MAKING SENSE OF THE NONSENSICAL

Since the announcement that the government’s decision to award teachers a reasonably generous pay rise will not apply to teachers and lecturers who teach in further education, I have pondered the reality of the situation and tried to do some sense making about why the FE sector has ended up in this position. The expressions of disappointment, and possibly even anger, by FE leaders has prompted me to consider the reality of the situation the sector finds itself in. The usual caveat is that these are only my views and expressions of curiosity rather than anything else – they are all based on thoughts and certainly not facts.

Making Sense #1 – A genuine surprise

I truly believe that the sector, and all of us associated with it, were surprised by the decision not to award FE staff with the same pay award as teachers. But why were we surprised? Were we all operating under the belief that this new government would have more love and appreciation for what we do and held FE in high regard. When looking at what previous Labour administrations had done for FE in terms of funding settlements, you could be excused for thinking that a more generous approach would be taken to the sector. Remember, it wasn’t until the coalition government of 2010 when things started to get really tough for the sector. However, the reality of the nation’s current economic circumstances means the government have very tough decisions to make and certain things will inevitably be prioritised over others. And at this point in time, our issues around the attraction, recruitment and retention of staff are not a priority for government. Something I have been reflecting on however, is whether it is possible or conceivable that the last government had a higher regard for the FE sector than this new one?

Making Sense #2 – There is no upside to reclassification

If we had one hope for the reclassification of the FE sector back into the public sector it would be that decisions made around pay for teachers would be applied across the whole of the publicly ‘owned’ education system. However this is clearly not the case and instead we only have a raft of downsides associated with reclassification. We have been taken out of earned adulthood and been forcibly returned to childhood. We now have a stronger intervention regime, restrictions on senior pay that are impacting on recruitment timelines, we cannot borrow commercially, we cannot be entrepreneurial and our estates and the facilities we provide for our students will inevitably deteriorate due to the lack of a proper capital programme. The intriguing thing here however, is that for such a significant change in the status of FE colleges and the impacts of reclassification the whole event passed without much protest or discussion.

Making Sense #3 – Our continuing success

Despite the significant financial challenges experienced by the sector as a whole,  our leaders have been amazing at achieving sustained improvements and making the impossible possible. Quality has risen, financial outturns have stabilized, we played a crucial role in educating young people during the pandemic and we have become even more responsive to the needs of the economy and employers. So maybe, just maybe, there is a view held centrally that we can make things work and didn’t really need central support for a decent pay award. Due to our resilience, and the phenomenal skills of our leaders to succeed in the face of adversity we will, once again, find a way of making it work. We will continue to recruit and keep staff – no matter how much harder it is becoming.

Making Sense #4 – The politics

Without doubt there would have been lots of politics at play in this decision. At one level, the government will seek as much political gain as possible from the spending decisions they make. Looking after doctors and school teachers plays well with the public. Just think how disruptive it is when school teachers strike. Parents have to rearrange their working lives when school staff are on strike. The same cannot be said when FE staff go on strike. The NEU has nearly 450,000 members making it one of the largest unions in Europe and with that comes real power. UCU in comparison has 120,000 members and what percentage of members actually work in FE? I’m sure that decent research on my part may have led to me finding the number but time was against me, so I am going to hazard a guess at less than 50%. The impact that striking FE staff have on parents and families is minimal compared to strikes by school teachers. So there must surely be an element of this decision relating to ensuring positive industrial relations with the schools sector and being the government that has brought an end to disruptive public sector strikes.

Making Sense #5 – The (reported) parlous state of HE

Now I know this one is a stretch, but I am genuinely curious about what the new government’s response is going to be to the claims that there are a number of universities about to go under. And could it be the case that the government is preparing to make some costly investments to protect those universities most at risk of falling over? Could it be that cash is being set aside for this and this is cash that could have been used to support a decent pay award for FE staff? I don’t know, but a couple of things I do know is that it was under the Blair government of 1997 that things really started to take off for universities – more numbers, more income, lots of fancy new construction projects, more international students and secondly it is important to remember that the UK seeks to position itself in the global education market as an excellent provider of higher education. Now of course we want to see all parts of the education sector flourish – our economy depends on it – but is there a chance that universities may be prioritised over colleges?

Making Sense #6 – Our time will come

Now viewing things through somewhat rose-tinted spectacles – it may be the case that it is just too soon and as the position of FE and a new strategy and policy for Post 16 education and skills emerges then our time will come. Remember that as things currently stand, apart from an announcement on Skills England and some mutterings about the reform of the apprenticeship levy, we are still working under the previous government’s policy framework. We would imagine that we will soon see a new skills strategy and hopefully it will be the case that attracting, recruiting, retaining and rewarding staff will be a central plank of this strategy and the funding to achieve this will follow the policy intention. So being hopeful, it may be that our time will come, that we will at some point in the near future be funded to make decent pay awards. The key question here however is what are we all doing to make sure that this hope becomes a reality. How are CEOs and governors addressing this with the shiny new ministers that are keen to visit their colleges, what is the Association of Colleges going to do differently to secure pay parity for FE staff and are the professional bodies and other organisations that represent our staff ensuring that the voices of colleagues in FE are heard?

And my final area of curiosity is this: what happens if our funding settlement over the next 3 to 5 years doesn’t enable us to make decent pay awards? Do we start saying to government, sorry we can no longer develop the skills in construction, engineering, IT or Health? The problem here of course is that we know that by doing that we are ultimately disadvantaging the communities we serve and if there is one thing I know about college leaders it is that they are very concerned with facilitating the improvement of their communities and improving their students life chances. Or do we develop more radical and innovative approaches to engaging experts to deliver the education, skills and training our students want and need? In actual fact, I think we need to do the latter irrespective of future funding but that’s the subject of another blog at some point.