better notice.
Mr Haysom: That is a separate
situation which we talked about earlier and it is absolutely the
intention to give colleges very early notification of their allocations.
Q126 Mr Bacon: May I ask you to turn
to figure 7, which is on page 13? It refers to self-assessment
on the right-hand side. Could you say how many colleges are capable
of starting to develop self-assessment now?
Mr Haysom: It is fair to say that
our college section is on a big journey on this; all colleges
are expected to go through a self-assessment approach. We are
working with colleges and trying to design pilots to see how far
we can go with peer review, which is part of this whole process.
Q127 Mr Bacon: Would you say there
are any colleges which are able to do it now?
Mr Haysom: Yes, I guess there
would be; we have many excellent colleges.
Q128 Mr Bacon: What proportion would
you say are able to do it now?
Mr Haysom: I could not hazard
a guess on that.
Q129 Mr Bacon: How long do you think
it will take?
Sir David Normington: We will
know more about this. Ofsted are shifting their inspection regime
to include looking at the self-assessment capability of colleges;
they are just starting that this year. That will give us better
information. Up until now they have had a much more in depth inspection.
Q130 Mr Bacon: How long do you think
it will take to get everybody up to the level where they could
do it?
Mr Haysom: I think we are talking
some years to get to that point.
Q131 Mr Williams: This discussion
is all against a background of an ever-widening productivity gap
between us and the United States and some of our colleague countries
in the EU. When you look at figure 21 on page 31, what you are
actually looking at is an absolute mess, is it not? I emphasise
that it is not of your making and I put this question to Mr Haysom.
Would you have taken the job if you had seen that diagram before
you started?
Mr Haysom: Well I did.
Q132 Mr Williams: You did?
Mr Haysom: Yes, I did and I knew
just how complex this was. Part of the job of the Learning and
Skills Council is to try to make sense of it.
Q133 Mr Williams: It is not "making
sense" of it. What are you doing at the moment? Are you just
managing chaos, which is what you have, or are you effectively
pursuing a policy of rationalisation? I do not see much evidence
so far, but in fairness, you have only been there a couple of
years. I am not blaming you for the mess which exists. I do not
see much clear evidence that we are going to get rationalisation,
particularly when I hear what comes from the Department.
Mr Haysom: I am not sure that
it is within my gift to rationalise this because these bodies
do not actually report to us.
Q134 Mr Williams: If you do not have
any say, if you are stuck with the system they have landed you
with and you do not have a say in how it is revised, then you
are wasting your time, are you not?
Mr Haysom: Forgive me, but I did
not say that I did not have a say: I said that it is not within
my gift to make changes. When I say that it is our job to make
sense of it, what I am trying to say is that all these different
organisations actually do have a different role. We are the point
at which all that should come together and we then try to take
that to our providers. We are making sense of it from that point
of view and from the learner's point of view, but it is complex.
Sir David Normington: With all
due respect, this does make it a bit more complicated than it
needs to be: the National Audit Office are on it, local employers
are on it, local schools are on it, local colleges. Whatever we
did there would be that kind of diversity. A smaller number of
bodies are concerned with the planning, funding and raising the
quality of provision in the post-16 sector. It does rather complicate
it, but I have already said that I accept that it is quite a complicated
picture: it is not quite as complicated as that suggests.
Q135 Mr Williams: I am not sure we
need to go into that in great detail. I differ with you considerably
but I only have 10 minutes. Your problem in dealing with it is
also made more difficult by the financial inertia of the Department
in allowing you to deal with it. They have made clear that they
are not going to have a transfer of resources between the sixth
forms and the colleges, despite the fact that the colleges are
actually in many cases showing far greater productivity themselves
in producing results.
Mr Haysom: Financial inertia?
I am not sure I understand.
Sir David Normington: Perhaps
I ought to answer that.
Q136 Mr Williams: It is because you
have said that the Government are committed to narrowing the gap
between sixth forms and the colleges. How wide is that gap? Do
you know?
Sir David Normington: There are
various assessments of it. In terms of the funding of sixth form
students and equivalence, some think it is 13% and some think
it is 7% and it is somewhere between.
Q137 Mr Williams: The gap is 13%?
I am sorry; could you explain what the 13% is?
Sir David Normington: The unit
price between what we pay for a school and what we pay for a college
student, but I think it is lower than that and that is not my
estimate. I think it is lower than that.
Q138 Mr Williams: That is rather
interesting. If it is 13%, we have just lived through eight years
in which we have had a trebling in the resources which have gone
into education.
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q139 Mr Williams: Why have you had
little success in narrowing the gap? The money was there, was
it not?
Sir David Normington: Because
we have increased school funding so significantly as well.
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