Colleges ‘need a clearer focus’
Failing colleges should be closed or taken over in a drive to improve quality in Britain’s further education sector, a new report suggests.
A review by Andrew Foster finds that although three million learners are benefiting from further education colleges, the sector lacks a clear and defined role.
The main aim of further education and specialist colleges should be to improve employability of their students and supply them with economically valuable skills, it says.
With this in mind, the Foster report calls for colleges to work more with local businesses, to improve their leadership and to specialise in key vocational subjects.
There must also be a “relentless drive on quality” to achieve these skills, which meant that “time must be called on those institutions that have relentlessly failed their learning communities”.
Sir Andrew calls for failing colleges to be given a year’s notice to improve, after which another college or provider may take over responsibility for a particular department or even the whole institution, or the college may be closed and the resources transferred elsewhere.
“This would be a major driver for improving quality. In the short term this focus should rightly be on failing colleges,” he said.
“However, attention should increasingly be on moving satisfactory provision to good and then from good to excellent. No learner or employer should feel that they have to accept provision which is merely satisfactory.”
In addition, the report calls for reform of the way in which the further education sector is managed. It criticises the “galaxy of oversight, inspection and accreditation bodies”, calling for them to be rationalised, co-ordinated and better focused.
It also calls on some groups who can afford to pay more, and for those on non-essential course such as evening classes, to contribute to the costs of their courses.
Education secretary Ruth Kelly welcomed the report as a “once in a generation opportunity to reform and invest in our historically undervalued further education sector” and said she would take on board recommendations to prioritise funding and cut bureaucracy.
Dr John Brennan, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, welcomed the report as a “huge” opportunity for colleges, and said he hoped the government would be quick to respond.
“But Foster also reflects the frustrations which so many colleges feel about the structures imposed on them, which often hinder rather than help our services to learners. These need to be unequivocally addressed,” he said.
The proposals on how to deal with failing colleges were given short shrift by the Secondary Heads Association, however, and deputy general secretary Martin Ward said he was disappointed that the excellent job sixth form colleges do had been over looked.
“A funding system based on needs and resources is long overdue. I hope the report will finally convince the government to address the funding imbalance in further education and ensure that college funding is improved to the same level as other sectors.”
Liberal Democrat education spokesman Edward Davey said the report revealed incompetence by the government.
“The Foster review is a devastating critique of Labour’s mishandling of the skills training,” Mr Davey said. “Foster is to be congratulated for exposing the gross over-regulation and centralisation of further education under Labour.”
For the full report click here.
