Tag: tertiary

  • Bridging Further and Higher Education: Building a Truly Tertiary Education System

    Bridging Further and Higher Education: Building a Truly Tertiary Education System

    • Professor David Phoenix OBE is Vice-Chancellor of London South Bank University and Chief Executive of LSBU Group.
    • Dr Katerina Kolyva is Chief Executive Officer of The Education and Training Foundation.

    Post-16 education in England is at a pivotal moment, with increasing efforts to create a more integrated and collaborative system. While elements of competition remain, the reintegration of the sector into the Department for Education presents new opportunities for colleges and universities to enhance their contributions to local communities. Both further and higher education providers play distinct yet complementary roles in supporting diverse learners, but significant challenges remain in achieving a fully joined-up system. The establishment of Skills England, along with the skills and industrial strategies, signals a growing recognition of these complexities, highlighting the need for a cross-government approach. Achieving greater alignment across the post-16 landscape could provide an opportunity to shape a system that empowers learners, strengthens local economies, and supports national prosperity.

    In February, the Education and Training Foundation and London South Bank University therefore brought together a range of relevant stakeholders to discuss existing models of best practice and the workforce characteristics needed to help develop an effective tertiary education system.

    University and college mergers, franchise agreements, Institutes of Technology and Group models are all examples of imaginative approaches to post-16 collaboration. Workforce characteristics found within these models include a leadership team with a clear vision, strong awareness of institutional values, and resilience against the prevailing winds of policy. Having the correct personnel with a positive and creative mindset can foster strategic risk-taking and allow for continuous learning with the avoidance of blame, though people and culture initiatives alone cannot be relied upon to deliver a coherent system.

    Our marketised higher education system and a focus on further-higher education transitions around level 4 could risk missing the bigger picture. We need government to develop a national framework within which local skills and innovation strategies can be developed. Such strategies would seek to consider issues related to the skills pipeline (including key areas such as adult education and gateway qualifications) but would also look at job creation by leveraging universities to drive innovation with business. Such a system-based approach needs to also consider what post-16 provision in the schools sector looks like and how this interfaces with further education, as well as the interface between further and higher education. This is essential if we are to provide alternative study pathways that meet the needs of the majority whilst also preventing duplication and redundancy at all levels.

    Published in December 2024, the government’s Devolution White Paper could be a first step towards establishing a framework for regional collaboration and addressing these missing elements. Strategic Authorities could take an important role in working alongside further and higher education providers and employers to identify skills shortages and promote clear pathways from education and training into employment through a combination of specialist institutions. The government, through a coordinated approach across departments, could use various regulatory and financial levers to encourage genuine collaboration between providers where there is a mismatch between skill demands and provision, while also simplifying the complex regulatory landscape.

    A greater level of specialisation and the recognition of the importance of different institutional missions has the potential to support a greater diversity of missions and a shift to a more collaborative framework. When combined with designing a corresponding careers, information, advice and guidance service, this will allow institutions to build more pathways for learners, meaning a more inclusive system. Those who are educationally disenfranchised would have more options to re-enter education and work, breaking down a key barrier to opportunity and, in the long term, boosting economic growth.

    Regulation, market forces, and financial constraints can both foster and hinder collaboration. If government can find the correct balance, post-16 education will better serve learners and employers, boosting equality of opportunity and economic growth. Government commitments to boost devolution, publish an industrial strategy and reduce intra-governmental bureaucracy tacitly acknowledge the problem, but an overarching framework for addressing this is lacking. Once the IFATE Bill, which will formally establish Skills England, achieves Royal Assent, government must establish a mechanism to ensure cross-departmental coordination, bringing together Skills England, regional authorities, education providers, and employers to drive structural change.

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  • Any possible tertiary future for England’s post-18 system must lean into college-based HE

    Any possible tertiary future for England’s post-18 system must lean into college-based HE

    The Lifelong Education Institute’s latest report – “Taking Higher Education Further” – shines a spotlight on the contribution of FE colleges to England’s higher education sector.

    In partnership with the Mixed Economy Group of colleges – a group representing the 43 colleges with a strategic interest in HE – we have explored the rationale for college-based higher education, analysed some of the barriers holding it back from expansion, and suggested ways in which policymakers could support its growth.

    The report could hardly come out at a more interesting time for FE/HE relationships. After a decade or more of relative stasis following the introduction of the £9,000 undergraduate student fee cap in England, the tectonic plates of post-18 education are shifting rapidly towards an as-yet-unknown end state. There are three key drivers behind this potential re-setting of the status quo between the college and university sectors.

    First is the dramatic shift in the financial situation of universities and colleges, with many higher education institutions now facing the sort of cost-cutting that further education colleges have endured for years and needing to come up with new, more efficient business models to sustain themselves financially. Following the consolidation of many smaller colleges into large groups, there are now several colleges with larger annual turnovers than smaller universities, and the balance of power between FE and HE is moving steadily away from the traditional template of senior/junior partnership.

    Second is the move towards universities having place-based strategies, with civic university agreements proliferating in all parts of the country. This has partly been driven by the rise in influential devolved authorities across England, and partly by the increase in take up of degree pathways in a range of public sector professions, such as nursing, policing, and social work, which are vital to local communities and tend to recruit from local populations.

    Rising cost of living pressures have also played their part, with commuting students becoming an increasingly important segment of the HE student market. The introduction of degree apprenticeships has also pulled many universities into much more active engagement with local employers and much more of a focus on local skills development. Colleges, which have always had fairly tight catchment areas, now find themselves working their patches alongside local universities, and in some cases, through the network of 21 Institutes of Technology, offering higher technical qualifications and high level short courses directly in partnership with HE institutions.

    Third, and most importantly, the arrival of a new government is rapidly moving the political paradigm away from competition towards collaboration. Education ministers have taken every opportunity since the general election to drive home the message that partnership, cooperation and coordination have now replaced markets, competition and institutional individualism as “the default way of working across all providers,” in the recent words of skills minister Jacqui Smith. We are promised a white paper this summer setting out a comprehensive strategy for post-16 education and skills, and at the same time a “radical” package of HE reforms which will also emphasise the role of HE in collaborating around local and national skills priorities.

    Is the future for England tertiary?

    HE/FE collaboration has tended to be relatively transactional and fluid in England, and there is no standard blueprint for forging partnerships. A small number of colleges can now claim to be tertiary institutions, having been granted degree awarding powers, although with the Office for Students having currently suspended the application process until August, it’s now far from certain how quickly this number will grow in future. There are four universities which by virtue of having absorbed a failing FE college have become tertiary – Derby, London South Bank, Greater Manchester (formerly Bolton University) and the University of West London. But this is the result of specific local circumstances, not national policy.

    Arguably, these institutions are a microcosm of exactly what the government is trying to achieve at a national level. Tertiary institutions are able to develop coherent progression pathways from basic to undergraduate level for students of all aptitudes, embracing both academic and technical education routes without competition between them. David Phoenix, vice chancellor of London South Bank University, has been an articulate advocate for this model, and his vision, as set out in his November 2023 report “Connecting the dots: the need for an effective skills system in England” has been highly influential in Labour-leaning circles.

    It’s possible the government will introduce much greater incentives for universities and colleges to consider merger, and even be prepared to act as “matchmaker” for reluctant or hesitant brides and grooms. It would certainly make it much easier to develop integrated apprenticeships, higher technical qualifications and Lifelong Learning Entitlement offers if there were more tertiary providers.

    The Taking Higher Education Further report is generally supportive of greater tertiary integration, but with several important reservations. To begin with, although most FE colleges are appreciative of the relationships they have with universities – mostly still based on validation agreements – there are many who are critical of the cost and in some cases one-sided nature of the partnership, with some having experienced the disruption caused by an HE institution deciding unilaterally to withdraw from the agreement. Another concern has been the proliferation of foundation years at many universities, which was seen as unwelcome competition for Level 3 students and met with dismay by many in the FE sector. This has abated considerably since the introduction of a much reduced fee cap for foundation years.

    While some institutes of technology have strengthened FE/HE relationships, others have struggled to bridge the gap between the two sectors. One aspect of that gap – the difference in pay and conditions between FE and HE lecturers – has proved particularly troublesome. But those institutes of technology which have been successful have demonstrated that joint working between FE and HE can be highly effective. Overall, despite the caveats, the FE leaders consulted as part of the research for the report were generally positive about the idea of working more closely with HE.

    In a political climate where economically relevant skills and wider access to job-related skills are now central to the government agenda, college-based higher education has both issues at its heart. The HE students who study in FE colleges are overwhelmingly, adult, very local and from disadvantaged backgrounds. The courses they take are typically directly related to opportunities in the local labour market and focused on career progression. Whereas the student loan system has tended to incentivise HE institutions to prioritise three year degree courses, FE colleges offer a much more incremental approach, with multiple entry and exit points and a high proportion of part-time and modular options. This could be a significant advantage as colleges prepare for the implementation of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement in 2026–27.

    In summary, the report is a plea for government to give more support to the expansion of HE in FE, but is not in any way antagonistic towards the HE sector. The aim is to strengthen the relationship between colleges and universities, not to weaken it. As the foreword says, “Working together, colleges and universities can open up accessible opportunities and make a real difference to people’s lives.” In this, FE and HE share a common purpose.

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  • What the UK can learn from Scotland’s tertiary pathfinder experiments

    What the UK can learn from Scotland’s tertiary pathfinder experiments

    It is commonly believed that, if we only had accurate up-to-date data on what skills employers were looking for, we could solve most of Britain’s productivity and social mobility problems in one fell swoop.

    There’s a kind of big state approach to collecting and sharing that knowledge we could follow – all kinds of architectures and data collections we could dream up to ensure that every course offered in every educational establishment was laser-focused on a particular industry demand.

    To do this at the level of fidelity and timeliness needed would be either expensive, or impossible, or both. Remember, right now, we can’t even accurately tell you how many people are currently working in the UK. And even if we did have this up-to-the moment, detailed, reliable data on employer needs: would the sector be able to use it? And would learners see any benefit?

    Pathways and pathfinders

    On the other hand nine projects, funded at a total of just £500,000 by the Scottish Funding Council, offer a glimpse of a set of approaches that are making a real difference to education and employment. It’s the opposite of big and flashy – building on existing structures and using small amounts of money to facilitate data sharing and collaboration. And it might just be a glimpse of the future.

    The key components are what the Regional Tertiary Pathfinder programme calls Regional Delivery Boards – the pathfinder iteration saw two established, one covering Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire (north east Scotland), the other covering Dumfries and Galloway plus the Borders (south of Scotland).

    If you are in England, you might be thinking these are pretty much the same as the Employer Representative Bodies that develop Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs). And you’d be wrong. The LSIP approach simply brings together employers to state their needs and then invites providers (just FE colleges and private training providers, obviously) to meet them. Ewart Keep, in one of the vast numbers of reports published around the programme, describes the LSIP approach as:

    the employer is viewed as a customer (more or less demanding but detached from the actual process of skill production) within a marketized, one-way street, relationship with a range of suppliers

    In contrast, the Regional Delivery Boards encompass providers at all levels (from schools through to universities) and treat employers and industry bodies as partners in designing and delivering not only the provision directly linked to that particular momentary skills need, but in helping to shape a whole skills ecosystem.

    It is, after all, not really worth designing an undergraduate level energy transition course (for example) aimed at a locality if people in that area are not going to have the qualifications and experience required to benefit from it, and if there is no local aspiration to work in that field. Every individual project supported by the board will be taking into account employer demand as one factor, alongside a consideration of wider skills pathways, of learner demand, and of the wider endeavour of offering people good quality and stable employment.

    I’ve always been a fan of small projects that use low levels of funding in carefully targeted ways to make transformative changes and build capacity. I’ve spent large parts of my adult life setting them up. It does not take a lot of money, in the grand scheme of things, to bring about lasting change. Especially if you build on existing interests, existing partnerships, and even existing plans.

    Building on the past

    There’s various models of change and innovation available, but the one I’ve always known to work draws on Eric Von Hippel’s lead user theory which can be summarised as: smart people on the ground doing the work are already inventing ways of getting stuff done – find these people, listen to them, and make the changes they suggest to enable others to do the same. The strength of the Regional Tertiary Pathfinders model is that it explicitly builds on existing work, existing relationships, and even existing projects – offering legitimacy and political backing as much as money to supercharge the good work that is already happening.

    You sometimes come across agencies and individuals that want to start from scratch, designing the perfect system that will replace everything that has gone before. While this is undeniably fun, it ignores the fact that the same people and the same groups that have been working on similar projects before will be unimpressed with branding and a tidy new organogram being presented as a way to solve the problems they’ve been working on for years. You could call it “producer interest” – I much prefer the term “people who are actually going to do the work to solve the problem” interest.

    It doesn’t matter how good you are on PowerPoint, those new boxes are going to be populated by existing domain experts – it would probably save a lot of time if we started listening to them.

    What about the data?

    One of the impressive facets of both the Regional Delivery Boards and the projects they support is what I might term a pragmatism about data. It actually turns out that data on employer needs is just one of the wells that need to be drawn on, of arguably equal importance is data on the needs of the kinds of students who may want to take the new course you are designing.

    It surprises many to learn just how many (technical, legal, procedural) barriers exist around sharing data across educational phases. Schools will have detailed data on their pupils, not just on attainment and personal characteristics, but on career intentions too. But it is rare to see such detailed information shared with colleges, and by the time you get to university or employment a pupil is flattened out to a list of grades and a very generic reference.

    Likewise, different parts of the system will be getting different kinds of information from employers and industry bodies. While an individual employer may be reasonably expected to understand their own immediate skills needs, to get a fuller or longer term picture you need more than one data point. The various employers, bodies, and providers involved all had light to shed – on a global, regional, and local level.

    In order to ensure that skills pipelines are unclogged working in the way they might be needed you need to bring all of these data sources together, and it is to the credit of the two boards that this has been able to happen.

    Designing and delivering courses

    Any provider worth bothering with will be drawing on all kinds of information in designing new courses and reviewing old ones. There’s a landscape of professional bodies, subject interest groups, QAA benchmarks, and comparators that can help academics and quality assurance staff decide what needs to be covered in a course. This intelligence is married with an institutional insight into its own purpose and mission, and the missions of other local providers.

    Employer engagement can and does happen at the design, delivery, and review phases of courses – each of these allows for direct input into the curriculum mediated by the kinds of wider understanding detailed above. What we are also starting to see is partnerships between providers across phases feeding these processes in a similar way – schools, local authorities, and FE colleges, are all components of the skills pipeline and have a key role both in directly preparing students for admission, and in raising awareness and aspiration more widely.

    This nicely illustrates a central strength of the regional tertiary pathfinder approach, an emphasis on the wider needs of the learner. Rather than seeing learners, Gradgrind-like, as vessels to be filled with the correct skills there is a recognition of “meta-skills” and graduate applicants: a genuine consideration of the careers and lives of learners rather than just thinking about the immediate employer or industry need. Again to quote Ewart Keep:

    There are a number of professions and occupations where we know that labour shortages in part (sometimes a growing proportion) spring not from a shortage of individuals qualified to undertake the work, but from the fact that those that are qualified and have entered the workforce are now choosing to leave the occupation because individuals are concluding that the pay and/or working conditions and stress levels are unacceptable

    Courses more closely aligned to employers needs are certainly useful in addressing skills needs – they are not a means of attracting young people to work in unlivable jobs.

    Beyond the programme, beyond Scotland

    The initiatives that the Regional Pathfinder Programme have fostered and nurtured are already becoming “business as usual”, though how the funding council can support and grow this activity remains an open question. The project coordinators that did so much to drive success were largely funded by the small SFC grants – whether such dedicated project delivery roles would exist without this small amount of funding is not clear. Likewise, the attention that SFC involvement (and, frankly, SFC oversight) drove at a senior level is difficult to sustain. As of yet we don’t know how or in what form the programme will continue – but given the small amount of funding involved and the scope to spread the lessons learned so far to other areas it would feel very short-sighted to abandon the approach.

    In other nations of the UK skills planning cleaves much closer to the employer-as-purchaser model that relies on the optimistic idea that employers are engaged in long-term skills planning that can be aggregated and delivered. The results from Scotland should inform England’s long-awaited reform of the LSIP process – and hopefully put a human face on what frequently feels like an impersonal and deterministic skills strategy that understands neither the people who have the skills, the institutions that develop them, and the the employers that react to a rapidly changing world.

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