Examination of Witnesses (Question 280-299)
DR DAVID
COLLINS, DR
MALCOLM MCVICAR,
PROFESSOR DAVID
EASTWOOD AND
PROFESSOR DEIAN
HOPKIN
9 JULY 2008
Q280 Chairman: We are looking specifically
at Level 3 and 4 skills really and that link between FE and HE.
Dr Collins, I have been in education all my life and it seems
to be every ten years this comes up and somebody writes a report
and says, "Woe is us; the world is coming to an end,"
and then ten years later we write another report that says, "Woe
is us ... " Surely Leitch is just one of those, is it not,
it is just a passing fancy?
Dr Collins: I think it has given
an emphasis on the skills agenda and certainly we would not be
arguing that more skills were not a good thing. Our problem is
whether that will achieve the Leitch objectives of competitiveness
and profitability, and I think there are serious questions over
whether that link between skills and profitability is as tight
as Leitch would suggest.
Q281 Chairman: Dr McVicar, are they
the right targets? Leitch has done his analysis and there seems
to be relative agreement on the analysis but are the targets he
has set, which the Government of course have added to with the
Level 3 target, the right ones?
Dr McVicar: I am not too worried
about the numerical targets but I think the direction of travel
you are going is really important. Leitch is saying you have got
to upskill the UK workforce and you have got to do it quite significantly,
so whether it is a particular percentage, you know there is quite
long way to go and you know the timescale that you have got to
work in, so I think the agenda is right.
Q282 Chairman: But you are delivering
qualifications; you are not delivering skills.
Dr McVicar: You are delivering
both actually. For example, we have opened up the first new dental
school for 100 years in the UK. When eventually you go to be seen
by one of our dental graduates you want them to be skilled as
well as qualified, so I think the two go together. You also need
to address the vocational and non-vocational distinction which
is not always very helpful. Medical education is a prime example
of both medical education and training but some people would not
describe it as vocational education. You have to take a fairly
broad approach to what skills are. Also you have to remember that
the young people who will graduate from my university next week
will still be working in 2050. With what is happening to demographics
and pensions they might well be working beyond that. It is very
difficult to predict what skills you need next year let alone
in 40 years' time, so a very flexible approach is required. It
is very, very difficult to predict what employers will need in
the medium-term future.
Q283 Chairman: Let me stick on this
point, Professor Hopkin, on this business of whether qualifications
equals skills. Do you buy into that?
Professor Hopkin: I do not think
you can actually separate them. I also think you have to define
what you mean by qualification—qualification for what?—and
I think you also have to ask what is a skill?
Q284 Chairman: That is not what Leitch
is talking about, he is talking about the skills needs of the
nation, not the qualifications needs of the nation.
Professor Hopkin: Let me take
you back to the beginning of your first question, Lord Leitch
does not do anything we did not already know, and if you looked
around the data and the evidence it has been pretty obvious for
a long time, but he brings it all together into much sharper focus.
That is what is important about it. Not so much that it is some
kind of tablet from the mountain telling us what we should do
but something that actually captures some of the real issues.
One of the big issues is the pace of change in the economy globally
and the way in which expectations of skills are changing. Indeed,
what it does is try to bring into alignment those who provide
education and training and those who require it the other side.
Qualification is a measure, it is a way of demonstrating how far
you have got. One of the problems we have had in the past is people
who have got skills cannot demonstrate what those skills amount
to. I think what we need to do with the qualifications framework
is actually capture skills that people have got, maybe acquired
in their workplace or whatever, and bring them together. Trying
to make a formula out of it is probably much more difficult.
Q285 Chairman: Professor Eastwood,
universities and to an even larger extent the FE sector will deliver
whatever the Government says they have to deliver. If it is qualifications,
they will deliver them. Whether in fact they actually upskill
the nation and increase productivity is a by-product rather than
the driving force, is it not?
Professor Eastwood: I think universities
will deliver the priorities of the day and more, and I think the
"and more" is quite important. If you look at the way
in which the Funding Council is responding to Leitch and if you
look at the way in which the higher education sector is responding
to Leitch, we are engaged in some important experiments around
co-funding between HE and employers, around new kinds of relationship
between HE and employers in programme design, but we are also
working with employers around CPD, around short course provision,
about upskilling in and around the workplace. Although I think
the qualifications issue is an important one, and I think you
are right to focus on that, that is certainly not the totality
of what higher education is doing. We see a very real increase
in CPD and other similar kinds of activities and that kind of
interface with employers. That does of course have quite a swift
feedback loop into the skill base of the workforce.
Q286 Chairman: David, you must answer
this question: I am right, am I not?
Dr Collins: I think we have been
delivering skills within qualifications for probably 160 years
in South Cheshire according to local demand from employers and
community groups and individuals, and we will continue to do so.
Where we are talking at the moment it is about the closeness that
we can get the qualifications to reflecting the skills that are
contained within them. Most of our post-16 qualifications, in
particular, do have a high skill element.
Q287 Ian Stewart: In my own experience,
there is a difference between some professors in making a distinction
between education, training and skills. It was good to hear, Deian,
your analysis and also the comments that you have just made, David,
but does the school system with education and business skills
separate not militate against the concept of bringing together
education, skills and training?
Dr Collins: I do not think it
does in the 16 to 19 market. I think we have got a good combination
there of qualifications and skills through the BTECs and the NVQs
that we deliver.
Professor Hopkin: You might expect
me to be very positive on this because one of my roles is to champion
the new 14 to 19 diplomas. I believe that we need to break down
the boundary between academic and vocational descriptors because
I think they are becoming increasingly irrelevant. You asked the
question what do we do in institutions. 114 years ago my institution
was founded in order to give people skills and qualification from
the age of 16 upwards and has been operating in the borough—London
South Bank nowadays—and the fact is the world has changed
but the requirement to give people the opportunity to work within
the economy, to demonstrate how they can do that is critical.
The problem is that we partitioned people and we said you can
do that over here, while somebody else can do this over here,
and bringing them together is the best opportunity we have to
become competitive; but that is a personal position.
Q288 Mr Boswell: A couple of points
really prompted by the two Professors but maybe the others would
want to join in. On David Eastwood's point, it is very good to
hear him acknowledge the importance of CPD for example. Perhaps
he can say a little bit more about the relationship between qualifications
and the funding mechanism because clearly if you are doing CPD
in a higher education institution which is paying for that, that
is very different from if it is a classic student award formula
or a post-graduate funding system. The second point, really picking
up on what Deian said about the pace of change, is it not rather
important to move away from what you might call a linear model
where persons progressed, went through HE, slammed the door on
it, forgot about it and went into their work, to a much more protean
model where people are moving into HE when it suits them, maybe
doing FE as a subqualification or as reinforcement of other skills
and so forth? Perhaps members of the panel might like to open
out on those two thoughts.
Professor Eastwood: I think what
we are beginning to see is a new kind of flexibility, both flexibility
in learning and reskilling and flexibility in funding. You are
quite right to say that the bulk of the funding goes into the
funding of more traditional kinds of programmes but I think I
would argue that that has also built an infrastructure in higher
education from which higher education can trade and CPD is delivered
off some of those sorts of platforms, so there is an indirect
funding relationship there. That said, I think it is appropriate
with CPD that the employer bears a substantial proportion of the
cost.
Q289 Mr Boswell: And sometimes the
employee does.
Professor Eastwood: Sometimes
the employee does and I think, in that context, what you are seeing
is increased responsiveness on the parts of higher education institutions
to the requirements of employers and to the requirements of employees.
The other thing I would instance in terms of new kinds of flexibility
is if you look at the advent of the foundation degree, the foundation
degree is often seen as a stepping stone perhaps from a foundation
degree to a qualification that then will then be topped up into
a traditional degree, but we are now beginning to see some graduates
doing foundation degrees, either investing themselves or with
the support of their employers, because the foundation degree
is the relevant qualification for the new kinds of skills that
they wish to acquire at that stage.
Q290 Chairman: I am going to leave
that because I think the comments you have made are broad. I want
to get one or two questions in before I bring in my colleagues.
Could I ask you specifically, Dr McVicar, are you confident that
in terms of the targets at Level 4 which Leitch set and which
the Government have accepted that you can deliver on those? Where
are those students going to come from?
Dr McVicar: There is no shortage
of potential students. I think the number of people who are currently
at work, the majority of people who will need to be qualified
by 2020 are already in the workforce. The potential demand there
for upskilling, changing skills and changing direction is tremendous.
You have to deliver that on a more flexible part-time basis. The
demand is there. The changes in the economy of which we are all
aware make individuals very concerned about their future qualifications
and their future employability, so I think individuals are concerned
about making sure they have got the right skills and qualifications
for the future.
Q291 Chairman: Where is the evidence
for that?
Dr McVicar: If you talk to people,
if you interact with groups of employees, they are concerned.
There is a distinction between individuals thinking about their
own careers and their own security of employment and employers
and their needs. The two do not always go together because individuals
might think, "I have got another 20 years ... "
Q292 Chairman: With the greatest
respect—which means I do not agree—where is the evidence
because Leitch did not provide any evidence that individuals were
actually banging on your door and on the door of the universities
and colleges saying, "I want to be upskilled"?
Dr McVicar: We have a large number
of part-time students who come every year for that reason. I can
only talk for my university obviously, I cannot talk for the whole
sector but there no shortage.
Q293 Chairman: But you have to increase
it exponentially beyond that between now and 2020.
Dr McVicar: I think the real challenge
is how do you provide funding for that, who is going to pay, who
is in the driving seat and how do we meet the demands from individuals
and from employers.
Q294 Chairman: Employers are going
to pay.
Dr McVicar: I think you can expect
employers to make a contribution. It has not always been easy
in the past to extract funding from employers.
Q295 Chairman: David, this is fantasy
land is it not, employers have never banged down the doors of
universities or FE colleges with cheque books?
Dr Collins: Can I make a point
in relation to FE.
Q296 Chairman: I am coming to you,
you are not left out, but just in terms of that model, where is
the evidence that there are these extra students because it is
the extra students rather than the ones that are in the system.
Where is the evidence that employers are going to fund them?
Professor Eastwood: 15 months
ago we were given what was widely thought to be a hospital pass,
that is to say we were to develop employer co-funded provision
and the target was that there would be some 20,000 students on
employer co-funded programmes by 2010-11. Not only are we on target
to reach that, we are on target probably to exceed that. We have
got some 34 higher education institutions engaged in programmes
so far. The average level of co-funding is some 30% of the cost
of the programme, so we have moved quite a long way in a short
period of time. Where what we have is high-quality provision delivered
flexibly in a way which employers see as bespoke and relevant,
there is demand from employers. I think we can parallel that by
an increasing emphasis, if you take for example foundation degrees,
we have moved from zero to over 70,000 learners on foundation
degree programmes in a period of just over five years.
Q297 Chairman: So you are confident,
David, of reaching the Leitch target by 2020?
Professor Eastwood: I am confident
that if we have the right kind of programmes there is genuine
demand in the workplace. But, going back to one of your earlier
questions Chairman, I do think, as we develop our response, we
need to think carefully about where qualifications are relevant
and where other forms of engagement in higher education are relevant.
One of the attractions of qualifications is that they enable us
to measure and to set targets, but I think all of us in higher
education know that for many learners the qualification does matter;
but for some others and for some other forms of engagement a CPD
model, a more flexible model is appropriate to their skills.
Q298 Chairman: What changes have
you actually seen in the FE sector that have been as a result
of the Leitch inquiry and the Government acceptance of the Leitch
targets?
Dr Collins: I think you could
probably say that the number of skills being followed by adults
in total has gone down because essentially the Train to Gain focus
on employer-led provision, which has not been fully taken up in
the sense that there is more money unspent in that budget each
year than has been allocated to it, has been at the cost of individuals
themselves pursuing qualifications outside of their employer-driven
framework. We had a period of considerable growth in adult numbers
supported by government funding on capital between 1993 and the
Leitch Train to Gain changes. Since then, I believe that you will
find that the totality of skills provision has probably diminished.
Chairman: We are going to follow that
up later but we will come on to Ian Gibson.
Q299 Dr Gibson: There are several
phrases that are often run around in higher education and in many
other parts of the world. For example, on Radio Four you will
hear every second person going forward in their speech. This phrase
"going forward" suddenly emerged from some kind of courses
they went on. "Polyclinics" is also a word that is used
and it really debases the argument about what is trying to be
done. Is not "demand led" the same kind of thing? What
does demand led mean, for goodness' sake?
Dr McVicar: If I could answer
that, I think it means what you want it to mean!
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