THE publication by the Learning and Skills Council of the national further education student numbers, as on November 1, 2001, demonstrates the degree to which its predecessor, the Further Education Funding Council, failed to deliver.

There has been a catastrophic collapse of vision - and of competent management. The overall number of students on council-funded courses has been static at about 1.95 million over the period 1997-2001. Numbers have risen by just one half of one per cent, from 1.955m students in 1997, to 1.965m in November 2001. The figures for all students enrolled has fallen by 1.2 per cent from 2,374,000 to 2,345,000 over the same period.

The figures are worse than they appear since the 2001 figures include extra part-time students on three-hour courses, including tasters; the previous threshold was nine hours. Meanwhile, funding has increased by almost 25 per cent, from pound;3.1bn to pound;3.8bn.

It will, of course, be contended that these figures are just a snapshot and that we should not read too much into them, but the figures confirm a trend - that we are making no headway in widening participation. They suggest that there has been no progress towards David Blunkett’s target of 700,000 extra students in FE by 2002.

What are the reasons for this lamentable performance? The key failure is a failure of vision. Helena Kennedy’s widening participation agenda has not been driven forward. Colleges have been strangled in red tape and pored over by auditors. Caution has become the watchword.

To widen participation, colleges must have the ability to work in genuine partnership with community-based organisations on their own ground. This means surrendering some control; the community must have a real stake. We should have community-based family learning, in association with primary schools; classes run with churches, gurdwaras, mosques and temples. We need provision that might include marching-band classes run by community associations. All of these programmes should start where learners are and be run in their own locality. All of them, incidentally, were ruled retrospectively ineligible for funding at Bilston Community College.

Robin Landman’s recent FE Focus article, “Yes, FE is racist”, draws attention to another vital area of vision failure, despite the rhetoric - the failure to recruit and retain black staff, particularly at senior levels. Black students are a major constituency for FE. Research in the school sector suggests that black staff are a powerful stimulus to black student achievement. More black staff in colleges - and at the LSC - apart from being right in principle, would help in widening participation.

The FE sector was woefully mismanaged by the FEFC. The sector groaned under an avalanche of “guidance” which set out constantly changing goalposts, sometimes retrospectively. We still have some 15 per cent of colleges in serious financial trouble. And now we know that even with significant extra cash, the council could only deliver a 0.5 per cent increase in student numbers over the period 1997-2001. What a record!

What lessons should the LSC draw from this sorry tale if it is not to end up in the same position in four years time? There must be a driving vision of inclusiveness permeating every aspect of the council’s work. Colleges must be freed up to allow them the space to interpret this in the context of their own local circumstances. It is surely self-evident that traditional courses alone will simply leave us where we are?

Getting new people into FE requires new approaches. New approaches are riskier than what we already do. Colleges must not feel that if they try something different and it fails, they will be hung out to dry. The FE story in recent years is of the triumph of myopic bean-counting over visionary and innovative education.

If the LSC wants success, particularly on inclusiveness, it must put teachers with a passion for taking education to parts it has never been before back in the driving seat. Education starts where people are.

Paul Goddard-Patel is former assistant principal and finance director at Bilston Community College