Skills Shortage: Government urged to seriously back further education courses

A new study has suggested that up to half a billion pounds should be diverted from universities to improve the quality of professional and technical courses provided by further educational colleges in the UK.

The report ‘Higher, Further, Faster, More: Improving higher level professional and technical education’ was undertaken by leading think tank, Policy Exchange, and funded by Wates and the CITB.

The report says that while the UK has some of the best universities in the world, many of these institutions have vast financial reserves and public spending is focussed too much on higher education to the detriment of further education. This is having a negative effect on the growth of training that is urgently required across the technical and professional roles within the UK’s job market.

Since the introduction of tuition fees, funding for higher education institutions has increased significantly, with a 26% rise in overall income since 2009 /2010 and universities holding £12.3Bn of unrestricted reserves – worth almost 50% of the total annual budget for the higher education sector.

In comparison, further education colleges have seen a sizable reduction in their revenue, with the adult skills budget being slashed by nearly a quarter since 2009 -2010. According to the National Audit Office, more than 1 in 4 of the entire FE college network could effectively go bankrupt within a year.

In an effort to raise the UK’s further education system to be on par with that of higher education, the study makes a number of recommendations, principally addressing the level of underfunding and support offered to students.

It calls for the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) to redirect up to £532m of the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) grant to improve the quality of higher level technical qualifications on offer at further education colleges, with any remaining grant funding to go to universities with the smallest financial reserves.

Also proposed is the extension of student loans and the introduction of maintenance support to students in further education.

New institutes of technology that were recently announced under the government’s Productivity Plan, would be able to award their own technical degrees, negating the need to partner with a university.

An expansion of Industrial Partnership bodies would play an essential role in designing and approving all new technical qualifications, including the new degree Apprenticeships.

The report cites the Royal Academy of Engineering forecast that the UK economy needs 830,000 more engineers by 2020 to deal with the skill shortage.

Jonathan Simons, Head of Education at Policy Exchange, said: “The case for training and for skills has never been more important – to help create 3 million Apprenticeships, to fuel the Northern Powerhouse, to boost social mobility and to drive economic growth.

“The UK is home to world beating universities that we should all be proud of. But as well as degrees, we also need many more people with high class technical and professional skills – and that means a flourishing further education system.

“It is clear that higher education is significantly better funded than its further education counterpart. Universities have substantial cash reserves which could be much better utilised than sitting in banks. That is why we think a proportion of the government grant to universities should be reallocated towards offering more students higher level technical qualifications at further education institutions, and why the student loan system should be expanded so that young people have access to finance to support their higher level study whichever route they choose.”

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