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This document is a report of 'The FE/HE Divide: Is it still relevant?' conference held on Thursday 6 February 1997.
The HE/FE Divide
- a reflection from the Chair
by Stephen McNair
Is higher education different from further education? If so what is the difference, and does it justify the different ways in which they are funded and managed? Would the needs of learners and society be better served by abolishing the distinction? These were the questions addressed at the NIACE conference in February by a distinguished panel of speakers. This short paper is a personal reflection by the conference chair. It identifies some of the key issues discussed, and is being circulated to those who attended, together with copies of the papers presented, where these are available.
The Education Acts of 1988 and 1992 formalised a distinction between the sectors which had always existed but never been very well defined. By amalgamating local authority managed "advanced further education" with higher education in a single funding system, distinct from the FE one, it sharpened the divide at a time when many other forces were bringing them together.
There are several reasons why this apparently arcane administrative issue now on the policy agenda. The most substantial is the shift to lifelong learning. Mature students are now the majority in both sectors, and overwhelmingly so in FE. A growing proportion of students are part-time, and the interlock between learning, work and life is becoming closer and more complex. A further dimension is the funding pressure on all education, which was one of the factors which led to the two Dearing reviews, of 16-19 education and now of Higher Education. The Dearing HE Review must consider the FE/HE relationship, and whether it would be desirable to provide more HE through FE institutions. Supporters of such a development would argue that it is more local, friendly, and familiar, while opponents argue that this model denies students some aspects of the "real" HE experience.
All speakers, whatever their general conclusion stressed the complexity of the relationship, and several argued that this should be a cause for celebration rather than alarm. 13% of HE students are now studying in FE institutions, and there has been a growth in the number and variety of ways in which the divide is being bridged, through access courses, HE courses delivered in FE colleges through franchising or outreach, through Compacts and partnerships. Similarly, there is a long tradition of institutions moving across sectoral boundaries: as several speakers pointed out, many current Universities began life as locally based, vocational, FE or AE institutions. Some saw this as evidence of academic or mission drift, others as part of a natural evolution.
Colin Flint, Principal of Solihull College, presented the most radical proposals. Like other speakers, he argued from the Government’s Skills Audit, that Britain’s real skills gap lies at "technician" level - notably HND and HNC, rather than degree level, and that our funding mechanisms give undue privilege to HE. He presented an "Agenda for the Future", arguing for a series of reforms which would involve creating single bodies for a range of functions including regulation, funding, awarding qualifications, quality assurance, and the creation of a single qualification for general education.
Two speakers, Christine King, Vice-Chancellor of Staffordshire University, and Sue Dutton from the Association for Colleges placed more stress on the celebration of the achievements of recent years. Both argued that, despite the formalising of the boundary, it had in practice become more blurred, and that this had created a more accessible and flexible system. Sue Dutton stressed the common ground between the sectors, pointing out that 40% of HE entrants now come through FE, and arguing that there was increasing understanding of a shared agenda around skills, the changing nature of vocationalism, and convergence in course structures and delivery. She called not for an abolition of the HE/FE divide, but for some rationalising, including the funding of all sub-degree work through the FEFC, and the creation of a single system for student support.
Christine King argued that unification is unlikely to be possible, but if it were to happen formally, the reality would probably be increased differentiation. She pointed out that the unification of HE had not created a single sector, so much as a series of sectors in which there was a real danger of some institutions, in the pursuit of international research excellence and social status, abandoning any commitment to adult learning and equity. To defend the mission of access, she called for more partnership, rather than administrative change.
The question of whether structural or administrative change was desirable was addressed in more detail by John Andrews, who has the unique role of chief executive of both the HE and the FE Funding Councils in Wales. His argument was clear, that maintaining a spread of kinds of provision was vital, and that a single funding, administrative or political structure would be bound to reduce diversity. He stressed the economic need to meet the technician level skills gap, and stressed the role of HND and HNC in "completing" further education. He called for a "seamless garment" which embraced the full range but did not force common administrative systems on them, and drew attention to the danger of giving critical policy responsibilities or allocation of resource between the sectors to a Quango rather than Government.
The role of HND and HNC was a recurrent theme of the day, given an added relevance by the debates about two year HE qualifications rumoured to be under consideration by the Dearing Committee. In addition to their formal role as the end point of initial technician education HNDs and HNCs have traditionally provided an alternative entry route to a degree, for those who discover an ambition to go on to HE while studying at Diploma or Certificate level. They have also provided an exit route for those who enrol for a degree and then decide not to purse it to the end. It thus plays a critical role in blurring the boundary between FE and HE. Bill Stubbs placed particular emphasis on it, pointing out the way in which it had become a tool for driving the expansion of HE in Scotland, where 50% of young women leaving school, and 43% of young men now enter HE (dramatically higher than the English rate which remains in the low 30s). His paper implied an increasing emphasis on such intermediate qualifications.
Alan Tuckett looked at the issues from the perspective of a small employer in a knowledge based industry. He pointed out, for most small firms (and probably large ones too) learning in the workplace, integrated with the work and the functioning of teams in the workplace is much more effective than "sending staff on courses". The same is probably true for many adult students, who want relevant learning which they can build into their lives, not simply traditional courses designed for school leavers delivered in more flexible ways.
Jonathan Brown, a Senior Counsellor with the Open University’s Northern Region, offered a student perspective which sharpened Alan Tuckett’s comments on relevance. He highlighted a series of individual examples of student enquiries, about acceptability of credit transfer, financial and personal support, about different admission criteria applied by different institutions to the same student and course, and about international transfer of qualification. He pointed out that, from the student’s point of view they were entirely reasonable questions to which the FE and HE system can only offer confused, technical and unhelpful answers. Our failure, he suggested, is not in a rigid sectoral divide, but in being able to respond adequately to the real expressed needs of potential learners. This issue was picked up by Peter Wilson of the National Open Colleges Network, who argued for a key role in development of credit accumulation and transfer, the mechanism which could enable individuals to move freely across sectoral boundaries. However, he reinforced Jonathan Brown’s message, that the technical and administrative issues should be secondary to the learning and the learners’ needs, and warned against too heavy a concentration on the former.
In opening the conference I asked how real the distinction is between HE and FE, and whether an alternative structure was conceivable or desirable? At the end of the day my personal perception of the arguments is that:
there are real distinctions, but that they are complex, representing a spread on a spectrum rather than a sharp divide,
many creative efforts have been made to increase the flexibility of the boundaries, and these have led to increased and wider participation
unification might either prove impossible or lead to reduction in diversity.
the development of existing intermediate qualifications (especially HND and HNC) may well begin to break down some of the distinctions, perhaps as an intermediate step towards a more coherent credit based or modular framework embracing FE and HE
the existence of the FE/HE boundary does not, in itself, represent a major barrier to access and participation, although several speakers argued that it leads to inappropriate distribution of resources
we need new models for supporting learning, more than we need new institutional structures. The most critical quality issue concerns our collective failure to understand how to reconfigure what HE institutions do to meet the needs of lifelong learning.
major issues remain in relation to funding: resources to support learners are currently distributed inequitably, and the impact of institutional funding mechanisms often contradicts what are widely believed to be the economic and social priorities - for raising intermediate skills and increasing participation at that level.
a continuing issue is the extent of communication across the sectoral divide. Those who work directly on the interface, in access and franchising etc. have good relationships, but there might well be benefit in more frequent and detailed sharing of ideas beyond that relatively closed world.
