Secret Lecturer - Bigger, shinier, better . . . but where’s my local college?

Funding cuts and Downing Street’s continued hostility to lifting the public sector pay cap mean reduced opportunities in colleges across the board. Retrenchment combined with area reviews is leading to rationalisation of provision, amalgamations and mergers. 

So what gets cut? Provision for the vulnerable and disadvantaged is often the first to go, along with withdrawal of local services within communities and concentrating provision at fewer, larger sites. The emphasis is on the brave new world of institutes of technology – so-called centres of excellence with state-of-the-art facilities, which are to become the exclusive (but less accessible) providers of certain courses previously offered by a host of colleges in students’ own neighbourhoods.

We can’t afford to ignore local college role

True, we need more modern facilities as many vocational departments are not up to standard and thus unable to prepare young people for the careers they want to follow. But a balance must be struck between access to modern facilities and learning on the ground near where you live.

Unfortunately, the highly important local role of colleges is being ignored by education planners with little idea how FE colleges work and apparently intent primarily on mergers and securing the financial health of institutions rather than looking at their real role. 

I know of one coastal town where poor and disadvantaged people make up much of the population. It supports a local college highly rated by Ofsted, along with a proactive local authority and a satellite university campus that runs courses that attract adult returners. 

The college and local authority no longer offer lifelong learning courses in the town, and now, as part of cost reduction plans, the HE institution plans to retrench to its main campus in a town a 40-minute bus ride away. And that could be a huge obstacle for current students and help deter future participation – both practically and psychologically. Besides the cost, many students in disadvantaged areas don't aspire or expect to have to travel outside their local area; many, for example, have never been to London. 

Local courses that broaden horizons

Attract them to locally-run level 1 or 2 courses, though, and they may well progress to an apprenticeship or further study and then see the advantage of travelling by bus or train to fabulous facilities further afield.

The problem is clear. If there’s no neighbourhood provision, how do you engage those best served by colleges – the disadvantaged? What happens if there is no local industry large enough to offer apprenticeships?

It worries me that much of our planning starts from the standpoint of the DfE or college boards and not of local communities that colleges have traditionally served so well. In some area reviews of FE provision, FE commissioners and their teams come in with a helicopter view and a map. They’ll say it’s obvious college X and Y and college A and B should merge and yet they often don’t know the local demographics and how things operate. People on the ground have to explain that, no, it just won’t work. 

In one early area review I understand a commissioner did indeed go back to the drawing board, yet the colleges still came under huge pressure to produce a plan. The proposed merger never happened and much valuable time and attention had been diverted. The point is that planning for FE provision in a given area has to start on the ground wherever and whoever the potential learners are.

When colleges really did collaborate

We hear constant rhetoric nationally about ‘localism’ when people actually mean ‘regionalism’ – devolving very modest budgets to bodies of variable quality and expertise across the country. 

Before incorporation in the early 1990s, I remember when collaboration really did take place across areas. One former head of basic skills tells me how he used to meet his counterpart from a neighbouring college ‘at dead of night’ and suggest one of his disadvantaged learners would find it much easier to attend the other college “but please don't tell my principal I told you!” Not ideal, but for a disadvantaged learner it made a lot of sense. 

At present collaboration is far patchier, and in some areas there has been a history of principal A not speaking to principal B in the street, which is not helpful. Funding based on numbers of registered students still causes tension between neighbouring institutions. 

What should colleges do?

So how can colleges improve relationships? It’s about lobbying for change, talking to people in local enterprise partnerships to make the case for FE and the local stepping-stone provision that can lead to other things, building links with voluntary organisations in their areas to ensure local provision, particularly for disadvantaged students. It’s about contacting local reps of organisations like The Prince’s Trust and other bodies working with young people who are struggling.

Specialist adult education institutions, such as London’s Working Men's College and the City Lit, or Lancashire College in Chorley, still deliberately foster close links with their communities because they understand the importance of introductory provision for disadvantaged learners. 

‘We opted not to merge but to collaborate'

Perhaps other areas could emulate the resolve of the newly formed Devon Colleges Group – four colleges opting not to merge but to collaborate in “a partnership with a shared vision focused on enhancing skill, raising aspirations and driving regional economic growth and productivity”. It’s the sort of collaboration going on in places like Lancashire (http://www.tlc.ac.uk/) for many years, whatever the national FE policy priority of the moment. 

Amid all this talk of ‘bigger and better colleges’, one institution always reminds me why many of us started working in FE. Its tee-shirt slogan reads: “A college is not a place but a service to the community”. It means that friendly, local place on the doorstep reaching out to the most vulnerable in our community, and by doing so, transforming lives.