New Challenges, New Chances

On 16 November 2010 the Government published two documents which set out a new strategy for further education and skills (FE), Skills for Sustainable Growth and Investing in Skills for Sustainable Growth. These skills and investment strategy documents set out the Government’s vision for reform of the further education and skills system: to increase the participation of 16-24 year olds in education, training and work, while reducing the FE resource budget by 25% over the next couple of years.

The documents cover wide areas of reform within the sector, but there was one thread in Skills for Sustainable Growth that caught my eye, which deals with our main area of interest, data. In chapter four of the executive summary of the skills strategy document Skills for Sustainable Growth the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) state their commitment to “…simplify systems and processes…” an aspect of the FE reforms also mentioned by John Hayes in his speech to Warwickshire College in Rugby this summer. In reference to streamlining monitoring arrangements, he said that BIS are seeking, “to make your relationship with the Government and our agencies less onerous.”

Now, while we’d like to think that you don’t find your dealings with us at all onerous, we do realise that you are all bearing the ‘data burden’. That’s why we are constantly looking for ways to improve the use of FE data and reduce bureaucracy, in particular by reducing the burden of the ILR. Over the last six years we stopped the steady year-on-year increase of fields in the ILR and are continually working to take out unnecessary fields wherever possible, reducing the total so far by around 15%

So you’ll understand why we were pleased to see that not only has the data thread continued in New Challenges, New Chances – the further education and skills system reform plan published on 1 December, following a consultation on FE provision for 19+ – but that in chapter nine we have been tasked to continue providing ‘a robust challenge process…that only allows change where it can clearly be demonstrated as necessary to support the effective delivery and development of the sector.’ 

We have also been asked to report on the progress of government plans to change data collections and systems, where it will benefit effective provision, and will publish an assessment on the efficiency of and burden from data collections in 2011/12 and 2014/15.

In a further step to streamline systems, we will work with BIS, in consultation with key stakeholders, to publish a road map for how to deliver better data sharing across the sector in the spring.

There is already movement towards simplifying and reducing data collected across the sector. In 2010/11 a single budget for Adult Learner Responsive and 19+ Employer Responsive provision was introduced for all colleges (except those performing poorly) and the requirement to complete Summary Statements of Activity was removed. We hope that our contributions in this area will help to identify more opportunities to significantly reduce the data burden across the FE sector.

This week’s news round up

• Reminder: 2010/11 SL05 returns deadline is 16 January 2011
• The provider guide to working with provider funding reports (PFRs) for 2011/12 is now on our website
• The outputs from the Learner Responsive Group meeting at the end of November are now on our website
• The information authority office will be closed from Monday 26 December and will reopen on Tuesday 03 January 2012.
• And finally, as a confused Santa inputs a billion delivery location postcodes to the ILR, we wish you Happy Holidays and hope you all enjoy a festive break from data entry!

All the best
Greta