Getting Value for Money from the

Education of 16 to 18 yearolds,
House of Commons Committee of
Public Accounts, 42nd report of
Session 201012, HC 1116.
Published 16 August 2011 by the
Stationery Office Limited, 10.00.
ISBN: 978-0-215-56115-1.
I
n its report on value for money
from the education of 16 to 18
yearolds, the Public Accounts
Committee (PAC) acknowledged
that educational achievements of
this age range had improved over
the previous four years. Yet if the
Department for Educations market
based delivery model to deliver its
objectives of improving choice and
quality for students was to work,
good comparative information
between providers would be needed
along with relevant advice and
information for students. The
Committee added that the
Department would also need to
intervene to address poor
performance.
The report warned that the
framework of accountability for 16
to 18 education was complex and
risked overburdening providers by,
for example, making general further
education colleges answerable to
two Departments (DfE and BIS), two
funding agencies and a wider web of
accountability including Ofsted,
local authorities, governors and
students. The committee therefore
recommended that to manage the
burden of audit and performance
reporting, the Departments should
clarify roles and eliminate
duplication of demands on
providers.
Local authorities
The report noted that although the
Department emphasised the duty
and important role of local
authorities, they had limited powers
and the effectiveness of their
engagement with the sector varied.
The Committee agreed that
reductions, if carefully managed,
could help drive efficiency, but it
added that a consequence of unit
pricing could also result in
institutions simply spending up to
that amount. The report warned that
cuts may also have unintended
consequences, such as reducing the
provision of courses that required
more intensive resource. The
Committee suggested that the
Department should require
providers to produce comparable
cost information as benchmarks to
increase the transparency of the
costs of courses and drive efficiency.
The report noted that larger
providers benefited from economies
of scale and that they could provide
a wider choice of courses for their
students and it added that evidence
also suggested that student
achievement was higher in larger
institutions. But the report also
pointed out that some smaller
providers achieved such benefits by
collaborating in different ways, from
informal coworking to establishing
federations. However the Committee
was concerned that many did not
collaborate, partly because of the
market emphasis on competing for
students and the fact that the
inspection and assessment regimes
were not aligned with collaborative
delivery as different parts of the
same federation were subject to
separate inspections. The report
recommended that the Department
should promote the benefits of
effective collaboration between
providers and address anomalies
between the way providers were
configured and how their
performance was assessed.
Student choice market inhibited
The PAC was concerned that
because information to measure the
performance of providers was not
comparable, assessing the value for
money they offered was difficult and
the operation of a market driven by
student choice would be inhibited.
The Committee noted that the
Department had plans to improve
the comparability of information
and to make it more accessible to
students and it recommended that
all providers should be required to
compile and publish comparable
performance information to support
the assessment of value for money.
The Committee added that the
information should be sufficient for
prospective students to use in
choosing the right course, thereby
improving student engagement and
retention.
The report highlighted the lack of
clarity about when and how the
Department would require
intervention in the event of failure
and the Committee argued that for a
market to be effective, poor
providers should be allowed to fail
as allowing poorly performing
providers to continue for too long
before action was taken would have
potentially serious consequences for
students. The Committee noted that
criteria for intervention were clearer
for colleges than for schools and that
actions to tackle poor sixth forms in
maintained schools were at the
discretion of the local authority. The
report therefore called on the
Department to clarify how it would
address failing providers and the
criteria that would determine the
extent and timing of intervention.
EMAs
The report pointed out that the
Department had indicated that by
definition, it was better value for
money to spend less on a
replacement for the Educational
Maintenance Allowance scheme by
targeting it and removing
deadweight costs. But the
Committee argued that the potential
impact on participation in education
and training of the replacement for
the Education Maintenance
Allowance still had to be assessed
and it warned the Department that
there was still some way to go to
improve participation before 2015
when the Education and Skills Act
(2008) will require all young people
to continue in education or training
up to the age of 18.
The Committee urged the
Department to assess the impact on
participation, particularly for
disadvantaged young people, and
the burden on providers of
managing the changes including the
costs of administration during the
implementation of its plan to replace
EMA in the 2011/12 academic year
by a 180 million bursary scheme.
Getting Value for Money from the Education of 16-18 year-olds Select Committee
ISSUE 129 28 EDUCATION JOURNAL