Find fixes not props

Colleges need to rethink how they deal with poor performance
1st September 2017, 12:00am

Share

Find fixes not props

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/find-fixes-not-props
Thumbnail

Should colleges be trusted to manage their own affairs? This is a question that the sector has never quite managed to shake off since incorporation almost a quarter of a century ago.

Colleges are largely autonomous, incorporated institutions, even more so since they were reclassified by the Office for National Statistics in 2012. With this comes the freedom to become insolvent - although the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 put extra protections in place to protect the interests of learners.

For government, the problem remains that there is little it can do to address poor performance. This could be a reason why the concept of the “self-improving system” from the schools sector has never taken root in FE.

Back in 2016, in the early days of the area reviews, Nick Boles, then skills minister, told colleges that they couldn’t sit quietly and “see how the chips fall and continue on roughly as we are”. Yet that is what the majority have done. For those involved in the costly process, the hundreds of thousands of pounds spent developing mergers which subsequently collapsed must be a source of intense frustration.

While the precise structure behind the early intervention, college improvement system to be led by the FE commissioner (see pages 54-55) is still being discussed, the concept is welcome. But some serious thinking needs to be done. Using the £15 million budget to prop up the weakest colleges will get us no closer to solving this 24-year-old puzzle.

 

 

 

 

@stephenexley

Want to keep reading for free?

Register with Tes and you can read two free articles every month plus you'll have access to our range of award-winning newsletters.

Keep reading for just £1 per month

You've reached your limit of free articles this month. Subscribe for £1 per month for three months and get:

  • Unlimited access to all Tes magazine content
  • Exclusive subscriber-only stories
  • Award-winning email newsletters
Recent
Most read
Most shared