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Partnerships for Progression
A NIACE Briefing and Response to the HEFCE / LSC Consultation Document 01/73
Published: April 2002
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Government policy is to “enable 50% of young people under the age of 30 to progress to higher education by 2010”. To achieve this target, HEFCE and LSC propose, through Partnerships for Progression, a widening participation strategy that targets the cohort of those aged 13 to 19 at present, whose participation can count towards the target. NIACE is concerned that this focus will divert resources and energy away from adult learners. Our concern is for those aged 18 - 30 who will fall within the target but who are neglected by the proposals and also for those aged 30+ who will fall outside an age-limited target. NIACE believes that the age 30 cut-off point is arbitrary and unhelpful and that Government should encourage all who can benefit to aspire to higher education. We call on government to guarantee that any strategy for widening participation it funds will support improvements for people aged over nineteen in 2002 and over 30 by 2010. To this end, Government should also indicate an HE participation target for people who will be over 30 in the year 2010. |
Introduction
1. A consultation paper ‘Partnerships for Progression’ (reference 01/73) was published in December 2001 by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on behalf of itself and the Learning and Skills Council (LSC). The document, available electronically at www.hefce.ac.uk under ‘publications’, contains proposals for a joint initiative on widening participation and raising attainment in order to meet the government’s target that, by the year 2010, 50% of those aged between 18 and 30 should have the opportunity to benefit from higher education.
2. The proposals are based upon the belief that the target will only be met by raising attainment at levels 2 and 3, in order to encourage retention of learners in education at age 16 so that they go on to HE. It also acknowledges the need to provide better routes for those already in work to increase skills levels and entry to HE through workplace learning. The document calls for a significant investment to be focussed on:
 | Supporting and extending HE/FE partnerships to work with schools and providers of education and training in the learning and skills sector, and a programme of activities including summer schools, mentoring and shadowing; |
| Raising quality standards in FE to increase attainment and retention, especially among lower socio-economic groups; |
| Incentives for workplace learning and progression routes into HE |
| A national programme of research, evaluation and dissemination. |
3. The document does not contain costings for the proposals and neither does it give a timescale. This is because the level of resources which government allocates to the achievement of the higher education participation target will be decided as part of the overall Comprehensive Spending Review. Departments of State submitted their proposals in mid-February and the outcome of the Review will not be known until July. It is understood however that the two Councils are bidding for funds of £60 million in the first year, rising to £100 million per year. It is also understood that as soon as funding is known, the Councils will issue a publication in autumn 2002 inviting regional (or sub-regional) action plans for funding from April 2003.
Commentary and Response
4. Excluding the summary and annexes, the extent of the paper is only ten pages and it contains ten substantive sections.
Background
5. Paragraphs 7 - 15 set out the government’s target and HEFCE’s own analysis of trends in supply and demand for HE among different socio-economic groups; the relationships between the school, FE and HE sectors. It also outlines the sort of approaches necessary to meet the target in very general terms. The response template then asks:
‘Do you agree there is a case for an initiative on the lines proposed in order to meet the Government’s participation target?’
6. Respondents are invited to indicate strong agreement; agreement; disagreement or strong disagreement and to comment. NIACE gives this statement only a qualified agreement.
7. We warmly welcome the intentions which lie behind these proposals. NIACE itself works to “support an increase in the total number of adults engaged in formal and informal learning in England and Wales; and at the same time to take positive action to improve opportunities and widen access to learning opportunities for those communities underrepresented in current provision”.
8. We recognise that that the education manifesto (‘Realising the talent of all: our mission for a second term’ Labour Party, 2001) upon which the government fought and won the last general election contains the promise “We will enable 50 per cent of young people under the age of 30 to progress to higher education while improving standards”. NIACE endorses the arguments made, for reasons of economic prosperity and social justice, to expand higher education.
9. NIACE believes, however, that there is a real danger that the majority of adults will, at best, be untouched by these proposals and may, at worst, be disadvantaged by them. This is because pressure to achieve an age-related target by 2010 means that attention will, inevitably, focus on those currently aged between 13 and 19 to the exclusion of equally important work with older learners
10. There is little in the consultation paper to reassure us that the existing work done by colleges, universities and others to encourage adults of all ages to enter higher education will be protected let alone that it will grow. While it is reasonable to assume that activities intended to attract people aged 21- 30 will be maintained in order that they will be available to those within the target cohort, the likelihood that activities targeting people over 30 will be anything other than marginal however, does not appear great. NIACE would welcome a rebalancing of the initiative to give greater balance to the post-school dimensions of the proposals.
11. While recognising the acknowledgement of diversity implied by the imprecise phrase “opportunity to benefit from higher education” (see paragraph 7), NIACE would be concerned if this were interpreted in ways which offer learners using new routes into HE access to an impoverished curriculum and narrowed higher education experience. We would welcome greater clarity about what is meant. It is important that Partnerships for Progression is about more than access to full-time undergraduate degrees and that part-time routes offer experience of equal richness and status.
12. Finally on this point, we believe that the institutional partnerships that the two Councils wish to foster would be more effective if they gave a significantly stronger role to the voices of schools, voluntary and community groups, unions and employers and also to learners (and their parents). Were partnerships to end up being overwhelmingly post-16 provider-driven, an important opportunity to promote informed public debate about the value and purposes of higher education would be lost. There is, perhaps some potential here for local Learning Partnerships, currently under review, to contribute to the initiative.
Context of widening participation
13. Paragraphs 16 - 20 describes HEFCE’s widening participation policy and strategy over a number of years and DfES activity. The response template asks:
How can we best link this proposed initiative with the range of existing widening participation activity and the Excellence Challenge initiative?
14. The central task will be to find a fair and appropriate way of funding widening participation activity given the diverse missions of providers within the two sectors and to build on the best of what exists already. NIACE endorses the observation made by NATFHE that funding rewards for recruitment activity need to be weighted towards the achievement of regionally agreed targets and not tied to individual institutional intakes. The rewards for individual institutions should be focussed on retaining students and their successful achievement of learning outcomes.
Role of Further Education
15. Paragraphs 21 and 22 consider the role of FE and give particular consideration to HE within FE colleges. The response template asks:
How do you see the role of further education and training providers in the initiative?
16. NIACE warmly welcomes the Partnerships for Progression initiative as a cross-sectoral collaboration. Learners make less of the boundaries between different sectors than do providers. The absence of a contextual position statement from the LSC comparable to that of HEFCE in the document is understandable given that the Council has existed only since April 2001 but any new initiative must take account of the extensive expertise of widening participation to education that exists within LSC-funded provision and the strategic direction of the FEFC before it (most notably, as expressed by the Kennedy report). It is important to recognise that there is more to the LSC interest in widening participation than what is captured by the FEFC/LSC’s special funded projects.
17. The diversity of the LSC-funded sector should be recognised. In addition to the college sector (itself covering general and specialist FECs, sixth form colleges and adult residential colleges such as Northern College and Ruskin College), the LSC also funds Adult and Community Learning; the Workers’ Education Association, and private and community-based training providers. All parts of the sector should be encouraged to contribute to partnerships as they are able.
18. The LSC has a unique statutory duty to encourage individuals to undergo post-16 education and training and should therefore ensure that widening access to higher education is done in a broader context of encouraging participation in all forms of learning.
Aims and Objectives
19. Paragraph 23 sets out the four aims of the initiative. Respondents are invited to indicate strong agreement; agreement; disagreement or strong disagreement and to comment. The aims are:
| Raising aspirations and motivation to enter HE among school and FE students from age 13, and particularly those from lower socio-economic groups; |
| Raising the achievements of students from age 13, through actions which complement the school reforms already in hand, so that they gain the academic or vocational qualifications and learning skills that will enable them to enter HE; |
| Strengthening progression routes via NVQ level 3 from schools and FE providers into HE; |
| Raising achievement and progression routes into HE through workplace learning. |
20. NIACE offers only qualified agreement. While not disputing the four aims set down, we believe that there should be a fifth which would allay some of our concerns about the age specificity of the initiative’s focus. What we propose is:
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“Encouraging and supporting all who can benefit to access higher education” Such an aim is close to that of HEFCE’s existing widening participation strategy and its inclusion would provide a necessary rebalancing of the “Partnerships for Progression” initiative by making it inclusive rather than exclusive whilst acknowledging the particular attention that must be paid to raising the aspirations and motivation of those from lower socio-economic groups. |
Priorities and principles
21. Paragraphs 24 - 26 proposes priorities for action and principles for designing the initiative. Respondents are invited to indicate strong agreement; agreement; disagreement or strong disagreement and to comment. NIACE broadly SUPPORTS the priorities and principles set out. Our comments include:
| The need to give a voice to prospective students and, in the case of children, their parents; |
| The need to involve a range of other agencies as well as schools - most significantly, local education authorities but also the Connexions service; |
| The need to work with trade unions (and in particular with union learning representatives) in activities relating to workplace-led learning |
| The need to consider what support the two Councils should give to incentivising workplace led learning, for example through paid educational leave. |
Scale of investment and range of activities
22. Paragraphs 27 - 29 set out the following four activity strands that are then covered in turn by the following four sections. The strands are:
| The extension of HE/FE regional partnerships and their widening participation activities, which would be supported by both the HEFCE and the LSC; |
| Support by the LSC for improvement in quality standards in further education and training providers working with disadvantaged students, as a means of securing and increase in the number of students achieving the qualifications needed to benefit from HE. |
| Incentives by the LSC for workplace learning to provide progression to HE entry; |
| A national programme of pilots, research and evaluation to assess what interventions have most effect, supported by both the HEFCE and the LSC. |
HE/FE partnership
23. This is the longest section of the consultation paper (paragraphs 30 - 46) and six questions are given in the response template.
24. The first question (6.a.i) concerns whether the new initiative should build upon the existing HE/FE regional widening participation partnerships. NIACE offers qualified agreement . While not disputing the sense of building upon good practice as far as possible, we would not wish institutions to be tied to a regional model in the way implied in the text. Existing regional partnerships might be supplemented by industry-specific or national initiatives. These may be more effective and appropriate - in the case, for example, of further and higher education institutions specialising in land-based industries or art and design or for a national association such as the WEA.
25. NIACE disagrees with the proposal that regional associations of HEIs, working with the regional groups of the Association of Colleges (AoC) should, alone, have the lead role in initiating proposals. This is because:
| Since much of the work proposed will be with people aged 13 - 19 who will be in schools, the omission of LEAs as key partners is particularly damaging and risks jeopardising the success of the proposals. Schools and learners should not be the passive beneficiaries of largesse from HE but should be active partners. |
| The AoC will be necessary and valuable partners but the Association represents only a proportion of providers in the learning and skills sector. If workplace-led learning is to feature in “Partnerships for Progression” the omission of organisations represented through the Association of Learning Providers will weaken the initiative. In addition, there should be an opportunity for National Training Organisations/ Sector Skills Councils to contribute as key partners and for the specialist expertise of adult and community educators (including those in the voluntary sector) to lead where appropriate. |
| Not all regional HE associations could or would wish to take such a role. |
26. The second question for this section (6.a.ii) concerns whether regional targets should be set and monitored. Leaving aside our reservations about the extent to which the initiative should be regionalised, NIACE would agree broadly with the intentions behind these proposals.
27. The third question about partnerships (6.a.iii) asks whether the Councils should allocate funds regionally, weighted to reflect current participation levels and invite strategic action plans. Given our earlier comments about which organisations should have an initiating role in partnerships and about regionalisation, NIACE would support this only if there were opportunity for supplementary approaches. We do, however, endorse the idea of weighting a system to benefit those institutions which have shown a commitment to widening participation and competence in delivering it through both recruitment and retention.
28. Question four in this section (6.a.iv) concerns whether partnerships should propose their own mix of activity to meet the aims and objectives identified. While NIACE supports the broad principle of holding institutions accountable for agreed outcomes but allowing them to determine the means by which they should be achieved, there may be a case for an element of central “steering” through a permissive framework. The danger of giving partnerships total autonomy is that this can mean there is little incentive for one partnership to learn from others. There may be a strong case for a degree of national co-ordination here through an overall dissemination and evaluation strategy (see document paragraphs 55 - 57) .
29. The fifth question (6.a.v) in the section asks whether a major area for investment should be support for HE/FE staff to work with schools, colleges and workplaces to raise aspirations and achievement. NIACE would support this proposal but believes this should not simply be one-way traffic: In a spirit of partnership, the support should extend further it so that those in schools, Connexions partnerships and the workplace could, for example, be helped in raising HEI staff understanding of the diverse pressures on schools and workplaces. Staff in all sectors and at all levels should be offered incentives to broaden their understanding of the costs, benefits and processes of progression to HE.
30. The final question of the section (6.a.vi) asks whether the initiative should support summer schools, mentoring activities and co-ordination. NIACE supports this proposal.
Quality standards
31. The second strand of activity proposed is covered in paragraphs 47 - 49 and is envisaged as an LSC-led action. Three questions are then asked but there appears to be no mention of the role of either OFSTED or the Adult Learning Inspectorate, both of which have important statutory duties concerning the quality of learning provision in schools, colleges and publicly-funded training on employers’ premises and elsewhere. The two Inspectorates do not appear in Annexe A of the document (the list of those to be consulted).
32. NIACE would urge the two Councils to discuss the proposals with the Inspectorates and to ensure that nothing is proposed that would unnecessarily duplicate or complicate their work or the burdens placed on schools, colleges or other providers. In addition, because information, advice and guidance are likely to be an important element of the Initiative, NIACE urges close consultation with the Guidance Accreditation Board to maximise coherence with the new guidance quality standards endorsed by government.
Workplace learning
33. Paragraphs 50 - 54 cover the government’s commitment to upgrading skills in the workforce and how the initiative proposes to support this through a targeted sector-based approach. NIACE supports this broad approach but would hope to see it more closely integrated with the other elements of the initiative and for it to include the voices of prospective learners articulated through trade unions as well as the voices of employers. Workplace-led progression to HE should not be driven by a purely instrumental agenda but should provide access to the full breadth and depth of the HE curriculum and should also seek to build a learning culture which affects the workplace itself as much as the individual.
34. An issue which demands particular concern in this part of the proposals is to ensure that labour market mobility is considered and that initiatives recognise that people in work change jobs and employers. Flexibility and modularity will be essential.
Research and Evaluation
35. The final substantive section of the paper (paragraphs 55 - 57) concerns a programme of research and evaluation as an important part of the initiative. NIACE strongly supports this approach and would hope to contribute to it.
Comments or queries on this response should be directed to Alastair Thomson (Policy & Development Officer) 0116 204 4241. e-mail: alastair.thomson@niace.org.uk or to the Policy, Analysis and Development Team at NIACE.
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