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Education Update - News December 2009

Published: 18th December 2009

Further Education

AoC Conference Speech
In a potentially bold move, Geoff Russell has decided to make the text of his speech at the AoC conference available online.

6% cut in Train to Gain funding
The Government announced a 6% cut in Train to Gain funding next year and a 3% reduction in course rates across the board.

The Government's Skills Investment Strategy, published this month, revealed that all college courses for 2010-11 will be funded at 3% lower than they were this year, and Train to Gain courses must bear an additional 3% cut.

Providers are already in difficulty with Train to Gain after the department put a halt on funding earlier this year when it was clear that demand for training threatened to exceed the budget available.

The investment strategy shows a clear shift from education provided in response to adult learner demand towards employer-responsive training. The number of learner-responsive places for over 19s will fall from 1.5m this year to 1.12m next, while employer-responsive places rise from 1.41m to 1.7m.

The strategy also reveals cuts of 10% on the rate of funding for apprenticeships for over 25s next year due, the department said, to lower than expected costs of delivery on these programmes.

Questions over HE & FE mergers
The TES has quoted an Ofsted inspection as saying that merging failing or satisfactory colleges with universities has not produced improvements in their performance.

Apparently, the review of further education provision in higher education institutions said that their success rates had not kept pace with the general improvement among colleges.

Inspectors are quoted as concluding that "The mergers of higher education institutions with satisfactory or failing FE colleges that had a broad academic and vocational curriculum have not led to significant improvement in the quality of the FE programmes."

"College success rates distorted"
It has been widely reported in the press that Colleges have been accused of falsely boosting success rates in some courses by as much as 40%, according to a LSC report.

The LSC examined data at colleges it suspected to be the worst offenders and found claimed success rates rose at some by more than 40% in their final returns to the funding body, compared with figures including all starts.

The report did not try to find out how prevalent manipulating data to improve success rates was, but said 42 colleges changed their claimed number of places by more than 10% in their final returns.

The colleges were found to be using a wide range of techniques that would cause students who had dropped out or looked likely to fail to disappear from the final returns to the LSC, increasing the college's overall success rates. Examples included:

  • 1. Recruiting above target and deciding at the end of the year which places are unfunded, so removing them from the Individual Learner Record.
  • 2. If a student takes on additional qualifications during the year, deciding at the last minute whether to include them.
  • 3. Including students on the records at first, but scrubbing them from the final submission under the guise of data cleansing.
  • 4. Manipulating the end dates to turn successful short courses into long courses and unsuccessful long courses into short courses, or extending the end date to remove the course from that year's figures.
  • 5. Changing the leaving date to October for students who drop out from November to January so colleges keep the funding but are not included in success rates.
  • 6. Leaving out overseas students or those funded by employers, even though they are studying alongside LSC-funded students.
  • 7. Transferring students off a course, but not transferring them to another course at the same level, as required.

A new right to request time to train
The new right is set out in new sections of the Employment Rights Act 1996 by the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has published this guidance explaining how the new right to train will work and how it can benefit businesses. From 6 April 2010, employees of companies with 250 + employees in Great Britain will have the new right to request time out from their normal duties to undertake skills training. It is understood that the right is extended to all employees as from April 2011.

Higher Education

Mandelson's views on higher fees
Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Lord Mandelson has announced universities must improve educational experience for students if they are to charge higher fees, including giving students details regarding tutorial time, teaching quality, academic support and what is expected of them.

According to Lord Mandelson's proposals, students should be given more details including graduate salaries and drop-out numbers with research funding concentrated on institutions offering world class skills. Universities are also under pressure to increase the number of students from diverse backgrounds; a review on access programmes has already been commissioned.

Second union backs 0.5% pay increase
Another union has recommended accepting employers' long-resisted 0.5% pay offer, with talks also producing a proposed "digest" advising institutions how to avoid redundancies.

Negotiations between the Universities and Colleges Employers Association and the five higher education trade unions finally closed at a meeting on 24 November.

With no improvement on UCEA's 0.5% offer, Unite's education conference recommended on 26 November that members accept the deal. The result of a ballot on the issue is expected in the next few weeks.

FEC under the spotlight
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is commissioning a new review into the full economic costing (FEC) system, which provides universities with extra money to pay for infrastructure and other costs that are not covered by research grants.

A BIS spokesman said it was setting up the review, which will be chaired by Bill Wakeham, former vice-chancellor of the University of Southampton, in response to a recommendation in a research council-commissioned study, which concluded in April.

Private body can award degrees
The ifs School of Finance has been granted taught degree-awarding powers by the Privy Council, with effect from 2 January next year.

It follows the College of Law, professional training company BPP and Ashridge Business School as the fourth private organisation to win the powers since the modification to the rules in 2004.