3 April 2008

Budget Reports these days tend to come accompanied by a hefty gaggle of other Papers and Reports. It is in here deep amongst these other Papers that the wider picture of Government policy and thinking can often be pieced together. This year was no exception; 20 additional Papers and still counting, many will be relieved that Alistair Darling did not choose to read them all out.

One of the most important for the world of education and skills came from the Dept for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) and was published the day after the Budget. Titled simply, ‘Innovation Nation,’ it pulls together an eclectic mix of activity and ideas that the Government has been pursuing since it launched its knowledge economy programme ten years ago. This programme has gathered momentum over recent years with the publication of three complementary Reports: the 2004 Science and Innovation Investment Framework, the 2006 Leitch Report on UK Skills and the 2007 Sainsbury Review of Science and Innovation Policies. Collectively these Reports highlight the growing importance being attached to innovation, now of course formalised within the work of one Dept. As the introduction to this Report notes, “DIUS brings together three of the main drivers of economic success in the 21st century – support for the skills that people bring to the workforce, science and research and a responsibility for driving innovation.”

Traditionally, innovation has been associated with manufacturing and products but is defined in this Paper as “the successful exploitation of ideas,” in essence a much more expansive model and one reliant on the development and transfer of knowledge and skills – hence the importance to the world of education. As the Secretary of State said, “it is the British people who will create a world beating innovation nation and that is why we must unlock talent at all levels by investing in skills.” Headline proposals include doubling the number of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships between businesses, universities and colleges, introducing innovation vouchers so that small and medium – sized businesses can contract with providers to develop new products and services and establishing an Innovation Research Centre. DIUS intends to produce an annual score card of progress being made, the first of which will be published this autumn.

If this all sounds a long way away from the daily grind of the classroom or the workshop, then it’s worth earmarking Chapter 7 because that’s where the implications at a provider level are spelt out. It is no surprise that it starts with FE providers as potentially they could be the greatest beneficiaries.

The major proposal for the FE sector, and it was backed in the Budget Report, is the proposal to pilot a revenue – based FE Specialisation and Innovation Fund, “to build capacity of the FE sector to support businesses to raise their innovation potential.” This is an important opening of the door for FE and one that could do a lot to raise its profile. It will complement the current successful LSC £180m Specialisation and Innovation capital fund let alone HE’s own innovation Fund now in its fourth round. On the downside, the Government seems keen to channel the funding through “a range of networking arrangements” incorporating the usual suspects but it is a promising move and the Paper talks evangelically of “accelerating the capacity” and “growing the number” of networked arrangements through the FE sector. The most useful mechanism may be the FE Knowledge and Technology Transfer (KTT,) promoted in the Sainsbury Review and linked in closely to specialist networks such as that for the National Skills Academies, the recently announced National Enterprise Academy (NEA) and the hoped for Dyson School for Design Innovation (DSDI.) Hoped for because at present it is embroiled in planning problems.

Hitching FE Knowledge and Technology Transfer into this emergent tier of specialist provision locks FE into a whole new world of opportunities. It also makes employer engagement a reality rather than a strategy but inevitably comes with some caveats, three in particular. First, that providers will probably need to acquire the employer responsive Training Quality Standard (TQS) to be able to participate; second, that this places greater emphasis on development of the FE estate that the LSC has been leading on, not least to ensure state of the art facilities are widely available; third, and perhaps inevitably, further development of the FE workforce will be needed to ensure the Government has the level of responsiveness it’s seeking.

For HE, some announcements have already been made, many following on from the 2003 Lambert Review of HE – business links let alone Leitch while others are awaited with varying degrees of trepidation. Those already made include two recent announcements. One, the new University Challenge, is intended to open up HE provision in what have been termed ‘HE cold spots’ – places where there are latent skills or business needs but no local HE centre to unlock them. The new University Challenge is to respond to this by opening up 20 more centres over the next 6 years. The other was the announcement by the Secretary of State that he was launching a fundamental review of HE through a series of 7 mini reviews of different aspects of HE activity, the aim being to create a new 10 – 15 year HE development framework.

As for those future announcements being awaited with varying degrees of trepidation, one is next year’s review of tuition fees and the other, due out shortly, is a Higher level Skills Strategy. The trepidation here is because early sightings of the Paper indicate that future HE growth will be based around meeting employer needs, fuelled by greater employer co – financing with employability as the driving force.

There is less in the Paper for schools, partly because much of the innovative activity is dependent on higher level of skills and partly because a lot of activity has gone on this area over recent years including the introduction of enterprise education, the focus on STEM subjects and of course the steady drumbeat of the Diplomas. The Paper adds to the considerable expectation building up around the latter by suggesting that Diplomas “will foster enterprise and innovation in young people across its constituent components.” An intriguing suggestion at this stage of their development and one that may require some innovative solutions to resolve.

© Edexcel Policy Watch 2008. Steve Besley is General Manger of Education Policy at Edexcel. Policy watch is a service intended to help busy people understand developments in the world of education. Visit Edexcel at www.edexcel.org.uk