College merger mania has failed. We need a new model.

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Labour has promised to end the historic funding inadequacies and place the sector at the centre of its radical proposals. What will be the future for FE: planning and collaboration or more competition and the market?

‘Merger mania, which has gripped the sector over the past five years, has failed. The leadership of some of these supergroups has slashed and burned, leaving behind hollowed-out shells’

TES article ‘College merger mania has failed. We need a new model’


In just over a week, we will be heading to the polls to vote in this year’s general election. For most of us, never in our lifetimes has there been such a clear difference between the main political parties in how they would approach the economy, society and education.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have offered additional funding for further education, with the Tories committing £1.8 billion on new buildings and the Lib Dems pledging £10,000 per adult for lifelong learning. Labour has promised to end the historic funding inadequacies and place the sector at the centre of its radical proposals to transform Britain, including a pledge to create 80,000 climate change apprenticeships.

Whoever is triumphant on 12 December, change is imminent. But is FE ready for these radical changes?

Extra funding is the starting point without which we can’t begin the transformation necessary to harness the true potential of the sector. But additional funding on its own doesn’t address the crucial issue of leadership.

FE leadership and merger mania

It was a breath of fresh air to read Stuart Rimmer’s article about FE leadership. He describes a situation in which principals are systemically focused on failed models of leadership and make short-term financial decisions that are diametrically opposed to the requirements of quality in education provision.

He writes: “Incorporation has failed to protect the security of colleges, of staff and students. It has failed to protect continued investment, it has failed to protect high standards, it has failed to protect support from those in high government since 1992.”

Finally, a much-needed debate is opening up within the sector about the failed model of incorporation. We need a new model – that much is clear. Merger mania, which has gripped the sector over the past five years, has failed. The leadership of some of these supergroups has slashed and burned, leaving behind hollowed-out shells. The few remaining staff are often demoralised and frustrated with the direction of their college. The fool’s gold of “economies of scale” has been exposed as a huge drain on cash and quality.

This managerial approach, based on an acceptance of the market in education, has made a bad situation worse. Management see themselves as firefighters running around colleges putting out fires – too often it is petrol and not water that is used to douse the flames.

Those who work in the sector will recognise the ridiculous decisions that lead to a race to the bottom within colleges and between colleges.

Timetabling troubles

It starts with timetabling, something that we can all agree is essential to effective teaching. Those outside education couldn’t be judged for assuming that timetabling would be organised coherently and successfully.  And how wrong they’d be. Those working in the sector find this basic aspect of college organisation is regularly a complete shambles.

Timetables are drawn up with cuts in mind. Fears of not reaching internally set recruitment targets mean that managers often timetable the least number of groups and then desperately add more at the last moment to deal with student demand.

At the beginning of term, management insists on telling staff to continue to enrol students even after groups are full, and yet no extra staff are recruited to match demand. This causes total chaos when lessons begin with overcrowded and chaotic classrooms.

This, in turn, results in many students – often those who are confident that their results provide other options – leaving within the first few weeks for other colleges. Millions of pounds of funding flows out of the college, leaving with the students.

Management then resorts to employing agency staff at the last minute to cover the groups without teachers. The use of agency staff is another kind of fool’s gold: organising staffing in this way was meant to control staffing costs by creating a more flexible workforce. But the reality is, it has become the default position in most colleges. It’s a very expensive staffing solution with disastrous effects for those on such contracts – and it ultimately leads to a worsening in the student learning experience, with many more following their peers out the door.

The race is then on to recoup this loss in funding: cutting guided learning hours, reconfiguring the weekly contact time and forcing staff to teach more units. This is usually followed up by redundancy trawls across teaching and support staff – with enhancing the learner experience often cited as the issue.

The danger of competition, not collaboration

Principals do express dissatisfaction with having to make these difficult decisions but the reality is, while some dislike the consequences, they fail to recognise them as the logical outcome of their political and ideological educational world view. I suspect few would accept that competition within the sector is the root of the problem.

Instead, they blindly accept the central ideological trope fostered by every government over the past 40 years or so that without competition there would be no incentive. Managers would feel no pressure to innovate and makes things happen, lecturers would simply dust down the same old tired lesson plans and students would turn up when they wanted to.

Thank heaven that we have competition ensuring these issues are kept in check…

The most inspiring ideas and initiatives come about when there is collaboration. Where lecturers and managers meet together as equals and discuss new teaching methods – what has worked and what has not – in an atmosphere of mutual respect and without fear of failing. And when this is underpinned by a long-term funding commitment from the government and a recognition that FE should be centred around the needs of the communities and society, everyone wins.

This general election has opened up the debate about the role of the market and competition in education. The successful leaders of the future FE sector will be those who understand that planning and collaboration are the key to success and not the outdated 19th-century vagaries of the marketplace.

Sean Vernell is the vice-chair of the University and College Union’s further education committee and branch secretary at Capital City College Group

I’m dreaming of a red Christmas….

Corbyn speaking at final rally

At last were off — the general election has been called. Out of the blocks comes Jacob Rees-Mogg telling us all how the people who died in Grenfell should have used their common senseand ignored the Fire Brigades advice and left their flats. What a despicable man. This was no slip of the tongue but someone dripping with class privilege revealing his total contempt for working class people.

Moggs very existence symbolises what this general election is all about, and why, as Jeremy Corbyn has said, it is a once in a generation opportunity to fundamentally shift the balance of power in our society. We have a clear and straight choice in this election. Will it be five more years of the Etonian elite, passing policy after policy that continues to reward the rich and powerful? Or will it be a Corbyn-led Labour government that promises to introduce measures that not only reverses the impact of a decade of austerity but also to change the acceptance that it is only through competition and marketisation of the economy that society can function.

A Corbyn-led government would signal an end to all those painful and so damaging senior management emails that remind us that we are a ‘business’ and our students are our ‘customers’, as they continue to drive through the stack em high, sell em cheapbrand of higher and further education.

I cant wait

We have the opportunity to put into office a Labour government that promises within the first 100 days it will abolish the Tory anti-union laws and set up a Ministry of Labour to introduce legislation to create national collective sectoral bargaining. A Corbyn-led Labour government promises to create 400,000 green jobs and to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2030, end the privatisation of our public services, scrap tuition fees and reintroduce EMA. The Labour Party Conference voted to ‘maintain and extend free movement’ to end the hostile environment created by the Tories as they attempted to scapegoat immigrants for their disastrous polices. This too must be in their manifesto.

Labour has started the campaign well, but there it is a long way to the 12th December.

The Tories and the media, as well as attacking Jeremy Corbyn for being a terrorist-loving, baby-eating Marxist who would turn Britain into a Gulag, will attempt to focus the election around the single issue of Brexit. They will claim that Corbyns position is confusing and difficult for the electorate to understand.

Whilst Corbyn’s position is one that I dont agree with, it is hardly complicated or confusing. Labour, if elected, will, within six months, renegotiate a deal and put it to the people to decide if they support it or not. Remain will be an option on the ballot paper. Why is this confusing?

Its not, but the Tories, the Liberal Democrats, and their media friends, want to keep the election focused on Brexit to divert the electorate from discussing their record as the architects of austerity that has wrecked so many people’s lives.

Dont vote for the yellow Tories

A vote for Jo Swinson is a vote to continue Tory policies. The Liberal Democrats had an opportunity to go into coalition with Gordon Browns Labour Party but decided to enter a collation with Camerons Tories. It is they, as the Tories’ Coalition partners, that launched the biggest attacks on working people since the 1930s. If they had to make that choice again, they would even more happily make the same choice and prop up a Johnson government rather than see Corbyn in Number 10.

No one should be surprised by this. The whole history of the Liberal Party has been one that has always taken the side of the establishment. It was under a Liberal government that leading Suffragettes were imprisoned, force-fed and tortured. This is why it is ridiculous for the Green Party to have agreed to join the ‘Remain Alliance’, a decision they will live to regret.

The Liberal Democrats are not the only ones who would prefer a Johnson government than a Corbyn one. Many Labour MPs feel the same way. Tom Watsons resignation for personalreasons followed by Ian Austins announcement that he too will not be standing (and calling for a vote for Johnson) tells us everything many of us suspected about the degree to which the Blairites oppose a Corbyn-led government.  No doubt more attacks like these are being planned.

We should say good riddance — go and join Chukka and his friends in the wilderness.

UCU can make a difference

UCU is not affiliated to the Labour Party. But it does have policy for calling for a vote for Labour. It was a motion Jo McNeil and I put to the 2017 UCU Congress and was passed overwhelmingly. UCU can make a real difference in ensuring that Jeremy Corbyn enters Downing Street on December 13th.

First, we have the announcement of eight days of strike action in HE starting on the 25th November. This announcement followed the brilliant ballot result where over sixty institutions got through the threshold and voted overwhelmingly to strike over Pay, Pensions, Casualisation, Workload and Equality. The strikes will allow us to take the issues that affect HE to the heart of the election campaign.

No doubt there will be pressure from within the General Council of the TUC on our General Secretary for UCU not strike to ensure there is no distractionfrom Labours election campaign. Strikes will not distract from getting Labour elected — they will be central to getting Corbyn elected. Strikes, as a part of the general election campaign, will also act as a reminder to the employers that if Corbyn is elected we will use our collective power to resist attempts to undermine that government. 

This election campaign must be run differently from any campaign that has been conducted before.  Already the signs are that Labours campaign is wanting to build upon the approach adopted in 2017; a campaign based on policies that show clear red water between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, with mass rallies to mobilise the 500,000 Labour members to get the vote out. Strikes are part of this campaigning approach.

Second, UCU must implement the policy passed at the last NEC meeting, calling on the union to launch a Vote Education Campaign that encourages members to organise hustings, rallies and to set up stalls to inform the public what is happening to Further, Adult and Higher education.

29 November: join a carnival of resistance

School students will be striking for the climate on November 29th, and have called on the trade union movement to join them. One of the strike days that UCU chose to take action on will be the 29th.

We must turn 29th November into a carnival of resistance. UCU London Region has already called a March for pay, pensions and the planet. We will be marching to join the school students, and holding a rally. We will be inviting trade unionists and shadow front bench MPs to join us too. We will be looking to do the same across the country.

It wont be just HE colleagues who will marching on the 29th, but FE too. In particular, we want to highlight the plight of Adult Education. One of the biggest historic scandals throughout the period of austerity is what has happened to Adult Education. This is the education sector in which the budget has been cut by 45% in the last decade.

This year is the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of Adult Education. We want to carry a message into this election that we want a hundred years more.

We will be calling on postal workers, six form teachers and anyone else to join us on the day to take a collective message into the general election campaign that we want radical change.

We have four weeks to make history. I cant think of a better Christmas present than seeing Jeremy Corbyn in number 10 and John McDonnell in Number 11, but we will need to launch the fight of our lives to make the dream come true at the ballot box, on the streets and in the workplaces.

– Sean Vernell NEC