It is over ten years since the Foster Report identified that the FE sector struggled with its own coherence and identify. Many years later, as part of the Oxford University Saϊd Business School and the Education and Training Foundation sponsored FE Strategic Leadership Programme, a group of sector leaders set out to attempt to understand what the purpose of further education is right now, and if it still has intrinsic relevance?
Often, we continue to attempt to describe the FE sector with linearity in order to fit a simple government narrative, but perhaps FE now faces a “wicked adaptive” environment which defies definition and boundary. This, it could be argued, is good for our students and most stakeholder groups but possibly damaging to providing coherence of identify to Whitehall paymasters, audit regimes and sometimes our customers.
The group have captured many voices within the sector and adjacent groups holding a view “from the balcony”. Through a range of responses we began to see a vision that has shared values and congruence, but also witnessed fissures and discontinuity and future opportunities yet to be explored.
Recognising change
The project was not a call for negativity, disownment or harking back to a nostalgic sector long since forgotten or battles lost in the past but it is a call to recognise change, stepping from our current reality and help identify some of the “red lines” that collectively we must seek not to cross in order to flourish but also defend clearly our very purpose, core and identify.
At a recent speech to the Learning and Work Institute, chair of the Commons Education Select Committee Robert Halfon MP suggested that “good education is the high-speed train that propels social justice. But it needs a proper line. And a series of stops that lead to thriving, dynamic places of opportunity. Not deserted platforms and decaying stations”. This statement begins to unpack the necessity of the sector and the value of the work, despite struggling with articulation.
If any theme can be drawn from our contributors, it must be that the FE sector is something that continues to have a refusal of formal definition. Despite not having the congruence of some other sectors, what is clear is that the sector is firstly a necessity, secondly requires continued support through funding and involvement. The third aspect is that whether the sector is defined either by itself or others, it must be trusted in its organic development.
Refusing constraints
The sector has grown over a century and continues to find its own way. A conclusion could well be that whilst nationally, the sector refuses its constraints of definition the community in which a college or provider sits and the stakeholders that use it will provide definition. This is one of local value and therefore local meaning.
The unintended consequence of being unable, except in the broadest terms, to define ourselves is that we are not funded at a local level but still must have national engagement with people in positions of power rarely understanding what we do locally. This “lobby national, deliver local” will no doubt continue to trial and test us in coming years.
At our heart remains the need not to leave anyone behind or displaced in the market settings of our work, and that colleges and providers must continue proudly with the social missions that they often set for themselves and engaging this social entrepreneurship. Often doing the work that others may not wish to do nor even see the need to do.
A coherent national definition, therefore, may not be important, but our purpose and necessity call more loudly than ever.
“Voices of the Further Education Sector, The Purpose of the Further Education Sector Now?” is available for download from today.
Stuart Rimmer is the CEO and Principal of East Coast College
Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes FE News on Twitter, like us on Facebook and follow us on LinkedIn
