After describing the FE sector and its diverse professionals, it is important now to summarise arguably the most significant piece of legislation to impact the running of colleges and its teachers in the history of FE: The Further and Higher Education Act 1992 (Randle and Brady 1997, Hodgson et al 2015). This legislation is important because it impacted so profoundly on the professional practice, identity and management of FE teachers (Briggs, 2005). The Act removed colleges from local authority control, thus enabling them to form ‘corporations’ that had their own legal identity and governance. The accepted term used within education for the introduction of this act and the period after its introduction is ‘incorporation’.
The Act was introduced to make colleges more efficient in their financial management, improve the numbers participating in FE and reduce the numbers dropping out of college courses (Hodgson et al, 2015). Two significant documents that highlighted these issues and created a rationale for the act were: the 1991 white paper Education and Training for the Twenty First Century (DES/ED, 1991) and Unfinished Business
(Audit Commission and OFSTED, 1993). These highlighted the inefficiency, waste and poor completion rates for students within the sector (Green and Lucas, 1999).
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The 1992 Act placed colleges into “a competitive market situation” against other local providers and they were expected to “use management practices adopted from the private sector” (ibid: 13). Tummons has argued that incorporation, for many working in FE at the time, created a paradigm shift where “education is not so much a right or obligation, but a product, and “learners are re-defined as consumers” (Tummons, 2010:18). The legislation had such a profound impact on the sector that research within the sector refers to two distinct periods within FE, pre-incorporation and post-
incorporation. It had a hugely significant impact on the management of colleges and their teachers.
2.5.1 New further education funding and ‘New Public Management’
Following the Act, the funding changes for students arguably had the biggest impact on the sector’s teachers (Randle and Brady, 1997). Funding was removed from local authorities to a central body the Further Education Funding Council England (FEFCE) formed prior to the introduction of the act. Its influence rapidly became significant across the sector. Now colleges’ funding from the FEFCE was weighted towards students staying at college and achieving their courses, with penalties imposed through less funding in the following year for students who left without achieving. This became known as ‘lag’ funding. Within this new methodology funding was awarded by ‘unit’ with the aim that it followed the student learning, therefore colleges were set unit targets (Lucas, 1999:46). In order to maximise funding, colleges had to meet their student recruitment targets, this became known as the ‘demand-led element’. If they did not meet the target, then the following year their allocation of funds was effectively capped and reduced (Hodgson et al, 2015). This methodology, created by the FEFCE, was extremely complex and called for rigorous administration and audit trails, the use of the phrase ‘data’ became pervasive. New departments were created such as
Management Information Services (MIS) and consultants brought in to run and train new staff, all at a significant cost to colleges (Lucas, 1999). To satisfy the complex auditing regime within the new funding methodology colleges were placing new demands on course managers and all college lecturers for specific data and information on each individual leaner (Randle and Brady, 1997) - which led to some lecturers complaining that “auditing demands were out of control” (Lucas, 1999:49). Ball, 2008 argued that the wider education sector including FE colleges were experiencing ‘new
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public management’ with a focus on marketization, performativity and managerialism. This new form of public sector management was designed to reduce inefficiency, introduce competition and allow consumer choice to be at the centre (Jephcote and Salisbury, 2009).
It is important to emphasise the impact that incorporation and specifically the FEFCE had on the sector and its far-reaching consequences for FE teachers and their
professional practice and identity. According to Randle and Brady (1997) in their case study of a college post-incorporation
The FEFCE, therefore, is a crucial agency in influencing the management of the college at both the strategic and operational levels, and it could be argued that it has driven the scale, shape and pace of change in the FE system in England since incorporation.
Randle and Brady (1997:123)
2.5.2 New contracts
Post-incorporation, colleges had to compete for students. At the same time funding per student was effectively reduced, so colleges had to save money and sought to reduce teaching costs (Fletcher et al, 2015). Lecturers were expected to sign new contracts that dramatically changed their conditions of service, including increasing teaching contact hours and reducing paid holiday whilst increasing key performance indicators (Randle and Brady 1997, Robson 1998a). This created huge resistance from unions and for a period of many years post-incorporation an ongoing bitter dispute ensued (Taubman, 2000). This led to many FE teachers having negative perceptions of incorporation and the benefits that they were led to believe would flow from it (Lucas, 1999).
Many lecturers struggled to adapt to the new management ethos experienced after incorporation, citing a clash of values between their “student centred pedagogic culture” and managers who held a “pervasive market ideology” (Randle and Brady, 1997:127). Shain and Gleeson (1999) argued that the marketisation and managerialism agenda had created a steady de-professionalisation of lecturers who held traditional views of professionalism. Many lecturers saw their pay reduced, felt that their
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to a fifth of the entire workforce leaving the sector either voluntarily or through compulsory redundancy (ibid).