A new report calls for a skills strategy to coordinate post-16 provision

The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) is today publishing a new paper, Connecting the Dots: The Need for an Effective Skills System in England (HEPI Report 167).

It focuses on the urgent need to break down the educational barriers created by regulatory burden and competition between education institutions, which is preventing our skills system from meeting the needs of learners and employers across the country.

According to the report’s author, Professor David Phoenix, Vice-Chancellor of LSBU, the education system only serves learners well if they follow the standard route from GCSEs to A-Levels through to university; it fails to deliver clear pathways for those who do not, particularly for students wishing to study more technical or industry aligned provision.

The Report highlights the fact that funding constraints are leading to ineffective levels of delivery through duplication across sectors, driving a quasi-market that is not necessarily in the interests of learners or the nation.

The Report then identifies the need for a national framework to enable regional networks of differentiated education institutions to develop, supported by a holistic cross-government skills strategy that considers industrial properties, regional prosperity and infrastructure development to facilitate a more integrated approach to education and the country’s future prosperity.

The Report includes a Foreword by Dr Diana Beech, Chief Executive Officer of London Higher, and an Afterword by David Hughes, Chief Executive of the Association of Colleges.

Professor David Phoenix, author of the report and Vice-Chancellor of London South Bank University (LSBU) and Chief Executive of LSBU Group, said:

‘England’s post-16 education system suffers from so many multiple and overlapping dysfunctions that it has become a misnomer to call it a system at all.

‘A learner wishing to pursue an intermediate level technical course will find a bewildering array of similar and overlapping qualifications being offered by their local sixth-forms, colleges and universities with no coordination between their provision.

‘This is a result of funding pressures that have forced education institutions to continually dilute their more specialist functions – with some colleges teaching everything from community education to Master’s Degrees. In parallel to these funding constraints driving competition for resource, regulatory burden – which can see some qualifications having up to four different regulatory bodies involved in quality assurance – is hindering collaboration.

‘Introducing a clear skills strategy linked to industrial priorities and regional prosperity coupled to reform of the education funding and regulation landscape are critical if we are serious about addressing the dysfunction of England’s post-16 education system.

‘Doing so would end the competition for learners that discourages the development of specialist providers and enable the joined-up partnerships required for an integrated system to emerge.’

In a Foreword to the Report, Dr Diana Beech, Chief Executive Officer of London Higher and former adviser to three Ministers for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, writes:

‘What is clear is that the old binary approach to tertiary education policy is no longer sufficient for England’s rapidly evolving post-18 educational landscape. And if the current or a future government is serious about promoting skills to improve national productivity and local economic growth, then a comprehensive framework is urgently needed which facilitates, not hinders, more tertiary partnerships and innovations. …

‘For a long time, universities and higher education providers have been emerging as anchor institutions in towns and cities across the country. The skills framework outlined in this report will now allow them to become anchors in a wider and all-encompassing vision for tertiary education, and importantly connecting skills of all levels to research, development and innovation.’

In an Afterword, David Hughes, Chief Executive of the Association of Colleges, writes:

‘The current arrangements are simply not working for the challenges we face as a country. We spend a lot of tax revenue on education post-18 but the labour market is lacking in people with the skills, particularly at Levels 3, 4 and 5 to meet employer demand. Productivity is flat-lining and regional inequalities and the disadvantage gaps in educational achievement persist with no signs of improvement. Polling is telling the political parties that large numbers of people want more investment in technical education, delivered locally and flexibly, and, focused on helping people get better jobs which will pay enough to stand up to the cost of living crisis. …

‘Collaboration and coordination to make pathways for learners more straightforward and clear routes into good jobs with employers as partners in education will all help. A simple, effective, first step forwards at a national level would be a statement of priorities to include key areas like net zero, the NHS and digital. At a local level, the colleges and universities working with employers would be challenged with delivering on these priorities.’

The report:

• highlights how financial pressures have caused sixth forms, colleges and universities to increasingly compete for 16-19 and sub-degree learners, in part by diluting their course offers;
• explains how this competition, coupled with a morass of post-16 qualifications and a burdensome and complex regulatory system, is undermining education institutions’ ability to both specialise and cultivate effective partnerships to meet local skills needs; and
• recommends creating a cross-departmental Post-16 Skills Council to oversee a national skills strategy, while ensuring that the funding regime supports universities, colleges and sixth forms to specialise and collaborate.

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Sector Response

Anne Murdoch, college leadership adviser at the Association of School and College Leaders, said:

“Colleges and sixth forms are doing their level best to provide young people with a variety of pathways to fulfilling careers. But, as this report makes clear, they are doing so in the context of a system that is critically underfunded and lacks a clear and overarching skills strategy. The government has added to the confusion by its plans to defund many BTECs and similar qualifications – one of the parts of the system which works well – in an effort to steer young people on to T-levels. Recently, however, the Prime Minister has said that he intends to replace T-levels with a new qualification, the Advanced British Standard. It is chaos.

“We desperately need a national strategy for post-16 skills which is well-coordinated and well-resourced. The economic growth that the government is finding so elusive is absolutely dependent on the country having an excellent skills base and it should be a priority to support technical education in a way that delivers this objective. That would be great for the nation and it would be great for young people.”

David Hughes, chief executive, Association of Colleges, said:

“Collaboration between universities and colleges does happen across the country, but not in enough places and for enough learners.

“There are barriers in place. The first is that the core mission of universities, colleges and schools are not aligned at their heart, in their values or in the culture of beliefs and values. Changing that will take a generation and would be the most enduring route to a proper system, baked into the DNA of every institution and its staff.

“The second is that the major underlying driver for the current institutional, policy and funding arrangements, which have favoured HE over the last 20 years, is a snobbery against technical learning. The result is that policymakers and politicians all too often, almost instinctively, value someone achieving a degree more than a literacy or numeracy certificate. Universities are somehow deemed to be ‘better’ than colleges, and so-called academic learning is presumed to be more important than technical.

“We need change, and it is encouraging to see a consensus for building a more coherent, balanced and cohesive tertiary system. We spend a lot of tax revenue on education post-18 but the labour market is lacking in people with the skills, particularly at Levels 3, 4 and 5, to meet employer demand. Productivity is flat-lining and regional inequalities and disadvantage gaps in educational achievement persist with no signs of improvement.

“I urge policy makers to take the recommendations in this report seriously. Collaboration and coordination to make pathways for learners more straightforward and clear routes into good jobs with employers as partners in education will help. An effective first step would be a statement of priorities to include key areas like net zero, the NHS and digital, with colleges and universities, working with employers, challenged to deliver on these priorities.”