Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260-278)
STEVE BROOMHEAD,
DAVID CRAGG
AND DAVID
HUGHES
25 JUNE 2008
Q260 Ian Stewart: We have moved now
from the structural stuff to the fact that there are plans. Could
you tell me what powers do RDAs or other regional partnerships
have to actually implement those plans and ensure their success?
Steven Broomhead: In terms of
the RDAs, we create the Regional Economic Strategy and we do that
with partners, we do not do it ourselves, it is an evidence based
and now I think all RESs reflect the different needs and opportunities
of each region, and the LSC and the universities are very engaged
in the development of that process. We do not necessarily determine
the corporate priorities of the Learning and Skills Council and
we certainly do not determine the priorities of a university because,
as has been said earlier, the universities are very autonomous
and there is no planning that goes on in higher education, it
is simply funding against agreed objectives. However, what we
do have with these existing arrangements which are about to be
torn up, and I am trying to keep emphasising this, we do have
significant interface with and influence over those policies and
those priorities and it is beginning to work well. We work very
closely, to give you a classic example here, with the LSC around
capital funding. There will be some capital funding schemes for
colleges and other providers where the college cannot quite raise
the cash in order to benefit learners in its community, and we
have entered, certainly my Agency and the same is so for many
other RDAs, into a number of projects where we have gap-funded
those provisions, so it is not just about the arrangements about
policy, it is about also impact on the ground.
Q261 Ian Stewart: You have actually
told us about the limitations of the ability to plan, but that
you are quite positive in what has happened in the last few years.
How does that fit in with a demand-led provision? There seems
to be a lack of confidence in the planning approach and then the
intention of Leitch is that it should be employer-led, that there
should be flexibility and that it should be demand-led. How, with
that lack of confidence in a planning system, can you do both,
or can you do both?
Steven Broomhead: I think you
can do both. Clearly changes in the funding arrangements, the
resourcing arrangements for colleges and training providers, need
to be switched and indeed they are being switched under Train
to Gain where more and more of the LSC resources are being moved
towards the demand-led agenda and the needs of individual employers.
I very much regret that employers never really seem to get involved
in the detail of the planning arrangements. I have seen lots of
them turn up over my career, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at
planning meetings at a local level, regional level and sometimes
even at a national level, only to find that the wiring, the bureaucracy
and the dead hand of even the conversations around policy planning
frighten them away rather quickly, so I think we have got to think
about, and perhaps we do it through the national commission, perhaps
they think we do it through the new sector skills councils, how
we can effectively get the voice of employers to be engaged in
those policy debates. What is the voice of the employer? Is it
the sector skills councils, is it bodies like the British Chambers
of Commerce or the CBI? I think there needs to be some fundamental
discussion about that because currently there is rather a confused
picture about how employers do get involved and how they see their
involvement making a difference.
Q262 Mr Cawsey: We heard a lot from
Steve there about the LSC and what is happening and, David Hughes,
I am quite interested to hear what you think about why the LSC
is being abolished and whether you think what is replacing it
will be better and more coherent and will anybody notice?
David Hughes: I think people will
notice. It is lovely for Steve to say those things, is it not?
It is a bit like an obituary and you just want to be able to read
it, do you not, before you die! It is interesting that the local
authorities are saying the same things. In London, the local London
councils have said exactly the same thing and there is a danger
that we are going to lose some of that sensitivity to place and
some of that understanding of local labour markets. I think it
is incumbent upon us to make sure that that does not get lost,
that through the change we make sure that there is the ability
to work locally with the right agencies, and that has to be with
the RDAs, it has to be with Jobcentre Plus, it has to be with
local authorities principally, to make sure that we are reacting
and responding to the labour market, to the economic development
opportunities and getting the planning right so that we are accessing
the communities who are not accessing the skills opportunities
and who are not able to get into those jobs. It is not that a
plan-led approach is right or a demand-led approach is right,
but it is actually both, is it not? To get the system to work
for the 30% of Londoners who are workless, we need to do a bit
of planning and intervention because the market will not deliver
to them. They are not out there demanding and they are not going
to get into the labour market because the jobs are at Level 3
and above and 600,000 of them have got no qualifications. There
has to be intervention, there has to be somebody working and some
of that has to be happening sub-regionally. What you need regionally
is the framework within which you operate, the direction it sets
for the colleges, the providers, the employers, the people on
the ground who are acting within that system. You need all of
that, so it is a balance, it is a fudge that we need rather than
going from one extreme to the other.
Q263 Mr Cawsey: But what is going
to happen to regional LSCs under the new arrangement? Are they
just simply going to go?
David Hughes: There is a shift,
is there not, and some people within the LSC will work for the
Skills Funding Agency, some for the Young People's Learning Agency,
some for the local authorities, and we have got to get that balance
right, we have got to get the functions right, we have got to
understand what the roles are, we have got to understand what
the roles are vis-a"-vis RDAs, Jobcentre Plus, local
authorities and we have got to make that clear, and there is an
opportunity within the change. There are all sorts of dangers
and risks, but the opportunity is that we get that demarcation
right for change and we really understand the role of each of
the agencies.
Q264 Chairman: Where is the advantage?
David Hughes: There is always
going to be change, is there not, and we have got to find the
advantage, but there are risks and there are opportunities.
David Cragg: To answer your question
about where is the advantage, whichever way you look at it, there
is always more than one way of skinning a cat. There will be benefits
if we get this right as a system as a whole on the work with young
people, especially around the whole of the 14 to 19 structure
where it is arguable that the division currently of responsibilities
between local authorities and the LSC needed fixing. Whether you
needed structural change is another matter, but one thing you
can be sure of is that we could be doing, for example, far, far
more on capital and infrastructure to have a coherent approach
across Building Schools for the Future and what you invest in
further education. Providing that we do not see a completely different
geography for the Skills Funding Agency, there is absolutely no
reason why, within the framework of what local authorities do
locally and sub-regionally, we cannot embed the role of the Skills
Funding Agency, but, if you want an absolutely straight answer
to your question, the crucial thing which you, as a committee,
should reflect upon is the risk of taking away local presence
or sub-regional presence which is currently essential to delivery
on the ground under some illusion that a kind of simple funding
agency model takes away any need to plan, to organise and to deliver
locally.
Q265 Mr Cawsey: I want to move away
from structures into programmes really, as indeed I said to the
first panel. On Train to Gain, is there deadweight in that as
a programme? By that, has the government money, in labelling the
skills that people already have, more than moved them on to the
skills that they need for the future?
David Cragg: By the nature of
the simplicity of the offer, there will be some deadweight. I
think there is less and less deadweight and more and more evidence
of genuine added value, and I think that comes through all the
satisfaction surveys from employers themselves and from individuals
taking part in Train to Gain, and we do not say enough about that,
and, if you look at the scale of take-up tackling some of the
fundamental issues of low-skilled people in the workforce, in
particular, then the numbers are now starting to be very encouraging.
It is too patchy, we would say, which is why we set about really
addressing performance issues region by region because that kind
of variability is unacceptable, but, where it is working well
and it is increasingly working well across the country, it is
really making a major impact, especially on low skills. The long-term
issue will be whether we can see more and more co-investment as
opposed to the employer investment being over here, not integrated
with the public purse, and whether we can see more and more co-investment,
especially at Level 3 and at Level 4 because, ultimately, that
would be the litmus test as to whether it works.
David Hughes: I would just add
a couple of things, and one is that it is still a fairly new programme,
it is less than two years old, and the system has been struggling
to work out how to make it work. Where it works well, the employer
gets a proper needs analysis of its business and it gets a way
of working out how to be more productive, and that is fantastic
and that is why the employers are saying they like it. I think
there are two changes which will be absolutely necessary for it
to be successful. One is what is happening with the compacts where
it is not just first Level 2 that is going to be funded, so that
retraining that Chris Humphries talked about this morning, the
need for people to be able to reinvent themselves is what a lot
of employers want. The other is about the fullness of the qualifications,
and we are seeing again with the compacts an opportunity to deliver
smaller qualifications that are meeting exactly what the employers
are saying they want, so the qualification reform in all of this
is an essential component.
Q266 Mr Cawsey: It is interesting
that you mentioned the compacts there because there have been
comments about the brokerage service and also this perception
that it is a Level 2 system, so it is a general view that the
compacts are the way to actually push that on.
David Cragg: It is a new and important
bit of effective market segmentation, is it not? If I gave you
a kind of illustration of what I would expect in the compact,
we have been working with SEMTA nationally and regionally, for
example, science and engineering, on looking at supply chains
and the kind of impact you can have on, especially, the automotive
and vehicle manufacturing supply chain. That is really exciting
work. We are looking at Caterpillar, we are looking at two major
aerospace businesses, Goodrich being one of them, driving down
into their supply chain, using the kind of qualifications, knowledge
and skills and the national role of the sector skills councils,
a well-established one, to actually embed, for example, Level
2 as a minimum employability standard in preferred supplier status.
That is the kind of work which we want sector skills councils
to do. That requires some detailed design work and that is actually
where the compacts can play a really important role. We could
look at health, for example, and the work we have done in the
health sector where we have worked with strategic health authorities
and the sector skills council usually at regional level to again
look at joint investment approaches, something which is very specific
and differentiated, but it is another bit of the toolkit, it is
not an either/or, it is an added-value element which we can bring
in, if we work effectively.
Steven Broomhead: There is just
one other element in terms of your point about deadweight. All
of the RDAs, under the guidance of DIUS and DBERR, are moving
towards now integrating the skills brokerage arrangements for
Train to Gain with business support, so there are a number of
RDAs now where you ring one number and you get one service, whether
you are asking about issues about VAT or you are asking about
Train to Gain. Now, why do I think that is important? If you are
going to move away from the deadweight training, it is very important
that you get to small to medium enterprises, who have no culture
of providing that sort of training. If we can just encourage them
to come to one place, I think we will start to move that deadweight
issue forward quite rapidly.
Q267 Mr Cawsey: You all heard from
the first panel some sort of fairly withering comments about programme-led
apprenticeships, and presumably one of the reasons we need programme-led
apprenticeships is because we cannot get small employers typically
to take on actual apprenticeships, so what are you doing, firstly,
about dealing with the criticism about the whole programme-led
apprenticeship scheme and what are you doing about engaging more
employers, particularly small ones, to take on apprentices?
David Cragg: First of all, I think
the language is so unhelpful and it creates what is largely a
red herring. We need a pre-apprenticeship programme, there is
absolutely no question about it. There is not, for many young
people, a progression route into apprenticeship. Apprenticeship
is 100% in most sectors, for structural reasons in a couple not,
but it is 100% employment and that is what we want to see. However,
it is clear, looking at a lot of young people, particularly young
people in the so-called NEET group, that you need a progression
route into employment and, we hope, employment with training with
a full apprenticeship. I think we are at an interesting point
in the whole cycle on apprenticeship in that we have seen a decline
in apprenticeship numbers in the last three years until 2007-08
and in 2007-08 you have seen a levelling off of 16 to 18 apprenticeship
against a background of increased participation in full-time further
education and schools, but the most interesting thing is that
we have seen a very substantial increase this year, in the last
12 months, in 19-plus apprenticeships and especially in people
over the age of 25. It is the most encouraging sign on apprenticeships
which we will have seen probably in the last five years and there
is no sign that that is just a short-term phenomenon. One of the
things we definitely do need is mechanisms for pre-apprenticeship
for people who are not in work which give them stepping stones
to prepare them properly for work, and that needs to be part of
a broader and much more integrated approach. It is the forgotten
bit of Leitch, frankly, and we need to be doing far more on integrating
employment and skills interventions and that is where pre-apprenticeship
ought to sit.
Q268 Mr Marsden: Perhaps I could
go to David Hughes and Steve and pick up on the implications of
what David has just said. Clearly, as Chris Humphries said in
the previous session, apprenticeships need to change rapidly with
demographic change, et cetera, but do we need to have, dare I
use the word, targets? Do we need to have targets in what we do
on apprenticeships for groups like older workers, women, in particular,
and indeed ethnic minorities because these are all groups which,
up to now, have not been well-represented?
David Hughes: I am not sure you
need targets. I think that the nature of the labour market means
that employers are going to find it harder and harder to employ
young people because there are not as many coming through, as
I think you said earlier, so they are going to find it more difficult
to recruit from the normal pool of people they recruit from. That
means they will start to look more broadly and I think that is
when you start to need the pre-apprenticeship bit to get people
ready to be employed within those organisations.
Q269 Mr Marsden: So you think the
problem is going to solve itself without targets, do you?
David Hughes: Targets can help
sometimes and sometimes they can hinder. I am just saying I think
there is a natural shift anyway. If we can get people to be employed
in those sectors where there is growth, we can get them on that
track of learning. The problem we have had in the past is that
you either have a Jobcentre Plus approach, which is about job
first and job only, or you have a skills approach, which is qualification
first and qualification only. What we are trying to do is put
it together and say that it does not really matter when you get
the qualification, but the qualification is really important,
a big impact on individuals in terms of their pay and progression
and their progression in learning, so let us get an integrated
system where we are saying that actually they are on a skills
journey which takes them into work at the earliest opportunity,
but the skills journey continues. The apprenticeship can kick
in when they are in the workplace.
Q270 Mr Marsden: Steve, your thoughts
on those particular groups I mentioned?
Steven Broomhead: I think it is
about the presentation, and the nature, of the careers guidance
advice that is available to present the apprenticeship options
to the groups you said. Obviously, coming on stream soon is the
new Adult Guidance Service and I think that is probably where
that debate needs to be had, but I would like to see, I do not
know whether it is targets, I have a bit of an anathema on targets
actually—
Q271 Mr Marsden: I did use the word
advisedly.
Steven Broomhead: —and what
it actually means in output in public policy, but certainly pushing
hard around hard-to-reach groups to present apprenticeships in
a positive way, I think we have a lot of work to do there.
Q272 Dr Iddon: Steve, how difficult
is it for you to engage with both FE and HE? Is it easier to engage
with one or other or are they just different engagements?
Steven Broomhead: As I am here
on behalf of all the RDAs here, I think it is a mixed picture
around England. Certainly my own experience is that those engagements
are strong and constructive through representative bodies, such
as in the North West Universities Association, and there are similar
structures in many other regions, but also through the Association
of Colleges and other bodies, particularly the Association of
Learning Providers. Therefore, it is easier for us to engage around
policy issues, to get them involved in debates about some of the
things we have been discussing today, to get views on Leitch,
to get views on the changes in the machinery of government, which,
incidentally, both the professional groups I have just mentioned
do not support, so I think it is about your attitude and your
approach to this. You have to be proactive about this, you have
to show that you have got real priority for this in terms of your
policy and, as I said, in each of the RDAs now they have put both
higher-level skills and skills very much strongly into the RES.
Q273 Dr Iddon: What are the main
stumbling blocks for the RDAs in bringing employers together with
HE and/or FE?
Steven Broomhead: I am not so
certain there are difficulties in bringing people together, it
is organising what that conversation will then be and what then
comes from it. For instance, the CBI has extremely strong links
with the universities throughout the whole, I think, of England
for the nine regions and at regional level, so there are certainly
strong debates about the importance of higher-level skills, the
research and development agenda, science, innovation,. I think
it has become probably more difficult for FE, although all good
FE colleges have their own groups of employers and are interlinked
into local chambers of commerce to make sure there is that informal
and formal link and of course the push on Train to Gain in terms
of policy priority, but of course in terms of the resources and
making colleges much more flexible and responsible about how they
adapt to these new conditions, and that brings them into even
greater contact with employers than they have probably ever had
before.
Q274 Dr Iddon: Could I perhaps pose
those two questions to the learning and skills councils as well,
first of all, the interaction with FE and HE and the stumbling
blocks being in place together with those two organisations.
David Cragg: Certainly obviously
it is our core business to work with FE colleges and I think those
relationships in all regions are very well-structured. There will
be sometimes the kind of tensions of purchaser/provider, you know,
if we have not got enough money or are perceived not to have enough
money, but I am delighted with certainly the work there, and especially
if you extend that out to the relationship with employers, I think
we have got an enormously responsive FE system nationally and
certainly that is my experience regionally. I would echo what
Steve said, which is that Train to Gain is really shaping very
different and new business models. I could show you a small college
on my patch, Telford College, which is now operating and doing
brilliant work throughout the country operating in nine regions
as a Train to Gain provider, with a fantastic success rate and
with phenomenal employer satisfaction rates. That is not an isolated
phenomenon. It is fair to say that some of FE still has not woken
up to the reality and the challenge of a flexible system and,
as far as HE is concerned, I think the key issue, for me, is how
much can we bring, given the demographics which you have already
discussed this morning, a real demand drive into our HE system.
I think we have got good relationships jointly with the RDA and
the LSC in most regions again for work with HE, but, if you are
looking then at one of the big questions for Train to Gain and
for business support, if the request from the employer is for
a Level 4 or, more importantly, a Level 4 equivalent programme,
how do we get HE to respond to all of that? I think the other
thing from a regional economic perspective, I hope Steve would
agree, is that this is not just about our current graduate population
or people taking part in higher education within regions, but
higher-level skills is a massive employment issue. We have got
this huge drift to London and the South East, which the North
West experiences, West Midlands, the northern regions generally
experience, and we have got to do far more, from a business perspective,
to join up that relationship. Again, I think the CBI and the chambers
are doing a very good job in starting to tackle that.
David Hughes: Perhaps I can just
add that I think it is instructive to look at how changes happen.
If you look at Train to Gain in FE, there was a shift of resource
and it required FE colleges to change what they did and they had
to start delivering in the workplace a completely different product
in a different way and they had to engage with employers to do
that. In HE, that has not happened in the same way, so lots of
HEIs can carry on doing what they have been doing, fantastic work
sometimes, but there has not been that same pressure on them to
shift the resource and to change what they deliver, so they still
deliver foundation degrees in a fairly traditional way, they do
not deliver them in the workplace, they do not make them look
like Level 4 apprenticeships, which is where we would like to
get to so that you can get progression, even if you go into work
at 16, through the apprenticeship programme all the way to degree
level. They have not made that shift, and I think we have got
to get that level of change and I think they need a bit of pressure
to make that.
Q275 Dr Iddon: Well, would it help
if the Skills Funding Agency and HEFCE, the other funding agency,
were brought together?
David Hughes: Well, it is an interesting
thought, is it not, and some of us who might be around in the
future might quite like it, but I just wonder how much the HEIs
would dominate that discussion. They are difficult to work with
for government, they are a powerful lobby and there might be a
difficulty in getting that organisation to work effectively across
its whole remit if it were dominated by HE, but it is an interesting
thought.
Q276 Dr Iddon: Any advantage, David,
in bringing those two agencies together?
David Cragg: Well, I suppose I
will not be here, that is for sure, but I suppose my private betting
would be that the next cycle will seriously look at that. What
I have not looked at personally, I have to say, is how it has
worked in Scotland, but I see a huge attraction in having a coherent
approach. The bits in the UK, or in England especially, which
need fixing from an economic perspective are at the top and the
bottom. We are not doing anything like enough to equip people
who are not in the workplace, especially low-skilled workers,
adults, to get into work, which is why the big drive on integration
of employment skills and that is right, but we are not doing anything
like enough at the top end. The Leitch killer fact was that 70%
of the workforce at 2020 has already left statutory education
and, if we are not really refocusing on a workplace and work-related
approach to higher-level skills, we will not have got it right
economically.
Q277 Mr Marsden: Just on that point,
and maybe, Steve, you would like to come in on that and where
we are going, we know at the moment that 12% of HE is now being
delivered by our FE colleges, not least in my own neck of the
woods in the Blackpool and The Fylde College. Is there a role
for the RDAs and the LSCs as well to encourage and to accelerate
that process, given the point that David has just made about this
need for seamless progression?
Steven Broomhead: Yes, and we
are doing. We are encouraging certainly a dialogue between universities
and the FE colleges around foundation degrees and Level 4 and
above. There is no reason why Level 4 and above cannot be delivered
in FE colleges.
Q278 Mr Marsden: When you say "they",
is that the North West or just generally?
Steven Broomhead: Certainly it
is region by region, but certainly in my own region that is a
very strong dialogue. Where the delivery takes place is irrelevant.
I think it is fair to say that universities were somewhat reluctant
to see the FE colleges being able to accredit their own foundation
degrees, and that led to some interesting discussions, but also
to make sure that we are making the appropriate investments as
an RDA, to ensure that a quality learning experience takes place
and to upgrade the facilities that sometimes are actually very
poor in the FE sector, and there are examples, such as in Burnley
where we are doing this, in Macclesfield where we are doing this
and indeed in Blackpool where we are doing this.
Chairman: On that note, I am going to
call this session to a halt. Could we, first of all, apologise
that it has been a very fast canter through a lot of the issues.
We did not quite realise, when we began this inquiry, that it
was going to be quite so heated and controversial, but we are
grateful for your evidence this morning, Steve Broomhead, David
Cragg and David Hughes, and thank you very much indeed.
|
