Examination of Witnesses (Questions 860-875)
MR ALAN
WOODS, MR
RICHARD JONES,
MS SUE
HUNTER AND
MS MICHELLE
CREED
8 JULY 2008
Q860 Mark Williams: The frustration
is where we have—your words "divergent funding"
issues.
Mr Woods: I think that does not
help when businesses are trying to understand the difference between
a Welsh Baccalaureate and an English diploma, even for the same
subject where they then start at different times; or that there
is Train to Gain funding which is available in England but not
available in Wales. Those things are difficult for us to articulate.
Q861 Mark Williams: On a personal
level, going back to those individual companies specifically on
the border, it must be immensely frustrating.
Ms Hunter: It is immensely frustrating
and I suppose the bottom line for business, if there were two
equally competitive offers either side of the border in terms
of what is being offered, and the quality and content is right,
then my guess is that the business would opt for whichever one
was the most cost effective at that point. So there will be an
imbalance.
Q862 Mr David Jones: Mr Woods, you
will be glad to hear that we are going on to specialist training
now! You mentioned briefly that, for example, there are no higher
education institutions in Wales delivering higher education institutions
in Wales delivering veterinary science courses, and presumably
that is only one example. Are learners from Wales who want to
attend specialist training courses usually able to access them?
If not, what sort of factors are an impediment to them obtaining
such access?
Mr Woods: From the evidence that
has been supplied to the Committee there are issues where they
have access to training; there are good examples as well as the
example which you quoted from Lantra, saying that there is no
provision. There is the evidence from colleagues which talks about
the airbus project, which is with the Manufacturing Sector Skills
Sector. I think what again is happening is that because we are
based upon a sectoral basis employers are looking for relationships
with providers of learning that can deliver their needs, and you
can pick out examples where it is working well and you can pick
out examples where it is working less well, and that is evidenced
throughout the report. To try and say that on a global basis is
that good and bad in the context of Wales, I think that is difficult
to do. We, for example, within the justice sector that we have
good relationships; there are other colleagues, obviously with
things like veterinary science that say there is not a good relationship
because that offer is not just there.
Q863 Mr David Jones: Can we look
at it more globally rather than in respect of your sector? For
example, you have mentioned veterinary science and would have
thought that tuition fees would be some sort of disincentive to
students who wish to study veterinary sciences having to come
from Wales; is that what you are finding?
Ms Hunter: I think there is some
evidence of that but there is another issue in that the colleges
and the universities will not put on a programme that they cannot
guarantee a break-even number of students. So if your pool of
students is quite limited and out of that pool of students only
one or two want to do a particular programme it is not worth the
university actually offering that programme.
Q864 Mr David Jones: To pause briefly
there, that could actually impact upon students from England in
that particular case, who would also be unable to access that
particular training course?
Ms Hunter: Yes, it depends on
the particular programme and the university and what the catchment
area is and whether they can actually get the sufficient number
of individuals on to the programme—whether it is at a college
or a university.
Q865 Mr David Jones: How would you
say that cross-border access to specialist training could be improved?
Is it just down to finance or are there other factors?
Ms Hunter: I think the Sector
Skills Councils have a role to play in this in identifying and
working with, as most of us do, with the higher education institutions
and defining for them what learning is required in which areas
of the country because some needs will be much more localised
than others, particularly for some of the other Sector Skills
Councils. So I think we have a role to play in identifying and
brokering the development of programmes.
Q866 Mr David Jones: Can you give
some examples of the way in which you are actually fulfilling
that role?
Mr Woods: Colleagues from Asset
Skills have identified that there are needs, for example, in surveying
and planning and they are addressing that by working with the
Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors for accredited courses
in surveying and planning at the University of Glamorgan. So there
are, I think, examples within the documents that the Committee
has received, which are again trying to articulate the employers'
needs. Where they identify that there is a skills gap, which we
will have published in our Sector Skills Agreements, it is then
us trying to work with the providers of learning to actually offer
those courses where there are gaps, which then means that there
is a progression from somebody taking that learning into the world
of work.
Q867 Mr David Jones: But is there
necessarily a gap because the course is available but it just
happens to be on the other side of the border. To what extent
can you assist learners in accessing training on the other side
of the border? It is all very well to create a new course within
Wales but what if the student is in North Wales and wants to access
the course in England?
Ms Creed: We have a policy lobby
voice as well as a voice that faces the supply side, so where
these issues surface and where the employers say that this is
becoming an issue for them, and obviously that becomes an employer
issue as opposed to an individual learner issue perhaps, we are
able to capture that and feed that back in to the policy consultation
processes that we go through. Just to give you a specific example
of where an SSC has overcome that issue, if I can refer you to
the Skills Set's submission, Skills Set are the Sector Skills
Council for the creative media industries and they specifically
stated, if I can quote: "We have noted instances where specialist
training was not available through the FE and HE sector in Wales
or indeed its neighbouring English regions. For example, a new
entrance programme for the post-production industries that we
successfully ran in Wales called First Post was delivered in Wales
by the collaboration of a Welsh Company, Barcud Derwen, and a
London based training facilitator, Soho Editors, the collaboration
provided an opportunity to develop the capacity for specialist
post-production training in Wales." That is an example there
where Skills Set has actively helped develop the capacity of the
system in Wales to be able to provide that specialist training.
Q868 Mr David Jones: Given your remit
though I guess that you would tend not to intervene until it was
becoming a problem that looked as if it was going to impact upon
employers; is that right?
Ms Creed: We are set up to be
employer-led businesses.
Q869 Mark Williams: To Lifelong Learning,
you have expressed concern about the increasing divergence of
the qualification requirement for further education teachers in
Wales and England, I think following the new regulation that came
into effect last year. What is the nature of the problem and how
big a problem is it?
Ms Creed: Thank you for the opportunity.
We are still at very early stages with this agenda because, obviously
as you have identified, it only came into play in September 2007.
In essence what has happened is the training of teachers for the
post compulsory system, so further education, community learning
and development, work-based learning, within that FE system used
to be joined by statutory instrument for both England and Wales,
and were both the same sets of qualifications and the same sets
of underpinning standards. In 2005 the Equipping our Teachers
for the Future agenda moved the England position to a new level
and England pursued the development of their own standards and
their own qualifications, driven by the needs that were highlighted
within the Ofsted Reports and the FE system. We have as a result
of those changes within England, because obviously education and
skills is a devolved matter, we have been working with Wales,
working with the support of the Assembly Government to review
the standards for teachers in Wales, and we have submitted recommendations
to the Assembly on what the new teacher qualification framework
for Wales should be. There are some differences between the standards
and qualifications that employers have said they would like to
see because of the different agenda between 14 to 19, for example;
and obviously Wales is a bilingual country and has complexities
there in terms of bilingual learning delivery. Where the issues
require further support at the moment, obviously we are working
with the HR managers' network through Fforwm and the principles
network through Fforwm to help them look at the implications of
cross-boarder labour market mobility. We do not perceive there
to be barriers for individuals moving across the system but we
do in the short term perceive a need to support employers' understanding
what of the new England qualifications they can accept and what
the implications are for students that are trained in Wales in
terms of moving into the England system. It may well be as a result
of the differences that have emerged between England and Wales
that there are some additional induction requirements that are
required into devolved education systems in both countries, but
I would say that that is in hand.
Q870 Mark Williams: What is the timetable
for this? You have discussions but when do you expect some action
from the Assembly Government?
Ms Creed: The Assembly have already
the new professional standards for teachers and trainers in Wales
and the qualifications framework recommendations is currently
with them for review and we expect a response shortly.
Q871 Mark Williams: How big an issue
was that? You said not a huge number of individuals, but how big
an issue has this been in terms of cross-border movement of teachers
to date?
Ms Creed: Because of the regulated
nature of teacher qualifications, where the immediate impact has
been felt has been within, for example, the University of Newport,
who previously had a franchise for teacher training provision
that stretched across England and Wales because obviously they
were working on the basis of the same standards. As a result of
the regulatory changes Newport has relinquished elements of its
franchise in England and is concentrating on the bulk of its provision,
which always has been in Wales. So that is an immediate impact.
Obviously there have been some tensions in this transition. As
a result of this the role that LL UK has played is that we have
established a four nations strategic summit where we bring the
senior civil servants from departments for education and skills
together, to look at what the implications are for learning delivery,
and I would say that in terms of standards for teachers the UK
has never had a UK-wide approach before. But we have now brokered
agreement across the four governments and we were in Belfast last
week actually commencing a project that is going to look at the
standards for teacher training across the whole of the UK for
the first time, bring it together as a set of national occupational
standards for learning delivery and in due course that overarching
set of national occupational standards will inform the needs of
the four governments, which in an evolving sense will make understanding
of the similarities and differences between the qualifications
easier for employers and learners to understand.
Q872 Mark Williams: Not least because
Sir Adrian Webb has talked about the need to have ongoing vocational
professional development, which obviously is going to lend itself
very much to what you said. This is not written in a tablet of
stone now, is it, it is going to be reviewed in the future as
well.
Ms Creed: Within England the commitment
to continuing professional development and a licence to practise
for teachers in the FE system has been established as part of
the equipping our teachers for the future agenda. Decisions on
licence to practice and commitment to CPD have not yet been taken
in Wales, and it is certainly something that employers in the
sector are firmly behind, and it is something that we have covered
in our sector skills agreement process; so we are on the case.
Q873 Chairman: I was intrigued and
interested in that particular example. Important as it is it is
a very highly localised part of the whole debate. It occurs to
me that there are very fundamental questions that you have raised
today about funding, about qualifications and about policy, and
I was interested to hear that this four nation approach is being
developed in relation to further education teachers. Where is
the actual public debate in terms of Lifelong Learning, in terms
of your work, in terms of skills taking place now? There are quite
serious developments in terms of funding obligations and policy
occurring in Wales and in England, but you are talking about senior
civil servants. Is there a body in Wales that actually now raises
the question how do we come together and discuss these changes?
Is there a sense of introspection or are you actually suffering
in silence, or are you actually looking outwards and asking the
question? For example, the body that I was associated years ago,
which is now called NIACE Dysgu Cymru, a body that usually in
days gone by 10 years ago would have been the public forum where
learners, employers, trade unions, local authorities all came
together to discuss and help to develop policy.
Ms Creed: An important part of
Lifelong Learning UK's governance structure in Wales is our Wales
Country Panel. Our Wales Country Panel draws representation from
the employers within our footprint, so each of our further education,
higher education work-based learning, libraries, archives and
information services and community learning and development, which
would include, for example, community development, youth work,
community-based adult learning, on that Country Panel the director
for NIACE Dysgu Cymru is a member, as is John Graystone, who is
the Chief Executive of Fforwm, as is the Higher Education Wales
Committee, as is the Wales TUC, so on and so forth, through the
well-established names and organisations in the Lifelong Learning
sector. We meet with that Panel three times a year and we—
Q874 Chairman: Could you stop a moment?
I did not make myself clear. Is that an introspective body or
does it actually take account of what is happening across the
UK and globally as well?
Ms Creed: Yes, we do. Certainly
as a body we are the sum of our component parts, so NIACE would
still have its UK links; it would also have its forums about which
you are talking where its networks can come together and offer
input on a policy matter, for example. And what we have a function
of doing as well as directly accessing our employers and as well
as looking to developments in Europe we are able to draw on the
combined intellectual capital that those key organisations and
groups bring together. So it is quite a complicated network but
we are pulling together the component parts of the sector.
Q875 Chairman: I think there ought
to be more public knowledge of what you are doing.
Mr Woods: Can I just comment upon
that question that you asked my colleague Michelle? The Alliance
of Sector Skills Councils also has a role in that process of working
across the 25 sectors to enable that debate. Although we are employer
led with the employers' voice as the one that we are hearing in
terms of trying to understand what employers want through the
various skills systems throughout the United Kingdom, that debate
is managed across those 25 Sector Skills Councils. The challenge,
of course, as you say, is then to bring that out into the wider
arena as an independent voice and I think that is something that
the Alliance of Sector Skills Councils will be looking to do.
Chairman: Thank you very much all of
you for your very challenging evidence this morning; it has been
extremely helpful to us in our inquiry on cross-border issues.
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