The government’s Skills for Jobs White Paper contains a lot of good ideas and has been generally, if cautiously, welcomed across the sector. The real question has been how to put it into practice: how to join the dots and, crucially, how to release the colleges’ capacity to lead.
FE White Paper: How to release colleges’ capacity to lead
So, here is a 10-point plan.
1. Challenge colleges to create Local Skills and Improvement Plans (LSIPs)
Ask colleges to create LSIPs and use the strategy development fund over 2021-22 explicitly to support this. The partnerships that create the plans should be called “LSIP foundations” and while there should be set minimum and maximum geographical patches, colleges should be free to choose.
Colleges in LSIP foundations should be given a three-year funding deal when the plans are approved. It’s crucial this doesn’t create a new layer of bureaucracy - and colleges should be funded themselves, not the partnership.
Colleges should submit reports on how they contribute to delivering their LSIP foundation plan and the foundations should create coherent plans from the welcome initiatives around Kickstart, traineeships, apprenticeships, boot camps, adult entitlements and flexi-job apprentice agencies.
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2. Continue to make it worth it
To sustain a new skills system, commitment to LSIPs has to be worth it. Colleges in LSIP foundations should be given a new status as “foundation colleges” and we must trust them to deliver. Calls for discretionary skills funding should be reserved for partnerships involving foundation colleges, so that the most strategic and most connected get the most opportunities to resource delivery of their missions. Cross-government tendering criteria and scoring for skills tenders should be used to boost and sustain LSIP foundation colleges, recognising their strategic value to the government.
3. Get more for your money
Money is tight but so much is wasted. We need to use risk-based regulation, reduce the burden of regulation and liberate trusted foundation colleges to step up to the role government needs. Retain existing systems to catch the unscrupulous poor-quality privateer.
4. Tip the balance towards sustainable colleges
Half of all colleges are in financial intervention: don’t undermine colleges’ financial sustainability by letting money leak out of education. At this time of national recovery, require a social mission of all education providers. Public money must go further in colleges.
5. Keep a competitive edge
We need to incentivise service improvement and innovation through some competition between colleges. Most colleges are run by social entrepreneurs whose innovation and enterprise has public value. Pair financial security for colleges with some competitive calls between colleges to maintain innovation and a competitive edge, but keep the cash in the educational circular economy.
6. Expect the highest standards of governance and leadership
The foundation colleges, like foundation hospitals that come together in strategic partnerships for the benefit of their communities, must show leadership, be well-governed and be seen to be so. If they are to be entrusted with reduced bureaucracy and monitoring, government has a right to know they keep their own houses in order. The colleges should be required to submit an independent review of their governance and share the lessons of effective practice with others.
7. Make colleges put employers at the heart of the system
Tell the college partnership to put employers at the heart of the system. Define the broad principles of engagement with the needs of employers expected in the LSIPs: using labour market information to look back, analysis of labour market intelligence for what is happening now and engaging employers for insights on what they need for the future.
Only plans that apply all three should be approved. Different areas will have different appropriate employer representative organisations: tell the colleges to sort it out with the employers and employer organisations most relevant to the locality. Employers want to influence the system, not be the system. Enshrine that influence within the LSIP requirements and make it worth the employers’ while - flex research and development tax credits to be productivity tax credits and support a wider range of innovation and skills-related initiatives in addition to cutting-edge research and development.
8. Allow no wrong door for businesses
College business centres should create business front doors in every college. Businesses that need to innovate are full of adults who need up-skilling and FE colleges are masters of helping adults to learn.
Colleges must support, nurture, train and advise the micro-firms as well as the more traditional firms that are in need of innovation. They must partner with high-growth start-ups and the global businesses in need of the higher technical skills. And they must connect these employers and wealth creators into regional innovation ecosystems to work with the country’s excellent universities that recognise their regional responsibilities.
As colleges build their own capacity and service standards are established, LSIPs should agree signposting between colleges and from colleges to universities. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy should invite LSIP foundations to bid for growth hubs to reinforce the centrality of skills and productivity in recovery and economic prosperity.
9. Target solutions to college skills shortages
A highly skilled college workforce is central to high-quality, relevant learning. Skills shortages and gaps are crippling colleges. Market supplements to attract the skilled staff are a proven response but a crude tool at national level. Allow LSIP foundations to create local workforce plans and specify appropriate local market incentives, fund them for fixed periods and measure the outcomes, together with pooling specialists and coordinating industrial experience and exchange.
10. Change the learning landscape for good
As a knowledge economy, England has a hole in its education and training system, with limited opportunity for learning to levels 4 and 5. New qualifications need an owner to champion them, and international comparisons show the potential. Colleges can fuel a higher technical revolution - and we should let schools sort out level 2, while colleges own 3, 4, 5 and universities 6, 7, 8. Provide concierge-quality IAG and bespoke transition support for those who struggle at the boundaries of these stages and need help to get their plans on track. Allow LSIP foundations, in partnership with universities or awarding bodies, to create curricula for qualifications that can be quickly developed to meet local needs. We need to transform the learning landscape for good.
Colleges are ready to lead. Communities are ready to come together. The country is ready to learn. Let’s get started.
Sean Mackney is principal and chief executive at Petroc. He writes in a personal capacity
