Lingfield report "Professionalism in Further Education

Final report from an independent review chaired by Lord Lingfield. Makes recommendations to Government on a new framework for professionalism in further education in England within the context of Skills for sustainable growth strategy (URN 10/1274). It define how professionalism, in the absence of registration, might be characterised and supported in further education.

The full report can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/professionalism-in-further-ed...

Summary (from the full report reproduced under http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/)

1 This final report completes the work of the Independent Review of Professionalism in Further Education (FE). It builds on our Interim Report, published on 27 March 2012, gathering together and reflecting on the many changes which are taking place in consequence. It considers the nature of FE in England, contrasting the diversity of intention and role which policy or pragmatism places upon it with the clarity of purpose which characterises some other systems of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) worldwide. We see this diversity, whatever may be its strengths, and the turbulence of government policy towards FE over past decades, as challenges to a settled and consistent sense of professional identity among FE teaching staff: lecturers, instructors, assessors and workplace supervisors (called lecturers throughout, for convenience). We make observations and proposals which we see in each case as conforming to the thrust of the government’s policy, and which in sum might imply far-reaching change. Our suggestions nevertheless address the FE sector as it is: varied in purpose; very large in terms of overall size; ranging across public, private and charitable organisations from the small and specialised to, increasingly, big educational businesses with national and international reach; and dependent for its quality on the creativity, confidence and sense of professional self-worth of nearly 200,000 teaching staff.

2 In fulfilling the terms of reference set for us by John Hayes MP, then Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning we have come to accept his general criticism that the sector has been ‘infantilised and encumbered’ by too much and too detailed intervention by government and its agencies (Ministerial speech, AoC Conference 2010). It seems to us likely that these interventions have, in the name of control and accountability, weakened the very characteristics successive governments have wished to nourish: good governance; self-reliance in academic quality assurance and continuous improvement; and a primary focus on furthering the interests of customers – students, their employers and their communities. The sector has matured beyond a need for such interventions in our view; they are now widely resented. There is some evidence that this ‘command and control’ environment has infiltrated relations between some FE providers and their staff, on whom a good service to customers relies. The general purpose of our proposals is therefore one of removing controls outside the provider wherever it is sensible and prudent to do so, but relying explicitly on employers and employees to chart their shared future in equal partnership.

3 In section 3 of this report, our survey of developments since March this year, we set out the results of our further consideration of two areas on which we were unable to make definitive recommendations in our Interim Report. These are as follows:
• We find the incidence of gross professional misconduct other than that which is already covered by the work of the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), or by general employment law, to be so small as not to warrant the introduction of new national arrangements (replacing those of the IfL) to prevent the re-employment of culprits in FE;
• We find that lecturers teaching remedial literacy and numeracy, and those working with students with learning difficulties or disabilities, cannot be regarded as relying heavily on past qualifications or experiences as the basis of their practice, but that they should achieve pre-service or early in-service specialist qualifications to at least the level of our recommended new Certificate in Further Education; we trust that the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) will take this observation into account in its review of qualifications.

4 Secure professionalism among lecturers we suggest rests in part on the clarity of the sector’s aim. This hypothesis we consider in section 4 of this report. We believe that there are at least five main aims and associated segments of FE:
• Remedial FE, redressing the shortcomings of schooling (described in the Wolf Report and elsewhere);
• Community FE, offering lifelong learning opportunities to local people, with benefits to their health, longevity and wellbeing, as well as continuing education;
• Vocational FE, teaching occupational skills;
• Academic courses up to Level 3 taught in some colleges;
• Higher education studies.
We suggest that the vocational role of FE (at both the further and higher education levels) should be regarded as having primacy, while community provision has an important subsidiary role. We believe that the devotion of so much public money and effort to duplicating work already undertaken in schools is wasteful. Remedial provision we hope to see gradually cease as a major function of FE, as soon as the government’s current reforms make this practicable, leaving schools to deal more effectively with foundation skills.

5 We suggest that the pursuit of this end, which we see as coinciding with the policies of both the Department for Education (DfE) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), is hampered by notions of an indivisible ‘14-18 phase’ of education. This implies that leaving school for FE is not the decisive step out into adult life (often including employment) which young people usually intend it to be. The existence of two funding bodies, the Education Funding Agency (EFA) and the Skills Funding Agency and two sets of funding policies, which was regretted by many of those we consulted, allows for unintended incentives to be pursued by FE providers to serve 14-18 year olds in preference to adults. We believe this is unhelpful both to students and in defining the professional identity of FE and of its staff. We suggest instead that a review is necessary to alleviate these unintended consequences. We note the great improvements in the availability of a nationally-consistent service brought about by the FE funding bodies since the early 1990s; we believe that this achievement needs to be further built upon.

6 Taking full account of the sector’s diversity, the panel nevertheless considers in section 5 of this report that a recognisable professional identity in FE exists, not only across the broad range of providers in England but also extending to those in similar systems abroad. That the robustness of this identity has become a matter for concern we believe substantially to be because FE is seen as the sector ‘in between’ schools and Higher Education (HE), apparently lacking a distinct and unique personality of its own. In the past, FE and HE in England have overlapped more fully. The United States offers an example where the community college sector (FE) is part of HE, facilitating progression for students and conferring professional trust and expectations on staff, in a way which we think resembles that which the government in this country now wishes to support. The rapidly extending provision of HE in FE institutions, the conferral on them of Foundation Degree-awarding powers under the supervision of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), and the widespread direct relationships between FE providers and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), as well as with individual universities, suggest to us that this model might be the natural direction of travel here. We hope in time that there should be a single post-compulsory sector of education, uniting further and higher education and making the term ‘further education’ effectively redundant.

7 We believe that with a clearer set of aims, a better approach to the key policy and funding relationships with government, and a heightened understanding of its status, the sector can begin to take full advantage of greater autonomy. The proposed FE Guild (see paragraph 3.8) gives an opportunity to underline the sector’s unity whilst still recognising its diversity. At the time of writing, representative bodies of sector employers and employees have submitted responses to the Guild Prospectus. We hope this process of negotiation might go forward into the conclusion of an FE Covenant, learning from a parallel with the Armed Forces Covenant. This might be the vehicle for agreement on such matters as the obligation to undertake qualifications and continuing professional development (CPD) among lecturers, and corresponding obligations to give moral and tangible support among employers: those issues which government decisions based on our Interim Report removed from the arena of compulsion to that of consensus. The FE Covenant might also be the place for expression of a code of professional conduct and those many other matters of mutual interest across the sector which transcend anything that readily can be agreed between the individual employer and its staff. We see the Covenant as an important means towards securing the success of a Guild and something to which all Guild members should formally commit.

8 We are enthusiastic about the potential for a Guild to offer a means of shared enterprise for the sector as well as enhanced staff professionalism. In this respect it is closely linked with the development of chartered status, plans for which are less well-developed. We record our hopes that the body which will grant chartered status will be at arm’s length from government, gaining authority and independence as well as enhanced status for all who work in chartered providers, through the early achievement of a Royal Charter. We suggest that chartered status might properly confer greater earned autonomy on able providers. In section 5 of the report the Review panel makes suggestions for realising the full potential of the government’s twin proposals, a Guild and chartered status:
• We suggest that a Guild might become the co-ordinating awarding organisation for students’ qualifications in the sector, specifically considering the reduction of their sometimes bewildering profusion; establishing ‘benchmark’ awards comparable in their simplicity and breadth of recognition with university degrees; and driving cost-efficiencies – working with the national awarding bodies to achieve these ends.
• We suggest that the long record of self-assessment of quality across the sector, a growing commitment to peer review, and developing practices in Ofsted which include freedom from inspection for high-performing providers, combine to make a proposal timely that quality assurance of chartered providers should shift towards independent verification of self-assessment, perhaps by the QAA which we believe may be best suited to the task, leaving Ofsted to focus on low achieving institutions.
• We envisage that the government’s steps to reduce detailed oversight of the sector will add still greater urgency to a need to raise the standard of governance; we suggest that LSIS and the proposed Guild might undertake further work on this on behalf of the sector, based on the model developed by the Financial Reporting Council and taking account of its application to public institutions such as that used in the Association of Colleges (AoC)’s Foundation Code.
• The panel believes that the evidence it has collected demonstrates decisively that professionalism among lecturers, here and overseas, is linked inextricably with their acceptance of responsibility for the validity of qualifications; for the quality of the service which their employing provider offers to learners; and for contributing to firm strategic direction, viability and probity through participation in good governance. It is providers’ autonomy in those key undertakings, and lecturers’ full involvement in them, that are intended by our proposals.

9 With the commonsense conviction that professionalism must be either bolstered or undermined by the favourability or otherwise of terms and conditions of service, we give them some consideration near the end of section 5 of the fuller port. Our conclusion is that salaries in FE have probably fallen over time in comparison with schools and HE and that this has contributed to the desire of some FE staff to hold teaching qualifications that are interchangeable with counterparts in secondary schools. Similarly, average conditions of service may have declined, including sufficient flexibility granted to FE lecturers to explore and make a creative and innovative contribution to professional excellence. Furthermore, we speculate whether there might be a proportion of permanent staffing below which it becomes difficult to sustain a comprehensive professional ethos. We suggest that the generality of these matters might be a subject for discussion in the Guild.

10 Finally, in concluding this report, we give some brief thought to the timescale over which our proposals might be implemented. Some might require legislation, with its inevitable capacity for delays but others might be achieved quickly. The Review panel hopes to see transformational change in FE to better sustain the professionalism of its staff, within the life of the Parliament.

The full report can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/professionalism-in-further-ed...