16.12.11
Difficulties in simplifying further education funding
The National Audit Office (NAO) reported today that the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and the Skills Funding Agency, which are pursuing a range of initiatives to simplify funding in further education, do not know the scale of the problem faced by further education colleges and other providers.
The Department and the Agency are attempting to simplify funding, qualification and assurance systems in further education as part of their wider reform of the skills sector. The NAO estimates that the administration of these systems is costing further education colleges around £180m a year, which equates to £150 per student, and around £250m a year for all types of further education colleges and other providers.
They have worked alongside the Department for Education to develop a series of proposals to simplify the system which target the most costly burdens. Colleges themselves suggested that large savings can be made through cutting administration.
The NAO claims that a clear, ambitious target should be set for the scale of the burden reduction to provide more impetus to change. There are already some initiatives underway but the NAO argues they are not well coordinated and further education colleges and other providers do not have confidence that the simplification of the system of administration will be sustained.
Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: “Our estimates show that substantial savings can be made by reducing bureaucracy in further education, and demonstrate the need for focused and systematic management of these costs to drive sustained improvements in efficiency.
“The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and the Skills Funding Agency have the ambition to make changes to simplify the system, but they must get to grips with the issues we have raised in order to achieve value for money and prevent colleges being embroiled in red tape.”
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