Toggle high contrast
Advanced search
Mobile menu

Pursuing Excellence: An Outline Improvement Strategy for Consultation

Issue date
Summary

The TUC welcomes the opportunity to comment on 'Pursuing Excellence: An Outline Improvement Strategy for Consultation' (the Improvement Strategy). Pursuing Excellence emerged out of the White Paper 'Further Education: Raising Skills, Improving Life Chances', published by the DFES in March 2006. The Improvement Strategy aims to provide an action plan towards excellence for the FE sector. This complements the LSC Consultation 'Framework for Excellence: A Comprehensive Performance Assessment Framework for the Further Education System'.

The TUC broadly supports the vision articulated in the Improvement Strategy, however there are concerns about how it might be implemented and there are a number of areas that need to be addressed:

  • There needs to be recognition that at the heart of the issue of quality is the historic under-funding of the FE sector and urgent steps taken to address this;
  • The Improvement strategy needs to properly account for the fact that one of principal determinants of excellence is a properly rewarded workforce;
  • Improvement through partnership must incorporate internal partnership with trade unions. Further, other policies may be inconsistent with partnership, in particularly the introduction of competitions;
  • The needs of learners in the workplace must be specifically built into arrangements for taking into account the needs of learners and employers.
  • Actions to meet the needs of employers should be re-conceptualised as the needs of "employment" and specifically include trade unions.
Introduction

1. The TUC welcomes the opportunity to comment on 'Pursuing Excellence: An Outline Improvement Strategy for Consultation' (the Improvement Strategy). Pursuing Excellence emerged out of the White Paper 'Further Education: Raising Skills, Improving Life Chances', published by the DFES in March 2006. The Improvement Strategy aims to provide an action plan towards excellence for the FE sector. This complements the LSC Consultation 'Framework for Excellence: A Comprehensive Performance Assessment Framework for the Further Education System'.

Overall TUC Response

2. The TUC broadly supports the vision articulated in the Improvement Strategy, however there are concerns about how it might be implemented. The Improvement Strategy aims to improve outcomes across five significant issues: economic prosperity, social cohesion, individual fulfilment, college and provider performance and further education system workforce development. It is important to ensure that economic prosperity, social cohesion and individual fulfilment are viewed as intertwined.

3. The pursuit of excellence needs a foundation of stability in Government policy if it is to be consolidated. Changes to Government policy can leave colleges or providers who have performed well within one policy regime deemed unsatisfactory in relation to others if there is insufficient time or resources to make the necessary adjustments.

4. The notion of excellence must be judged in relation to the circumstances of particular colleges and providers, taking into account the available resources. There needs to be recognition that at the heart of the issue of quality is the historic under-funding of the FE sector that has not yet been remedied.

5. It is welcome that the Improvement Strategy recognises the important role of the workforce in achieving excellence. However the Improvement strategy needs to properly account for the fact that one of principal determinants of excellence is a properly rewarded workforce. The pay and status gap between comparable jobs in different areas of the education sector makes the recruitment and retention of high quality staff into further education difficult. The strategy also needs to take greater account of the role of support staff.

Improvement Through Partnership

6. Supporting improvement through partnership is welcome. However this is on the basis that partnership must not only be viewed as external, there also needs to be internal partnership with trade unions. Improvement needs to be seen as both a top down and bottom up approach within organisations.

7. While supporting that notion that the spirit of partnership is intended to drive the Improvement Strategy (paragraph 17), the TUC is concerned that other policy areas may work against the development of partnership approaches. In particular the introduction of competitions in a range of areas is inconsistent with the notion of partnership.

Priorities for Action

8. In prioritising the beneficiaries of the pursuit of excellence as primarily learners and employers, it is important to ensure that the needs of learners in the workplace, which will often be different to those of full-time students, are properly taken into account. Employees participating in workplace learning should be explicitly built into these arrangements through trade unions.

9. In relation to actions to meet the needs of employers, the TUC strongly believes that this should be re-conceptualised as the needs of "employment". This approach would properly encompass the needs of both sides of the employment relationship - employees and employers. Specifically, the proposal for an advisory forum for employers should instead be an advisory forum for employment and incorporate both employers and trade unions.

Conclusions

10. The TUC broadly supports the vision articulated in the Improvement Strategy, however there are concerns about how it might be implemented. There needs to be recognition that at the heart of the issue of quality is the historic under-funding of the FE sector that has not yet been remedied. The Improvement strategy needs to properly account for the fact that one of principal determinants of excellence is a properly rewarded workforce. Further, the notion of partnership to achieve excellence must include internal partnership with trade unions. The TUC is also concerned about inconsistency in other policy areas in particular the introduction of competitions. Finally, the needs of learners in the workplace need to be specifically taken into account and actions to meet the needs of employers should be re-conceptualised as the needs of "employment", and include trade unions.

Join a union
Enable Two-Factor Authentication

To access the admin area, you will need to setup two-factor authentication (TFA).

Setup now