What does the Post 16 Education and Skills White Paper mean for HE and FE?

Welcome to Going Further and Higher Shakespeare Martino's podcast in which we discuss topical or indeed long-running themes in higher and further education. My name is Sveta Jamdar and I'm partner and head of education at Shakespeare Martino. In today's episode, we're going to discuss the recently published white paper on post-16 education and skills, and what it means for further and higher education. I'm delighted to be joined for this discussion by my fellow members of the education team Mark Taylor and Paul Greattricks. Welcome. How did you? Before we get stuck into the detail of the white paper, one of the things that I do quite like about it, well there are two things I quite like about it. One is it's got a very run-seal name, hasn't it? They've not gone for anything snappy. It's just post-16 education, marvellous stuff. And then the second thing I like about it is that it is actually signed by ministers from across the various departments. So it's sort of got that feel of slightly joined up, but whether that is borne out by its contents is what we're really here to discuss. So why don't we start, Mark, with perhaps looking or reflecting on what the white paper means for further education? What's the vision that it's setting out for the future of further education? There's a lot in there for colleges. I think one of the things I like about it is we're not trying to invent any new kind of legal thinking here. Alas, we've got a government that hasn't thought, oh well, if we just create this new funding stream or if we just create this new type of delivery vehicle, then things will more accurately get better because I bore everybody about all time, just doesn't work. So this is actually looking at doing the system a bit differently. I saw an article on F.E. Week, a good one saying that this is actually asking the sector to do more with less. It definitely is asking the sector to do more. I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but I'm not sure after yesterday's budget we can say it's more with less because there is at least some money to help make some of these things happen in F.E. So what's in there? The head of engraving is the guarantee of a college place for young people. I just don't see how that can work because colleges won't have any idea how many people are going to convert through that. And a college is not going to have to do some level of enrollment of everybody in their local area who would be eligible. It just, it's one of those that sounds like a nice idea, but I'm not sure people have actually thought through the practical consequences of it. And I don't know, that would actually encourage those people to go to college. And is he, I mean, is he, you go back to what is the problem that's trying to address? Is the problem actually that there are insufficient places or is there something else that's driving people? The country is massively failing needs. Yes, but is that due to lack of places or is that due to some of those, you know, sort of, no, it must be other reasons because colleges would be teaching those people if they were applying. I mean, it's only this year, first time in my career, I've heard about colleges actually turning people away because they don't have any more places. Yeah, okay. That is exceptionally rare. Yeah. Okay. So everybody would have heard about V levels. Yes. Which, cynically, people are saying proves that T levels haven't worked. I think it's at say T level aren't working because the take up hasn't been high enough, but I kind of like the idea of V levels. The difference being T levels, you just do one program and that's the whole review or learning at that level, whereas V levels, you do individual subjects equivalent to A levels. I think if I'd been 16 and somebody had said to me, do you want to do one technical V level with the A levels? I would have been interested. So it looks like an interesting idea. Yep. Headlines around banning unsuitable leaders from the FE sector. That's just noise. The only people who would ever get banned, it would be sufficiently public that they've done something very naughty that they're not going to get a job in the sector again. So there's nothing inherently bad with that, but I can't see it making any difference. Okay, so more money for 16 to 19 delivery and at the same time big cuts to adults education delivery. So very clear where the government's putting its money here. Immigration, requiring a level English for immigrants to the country, which seems incredibly harsh and that's somewhat unrealistic for some of the skills gaps we need to fill in the country. But then at some same time we have some local authorities that seem to be cutting east or funding for immigrants, which I think is just mean. I'm saying that we're not going to help people who are in the country already integrated into the country is just nasty. Well, it's very and it's counterproductively. It is nasty, but it's also counterproductive, you know, we want to encourage integration language. But it probably plays to the audience that those politicians are looking to play to sadly. Yes, regional improvement teams as there are in schools, which is effectively within the F.E. Commissioners' office getting colleges to look at how they're helping to deliver local skills improvement plan. Right. Which I'm not sure I like the idea of more police and more regulation of colleges, but you've heard me say a few times, I'm a big fan of the F.E. Commissioners' office now, I do think they work in a sensible, supportive way. So hopefully this will be more of that. We've got apprenticeship units, which is a terrible name. It's a little bit of an apprenticeship that in some targeted sectors, the riders will be funded to deliver that. I can see it working. We've been questions around quality, questions around whether there'll be any sort of qualification or assessment of it. I don't know, wait and see. Colleges themselves getting level four and five awarding powers, which could be interesting for colleges. Attendance tracking of individuals in F.E. I'm not sure whether we need that or not, and is it just trying to cure a problem that isn't there? But the big one for me is the throwaway line, OFS, becoming the main regulator of colleges which doing fire delivery. And that is something we're going to come back to definitely in this conversation. But your mention of the OFS makes me think about higher education and what the paper means for higher education. So on that note, Paul, do you want to do a similar sort of summary of the headline, because I feel it's just slightly shorter summary when it comes to higher education, then. It is, I think, to me. I mean, and I think we do need to come back to this issue about the relationship between the OFS and further education. And I think one of the features of the white paper, I personally would have preferred an exciting novel title that we'd all remember. But anyway, I'll stick with Ronseel. But the one of the features of it, I think that escaped a lot of people, including me on kind of first reading, was the intent around integration. You referred to the three ministers signing it off. I think the behind it, there is a lot more expectation from government that things will be a lot more joined up. Now that doesn't leap off the page, but the more you think about the more you talk about it, I think there is a lot more ambition for genuinely joined up post-16 work than perhaps we first thought. But in terms of the higher education side of things, all the headlines were stolen by the issues around an uplift to undergraduate fee levels, which we'll be going through for at least the next couple of years, and then hopefully be built in longer term when parliamentary time allows. But also as is merged from the very recent budget, the additional levy on international students, which kind of takes away some of that bonus that higher education taught it was getting. However, it all seems pretty small compared with some of the financial challenges that institutions are facing. Nevertheless, that's the money that there is available. But what government is looking to do is to encourage and control and direct institutions to work more closely together to find new ways to collaborate, particularly whether it's under provision of higher education, but also to work with their fee. And part of the responsibility that does fall to the office for students, it seems. And there are an awful lot of references in the white paper to expanding the powers of the office for students in various different dimensions. And this kind of includes their greater encouragement to collaborate. What they want to do is to enable the, or rather ensure that the office for students adopts a big regulatory stick when it comes to allowing inflationary lifts and student number expansions. So it's revised regulatory framework. We'll use the remodeled teaching excellence framework or Tef to rank providers, gold silver and bronze or below bronze and use that as the vehicle for deciding whether or not they're allowed to expand or indeed to increase fees. And that's a very, very big stick for institutions to real challenge to institutional autonomy as well. It's being consulted on the moment remains to be seen how it lands. But those are the big things. There's other stuff around various grants and changes to research and actually specialising in research using that as a vehicle to drive more institutional specialism and expecting that institutions will focus more on their areas of strength, but also collaborate more to. So a lot of it is aspirational, but there are some big OFS sticks in there as well. There's a few incentives, but mainly it's, it sticks rather than carrots. And that's, I think that's, again, I think that's something that we'll come back to a little bit later in the discussion, which is what are the levers to deliver? Any of the things that that government wants to see and how much of this really falls on individual institutions voluntarily choosing to go in the direction that some government is setting for them. Both of you have mentioned separately the fact that the White Paper talks about encouraging collaboration within HE and FE, but also across the two sectors. And this is something that we've discussed in previous podcasts. In terms of collaborating across the two sectors, Mark, what do you think are the main barriers currently to that happening? What if anything would encourage more of it? The answer to any question like that's normally money, but it's not necessarily the best answer. I think encouraging the collaboration. The White Paper's obviously after getting everybody to think about what is it that learners in this area actually need? Who's best place to deliver it? That's false and that seems to be the thrust of the White Paper. It's kind of hard to argue against that. We've got the right levers to do that. I'm nervous that it won't happen because each institution has an obligation to do what it thinks is best. And unless you've got an incentive to do something differently, whether that's positive or negative, education institutions aren't always that quick to adapt. Aren't always that quick to change their delivery model. They have big staff bases, they have bigger states that mean it is difficult to do that. Will they? I'm not sure. It's going to require a cultural shift. It's a cultural shift I'd like to see. I don't have the answers as to how we do it. Sorry, come in Paul. I do think part of what government is trying to achieve is to, I mean, Mark's absolutely right. There are no financial incentives for institutions, no obvious ones, anywhere for institutions to do this. There's a little bit for colleges, although there is increased 16 to 19 funding and there are a few other pops of money. But maybe for the FE part of the white paper that could have been entitled carrots for colleges. From the HE perspective, it really is about people or institutions wanting to do what the government wants them to do in the interests of growth, in the interests of economic prosperity, in the interests of supporting their local city/regional economy, collaborating with others under various local partnership arrangements as well. Part of the role, I think, of the regional mayors is to convene institutions in a way that probably hasn't quite happened as government would like it to see before. There is a real exhortation to do more in the national interest. Certainly universities have done a lot in the civic domain in the past few years. But this really is asking them and expecting them to take a step further. It's hard when at the other end they're looking to find ways to slim some of their activities, to potentially rationalise course provision. Many of them are looking to make major savings, and indeed people are being made redundant around the country as well. It's a really challenging time to be asking institutions to be stepping up, but it's understandable that government sees them as the powerhouse is for economic growth and wanting HE and FE to join together to address national skills deficits is a rational approach for government to take. It just feels to me that not all the tools are there to enable it to happen, but also it's not hugely explicit in what ministers have said and what people are reading publicly from the white paper. I hear all that about the lack of incentives, the lack of direct financial or other incentives to collaborate, but then at the same time I wonder whether there is actually a case here which says if you get excellent collaboration between schools further education and universities in a region, you are creating for each of those institutions a pipeline of people who will move through and thereby support those institutions in the future. So there is a self-interest argument that says if we have a situation where people are not progressing, you know participation levels aren't high enough, institutions working together might be some way to address that. I'm going to come to you in a minute, Mark, but the other point I find quite refreshing about this white paper is it's almost an admission that government does not have all the answers. What it can do is encourage the different parts of the civic system that could have the answers to work together more effectively and maybe in an ideal world there should be money for that, but even just the recognition that some of this is about autonomous institutions making choices that are right for them and their regions. Mark, you wanted to come in on that or something. It's a bit like a prisoner's dilemma and I was always rubbish at playing prisoner's dynamic games because I fundamentally trust-worthy. I do believe that people are going to be nice if I'm nice to them which doesn't always work, but you can see if you had two institutions in a region and they both decide, well it will be more successful if one of us stops delivering this cause frankly we're not very good at it and it's costing us a fortune to do it and the other one delivers it, you can see how an institution focusing on what the region needs will bring in more learners, so there is a real scope for this to help universities and colleges have more income and a lower cost base. The trouble is that does require both working together because one of them decides actually we're going to cut a third of our course, it's to benefit the other and the other doesn't reciprocate or do something similar. It's not going to work for both of them and you're going to end up with one successful institution or one less successful institution, but if colleges, universities can step up, can collaborate then I really do think there's something in this. Yeah and you can make the cake bigger which is the goal for everybody and of course what you've just touched on there does also highlight one of the other things that people have got to think about which is things like competition law etc and again I think that the white paper sort of gives some indication that government wants the CMA to facilitate, encourage at least not discourage beneficial collaborations which the CMA says it's very happy to do so possibly we might see some you know clarificatory advice or whatever that will encourage institutions to move beyond the fear of the competition law. I think the clarification that they will remain silent for the next few years on HEMatters would be the you know the greatest reassurance our education could anticipate. I mean the other thing that's worth mentioning in this domain I think is the lateral learning entitlement right because this is something that was you know has been in the you know in Genesis for quite a long time now and you know was the intention to essentially finance the students through essentially on a credit based approach rather than a year of study approach so you divided things up and that enable would enable in theory students to pick up credits which would be properly funded throughout their lives and therefore ultimately getting a ward ever much longer period of time and move around and accumulate credits and so forth it's the credit transfer credit accumulation and transfer ideal scenario where you link credit to money and theoretically it's perfect right it makes a huge amount of sense it's just that because the traditional full-time undergraduate three degree is so dominant still in higher education it's very very difficult to break that down and and also learners on the whole not unique not completely but on the whole the largest part of them prefer that model right and that's what they still want to do so unless something radical changes LLE is going to remain at the margins of student behavior I think it's still very difficult to administer technically but it's it's happening it's just the numbers aren't huge but government seems to think it will grow and it's similar in a way to their idea of having the exit awards at level four and level five which you know are possible but they just existed for 40 years it's just that they've got really really terrible names that no one likes and they feel always like a consolation prize whereas you know instead of certificate of higher education and diploma of higher education if you call them you know something incredibly exciting like you know I haven't got an exciting name for them but you know gold star of excellence then it might be a bit different yeah yeah I suppose it's it's rather than seeing them as the way off and the way out of a longer program you see them as stepping stones towards that longer program which might also start to shift the mindset around credits more broadly I mean it is still the case that we think of the qualification as being the whole three years and anything shorter that is somehow a failure not helped of course by the office for students focus on continuation because that naturally also suggests that not progressing is somehow a deficit that needs to be addressed so yeah I think that there seems to be a lot in in this which we I'm sure we'll return to in you know future episodes and I know that we've got some thoughts about how regulation particularly the office for students role in this might work so before we conclude today's podcast I will just ask you both for your key reflection on the idea that the office for students will assume greater responsibility for regulating across both FE and HE and it is something that we will have to think about in much more detail but Mark what's your initial sort of reaction to that proposition two thoughts if the OFS is going to become a regulator of FE then it needs to do a heck of a better job of understanding FE because the way the OFS interacts with FE institutions through on the register at the moment just doesn't make sense yeah and I know you've got you've got a particular bug bear haven't you on that one oh the letter that the OFS wrote chairs of register providers saying that you need to be worried about Chinese influence yeah the chair of local college in a small town which is focusing on 16 to 19 and happens to be on the register because it's got a little bit of HE delivery that it does with the local university you shouldn't be leaving the seconds thought to Chinese influence you should be worrying about how we are failing meats in this country and worrying about real risks but you may have guessed there's a book back with me there so it's an example of how the OFS doesn't yet get it and the second second thing which I just don't think we could fix would be if just over half the country's providers are on the OFS register FE providers are on the OFS register and doing HE delivery we can split the FE sector in two yeah half regulated one way half regulated another way and it'll just be a mix and extra compliance and a huge bird not providers you know have regulators trying to do the same thing together but it's just not gonna work okay so you're not a fan Paul you were found of the idea of expanding the OFS's role into FE I mean I will take a neutral position list but I would say that I think it will be a real challenge yeah for the office for students for two principal reasons what is as Mark has alluded to there you know this is not an area that they've invested a huge amount of time into because actually it's a very much a minority area of the totality of the institutions that they are regulating at the moment so I think they're going to have to invest an awful lot more time as Mark said in understanding the FE sector but I think the bigger challenge is that the OFS keeps taking on more and more responsibilities is promulgating more and more regulatory apparatus and actually you know isn't going to be able to appears expand its workforce and its resources to enable it to do so so some things got to give so either it has to charge everyone an awful lot more in terms of registration fees to cover a massive expansion and staffing or it has to stop doing some other regulatory stuff which means it has to get much more targeted and risk based in its approach which of course in theory it should be but in practice it hasn't been very much so I think there's a you know a lot of reorientation reorganisation change going to be required it's just set out a new strategy which is you know very snappy but it's not clear at all to me what that means in terms of its activities given the expansion of its brief signal in the white paper so much to look out for there in the future of the OFS and the future regulation of both HE and FE thanks very much for sharing your thoughts Mark and Paul and thanks to you for listening if you'd like to discuss any of the issues we've covered please do get in touch we hope you'll join us next time so don't forget to hit the subscribe button and if you like what you've heard please do leave a review until then for me and my colleagues goodbye [BLANK_AUDIO]