In this series of 10 short blogs – which will issue in rapid succession – I will consider in turn the top themes that have emerged from 60 interviews with teachers, leaders, policy-makers, academics and others from across and beyond the English FE system. Each blog will end with a question which I hope will generate debate on LinkedIn, where the blogs are signposted.
The core question considered has been “what might be the features of a self-improving FE system?” Interviewees have also considered the key features of the FE system as it stands, and what is holding it back from being self-improving.
In this blog I will wrap up three more of the minor themes that my interviewees discussed – not the “big 7”, but pretty interesting nevertheless, and each mentioned between two and five times. These three are all about employers, one way or another. They were all mentioned separately by different interviewees, and they are:
The first theme is self-explanatory. The assertion was that employers are seen – at best – as customers or stakeholders in our FE system, and not as key drivers. The view expressed was that in a self-improving system there would be much stronger links – locally, regionally and nationally – between what colleges and providers teach and what the labour market needs. Of course this is an age-old worry about the vocational education system, and there have been umpteen efforts to address it over the decades (or centuries, we might even say). The latest are the LSIPs (Local Skills Improvement Partnerships) and the new Ofsted sub-judgement [sic] that looks specifically at how well colleges [sic] are contributing to meeting local skills needs.
But several of my interviewees (none of whom worked in colleges) felt strongly that our FE system is not well linked to the labour market. For some this was an explicit criticism; for others it was simply an observation in the context of all the other demands on colleges; and for one it was actually a plus point, as they said the learner was the real customer and rightly the primary focus.
By “weak links” a number of things were meant. These included the following:
The upshot of all this was that in a self-improving FE system there would be strong, tight feedback loops between the labour market and FE providers, such that providers teach knowledge and skills that the labour market demands, and employers would in turn offer partnership to providers in myriad ways – taking apprentices, offering T Level placements, co-teaching, professional exchange, curriculum development, sharing of kit, even co-investment in capital developments or innovations. The assertion was that some of this happens some of the time, but it is very far from being systematically embedded, and that Government policy does nothing to make it so, as there is no sign of any join up between DfE and the other relevant departments that have a stake (DWP, DLUHC, BEIS, HMRC, DHSC, etc).
A few interviewees felt that the role of employers in the FE system was one-sided and inappropriate, and not at all conducive to a self-improving system. They said that employer opinions – as manifested in the processes run by DfE and IfATE to set standards, and in LSIPs, LEPS, or any of the predecessor mechanisms – were given credence without much critique, and that employers were listened to when they produced a self-serving narrative of the shortcoming of the FE system without having to take any responsibility themselves. One interviewee talked about “benefits dependency” of UK employers, who are used to believing that skills development is a proper role of the state, and not something they should be expected to invest in themselves in any significant way.
The upshot of all this is that there is a feed-in from employers, but no feed-back. As such, it lacks the key characteristic of a self-improving system, namely that it benefit from “joy loops” (aka positive reinforcing loops of a beneficial kind as per blog 4) and “balancing loops” (aka negative feedback loops as per blog 5).
Okay, nobody actually said this. But it stands for a theme that several interviewees did mention, which was that our system lacks some vital positive attributes that exist in some other countries. It was encouraging that nobody literally said that the German tech ed system is much better than ours – this is not now the opinion of anyone I have met who has up to date understanding of both the UK and German education systems.
But there was a hankering for two specific things which are still worth thinking about. The first was the general policy framing of technical education in some European countries whereby there is a stronger ‘social partnership’ model, where state, workers and employers are all baked in to the system in a meaningful way, and where policy changes are slow and infrequent. The second was the idea that in some countries one cannot gain top status in a profession without engaging in the endeavour of teaching your profession to others. The idea of the German ‘mastercraftsman’ being obliged to learn something about how to teach in order to attain that status was described as a “dream” by one or two. Whether or not this does correspond to any reality in Germany – or anywhere else – now is perhaps less relevant than the concept itself, which was thought to be a powerful feature of a joined-up, high quality and self-improving FE system, which encompassed the whole landscape including the work of work, and did not see FE as a ‘supply side’ facing a labour market ‘demand side’.
Question: Is employer engagement in our FE system about as good as it can get in the real world? Or are there clear wins that are achievable that would represent a step towards a more self-improving FE system?
David Russell
Executive in Residence at Oxford Saïd Business School
Education and Training Foundation