THE new director general of lifelong learning has an odd item on her CV. Janice Shiner, 50, is actually a college principal. It is highly unusual for such a position to be given to an FE figure instead of a career civil servant.

Not for her the traditional image of civil servants as public school boys with little experience beyond the corridors of Whitehall. This at least has the advantage of reducing public expectations.

But she knows that next time beleaguered college staff complain about red tape, pay, resources and the dreaded funding methodology, they will be able to say: “Janice Shiner should know better.”

“I can see they might say that,” she said. “But on the other hand, I think I have a responsibility to take my experience with me. And I think my experience is one of the reasons I have been appointed. I have already delivered on the ground and I know what it is like to run a college.”

Ms Shiner, who has two children, aged 20 and 21, takes up her post at the Department for Education and Skills in January. The news came two weeks ago. Asked if she is concerned by the pressures of working so close to ministers, she laughs. “Oh dear. Do you think I should be?” She grew up in Catford, southeast London, and her father drove a bus for a living. She won a scholarship to a fee-paying girls’ grammar school.

At 17 she left full-time education and became a secretary, eventually working for the chairman of the London Stock Exchange. After that she worked in human resources for WH Smith and Chase Manhattan Bank in England.

She did a business studies HND at South Bank Polytechnic from 1976 to 78, went on to get an Institute of Personnel Management diploma and a PGCE from London University.

Her first full-time teaching job was in business and management studies at Bridgnorth and South Shropshire College, where she became vice-principal.

In 1986 she was headhunted back to Chase Manhattan as vice-president of the human resources department.

But she missed FE and the students, and returned to be vice-principal at Yeovil College in Somerset, an inspector, education director of the Further Education Funding Council, and finally principal at Leicester College in 1999. The college was formed that year by the merger of Charles Keene and South Field colleges.

One of the largest in the country, it has 26,000 students and 1,500 staff. She says Leicester’s racially and socially-diverse community has given her the experience she needs to meet the Government’s agenda for widening participation and increasing basic skills among adults.

“The appointment reflects well on what has been achieved at Leicester College over the past two years and the influential and important contributions Janet has made to the merger and the formation of the new college,” said Michael Switzer, Leicester’s chairman of governors.

She is naturally reluctant to talk about what measures she might propose in her new role. But as a principal she feels there is room for more lateral thinking. “We need to do things differently. This college has 112 venues in the city. For instance, we go and work with bakers in their own workplace, helping them through their GNVQs. We mustn’t think of colleges as groups of buildings.”

In Leicester, she says, 99 per cent of businesses have fewer than 200 employees, and 88 per cent have less than 10. These enterprises need flexibility from learning providers if they are to invest their often limited resources in training.

Ms Shiner also believes the FE sector needs to learn to put its case in business terms if it wants the best possible partnerships with the private sector: “In the private sector, the bottom line plays an important role and training can benefit that.”

She recognises principals’ concerns about bureaucracy and admits larger institutions like Leicester tend to have better resources to cope with red tape, especially the sort which is generated by the multiplicity of funding streams. But she says there is always going to be a “balancing act” between reducing the burden and retaining accountability for public funds.

“We need to do everything we can to reduce bureaucracy,” she said. “There are a lot of funding streams and it would be easier if the money came through just one funding stream. But I don’t think it is a s simple as that. As a taxpayer, you would want to know that the money is going where it is intended.”