Examination of Witnesses (Questions 720-739)
PROFESSOR FRANK
COFFIELD AND
MS LEE
HOPLEY
4 JUNE 2007
Q720 Mr Chaytor: Do you see any sign
that the system has changed in the past few years?
Ms Hopley: Not particularly. I
think that the brokerage offering of Train to Gain could make
a difference, but that has not been going long. I do not believe
there has been that much publicity of it as a national offering
at the moment and I think we must wait and see.
Q721 Mr Chaytor: Professor Coffield,
do you agree with Ms Hopley's analysis, or do you approach Leitch
from a different point of view?
Professor Coffield: Forty years
of looking at the education system in Great Britain, Scotland
and England, tells me that this is the highest risk strategy I
have ever seen any government propose. I am very concerned about
what the outcomes might be. First, I do not understand how the
demands of millions of individuals and tens of thousands of employers
come together to form national priorities or respond to the public
good. Second, let us try to predict what will happen in the market
that will be created. Is it not likely that both private providers
and colleges will start to concentrate on those courses with high
volumes of students which are cheap to deliver? That is what anyone
does in the market; you bring in as much money as you can quickly
to preserve your organisation. What happens if that becomes the
performance by both the private providers and colleges? Expensive
courses are immediately threatened with low numbers and those
will be engineering and construction which are the very things
we need for productivity. The second thing that may happen is
that courses for the disadvantaged and those with learning difficulties
will not be very popular and so may be dropped. What about courses
with small numbers in rural areas? I can see the LSC being forced
to intervene as crisis after crisis hits the newspapers. Senior
managers in colleges in two different parts of England whom we
have interviewed predict major problems within five years; they
see that there will be a need for another restructuring within
five years if this system is introduced because it will create
such serious problems. They predict serious destabilisation of
a number of colleges up and down the country.
Q722 Mr Chaytor: Is your prescription
just the status quo? You are not in favour of radical change
in terms of structural reorganisation?
Professor Coffield: Of structures,
yes.
Q723 Mr Chaytor: But in terms of
the flow of funds and how they are accessed do you just argue
for the status quo?
Professor Coffield: No, I do not.
To come to the second chart that I sent, which is entitled "Key
tasks proposed for the sector", I have added five or six
to that list since I submitted it as I go on reading and trying
to understand the system. I think that the sector is trying to
do too much. I just wonder how much radical change the sector
can cope with. Just look at the list of things they have to do.
I would go for the main priorities here. I do not think we can
do all of this simultaneously; they are being pushed in all sorts
of directions at one and the same time. There must be a concentration
on the major issues. By the way, in that respect I accept what
the two previous witnesses said. The priorities differ regionally,
sub-regionally and locally.
Q724 Mr Chaytor: How are the priorities
to be agreed? That is part of the problem, is it not? Your priority
would be the NEET group, whereas the Government and employer priority
would be increasing the skills of those already in the labour
market.
Professor Coffield: We need both.
After all, the heart of this Government's policy has been economic
prosperity and social justice and both interact. Those are exactly
the two priorities that I would have as well.
Q725 Mr Chaytor: You think there
is a continuing role for strategic planning?
Professor Coffield: Yes.
Q726 Mr Chaytor: Is that through
the LSC or RDA?
Professor Coffield: Both. The
meeting this afternoon needed a bit of planning and the smoother
it runs the more planning has been done. This is a small business
here but compare that with trying to run all of this. How can
you do all of this without planning? I think that is a bit of
rhetoric on the part of Leitch; I simply do not see how you can
move to another whole system of 14-19 without planning. Will the
LSC plan the 14-19 but leave adult education alone and let it
just go to the market?
Ms Hopley: Up to now some of the
issues with planning have been the attempt to marry both a regional
and sectoral approach with no one really taking the lead. I do
not think there has been that much engagement between the two.
Maybe the North West is different, but we have heard that some
Sector Skills Councils find it quite difficult to become engaged
at regional level. For example, it was the case that one member
of the Skills for Business Network would represent the whole network
on a Regional Skills Partnership. One might have someone from
SEMTA covering Lantra, Cogent and e-skills in one region. That
is not engagement and it is not particularly joined up. We were
quite pleased that Leitch went for the sectoral approach because
RDAs are essentially arbitrary regions and their economies are
influenced by the sectors that make them up rather than by any
geographical reasons.
Q727 Mr Chaytor: Do you think there
is a problem with the way in which employers engage? There is
a limit to the amount of time that any committed employer can
give to being represented on the proliferation of working parties,
task forces and partnership groups that have been set up. Is there
a way of cutting through it or simplifying it?
Ms Hopley: I think there is. If
it is to be a sector-based route and that is the way organisations
that understand how businesses evolve, respond to competitive
challenges and how they affect the skill needs of today and in
the future that is the horse you will back. We say that you should
engage with the Sector Skills Council, but at the moment it is
very difficult. Does one engage with the RDA, the local LSC, Regional
Skills Partnership, the Sector Skills Council, the EEF or CBI?
If we go down the sector-based route then it is easier for companies
to see how they can make a difference and where their time is
best spent.
Q728 Fiona Mactaggart: If I understand
Professor Coffield's paper correctly, he is more focused on neighbourhoods
and local strategic partnerships as a planning centre than the
sector. I think there is a conflict between these two. I represent
Slough which has a very diverse economy but as a place is very
powerful. How does one deal with the vision of getting everyone
locally around the table, because at least they are local, or
driving things via sectors? Is there not a conflict here that
will never be resolved?
Ms Hopley: From a training supply
point of view the needs of a steel company in the North West are
not that much different from those of a steel company anywhere
else in the country. The training, qualifications and national
occupational standards are not different around the country. That
is where sectors make a difference because they understand the
needs of the industry and how the skill needs are likely to evolve,
whereas it is unrealistic to expect a region to have that depth
of understanding of skill needs of all the industries contained
within it. That is perhaps where sectors have an advantage.
Q729 Mr Pelling: Mr Chaytor asked
about demand-led skills training. Under a compulsory system would
you return the moneys to the employers so that they would decide
the skills training that they wanted?
Professor Coffield: We can look
at what already happens in this country with construction as the
model. We can look to Germany where there is a fund developed
by employers regionally and locally. The large employers put in
more; the smaller ones put in less. They decide on what the quality
of training should be. It is done in a very harmonious way. But
the advantage of that kind of system is that the culture of training
changes because everyone starts to be trained. One has licences
to practise in which we are very much in favour. It makes for
more cultural change. One of the things that arose in the earlier
session was the problem about fees going up. That is a major cultural
change. In this culture neither individuals nor employers is used
to paying for education and training. You can see the resistance
to change. Yet with these targets all of it is supposed to happen
so easily; it goes up to 37.5% and then up to 50%. The first time
you try it it does not work; you cannot change things overnight
like this. In all these things the speed is too fast for cultural
change.
Q730 Helen Jones: Should the responsibility
of the public sector be to fund training which is specific to
employers or to fund training which is transferable?
Professor Coffield: I think that
the public sector should pay for the fundamental training of basic
skills and so on probably up to Level 2 to make sure that no one
leaves schools without that. After that, I think there is a combination
of advantage between the employer, individual and society. I see
that as being more a matter of one third, one third and one third,
but it should not all be on the public purse. The situation created
with Train to Gain just now is that if I was a small employer
in any part of Great Britain I would watch to see how much I could
get from the public purse before I trained at all. Why should
I train them when there is so much public money available for
just getting accreditation of the skills that my staff already
have but for which they do not have qualifications?
Q731 Jeff Ennis: My first question
is directed to Ms Hopley and relates to the Government's establishment
of the new national Commission for Employment and Skills. Do you
see this new commission performing a useful role?
Ms Hopley: Do we know what it
is going to do? Potentially, yes. With the SSDA being rolled into
it there is clearly still a need for some monitoring, evaluation,
licensing etc of Sector Skills Councils. There must be oversight
of those bodies. There is probably a need for one organisation
that can take a strategic overview, if you like, of the skills
agenda. Recently, it has been quite bitty. One has DTI doing a
bit and the Treasury and Department for Education and Skills are
involved. No one really had the lead. I think it is good to have
a potentially independent organisation that can take that strategic
overview, if that is what it will do, obviously taking direction
from national government policy but also having a feel for what
is going on on the ground through Sector Skills Councils, RDAs
etc. That may have been missing in the way that the Skills Alliance
and various other organisations have come together to date.
Q732 Jeff Ennis: Given the evidence
you have submitted, are you disappointed that the Learning and
Skills Councils were not also brought into the commission?
Ms Hopley: At the moment I do
not have the detail to see what the relationship between the two
will be. I imagine that it would be close since it would be a
national funding body.
Q733 Jeff Ennis: Given your earlier
responses, Professor Coffield, about letting sleeping dogs lie
in terms of restructuring, do you have any views on that?
Professor Coffield: I would be
poking the dogs all the time but I would leave them where they
are. Look at what Leitch suggests. He wants to relicense the SSCs
and they are not three years old. That is the English problem,
if I may say so. The LSC is still working through the last reorganisation;
it has not completed it. Not all the teams are in place throughout
the country to move from 47 LSCs to 148 local partnership teams.
Before we even have them in place we are off on another reorganisation.
I think this is a diversion.
Ms Hopley: I do not think it is
the intention to re-license SSCs straight away. That was always
going to happen as part of the process.
Professor Coffield: I just give
it as an example of the constant turbulence in this sector.
Q734 Jeff Ennis: You feel that the
situation will not help at all but will make it worse?
Professor Coffield: I think this
change would divert most people in the sector away from their
main job: to have fewer targets than we have at present and to
concentrate upon improving the quality of teaching and learning.
Those are the major issues that I believe face the sector.
Q735 Stephen Williams: Ms Hopley,
as regards Train to Gain the evidence that your organisation put
forward was that employers would value that service only if it
was impartial as well as knowledgeable, but one of the problems
that you also identified was that the brokers were given targets
by Government and had to deliver or emphasise certain courses
and a lot of the funding is now directed at Level 2 rather than
elsewhere. Do you think that impedes their impartial nature?
Ms Hopley: One part of Train to
Gain is the funding element. The brokerage is open to levels beyond
Level 2. If an employer wants to access Level 3 a broker can provide
options as to where that can be found but there is not necessarily
public funding available. It would be inappropriate if they said
they should do Level 2 if the employer demanded Level 3. That
is not what the brokerage service is designed to do. The initial
feedback on the brokerage service that we have had has been broadly
positive. There are issues to do with individual brokers perhaps,
but most of what we have heard is basically a training issue;
it is not a massive hurdle that cannot be overcome. They have
to be impartial; they cannot act on behalf of a particular college
or try to push things. To my knowledge, they do not have targets
which means that they must push through x number of Level
2 qualifications.
Q736 Stephen Williams: Several college
principals have said to me in the past that they think Train to
Gain gets in the way. Maybe they speak from the perspective of
seeing themselves as good colleges because good colleges know
their local employment market and have good relations with employers.
These brokers are more of a barrier and unnecessary intermediary
whereas employers and colleges could be closer together. Is the
impression of the particular sector that you represent that these
brokers are needed because that bridge is not there?
Ms Hopley: Are you talking specifically
about further education colleges?
Q737 Stephen Williams: Yes.
Ms Hopley: The use of further
education colleges by employers is pretty low. I think the last
National Employer Skills Survey showed that less than 20% of employers
used FE colleges.
Q738 Stephen Williams: Why do you
think that is?
Ms Hopley: Perhaps because the
training that they demand is not offered or they have an arrangement
with a private provider that can tailor provision which is available
at their premises which perhaps the FE college cannot provide.
There are a number of reasons.
Q739 Chairman: It could be cheaper?
Ms Hopley: Or it might not be.
I do not know; it would depend on the content. Brokers are not
confined to recommending further education colleges either. They
have to outline where the provision is, whether it be in an FE
college or a private provider; it is the one that is most appropriate
for the employer.
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