Further Education (Hansard, 13 June 1984)

§ Sir Keith Joseph

The Government are seeking to promote efficiency and effectiveness in further education by a variety of means.

Within non-advanced further education the Department is supporting college-employer links projects in eight local education authorities to test the adequacy of existing links between colleges and the world of industry, commerce and public employment to identify possible problems and to disseminate good practice. The proposals in the White Paper "Training for Jobs" (Cmnd. 9135) are also intended to strengthen the responsiveness of colleges to industry, commerce and public employment in the provision of work-related further education, through the intervention of the Manpower Services Commission in the funding of courses in national priority areas.

The Department is supporting the development, through the further education staff college, of a management information system for colleges of further education. The Audit Commission has recently produced a report on efficiency in colleges of further education, and is actively promoting work in this area. The Department is also seeking to promote improvement in further education curricula and examinations which will lead to more efficient and effective provision. The proposed certificate of pre-vocational education, on which a consultative document was published in May, will lead to a rationalisation of the many provided courses in both schools and colleges for young people at 16-plus without a clear academic or vocational commitment, for whom a one-year pre-vocational course is appropriate.

The main examining and validating bodies are revising the structure of courses at craft and technician level, and it is likely that more efficient and effective provision will result from these reviews. The Department is giving increased financial support to the further education unit (FEU) which promotes curriculum development and review and is increasingly concerned with the need for rationalisation and improvement in both pre-vocational and vocational courses; one current example is work in hand with the examining and validating bodies and industrial training interests to develop a common, competency-based core for the initial level of craft and 480W technician courses in engineering. The FEU is also playing a key role in the Department's PICKUP initiative, which is intended to develop greater mutual awareness and responsiveness between employers, employees and the education system in the provision of post-experience vocational education and updating.

Within local authority higher education (LAHE) I announced in April the establishment, under the chairmanship of Sir Norman Lindop, of a committee of inquiry into the effective and efficient maintenance of academic standards at degree level. The Government have since 1980–81 promoted increased cost-effectiveness most notably through progressively refined methods for distributing the capped advanced further education pool. It is envisaged that for the future the main means of securing further improvements in efficiency and effectiveness in LAHE will be through the national advisory body (NAB), established by the Government in partnership with the local authority associations. The first main fruits of the NAB's deliberations were embodied in its advice to me—which I accepted in its entirety last December—on the academic disposition and funding of LAHE in 1984–85.

Finally the Government are substantially strengthening the section of Her Majesty's Inspectorate dealing with further and higher education.