Fragmented funding is the major cause of unnecessary bureaucracy for Ted Parker, principal of Barking College in Romford, Essex. And he has a solution.
“We need to go back to a single budget for colleges,” he says. “This would allow them to get on with coherent, strategic planning.”
Within the college, Mr Parker is working with the unions and a consultant to streamline their own procedures so that the workload does not get passed down, but they can do little about outside demands. Every initiative comes with its own auditing requirements.
The Learning and Skills Council has replaced annual monitoring with even more demanding provider reviews. Efforts to rationalise these are not succeeding.
“The intention is to make it more effective, but there is not much sign it is going to shrink. Now we have at least a termly meeting with a whole team of people,” says Mr Parker. Equal opportunities monitoring also has complex requirements, he added.
Walking around his college on the day of the strike by the lecturers’ and support staff unions, it was clear to him that the Teachers’ Pay Initiative has satisfied no one. It makes extra work for the colleges and does not feel like a rise because it is not part of lecturers’ salaries.
Providing the same data in different forms for different organisations is a significant issue. “Systems that demand duplication of information like this must be changed,” he says.
His main concern with the way the sector is managed and regulated was echoed by most principals, who said there was too much micro-management.
