The Possible Policy Effects on FE Colleges in England under the Learning and Skills Councils
Michael Hammond
Paper presented at BERA 2003 Annual Conference 11-13 September 2003
Heriot- Watt University
Abstract
This piece of policy research, looks at the potential effects on Further Education (FE) colleges under the Learning and Skills Councils (LSC)in England, and initially presents an overview of what the author perceives to be a number of important key themes coming out of the policy changes.The LSC was created by the Labour Government in 2001, to plan and fund all post 16 education and training within England, excluding some adult provision. It is a centralist body with its head office in Coventry, and 47 regional arms, known as Local Learning and Skills Councils (LLSC's). This paper charts the development of the FE sector from a traditional local authority model under the Local Education Authorities (LEA's) to the 'new managerial' market forces model of the Further Education Funding Council ( FEFC).The LEA's managed FE provision in England up until FE colleges were transferred into their own independent corporations, by a process known as incorporation. Thus the FEFC was created by the Conservative Government 1992-1997 to fund these new corporations, and was a funding body only not a planning body. From this, the paper then considers the possible reasoning behind the change from the market forces model of FE, to the 'planned' model proposed under the LSC. Within this heading, issues such as 'sleaze' (a generic word much in vogue during the 1990's to cover a range of misdemeanours by politicians and people working in the public sector), and governor failure are considered. Having set the scene as it were, the paper then considers some of the issues that come out of the LSC model, in relation to planning, control, bureaucracy, and rationalisation etc, within the sector. The paper concludes by suggesting how these concepts might impact on FE colleges.
Introduction
To understand the momentous changes discussed within this research, it is important to appreciate how the FE college sector was born, and how it developed up until incorporation in April 1992. The researcher would suggest that the FE sector had been, until this time, an educational sector that had not attracted the attention of the government and policy makers in the same way as schools probably because the economy of Great Britain had been able to absorb a large number of unskilled and semi-skilled workers without training. For example, prior to 1939, eighty eight per cent of young people left school at fourteen years of age to pursue a career which, more often than not, was in unskilled employment (Tomlinson, 1997). This left their upper and middle class colleagues to pursue a liberal-academic education in the grammar and public schools to prepare them for the universities and the professions.
By 1959 these figures were substantially unchanged with only ten per cent of young people stayed in education until the age of seventeen (Tomlinson 1997,p3). Some of those young people who left school before seventeen were fortunate enough to obtain an apprenticeship to a trade but for them there was only a limited and somewhat sporadic provision of technical education which had begun in 1823 through the vision of George Burbeck. Burbeck founded the first Mechanics Institute with the intention of teaching young men the scientific principles which underpinned much of what they were doing in their respective trades.
The Great Exhibition of 1851 was however a catalyst for the development of further Mechanics Institutes as deficiencies in technical innovations between Great Britain and continental Europe were exposed to the shock of Victorian Britain (Macfarlane 1993,pp10-11). In 1878, the City and Guilds of London Institute was founded, which provided a qualification framework for technical education. This development then allowed many of the Mechanics Institutes to evolve into colleges of technical education which, in addition to night school courses, began to offer day release classes (Green, 1998).
A further impetus in the development of the FE sector, was the 1918 Education Act which was promoted by H.A. L. Fisher, who was President of the Board of Education in the Coalition Government of that period. The Act had intended to compel Local Authorities to provide continuing education, but this measure was never properly implemented, although some provision was made for part-time post school education (Green, 1998). In 1921 the Government, as a further initiative to help employees along the path to promotion, introduced a national certificate scheme at ordinary and higher national level. The FE college sector received further Ministerial support for expansion through the Local Education Authorities (LEA’s) which were compelled by the 1944 Education Act to secure the provision of adequate facilities for both full and part time FE for people over compulsory school age.
From the 1944 Education Act, FE initially expanded rapidly with many new colleges being built in the 1950’s and 1960’s. This expansion though was short lived and highly uneven, varying substantially from one locality to another (Lucas, 2001). During the 1970’s concerns began to arise about the core (English, Mathematics) skill deficits of school leavers entering the workplace. Mr. James Callaghan the then Labour Prime Minister, sought to raise these concerns in a major policy speech on education at Ruskin College Oxford. The policy described by Callaghan was to relate curriculum in schools nearer to the needs of industry in the country. Mr. Callaghan in making the speech was seeking to engage the academic community and other interested parties in a debate on the future of education within the country. Callaghan achieved this ambition, as the speech is recognised as being the start of the ‘great debate’ on education (Baker, 2001).
Thus Callaghan’s Ruskin College speech in 1976 was taken up by the Conservative administration of Margaret Thatcher when they were elected in 1979. That initiative was extended towards FE colleges initially by the Thatcher Government, and subsequently by the John Major Conservative Government. When discussing the Ruskin phenomenon, it was seen by Morris (2001) to be the start of a decline in the ideology of ‘liberal’ education, towards the more focussed concept of ‘education for business.’ A critic of these reforms, Morris (2001) lamented that the ‘new’ Labour Government has carried them on. He concluded:
“The speech set the standard for the beginning of Tory intervention, which has now been taken to its extreme by New Labour centralised control of the curriculum, and the whole idea of education for business. It set future trends that have become so disastrous.” (Morris, 2001,p21)
Until the end of the 1980’s FE had avoided many of the changes that had been inflicted on schools by the Conservative Government (Baker, 1989,p1). Mr. (now Lord) Baker, the then Secretary of State for Education indicated in a speech, however, that FE in its turn was about to receive similar change at the hands of the Conservatives. He stated:
“Further Education is not just the bit in between Schools and Higher Education. It is not just the Cinderella of the education service. Over 1,750,000 people attend further education classes, taught by the equivalent of 63,000 lecturers. There are some 400 LEA maintained Colleges. The whole thing costs over £1 BN a year. It is a big, big enterprise.” (Baker, 1989,p1)
He continued:
“We have set in-hand, the changes which will achieve a better foundation at age 16. Now I believe the time is ripe to give a similar thrust towards education and training thereafter, building on the work done through TVEI. In short it is time for an initiative to promote further education.” (Baker, 1989,p1).
Thus the development of FE prior to 1992 began with individual, voluntary efforts in the nineteenth century. It continued with patchy LEA provision during most of the twentieth century. Recognition of its inadequacy in relation to the need by business and commerce in Great Britain for good technical education for potential employees, led post 1976 governments of all political persuasions to adopt more interventionist approaches, as was signalled by Callahan’s Ruskin College speech. These approaches began with the Conservatives moving FE colleges out of LEA control, to be incorporated as individual ‘business’ corporations under central control through the FEFC. The Labour Government then replaced the FEFC with the LSC.
Methodology
When undertaking a piece of policy research then the concept of ‘methodological eclecticism’ has been held to reign supreme (Finch, 1985; Troyna 1994). Published policy research has for example consisted of a methodology based entirely on interviews (MacPherson and Rabb, 1988). Primary source documentation was used as the sole source for data collection in policy research (Slater and Tapper, 1981). A ‘partial’ ethnographic approach to policy research has also been used by other researchers (Bowe, Ball and Gold ,1992; Walford and Miller, 1991). The researcher, in designing the methodology for this research used primary and secondary literature. The primary literature took the form of Government DfEE/DfES publications and LSC/FEFC circulars (Cohen and Manion, 1994). This paper is based around three research questions: What were the ideologies behind incorporation of the FE college sector? What were the motivators which persuaded the new Labour Government that there needed to be a change from the FEFC model of FE to the LSC model of FE? What is the impact of the LSC likely to be on the FE sector?
Ideologies Behind Incorporation of the FE College Sector
A major difference between the LEA and FEFC models lay in the significant reduction of state intervention which the Conservative Government sought to achieve by removing FE colleges from Local Authority control into independent corporations run by college governors. This reduction in state intervention arose from a Government desire to achieve marketisation of the FE sector using the techniques of new managerialism. Many years before the birth of ‘Thatcherism’, Margaret Thatcher was expressing the view that there was too much Government (Thatcher, 1997). While in opposition to the Wilson/Callaghan Government of 1974-79, the themes that were to dominate her administration during the 1980’s began to be developed and defined (Russell 1978; Gamble 1988). Grocott (1989) states:
“With the arrival of Thatcher came a great determination to do what was necessary to rescue Great Britain from the perceived national decline for which the civil service was partly to blame. Reducing public expenditure, eliminating waste, rolling back the frontiers of the state, lifting the dead hand of bureaucracy, cutting the public payroll were the objects of a crusade given authority by a clear electoral victory and leadership of a peculiarly visionary and dogmatic kind.” (Grocott, 1989,p119).
Linked with the concept of marketisation was the concept of new managerialism. Although the various facets of new managerialism and marketisation are discussed separately in this paper, academic authors tend to denote the two phenomena as arising together (Levitas, 1986; Hall 1988; Clarke, 1991). New managerialism involves deregulating public sector management to help ‘managers to manage’ without being hampered by excessive demands for accountability (Clarke and Newman, 1997). Thus, the politicians (at local level), the bureaucrats (in the town hall), and the professionals (teachers, social workers, etc) who the Conservatives felt by their controlling interest in the public services actually distorted the potential working of the free market model, had to be removed or sidelined.
This they believed would then leave the market to control both supply and demand (Pollitt, 1993). This has invariably enabled managers to compel and control workers within the public sector, as unions were enfeebled through repeated anti-trade union legislation enacted by the Conservative Government with a view to rolling back the state (Pollitt, 1993). Marketisation as a secondary phenomenon acted as a check on newly emancipated public sector managers by creating a quasi market for their services. This for the first time raised the spectre of redundancy for public sector managers and their employees if their ‘business’ failed to be efficient. By the use of both of these mechanisms, the Conservative Government sought to reduce the amount of public money spent on education.
Public services’ new managerialism was encouraged by such academics as Peters and Waterman (1982) in their work on customer service. This influenced the development of three initiatives which collectively Pollitt (1993) calls New Public Management. These initiatives involved the re-working of budgets so that they became transparent, costs being attributed to outputs not inputs and outputs being measured against quantitative performance indicators (Pollitt, 1993; Dunleavley and Hood, 1994). To the Conservative Government the changes they proposed were going to increase the student numbers in FE colleges, and improve quality, while at the same time through increased efficiency, and business acumen reduce the overall cost of FE to the Treasury. It has been argued however, that the Conservative Government policies had a very negative effect on many public sector workers as public sector organisations engaged in cost cutting, downsizing and a loss of professional status by teachers and lecturers (Gleeson, 1996, p102)
As Macfarlane (1993) points out however, an ulterior motive for marketisation and new managerialism being implemented in FE by the Conservative Government, was a perceived skills deficit in the workforce in comparison with other nationalities according to independent reports (Confederation of British Industry (CBI) 1989, Institute of Manpower Studies 1989,Royal Society of Arts (RSA) 1991). These reports cited skill deficiencies as having a possible detrimental effect on Britain’s economic performance. The Conservative Government believed that new managerialism and marketisation of the FE sector would address this issue by making colleges responsive to business needs, while at the same time increasing efficiency of the sector, thus reducing increases in public spending.