FDs and Higher Level Skills

Leitch (2006) in his Review of Skills and Prosperity for all in a Global Economy advocated a more industry led qualifications system that delivers what employers and individuals need within a national framework, and that future expansion in higher education should be based on programmes offering specific job-related skills such as FDs. In 2007, the Government published its response to the Leitch Review setting out a programme to make the UK become a world leader in skills by 2020. By 2014, the aim was to have 36% of adults qualified to level four and above. The Government’s response to Leitch had special recommendation with respect to FDs:

94 “Employers working with their Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) should articulate their

priorities for high-level skills and influence the development of HE to meet their needs…We will encourage SSCs and HE institutions to extend their Collaborations”

(DIUS, 2007:42). Further policy aims of foundation degrees are to address shortages of intermediate level skills in the national and regional economies and enhance the employability of students.

The Labour government launched its national skills strategy in 2003. In a review of this strategy in 2009, the Government placed skills at the forefront of economic recovery. The Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills states (DBIS, 2009:2):

The country’s future can only be built by educated, enterprising people with the right skills; the skills demanded by modern work in a globalised knowledge economy. Skilled people are more productive, they are more innovative, and they build stronger businesses.

The Labour government strongly believed that there was a direct correlation between skills and productivity and following the Leitch Review (2006) put in place a “demand led’ skills system that they stated ‘responds to both the needs of employers

and individuals”. This involved the development of a complex, multi-level planning

system, managed by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) that sought to ensure that vocational and educational training (VET) providers tailored their programmes and courses to existing and projected employer demand at national, sectoral, regional and

95 local levels (Keep 2002). The system required retailers to provide information on their particular skill needs into this system via Sector Skills Councils (SSCs).

Sector Skills Councils (SSCs)3 _{have been at the centre of the government initiatives to}

address skill shortages and articulate the views of employers. The SSCs alongside UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) are responsible for generating labour market information and producing sector qualification strategies. In, addition they negotiate with funding agencies and providers to produce Sector Skills Agreements (SSA) to realise these strategies. They elaborate and regularly update a detailed qualitative description of their specific skills needs in the National Occupations Standard and have the right to approve or reject qualifications to be included in the Qualifications and Credit Framework4 _{(Halasz, 2011). People 1st}

(who acquired the key assets from Skillsmart retail to provide apprenticeship certification services) are the Sector Skills Council for the hospitality, leisure, travel, tourism and retail, However, there appears to be little inter-agency working in relation to skills. Keep (2014: 255) contends that there is very limited interaction between HEFCE and the Skills Funding Agency and between the various government departments with responsibility for skills:

The relationship between the two government departments in England with prime responsibility for skills, the Department for Education (DfE) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS), is not always

3 _{There are 21 Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) across the UK, these are employer-led skills organisations}

represented by the Federation for Industry Sector Skills and Standards. SSCs cover approximately 90 % of the UK workforce and work with over 550,000 employers to define skills needs and skills standards in their industry (http://fisss.org/about-us/, accessed 10/06/15).

4 _{Qualifications and Credit Framework enables qualifications to be broken down into smaller pieces of}

96

characterised by close co-operation. Given that the sourcing of skills is often about making strategic choices about substitutability and different routes and skill creation mechanisms (for example, between primarily work-based apprenticeships and further and higher education), this makes the costs and benefits of different skill provision mixes harder to define and calculate and coherence in provision much harder to achieve.

In addition, Payne (2007) argues that an approach where employers have to identify their own skills needs confronts many problems, not least of which is the ability of employers to communicate a clear message to providers in a country where the weakness of employer collectives has traditionally made such mediation difficult. The Government has also been responsible for the setting up of public service agreement (PSA) targets, independently of employers, for the proportion of the workforce holding qualifications at various levels, in particular level 2. The underlying assumption being that whichever country amasses the biggest stockpile of qualifications by 2020 will ultimately triumph in terms of economic competition (Based on the findings of the Leitch Review, 2006). Keep (2006: 12) argues strongly:

The country is being treated as a ‘undifferentiated’ unit of analysis, producing blanket prescriptions for publicly funded up-skilling which pay little attention to the underlying structure of employer demand, the specific needs of particular firms and sectors, and the fundamental issues that skills must be utilised if they are to deliver economic gains.

97 Payne (2007) suggested the two approaches discussed are extremely difficult to reconcile and can often be in tension with one another. VET itself is difficult to define especially when described as a multidimensional concept that varies between countries and over time (Nilsson, 2010). In the UK, the VET system has been in a continuous state of flux (Grugulis, 2007) and as a result, the VET process has meant a ‘limited half-life for major institutions, qualifications, inspection regimes and

programmes, with associated problems of stability and recognition” (Keep and

Ashton, 2004:2).

In contrast, the German dual system (general and VET) has remained relatively stable and attractive to other countries due to the provision of highly skilled workers and smooth transition from school to work. The VET system comprises the pre- vocational training system (Ubergangs-system), school based vocational training and the dual system proper (apprenticeship). The student’s general education level and choice of sector determines entry to specific VET fields due to educational stratification and occupational segmentation (Powell et al, 2012). VET offers qualifications across a broad spectrum of professions, however, there is increasing competition between HE and VET since the implementation of the Bologna Process. In the new BA courses, competencies and educational objectives are defined with a view to the demands of the labour markets (KMK & BMBF, 2007:11) with elements of vocationally specific training being merged into previously academic general programmes through in-firm internships. One of the consensual goals of German education and training policy has been to make skill formation systems more flexible, more transparent and more permeable, both within VET and HE as part of the European Union (EU) lifelong learning initiatives.

98 The Leitch Review (2006) highlighted the poor standing of the UK compared to other countries in relation to the countries skill base. The New Labour Government sought to increase the level of people with higher-level skills through increased employer engagement and workplace development (Greenwood et al, 2008). The Foundation Degree was the first major qualification introduced in England since the Diploma of Higher Education in the 1970s (Parry, 2006) to directly address the skills deficit. The characteristics of the FD when combined made the qualification a unique offering. However, the Government’s ambitions for the award were far reaching when considering the social, economic and political requirements set out. One of the greatest challenges for the qualification discussed in this chapter was the reliance of the qualification on the UK VET system. The system, since its inception has been in a constant state of flux (Grugulis, 2007), government changes and new skills initiatives have not allowed time for the new qualifications to embed; this has meant that too few employers know or understand what FDs are. Further, there appeared to be little interaction between the various government departments with responsibility for skills and HEFCE (Keep, 2014), which makes skills provision harder to achieve, especially when employers have also found it difficult to communicate the skills they require. The forthcoming section features the central role of the employer in the design and delivery of Foundation Degrees.

3.2 Employer Engagement and Participation in Foundation Degrees