Messing about,political indulgence,or making progress?

The UK General Election in June 2017 produced a minority Government which will obviously influence the way in which politics works to reach decisions. However, ministerial appointments have been made, and these individuals and their advisers will be thinking about their agendas (although decision and implementation timescales could be very short, quite short, a little longer…) and doubtless applying an imperative of ‘reform’ or ‘progress’ or ‘improvement’ or ‘rationalization’ in order to demonstrate some form of political energy. Any of these intentions implies change. But is a political imperative for change desirable or undesirable? Is change, in any case, inevitable within our political framework?

Ron Glatter likes to draw upon the term ‘re-disorganisation’ (Glatter, 2010, 2017), explaining that the word was formed by Christopher Pollitt (2007) to denote ‘the serial restructuring that has been a characteristic feature of the governance of public services over the past 20 years or so’ (Glatter, 2010: 15). Of course, depending on your point of view, there are other expressions that might be used as alternatives to ‘re-disorganization’, such as ‘policy churn’ or ‘innovation’ or ‘transformation’.

For some evidence of the consequences of policy change, The Institute for Government has recently produced ‘All change: Why Britain is so prone to policy reinvention, and what can be done about it’ (Norris and Adam, 2017). Helpfully, because it certainly needed to be looked at, the authors give consideration to the case of further education in England. The beginning of the chapter on further education (Norris and Adam, 2017: 5) sets the scene, with the following overview:

The further education (FE) sector has been defined by more or less continuous change over the last three decades. Our timeline of major policy, programme, leadership and organisational changes in the sector demonstrates the sheer scale of churn that has been experienced. Since the early 1980s there have been

28 major pieces of legislation related to vocational, FE and skills training

six different ministerial departments with overall responsibility for education

48 secretaries of state with relevant responsibilities

no organisation [agency or support body1] has survived longer than a decade.

I have often mused on the cost and impact of the quality improvement agencies formed to support further education colleges, from the closure of the Further Education Staff College (FESC) at Coombe Lodge in 1995 to the formation of the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) in 2013. Interestingly, I have worked in some capacity for every one of these agencies since the FESC, up to and including the current ETF. They all seem to share a similar short-lived profile of a few years before a new idea for an agency comes along. I have often thought that just as each agency is reaching a degree of confidence, expertise and recognition, it’s time for a new one, sometimes with a transfer of leading staff, or sometimes with completely new personnel.

When the bigger picture of further education is taken into account, as by the Institute for Government above, the first reaction is one of serious concern – how can a service withstand such an onslaught of change? The second reaction could reasonably be one of amazement that further education has managed to survive in the face of such churn.

What has driven this churn over 30+ years? The Institute for Government authors (Norris and Adam, 2017) identify four reasons:

competing and often conflicting ideas about what the further education sector is for;

the high levels of ministerial discretion over change;

colleges and agencies not being given time to address reforms; and

poor levels of ‘institutional memory’ in Government civil service and departments of state.

These reasons seem about right to me, but the context of the four reasons needs to be articulated too. The context has included:

declining funding for learning;

restrained pay for those employed in colleges;

increasingly competitive practices for survival between colleges;

the possibility of institutional termination through poor finances, poor quality of provision, or both;

the serious consequences of college inspection outcomes delivering a less than ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ grade, plus changing criteria for inspectoral judgements;

the opening of local University Technical Colleges and other competition for college students; and

notions of self-regulation or ‘shared regulation’ within parts of the further education sector.

The degree of churn, plus the circumstances in which the churn is taking place, have exerted a seriously disruptive force, the most recent example of which has been the Post 16 Area Reviews in England (started in September 2015), in which the financial viability of colleges has been tested through a great deal of regional meeting time for chairs of college governing bodies. Senior college staff have been engaged in data collection and presentation for Area Review teams, with every college in England being affected. There has been so much distraction time that a number of chairs of college governing bodies have suggested they might be remunerated for such additional time and effort they have devoted to the Post 16 Area Review exercise. The consequence in England has been that some colleges have been encouraged into merger (and thus probably continued disruption for students, staff and stakeholders), and for others it has been continued ‘stand-alone’ status but with more collaboration expected.

Churn is felt throughout the system – from those who work and study in colleges to those whose role it is to fund colleges and also those who seek to work with colleges to secure ‘improvement’. I may have missed something or I may have a faulty memory, but there has rarely been joy and excitement from the churn in policy and practice in further education. Glatter quotes from Ringen (2009), who states, in relation to public services generally,

A country of 61 million people must be governed through leadership in which the government persuades others, from its civil servants to citizens at large, that its project is a worthy one…No government can succeed by force of [its] own effort. Glatter (2010: 22)

Governing bodies of further education colleges have, since 1 April 1993, each carried the responsibility of an FE corporation as an exempt charity and have, of course, had to govern throughout this period of extreme churn. There are no regular or comprehensive attitude or motivation studies of governors to draw upon to reflect on how policy churn has been felt in the board room.

However, there are two studies which are worth considering. Firstly, a study published by the LSDA entitled ‘The changing face of college governance’ by Peter Davies (2002) reported responses (with a 55 per cent response rate) to a questionnaire about governing processes and experiences circulated to all colleges in England. There are two points worth making about the governor experience reported in 2002. The emerging picture from questionnaire responses is one of high levels of commitment and fulfilment on the part of governors: ‘Large majorities [of governors] appeared to be satisfied that they were making a worthwhile individual contribution and that the boards on which they sat were, in general, performing an effective role and “adding value”’ (Davies, 2002: 7). However, this comment is balanced by reference to concerns about ‘the burdens of workload’ including volumes of paperwork and time commitments. There was also an ‘irritation’ with ‘accountability overkill, that interfered to an unnecessarily high degree in the independence of corporations’.

Secondly, a study published in 2009, nearing the end of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) era (2000–2010), entitled ‘Creative governance in further education: the art of the possible?’ by Denis Gleeson, Ian Abbott and Ron Hill, looked at six case study colleges, and included enquiry into governor motivation at the end of what was considered to be an increasingly micro-managed phase in further education. The study stated: ‘Government policy as delivered by the Learning and Skills Council, has produced a sense of disempowerment which marginalized governors’ contribution beyond taking responsibility for any inadequacies in the college performance’ (Gleeson et al., 2009: 31).

It is also worth referring to Governor (C) from college C, who stated, ‘…target-based Government was taking creativity from college boards. Without a legitimated planning role, governing bodies were struggling to get beyond the dominating compliance agenda issues’ (Gleeson et al., 2009: 19).

Whilst, of themselves, these two studies do not amount to overwhelming evidence of a paralysis of college governing bodies by Government policy initiatives, both studies help to illuminate the effect of Government policy at local college level. Given this evidence and other anecdotal examples from personal experience, it is possible to deduce that the local implications of national policy reinvention highlighted by the Institute for Government could produce at least six consequences for college governing bodies and their processes for decision-making for learners, learning, staff and wider stakeholders:

initiative overload, with a Government agenda dominating;

protecting the college, in response to perceived threats posed by a Government agenda;

empire building, in response to possibilities arising from a Government agenda;

risk aversion – playing safe, taking an ultra-cautious line in an uncertain context;

confused governors, who may feel undermined, insulted, ignored by continuous Government intervention; and

distraction from planning, implementing, evaluating and improving, and thus the clogging of governing body agendas with departures from ‘core business’.

I am not necessarily suggesting a pejorative interpretation of all of these consequences, but governing effectively is a difficult task in any case, and therefore any external turbulence will inevitably put additional pressure and demands on governors, clerking, and senior staff which could distract from a focus on the quality of teaching and learning and the learner experience generally.

Governing bodies of colleges need space to exercise their responsibilities, with confidence in the framework in which they are expected to operate, and with the respect and appreciation by Government and its agencies. Arguably, these conditions have not been adequately provided by Government. The evidence by the Institute for Government suggests a further education sector and its governing bodies facing continuous, Government-driven change. If politics delivers what politics has provided so far, there are bound to be more changes for further education. The test for Government is to make change successful and celebrated rather than disparaged and ridiculed.