The Business Excellence Model (BEM) and FEFC Inspection ace considered by Dick Evans, Principal of Stockport College and Education Consultant Jenny Cronin. Colleges have been required to respond to a multitude of quality assurance interventions. The FEFC, HEFCE, TQASM, Common Accord (CA), etc have consumed an immense amount of valuable and increasingly limited resources and involved a great deal of replication of effort. In a time of diminishing resources and following questions about the cost benefit of these quality interventions, many of the frameworks are beginning to converge in terms of methodology and intended effect. One of the main vehicles
Browsing 47 Articles Filed under: “Colleges, Education & Training Providers”
What Price Institutional Solvency
The continued operation of the ‘free market’ precipitates a whole series of paradoxes to companies and organisations. Employers, both in the private and public sector, struggle to cope with increasing competition and continuing cuts and Government requirements to make ‘efficiency gains’. As staffing levels continue to be reduced, they are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the quality of their products and services. This is most certainly true of organisations such as the prison service, probation, health, social services and education. One accepts that a great many manufacturing industries have witnessed significant cutbacks, yet they have managed to increase productivity
Managing and Creating Quality in Colleges
Dick Evans The first question to address is ‘What is quality in the context of education and training?’ Quality, after all, is subjective and it is an individual’s perception of a particular product or service and this in turn is influenced by what they experience and what they think. People may not agree on what constitutes quality, but they have a common idea of what it involves. It is about values and these critically depend on a wide range of factors that operate at particular times for that individual. Education is also concerned with a complex blend of production and
Institutional Self-Assessment
Institutional and departmental self-assessment will become increasingly important instruments in inspection systems operated by the Further Education Funding Council (FEFQ and the Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs). Their introduction is being primarily driven by the need to reduce costs associated with quality assurance. Post-16 institutions can currently be required to report to a number of external sponsors and over the past three to four years the cost of these, not only to the institution but to the sponsors, has become prohibitive. The FEFC has yet to publish the guidelines for self-assessment and these should be available during 1997. At present
Convergence v. Divergence
As colleges are required to make even further so-called efficiency gains, a classic contradiction and paradox is presented to colleges who are trying to manage the current situation. Institutions are now expected to deal with a very harsh and steep reduction in their resources from the Funding Council, just at the time when we are beginning to open up access and attempt to increase participation of the new learners of the future. We are therefore confronted with two opposite and in many cases opposing forces arising from convergence of funding and the divergence arising from the increasingly diverse learner populations.
Sink or swim
Dick Evans fears that FE could become a lost continent drowned by competition. One of the inevitable consequences of subjecting education and training to an open and free market is to create a competitive climate, which becomes counter productive. If the market approach is operated in an extreme form, as it is sadly now, with uncontrolled deregulation, the resultant cut-throat competition between the institutions and sectors will fail to rectify many of the problems confronting education and training in this country. Couple this with the absence of any long-term strategic framework for education and training, and the consequences are indeed
Cutting Remarks
The long-term should be taken into account before singing the praises of downsizing, writes Richard Evans. Recent articles in the education Press indicate that 1996 is to be the year for cuts in staffing in the Further Education sector following the issuing of 188 notices. Announcements in last year’s budget will sadly mean that schools and universities will also be making staff redundant. Following on from the previous two years, Further Education is again being subjected to totally unacceptable levels of cuts, dressed up by the Government and the funding councils as necessary and attainable efficiency gains. The FE sector is
A Fair Approach to Recruitment.
College recruitment should take into account the needs of students, not just the colleges’ own reputation, writes Richard Evans. Recent coverage, both in the tabloid and broad sheet Press has highlighted the current concerns about the ethics and morality of some of the techniques being introduced by a few colleges in recruiting students. Massive amounts of money relative to the overall college budget are now being spent in some colleges on publicity and incentives for prospective students. These incentives take the form either of financial or other inviting bounties. These activities most certainly raise serious and fundamental questions about the
The Sigmoid Curve.
Richard Evans applies tool to colleges. Reading Charles Handy’s excellent book ‘The Empty Raincoat’, I reflected on the application of the Sigmoid curve for college managers (see below) The symbol is a powerful one, and as Handy states, it possesses almost infinite universality of application. Obviously one can imagine a single curve which can represent the institution’s life and a particular point can denote its current health, but practically each element within the institution can be mapped to its contours. Other curves could locate the general effectiveness of, say, an indi-vidual member of staff or a group of staff in
FE: Further Thoughts.
Colleges’ priorities are not what they used to be. Richard Evans finds his unhappy predictions for the sector have come true. I have previously written about some of my views and concerns about the future of the FE sector. It gives me little satisfaction that many of the potential problems and concerns identified are now all too evident. One issue that merits investigation is the analysis of the cost of all the increased marketing, publicity and incentives that have been introduced since incorporation and the number of new students from previously nonparticipating groups that have been recruited into the sector.