Gavin Williamson was aware of at least one thing in his speech today in which he promised a revolution in England’s further education sector. “A lot of education secretaries across the years have said they want to support further education,” he told an empty room during his pre-recorded speech. “I know some of you will feel you’ve heard all of this before.” Anyone who had listened to Williamson’s recent predecessors would have a sense of deja vu, from the lament for the “forgotten 50%” of young people who do not enter higher education, to the desire to copy Germany’s much admired technical and vocational education routes. This time though a more menacing tone was aimed at higher education, principally universities in England, for somehow being too popular despite also being expensive and inadequate. But that was the fault of Tony Blair and his 50% higher education pledge, rather than whoever had been in power for the last 10 years.
Last week the first attack came from Michelle Donelan, the minister for universities, who was blunt. “Quite frankly, our young people have been taken advantage of, particularly those without a family history of going to university. Instead some have been left with the debt of an investment that didn’t pay off in any sense.” Then Williamson went further. In his speech – a preview of the Department for Education’s white paper on post-school education to be published in autumn and designed to bolster further education – his main target seemed to be universities. A plan “to tackle low-quality higher education” was somehow included between talk of apprenticeship levies and college rebuilding. “For too long we’ve been training people for jobs that don’t exist,” said Williamson, without naming any non-existent jobs. Even university vice-chancellors have by now figured out that things are going to get rough. To stop poaching, a student number cap has already been reimposed for this year’s admissions round. It was a Conservative-led government that abolished the cap on undergraduate numbers in 2015, and it may be about to return, permanently, to tackle “low-quality” courses. Between the lines in Williamson’s speech can be heard the words of Downing St advisers such as Alison Wolf, who has long complained about the complexity of vocational education in England. Hence his mention of “qualifications which no one takes, or that are poor quality,” being done away with. Another voice is that of Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s ill-fated special adviser at the Home Office and No 10. After failing to be elected as an MP last year, Timothy gained an appointment as a non-executive director of the Department for Education. Firmly a member of the “more means worse” brigade, Timothy’s views were confirmed when he discovered that his barber had a degree in football studies. But Williamson appears to have a plan for further education, aside from bashing universities. In his speech he repeatedly said that England’s colleges should be led by, and tailored to, their local communities.
The local employer link would in theory give further education a chance of emulating the German model. There are so many differences between England and Germany that transplanting a policy from one to the other is challenging, but the German model is heavily dependent on employers who fund vocational training through in-house apprenticeships. So perhaps that is what will emerge from Williamson’s white paper. But there’s much more to do. Williamson himself confessed that when he became education secretary he was shocked at how far adult education numbers had fallen. Kate Green, the shadow secretary of state for education, responded: “Any new support for further education is welcome, but it’s a bit rich for the government to complain about a crisis in FE that they themselves have created. Funding has been slashed by billions of pounds and support for learners scrapped.”