Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)
DEPARTMENT FOR
EDUCATION AND
SKILLS AND
THE LEARNING
AND SKILLS
COUNCIL
24 OCTOBER 2005
Q140 Mr Williams: Despite the extras.
Sir David Normington: There is
a chart in here which shows very considerable increases in unit
funding for colleges, but alongside that we have been increasing
the funding for schools very significantly. We have not been narrowing
the gap, they have been going up and the gap continues.
Q141 Mr Williams: So the gap is still
the same as it was before, or has it got even wider?
Sir David Normington: No, it has
got narrower.
Q142 Mr Williams: Per head?
Sir David Normington: Per head.
That is a contested point between us and the FE sector. These
figures are not agreed. I believe it has got narrower, they do
not accept that.
Q143 Mr Williams: Coming to the point
of the financial difficulties some of the colleges find themselves
in, which Mr Bacon has referred to, this is your fault here if
there is a fault. Why on earth do you on the one hand preach the
doctrine of three-year programming and then yourself, at six months'
notice, alter the financial ground rules?
Mr Haysom: We are back to paragraph
2.14. We are talking about two issues here: the financial ground
rules. What we did was change the phasing of the funding, the
allocations we pay, which caused a short-term issue for a number
of colleges during that year. I repeat that we actually had to
help four colleges during the year.
Q144 Mr Williams: Why did you need
to do it?
Mr Haysom: Because there was a
benefit to everyone from doing it. There was a one-year benefit
of £180 million and otherwise we would have had to find savings
elsewhere.
Q145 Mr Williams: So what about the
colleges now who are in financial difficulties?
Mr Haysom: Which colleges? There
are not many. There was a very short-term issue.
Q146 Mr Williams: They are possibly
going to have to borrow.
Mr Haysom: My understanding is
that there were four colleges to which we gave exceptional support
during the year and that was a short-term cash flow issue for
a few months.
Q147 Mr Williams: Again it is a situation
you inherited and I do not know whether you have done anything
about it. We are told by the NAO in the briefing they have given
us that even chairs of governors, let alone the governors as a
collective group, receive little information from the Learning
and Skills Council directly; they have to get their information
from the principal. From some of our previous dealings with certain
principals in further education that does not exactly seem the
ideal situation.
Mr Haysom: No and, as I said earlier,
we acknowledge that point. There was probably more going on in
terms of communication with governors than the report suggests.
Q148 Mr Williams: It is not just
education, it is sheer basic information, is it not? If they do
not know what your objectives are, if they have to go to get the
principal's interpretation of what your policy is, that is utterly
undesirable.
Mr Haysom: Absolutely; yes. We
have worked very hard to correct that, we have upped the communications,
we have a communications strategy all about governors, we have
an area of our website devoted to governors, we are trying to
make sure we meet with governors on a much more frequent basis,
particularly with our Agenda for Change work, we have started
to describe how we would work with governors more closely, we
are engaged with the Association of Colleges in working with this
whole area.
Q149 Angela Browning: I am very concerned
about this shift of emphasis just onto qualifications and the
impact that has on students with learning disabilities. May I
just ask you, Sir David, particularly, how frequently your Department
talks with the Department of Health about the Valuing People
White Paper and the strategy which is being put into place by
social services departments under the auspices of the Department
of Health? There seems to be some moving away now, if you read
Valuing People and how education and learning just life
skills in a formalised setting is important to that group of people,
but would perhaps be setting them up to fail if you were to insist
at the end of that course they had to take a national framework
qualification. How frequently do you talk to the other department
involved in that project?
Sir David Normington: We talk
a lot to the Department of Health; we regard them as one of our
key partner Departments for a whole range of reasons, right through
from children to adults. I just want to reassure you about this.
Our drive to get outcomes in terms of qualifications does not
mean that we are unrealistic or insensitive about people who can
only take one step on the ladder and who cannot get full qualifications.
In fact it is part of our Skills for Life strategy that we will
ensure that people can take small steps. We are increasing funding
for people with learning difficulties and learning disabilities
within the overall funding that we have described. Over the period
up to 2008 the funding will increase by 14%. We recognise this
point precisely and we shall be very, very concerned if those
people above all suffer.
Q150 Angela Browning: I may need
to write to you on the specifics, if I may?
Sir David Normington: Please do.
Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much.
I think that figure 21 is instructive. I am just counting up the
number of organisations which are mentioned in that figure circling
round the poor learner: it is 23. What I think is quite amusing
is that at the outer reaches of those organisations is the Bureaucracy
Review Group reviewing the other bureaucracies. I am sure that
in our report we would wish to refer back to this figure and see
what we can do to help you in your endeavours to reduce the number
of organisations between the learner and the learning. Thank you
very much.
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