I spend a lot of time, too much time for my liking, worrying about, talking about and lobbying for better investment in colleges and in college students. The evidence that colleges have been the hardest hit part of the education system during this extended period of austerity is compelling, so I feel vindicated in continuing to press the case. I believe that the lack of funding for colleges is now a significant constraint on the government’s own ambitions for the education system, for social mobility and for economic growth. It is certainly a constraint on the opportunities open to people to learn and to realise their ambitions and potential.

But there is another issue that has had little air time and that this government might just be starting to recognise the importance of: it’s the nature of the relationship between colleges and the government. This is much more than the words, clauses or key performance indicators in a funding agreement or the legal terms of trade. At the heart of the issue is what the government truly thinks about colleges - their roles, quality, purpose, potential - and the long-term investment it wants to make in them.

The last decade has seen colleges being treated as if they were simply “another provider or supplier”,  players in a market with hundreds, even thousands of training providers. Viewed like this, the government’s approach has been to create commercial distance between themselves and their suppliers, treating them all the same, believing this to be the fairest and correct way to manage the market. Unfortunately, this approach denied the unique place, purpose and roles that colleges represent.    

Accessible and local

Colleges are the accessible, local, community-focused anchor organisations that are vital in meeting the ambitions of the government, electorate and employers. They support young people to achieve across a spectrum of routes, meeting the diverse needs of the whole cohort and supporting over 700,000 16- to 18-year-olds. They also support over a million adults with learning aims from entry level to postgraduate. They offer both wide and supported access, as well as excellent quality and outcomes. They support the economy, help the labour market operate, enhance tolerance and social cohesion, and offer something to everyone.

In many ways, colleges are like general hospitals - they offer specialisms as well as the open access that the system needs to operate effectively. Colleges also have specific legal duties, such as supporting high-needs learners, which independent providers do not have. Independent training providers have a part to play, but their involvement and interests are different to colleges. In education, as in health, the balance between independent providers and the college/hospital is a delicate one that needs to be carefully managed and purposeful.

The government’s ambitions for apprenticeships, T levels and for levels 4 and 5 require specialist facilities and expert staff, alongside strong employer relationships. Colleges are best placed to offer that. But the ambitions also require outreach, open access and a range of progression pathways for young people and adults who need encouragement and motivation to reach those higher levels. Colleges, in partnership with others, are once again the best places for that. Put another way, every community needs an effective college. Colleges are open to all and offer the best first chance, often the only real chance for so many people.

 Broad and ambitious

To deliver on this broad and ambitious agenda, colleges need better funding to be able to outreach to more people, to provide more opportunities for adults, to support more teaching hours and to reward staff more fairly. But they need more than that. They need a degree of stability on which they can make longer-term investment decisions (supported by banks) confidently in the knowledge that they have a grown-up and nuanced relationship with government. They need the freedom to act, innovate and to deliver, with the support, understanding and respect of government.

There are, of course, constraints that the government faces in how it manages this. The spectre of the Public Contracts Regulations is often raised as a barrier to acting differently. Those constraints are real, but there are ways around them. Education should not be seen as an open market and colleges are non-for-profit charities with a social purpose. Being clearer about this would help overcome the problems.

Restricting the open market part of education and being clear where and why competition with for-profit and independent providers is desired would help. There is no open market for health services dealing with heart disease, intensive care or cancer where quality and access are the top priorities and where these patients are the most vulnerable and in need. There is for day surgery and more routine operations and procedures. Does that translate across into education? Is a market approach right for 16- to18-year-oldss, for adults with low levels of literacy and numeracy or for those needing to achieve Level 2 qualifications? Do the specialist facilities, expert staff and employer relationships in advanced manufacturing or engineering also require more than an open market approach? I think so, and increasingly I believe that the government is starting to see it.

LearnDirect

The government has evidence of the problem starting to pile up. The rather transactional approach to apprenticeship procurement and commissioning in recent years has not delivered high quality. The scandalous LearnDirect episode has been only one of many examples of private providers pursuing profit ahead of apprentice and student outcomes. Private providers have gone into liquidation, leaving learners with loans to repay but no learning or qualifications to show for it. Meanwhile, colleges have often struggled to continue with their comprehensive offer and to make a surplus. The system is not working, so we need a new approach.  

We know that departmental budgets are now fixed until 2020, when the 2019 spending review will start to make an impact. We will continue to press for colleges and college students to be top priority for the Department for Education, but we will also be asking for an open debate and discussions about the importance of colleges and the relationship they have with government. I’m confident the debate will happen and that changes to the approach will be made.

David Hughes is chief executive of the Association of Colleges

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