16-19 Participation in education

Written Evidence Submitted by OCR

EDUCATION MAINTENANCE ALLOWANCE

What impact has the Education Maintenance Allowance had on the participation, attendance, achievement and welfare of young people and how effective will be the Discretionary Learner Support Fund in replacing it?

1. We are not in a position to comment on the front-line experience of young people who have benefited from Education Maintenance Allowances.

2. However, we have recently become aware of widespread concern from students, providers, support and development agencies, and some politicians about the impact of their withdrawal. We will leave it to them to raise the matter within this consultation.

3. On one specific issue, we are being advised by colleges that the removal of the Education Maintenance Allowance alongside the significant reduction in 16-19 entitlement funding is likely to make learning in schools and colleges a less attractive proposition and therefore jeopardise the aim of increasing participation.

PREPARATIONS FOR RAISING THE PARTICIPATION AGE

What preparations are necessary, for providers and local authorities, for the gradual raising of the participation age to 18 years and what is their current state of readiness?

4. The participation age is being raised at exactly the same time as the school system is being encouraged to diversify into free schools, academies and UTCs, each choosing their own curriculum. Simultaneously the capacity of local authorities to coordinate development is being reduced through public expenditure cuts and top-slicing of budgets to fund the new types of school. The advantages and disadvantages of this combination of circumstances are pretty clear.

5. On the positive side, we are already observing widespread indications that schools which are intent on forging their own independent future with their new freedom relish the opportunity to create their own curriculum for their new learners. Those which select their students against specified criteria, and therefore have the opportunity to channel their young learners down particular paths, find this easier than those with open recruitment policies who have to find a wider range of options.

6. For example, OCR has been involved from the outset in the establishment of the JCB Academy at Rocester, Staffordshire, which opened in September 2010. Recognised as the first University Technical College, it is encouraging high-level engineering and business studies backed by major companies and firmly rooted in academic subject studies. This embodies clarity of vision which would be transferable to other specialisms and other institutions.

7. This raises the key curriculum issue: what is appropriate for the high percentage of learners who are not attracted by a traditional subject-based post-16 offer? OCR has extensive feedback on the range of new subjects and practical courses, many of them work-related that have attracted young learners who were otherwise becoming disengaged. Crucially they have gained the confidence of their parents too. Many of these courses enable schools to engage learners better and teach the essential core subjects in different, more appealing ways, and they also have a strong record in progression to reputable further education and employment.

8. However, there is an issue of responsibility: are any individual schools actually obliged to provide for this group, particularly if they offer a narrow curriculum which is likely to prove unattractive? Or can they simply offload the responsibility to other more adaptable and socially-minded providers?

9. The colleges and independent training providers who are likely to accommodate a higher proportion of the new participant cohort pride themselves on their ability to provide for a wide clientele, as we know from the wide range of OCR qualifications they offer and their contributions to OCR’s various consultation forums. They offer valid full-time and part-time courses with specific purposes and outcomes leading to further study or employment.

10. However, they advise us of one massive proviso: they need a consistent funding stream which rewards them for recruiting and retaining learners who then achieve approved outcomes. Repeated changes in (a) the amounts that are payable for different outcomes or (b) the courses – or even the number of hours - that are eligible for funding, particularly when actual figures are confirmed after courses are offered and learners accepted, destabilise their programmes and blight their planning. And ultimately this works against the interests of learners.

11. Unfortunately in the current employment climate we see little indication that employers will make a significant contribution to the raised participation age by managing 16-19 learning in the workplace on anything like the scale that would be desirable. We understand that the rightly-trumpeted economic value of adult Apprenticeships will make them more attractive to employers and therefore exert downward pressure on 16-19 Apprenticeships. So although there is an increasing response to the Government’s promotion of Apprenticeships, we fear the projected figures will make relatively little impact on the age cohort.

12. Since these are the young people for whom school has been a less than successful experience, their likeliest preference will be for colleges and independent training providers. But whichever organisation provides their learning programme, providers advise us that they increase the unit costs and demands on the infrastructure of support and guidance services.

13. Incidentally the Institute for Careers Guidance’s professional development initiative, in which we are partners, to improve the expertise of careers advisers aims to make an increasing contribution to the careers aspect of these essential services. However, at the same time financial cutbacks have seriously weakened the organisational structure within which they are seeking to make this contribution.

14. On the issue of qualifications rather than providers, in theory the Qualifications and Credit Framework should improve young people’s opportunity to accumulate units of achievement towards relevant qualifications, providing the data management systems are up to the job. However, in our experience providers overwhelmingly offer full-qualification courses for two reasons: they keep learners engaged longer with a substantial end target; and the funding, scheduling, data management and support requirements of unitised provision are inefficiently complicated and resource-intensive, particularly in the current period of financial constraint.

15. In relation to the pedagogy applicable to the new participant cohort, staff development in a wide range of practical learning methods is likely to be appropriate. However, it is difficult to see who will be the providers of staff development on the scale required, particularly given the accelerating diminution in local authority services.

16. We are of course encountering the view that QTLS-qualified further education staff should be able to teach in schools, which might improve the quality of their 16-19 curriculum. In recent national conferences colleges in particular have been (not always fairly) dismissive about the limited workplace expertise which teachers can draw on in teaching vocational courses in schools.

17. OCR has been fully engaged in the increasing professionalisation of education-industry partnership activities led by the Institute of Education Business Excellence (IEBE). Its education-business organisation accreditation scheme, the Award for Education Business Excellence (AEBE), and its rigorous membership structure are making a strong initial contribution to its professionalisation ambitions. We believe that the two key elements in its next phase, the accreditation of individual institutions and the structured continuing professional development of teachers, will make a further significant contribution to the improvement of practice for the new 16-19 group.

IMPACT OF RAISING PARTICIPATION

What impact will raising the participation age have on areas such as academic achievement, access to vocational education and training, student attendance and behaviour, and alternative provision?

18. When A Levels were first introduced, they were taken by a small and relatively self-selecting elite. A wide spread of achievements was expected so high grade achievers were few, only a subset of the successful students applied to university and only some of those were accepted. Thus the cohort was pruned in several stages to ensure a self-defining group reached university, easing the task of university and employment recruiters. And of course there were no non-A Level applicants for higher education to consider.

19. This is not the case now. With the whole age group aware of the opportunities for higher education, and learning providers unwilling to write off several phases of casualties, in theory any teenage learner can aspire to any post-18 destination. Nonetheless, many self-select out of the race and divert into employment, active unemployment or listlessness, with no further education or training. These will need learning programmes from one provider or another, but they will be a very difficult group to service.

20. Many of those in employment will find their workplace unaware of, or turning a blind eye to, the raised participation age requirements. Others may resent or ignore coercion; and we understand from learning providers, particularly those in the voluntary and community sector dealing with the most reluctant participants, that they are likely to have erratic attendance, completion and achievement records. Thus any statistical modelling based on extrapolation from current achievements will produce wildly inaccurate results. Assumptions about achievement from the raised participation age cohort will need to be extremely cautious, given their unpredictability.

21. Secondly, attendance models based on their counterparts in full-time school or college education would be misguided. More appropriate models will be found in the examples of good practice of which OCR has become aware in voluntary learning providers, youth services and organisations such as football clubs, involving persistent and often one-to-one mentoring and monitoring, in some ways more akin to social work than education but with the added bonus of educational attainments as specified goals. It would also encompass some of the valuable support and personal development which has been available through activities formerly funded as ‘entitlement’, for which the budget has been cut.

22. The raised participation age also necessitates a range of learning programmes and qualifications different from the standard GCSE and GCE route which, crucially, the new participant cohort has de facto turned down. Whatever definition of vocational education the impending Wolf Report proposes and whatever learning routes government encourages in response, there must be 14-19 routes which play to the range of different aptitudes of the new participants, whether artistic, caring, administrative, sporting, technical or whatever. Narrowly defined curriculum models which rule these out will disenfranchise large numbers of learners who are already at a disadvantage.

23. To expand on this theme, there are taxonomies of employment skills such as that compiled by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) which could be exercised in real practical contexts in local workplaces and, in tune with the Government’s evolving community policies, social enterprises and suchlike. Again, voluntary sector learning providers know what works and what doesn’t; they should be a major influence on the design of the available options.

24. Their priority often seems to be on the personal and social development programmes embracing more specific employability skills, many of which hitherto would have been encompassed in ‘entitlement’ and similar programmes in colleges. These, upgraded to reflect different levels of potential achievement and therefore qualification levels, may be better attuned than specific practical skills to future workplace demands for flexibility, emotional intelligence and so on. There is evidence from sixth form colleges and independent schools in particular that ingrained personal, social and employability skills survive longer than today’s specific occupational and technical competences, and provide a sounder basis for future learning.

25. Thus the levels of participation, attendance and achievement will be determined as much by the breadth of curriculum on offer as by the intrinsic characteristics of the new participant group.

25th March 2011