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Accelerated degrees the future for HE in FE?
Perhaps surprisingly a report published this month by HEFCE called: “A costing study of two year accelerated honours degrees” went unnoticed by the press. Download the report here: http://tinyurl.com/62tbjp8

The report was part of the HEFCE-funded Flexible Learning Pathfinder Project, and in the two areas analysed (Law and Business) found that “the cost of two-year accelerated honours degrees to be between 71 per cent and 74 per cent of the equivalent three-year degree.” This is certainly an area colleges should be considering as a growth market, and hopefully we will hear soon from Roxanne Stockwell, who joined Pearson (owners of Edexcel) in January of this year to launch vocational degrees: http://tinyurl.com/5t7wbyf

As an aside, it was interestingly the researchers found that at the universities they visited “there was very little evidence of any formal financial analysis or appraisal at either faculty or institutional level” (Para 5.24). Ouch!

Boys have to have their own toys
At a time when colleges and local authorities are being encouraged to find savings through shared services, it comes as a surprise that “The YPLA is developing an extranet to provide a secure and efficient means of sharing confidential and sensitive information that is specific to your organisation.” given the existing “Provider Gateway will continue to function as now”. http://tinyurl.com/649qa94

So it appears that colleges will in future have to go to both the SFA Data Service Document Exchange and YPLA extranet to upload and download documents.

Whilst the Document Exchange is not a great tool and thus sympathise with the YPLA, I can only guess at the additional costs of running two secure extranets instead of one.

£91.8m underspend at the YPLA
The YPLA Chief Executives Update paper distributed in December 2010 for their board meeting on the 12th of January 2011 contains an item on YPLA expenditure for 2010-11 and says “The Board will be aware that the YPLA’s expenditure is critically affected by the number and timing of new Academies, as well as by other changes.” and that “An update on the budget will be provided at the January meeting”.

Oddly (and I’m not a conspiracy theorist) the only mention of the budget in the January board meeting minutes was to say “An update on the spending forecast was tabled. The Chief Executive was content that there was sufficient cover in the budget for all areas.” I bet it’s sufficient, given the addendum to the Chief Executive Update includes a table which “summarises the current forecast of YPLA expenditure - a £91.8m underspend for the year. YPLA and DFE officials will continue to work together during the remaining months of the year to manage this position to make best use of these funds given competing priorities and risks over the use of public funds.” Maybe some of that money could be used to fund EMAs for second year students (too obvious?).

See all the YPLA board meeting documents here: http://tinyurl.com/5wujdo9

Are we about to get a u-turn on ESOL fees?
An article this week on ESOL funding in the Financial Times suggests John Hayes is less than impressed with his civil servant briefings on ESOL impact analysis (memories of Bill Rammell anyone?). Mr Hayes is quoted as saying that he has requested analysis of the changes to fee and funding eligibility for those on inactive benefits (and their dependents) – so I think we can expect at worst a partial u-turn announcement in the near future. Here is the link to the FT article, although I am afraid is sits behind a pay-wall: http://tinyurl.com/63dy7fn

YPLA/SFA Advisory Forum Minutes ~ more u-turns?
The minutes from the 14th January have been published, and they provided some useful insights: http://tinyurl.com/6hr8fbg. In addition to a thorough assessment of ‘challenges’ (a word used eight times), a couple of things from the SFA stood out for me:

~ “David Hughes outlined the issues that had arisen around ACTOR and explained that the Skills Funding Agency wants to review and evaluate the process” ~ so watch this space…
~ “The Skills Funding Agency is discussing whether more can be done to support automatic fee remission for Level 1 learning where there is a L2 entitlement” This has been said at meetings but here is the first place I’ve seen it written down. We eagerly await the announcement!
~ “The Skills Funding Agency acknowledges these changes may need to take place over a period of time – say two years – and they may be able to be flexible on this”. Never heard this said before, so maybe some sort of transitional implementation possible.
~ “David Hughes said that the Skills Funding Agency would be sending a letter out within the next two weeks asking for colleges to provide some information about their assessments of the impact and this meant that by late February/early March we should have the overall picture to feed up to Ministers ready to publish.” Has anyone received this letter? If so please do get in touch.

Local Authority extension for MCLs
The MCL policy appears to be unravelling before it has even been agreed whether 16-18 Apprenticeships are included, with the announcement that local authorities can request extensions for implementation by end June 2012: http://tinyurl.com/62hwyaw Seems odd it is end of June rather than end of the academic year, which is end of July.

It is also interesting that the “SFA will introduce a 'ring-fence' of the local authority Agency funding under any new collaborative arrangements in order to protect the geographical aspect of the funding”. Does not sound very free or flexible.

Without wanting to over-dramatise, I think we could be witnessing the rumbling of the next FE fiasco (last two being capital and TtG), because if MCL policy collapses it could lead to many expensive legal challenges and learners left (often mid-programme) without a provider.

And finally…..who is paying the £84k cost of an Apprenticeship?
An article during Apprenticeship week caught my eye, in which BEA Systems say they spend £84k on each apprentice: http://tinyurl.com/6cgwbcb. What is unclear is how much of that is public money (the National Employer Service within the SFA often does not apply national rates) although we know BAE Systems PLC have a contract this year with the SFA for £3.5m: http://tinyurl.com/3ajecbm. Others big high street names are also listed in the article, many with even larger contracts this year with the SFA, such as McDonalds (£9.9m), BT (13.8m) and British Gas (£4.7m). Wonder if it raises any questions about ‘state-aid’ and or the use of public funds (McDonald’s global revenue was $24bn last year http://tinyurl.com/6zlbvgt). Food for thought perhaps?

Kind regards,

Nick
www.twitter.com/nicklinford