To be community assets, we have to think well beyond our own defined borders

By Liz Bromley, Chief Executive of NCG

The introduction of 10 technical excellence colleges (TECs) is a good thing. Funding through a hub and spoke model will force colleges to work together to deliver the best education - in the first instance in construction - that makes sense to employers and places, and gives learners the very best skills training and qualifications options for long-term meaningful employment.

When I joined NCG six years ago, after 23 years in HE, I spoke of the jigsaw of education. I believed that FE could set the tone for an educational landscape that adds value in all its constituent parts to all of its stakeholders. There was departmental discussion at that time about regionalization and college clustering. I envisaged a sector that would think strategically as a collective and would come up with its own collaborations in relation to regionalization.

It is ironic that TECs come at a time when some universities, facing an unprecedented paradigm shift, are looking to FE’s group structures as options not just to strip costs, but to align the educational offer. Even the NHS is creating alliances to better serve its communities and patients, and to better manage the vast amounts of public money spent on our health system by investing in points of excellence rather than a broad spread of competing services.

FE’s governance model allows for governing bodies, even those which have overseen college failure, to determine the shape and strategy of the college post-intervention. College boards put huge emphasis on their ‘autonomy’. Their desire for autonomy outweighs the positive consequences of merging with other colleges for a bigger picture, more strategic outcome. But what is ‘autonomy’ in a sector that has been reclassified? Funding bodies give and take our money. Our ability to make commercial financial decisions has been massively curtailed. Quality and student experience are heavily regulated. Our strategies are shaped by LSIPS, with accountability plans scrutinised and shaped by Department for Education territorial teams. We are over regulated, endlessly audited and shaped by ‘compliance’. So how much autonomy do governing bodies really have? Just enough, it seems, to be able to stop forward thinking collaborative structural shifts that would strengthen the sector and give it so much more credibility.

A number of potential college mergers, which would have reduced wasteful competition and strengthened quality, have been viewed by external stakeholders as hugely positive and strategically significant. But they have been thwarted by boards who could not forsake their ‘autonomy’. Boards which cannot think beyond their own existence do not serve the sector well. Although I did not welcome reclassification, I can see the advantage of a higher level approach to education delivery across regions been taken away from governing bodies that have overseen failure. Parochialism, localism, and status protectionism are not the underpinning principles that will reshape British education.

For colleges to be community assets, we have to think well beyond our own defined borders. TECs will force us to work differently. If they teach us how to work together to think bigger and behave differently, they will improve accessibility and raise the standard of technical education. They might give us a combined spending power to lure technical specialists from industry into classrooms. They might give us the credibility so long held by universities as players of strategic value.

We often tell people education is a complex business. It is no more complex than anything which is rewarding, but we choose to make it illogical and messy when we could take difficult decisions to make our sector a better place for everyone. This is a pivotal time for FE to stand up, be brave, and use the TEC model to consider the shape, size and strength of our structures to both strengthen and sustain a viable, excellent skills offer.