Getting through those stickies

It was a day of hitting the books today. I feel like I'm building up a head of steam on my TQFE now.

I did take some time out to read the government white paper on post 16 education. While there are some very sensible suggestions in there I'm glad it's a consultation at present and not a finalised document. For one thing it seems to rely heavily on the consultation with representatives from the Higher Education sector (universities) and little real consultation with people in Further Education (colleges). As such the tone of it reads as our universities are wonderful and are continuing to be wonderful but FE colleges need fundamental change.

I'm not denying for a second that some of our Universities do wonderful things and in areas like scientific research we have world leading universities, however to suggest that HE is wonderful but FE needs drastic reform as a sweeping statement raises serious questions. In my field for example I was told by the head of marketing at a Scottish University that students coming onto third year from FE courses were consistently averaging about 10% higher n tests than students who had completed the first two years at Uni courses.

In light of stats like that you have to wonder whether statements like "Whilst the incorporation of our colleges has brought some opportunities for growth and innovation, we believe that fundamental change is needed to meet the needs of a very different Scotland and that all objective consideration supports that view. " are really a matter of self preservation when you consider that the "objective consideration" has largely been carried out by people in the HE sector. A sector which, I should add, no longer has huge graduate training schemes run by the major banks and financials to prop up their graduate employment stats.

Don't get me wrong, I relish the prospect of more ties with industry and enhancing employment and education options for as many people young and old throughout Scotland as possible. Which brings me to my second major worry.

The white paper talks of regionalisation of college provision before going on to talk of mergers. The idea of Government imposed mergers is a very worrying I may be reading it wrong and they dont intend on having only one college per region, but that seems to be a genuine concern at the moment. If that is the case I fail to see how reducing choice for learners and competition between courses will improve learner prospects. At the moment a learner may have a couple of options of similar courses for a particular field of study, they can usually access former students and review the stats and make an informed choice as to which suits them best based on figures like pass rates employability and articulation onto degree courses (all of which I'm proud to say are high for my course). Should we move to a system where students only have one college in their region it takes that choice away completely. Looking at any business, and FE and HE institutions are businesses these days, removing customer choice in the interest of saving money is not a sound model.

As I say I may be reading that wrong and there may be no intention to cut FE institution numbers so drastically. I just hope our government exercise a bit of joined up thinking and consult with FE professionals as well as just people in the HE sector before finalising the proposals as this white paper is an opportunity to really improve education for all of Scotland.

And before this seems too much like a rant there are clearly areas where the suggestions make a lot of sense, recommendations to have a far higher employer voice in FE make great sense, as does the idea of guaranteeing articulation onto University courses where there is a curriculum fit (we currently have two separate agreements in place for access to third year at uni for my main course), further integration of the Curriculum for Excellence in post -compulsory education makes sense too and is somethin the FE sector has already been working toward.

The worry though is that when you see statements like "The Scottish Funding Council is currently reviewing its quality enhancement framework for universities and colleges with Education Scotland, QAA Scotland, NUS Scotland and other sector bodies in the university sector" and it is followed by "We do not propose any change in the quality assurance arrangements for universities. " that it's already been decided who will be targetted for cost cutting reforms and who will be left to pretty much continue governing and policing themselves.

Sorry for such a long rant, but a part of me feels like there's a potential for FE which, albeit with a vested interest, I think does a fantastic job to be made whipping boys for any future budget cuts to education from the Scottish Government.