Foster FE Review
Realising the Potential: A Review of the Future Role of Further Education Colleges
Education
Independent review of the future purpose and role of further education colleges in England, placing employability and skills as the sector's core purpose. Made 81 recommendations covering college mission, quality and self-regulation.
81recommendations
81Not Yet Responded
Government Response
Informed the 2006 White Paper 'Further Education: Raising Skills, Improving Life Chances'; government broadly accepted the skills-first mission framing for FE colleges.
Recommendations
Recommendation 1
FE colleges and their corporations should review how they compare against the description of the FE college of the future and act on the outcome.
Recommendation 10
FE colleges must address more urgently provision which is failing, supported by the LSC, QIA and others.
Recommendation 11
FE colleges should be required to collect learners' views in a consistent and systematic manner as a key way of improving college provision.
Recommendation 12
FE colleges should consult learners on major issues impacting on their learning and the learner environment. This should be part of the learner entitlement.
Recommendation 13
FE Colleges should be required to publish annually this information in a learner report, together with their plans for addressing the issues.
Recommendation 14
FE colleges should look at what more they need to do to improve their offer to employers both through their primary role in improving the pool of employability and skills and in response to specific employer needs.
Recommendation 15
FE colleges should work with the LSC to develop a network of 'business' colleges focused on the needs of employers as proposed under agenda for change. This should include developing the new national standard in the design and delivery of workforce development service to employers.
Recommendation 16
All FE colleges should be active locally in promoting their services and the college brand and vision to local stakeholders.
Recommendation 17
Some principals, for example of larger colleges, should take on a promotional role at regional and national level.
Recommendation 18
FE colleges should work together (and with other providers) to improve learning pathways and choice (including for the 14-19 phase) and to realise the opportunities for economies of scale, development and innovation.
Recommendation 19
These networks should have as a core objective improving information, advice and guidance to help learners and employers navigate around local provision.
Recommendation 2
FE college principals – and aspiring managers and leaders – should review how well they meet the competencies described for leaders of the future and consider the further experience and development they need.
Recommendation 20
Successful local colleges and other providers should be allowed to grow through an increasingly more contestable and open learning market.
Recommendation 21
FE colleges should have as their core function the provision of high quality, value for money services for learners and employers. They should play an active part in helping the local commissioner develop the overall local strategy, but there should be a clear and unambiguous separation from the local commissioning function.
Recommendation 22
FE college governance arrangements should not be changed, but FE colleges and the Government should take steps to improve the diversity of governing bodies. There should also be a guide to good Governance to underpin the new purpose and clarify roles and responsibilities.
Recommendation 23
All colleges should have access to state of the art management information systems and be actively using this information – including inter-college comparative value for money data – to manage their organisations.
Recommendation 24
The AoC should help identify the costs to colleges of dealing with awarding bodies.
Recommendation 25
FE colleges should use their purchasing power and develop voluntary consortia to negotiate costs with awarding bodies so that economies of scale can be realised.
Recommendation 26
FE Colleges should also use their collective purchasing power to negotiate with awarding bodies the rationalisation of their administrative requirements.
Recommendation 27
There should be a more systematic capacity and capability building push across the college network around professional development.
Recommendation 28
FE Colleges should work with the DfES to develop a new national workforce development strategy founded on a fresh analysis of workforce needs. And implement its proposals.
Recommendation 29
Government and colleges find a solution to make leadership development more affordable so more colleges engage.
Recommendation 3
GFEC and tertiary colleges should adopt as their primary purpose, improving employability and supplying economically valuable skills. To achieve this: the skills focus should be clear in mission statements, there must be a rigorous approach to quality, and funding incentives, performance management arrangements, capital investment and workforce development strategies must all be geared towards this primary purpose.
Recommendation 30
Colleges should work with the Government on a programme to introduce new, radical approaches to develop leadership and to bring in effective leaders in from outside the college system. In the first instance it would be prudent to devise a programme to recruit and train 50 new senior middle managers a year from other sectors.
Recommendation 31
Colleges should ensure that their capital investment plans follow, and do not determine, their clearly defined purposes. They should also support the extension of e-learning, ICT and community outreach and also deliver sustainable development objectives.
Recommendation 32
The LSC should consider what more it needs to do to transform its planning, funding and accountability systems so that they meet the aspirations set out in the vision.
Recommendation 33
LSC should strongly endorse and promote the skills mission and work with DfES and colleges to embed this into all their strategies, plans and targets.
Recommendation 34
The LSC should co-ordinate and manage the planning, commissioning and funding of learning provision at the local level. Provider functions and commissioning functions should be appropriately separated, conceptually and practically.
Recommendation 35
The LSC should, working with FE colleges, develop an intensive one year development programme for the under-performing colleges who are in the failing category. The QIA and CEL should give major support to these institutions during this period. Those colleges or departments that do not pass a re-inspection should be made the subject of a contestability review, organised by the LSC, which could result in the removal of services, changes in management or in extreme cases dissolution.
Recommendation 36
The LSC and QIA should accelerate support for coasting provision and raise expectations so that it strives for excellence.
Recommendation 37
The LSC should ensure that its planning, funding and performance management arrangements take full account of the voice of learners. It should introduce a requirement for FE colleges to collect learners' views on their learning and the learner environment in a consistent and systematic way as a key way of improving college provision. Colleges should be required to publish annually this information in a learner report, together with their plans for addressing the issues. The LSC should aggregate this nationally and publish it.
Recommendation 38
The LSC should establish learner panels to provide a stronger learner voice in determining local needs.
Recommendation 39
The LSC should continue with its plans under agenda for change to create a national network of colleges and other providers which are focused on the needs of employers.
Recommendation 4
There should be a stronger push, supported by incentives, to develop vocational specialisms within General FE and tertiary colleges. These should be connected through hub and spoke arrangements across the country embracing the new Skills Academies and a revised CoVE programme.
Recommendation 40
The Government and the LSC should consider what further action should be taken to improve engagement between colleges and employers when it receives the advice of the Leitch Review of Skills.
Recommendation 41
The Government and the LSC should promote widely the clear purpose and strong brand for FE linked to the skills mission and there needs to be a long term consistency in this promotion.
Recommendation 42
The Government and the LSC should ensure that the development of managed provider networks at local level is co-ordinated across the country in a systematic, rather than opportunistic way, in particular to support the Government's 14-19 plans.
Recommendation 43
The Government should introduce a requirement on all providers to collaborate to make this happen.
Recommendation 44
To enable improved choice and quality locally, over time the market, particularly employer provision, should be opened up to those best able to deliver.
Recommendation 45
Capital support and help with initial start-up costs should be provided in special circumstances to prospective providers to assist market entry.
Recommendation 46
All tenders and competitions should be advertised regionally and in some cases nationally to allow national providers, other providers, or indeed colleges outside the local area to bid for new provision.
Recommendation 47
The LSC ensures as part of its agenda for change reforms, local LSCs implement the commissioning functions. Provider functions and commissioning functions should be appropriately separated, conceptually and practically.
Recommendation 48
The LSC, supported by the DfES, establishes and publishes clear information standards across the learning and skills sector including inter-college comparative data on value for money.
Recommendation 49
In line with these standards, the LSC, with the DfES, should ensure urgent rationalisation and simplification of the data collected as a priority as it is at the heart of good management and resource utilisation.
Recommendation 5
Sixth form colleges should retain their primary focus of academic achievement and progression for 16-19 year olds, and be treated by the DfES and LSC as a distinctive brand.
Recommendation 50
The LSC should develop plans to ensure that all colleges have access to – possibly through shared services – state of the art management information systems.
Recommendation 51
The LSC should ensure that capital investment plans follow, and do not determine, clearly defined FE college purposes. This should include using capital expenditure for local collaboration.
Recommendation 52
LSC and DfES should investigate how internet connectivity for colleges might continue to be supported.
Recommendation 53
LSC and DfES, working with Becta and others, should explore how to stimulate the market for content and increase the amount of good quality material available and give guidance on developing integrated systems and electronic campuses.
Recommendation 54
A dedicated, time-limited Implementation Unit should be established under an experienced General Manager as Project Director, with the task of putting significant changes in place within 18 months. This Unit should be monitored by a national stakeholder group.
Recommendation 55
The Government's CSR agenda should be expanded to cover employers encouraging their employees to take an active part in skills training either by being assessors and or becoming visiting lecturers/trainers in colleges.
Recommendation 56
The Government should consider a new policy for giving incentives to those in employment to become vocational tutors and visiting lecturers.
Recommendation 57
The Government should ensure that the new qualifications requirement on all college lecturers is not placing too many barriers in the way of vocational specialists entering teaching. The qualification framework should be reviewed and a new category of vocational tutor should be developed.
Recommendation 58
The Government should consider undertaking value for money studies, including asset utilisation, and bringing forward proposals for efficiencies in procurement.
Recommendation 59
The Government should expedite its reforms of information, advice and guidance to improve services to learners.
Recommendation 6
FE colleges, working collaboratively with Higher Education Institutions, should improve learner pathways to higher education to facilitate progression.
Recommendation 60
With the LSC, the Government should introduce a requirement on providers to provide a shared service to help learners and appropriate courses (part of the requirement to collaborate).
Recommendation 61
The Government should set the vision for FE and this should be in the context of a wide educational strategy covering all sectors. This should be translated through the LSC and interpreted locally by colleges and other partners.
Recommendation 62
The Government should give a stronger focus and interest in colleges and what they can offer.
Recommendation 63
The Government should review the way that the corporate leadership for skills is organised with the intention of enhancing the importance of the role.
Recommendation 64
The Government should establish a yearly review of activity at regional level and hold the system to account. (To be conducted by an independent scrutiny body).
Recommendation 65
The central roles of the LSC and DfES should be refined so as to lighten the impact of centralised control and monitoring and minimise duplication and undue central demands.
Recommendation 66
The roles of the LSC and DfES, so refined, need to be clear and complementary and this should be manifest in a relationship based on trust and openness.
Recommendation 67
LSC and the DfES should review their formal concordat to ensure the refinement and clarification proposed above are in place.
Recommendation 68
The building blocks, of a national learning model, and underpinning context and assumptions should be brought together into a single document which is published on a regular basis.
Recommendation 69
This document should set out greater clarity about what the public purse will support in full, what the public purse will subsidise and what the Government considers individuals and employers might pay for in full.
Recommendation 7
There must be a continued drive by colleges to improve quality and achieve excellence. Failing provision must be addressed and coasting provision should strive for excellence.
Recommendation 70
The Government should lead a national debate on this important issue which leads to a broader understanding with key stakeholders of the key principles underpinning the framework.
Recommendation 71
The Government, with the AoC and FE colleges and other key stakeholders, should develop a clear and targeted workforce development plan within the next twelve months which is published and consulted on prior to implementation.
Recommendation 72
The Government should introduce clearer "standards" and "measures" of leadership that incentivise and reward outstanding work.
Recommendation 73
The Government should introduce new, radical approaches to bring effective leaders in from outside and ensure their success and impact. In the first instance it would be prudent to devise a programme to recruit and train 50 new senior middle managers a year from other sectors.
Recommendation 74
The ALI corporate knowledge and experience is celebrated and embedded in the new organisation.
Recommendation 75
The new inspection organisation develop a 'state of the art' inspection methodology which incorporates the learner experience, corporate governance, impact and value for money criteria, alongside the essential quality and outcome measures.
Recommendation 76
This inspection activity should also include a strong element of area assessment, community and business impact.
Recommendation 77
HEFCE and LSC, colleges and universities should expedite work to ensure clear learner pathways exist across the country to enable progression to higher levels.
Recommendation 78
The CEL and other partners should expedite an approach to improving leadership in FE colleges.
Recommendation 79
The QCA accelerates the pace of change towards the Framework for Achievement as it brings much needed clarification.
Recommendation 8
Self Regulation should be the medium term goal. Colleges should work with the LSC and QIA, to develop the foundations for this based on a new model of self assessment underpinned by broader measures of impact and value for money. Those colleges that demonstrate the achievement of criteria for such a system, should over time increasingly be rewarded with greater autonomy.
Recommendation 80
The AoC should help identify the costs to colleges of dealing with awarding bodies and FE colleges should use their collective purchasing power to negotiate with awarding bodies rationalisation of their administrative requirements.
Recommendation 81
A dedicated, time-limited Implementation Unit should be established to ensure significant changes are put in place within 18 months, with an experienced General Manager as Project Director, monitored by a national stakeholder group.
Recommendation 9
FE colleges should strive for long term, continuous improvements in teaching and learning based on best practice from across the sector.