LSC ... RIP
With barely a whimper, the Learning & Skills Council closed down yesterday. Its functions have passed over to local authorities and two successor bodies: the Young People’s Learning Agency and the Skills Funding Agency.
The rather grandly titled "machinery of government" changes were announced in March 2008 and the transition to the successor bodies has been detailed and lengthy.
In this week's TES, the chief executive of the SFA describes what will be different about the new arrangements for adult skills. He says the new agency will "move away from the top-down approach towards a much more market-driven position". The agency will "simply to do three things: provide funding; manage quality; and empower the customer and free the employer to respond to customer demand"
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyc...
The old Training & Enterprise Councils had a 10 year lifetime; and the LSC also lasted exactly 10 years. Will the new agencies make it through until 2020?
Meanwhile the Government says that "millions of people benefitted from skills and training courses in 2008-09". figures, published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills show that nearly five million people took part in a LSC funded further education course with more than 3.3 million of those achieving a qualification. There were also:
• a record number of 239,900 Apprenticeship starts, and 143,400 Apprenticeship achievements in 2008–09
• over one million people achieved a qualification through Train to Gain
Between 2000–01 and 2008–09 provisional figures show that 3.24 million working age adults improved their basic skills and achieved a qualification in literacy or numeracy. This achieves a Public Service Agreement target of 2.25 million, two years early.
Comments
The transition has been detailed, lengthy....and a shambles. Great wodges of detail were left not tied up, and for months now it has been impossible to get any sense out of anyone at the LSC as they were all so individually desperate not to be associated with it anymore, claiming "I work for the SFA now" or "I'm at the YPLA now", and leaving providers grasping in the air as to who the hell exactly they were supposed to be talking to about things that were clearly still in the LSC's gift to influence and decide. The LSC was congenitally incapable of running a budget - ref: capital funding, Train to Gain - and when they finally got rid of the previous dimwit in charge of it they replaced him with Geoff Russell, a man with a great talent for identifying problems and no talent whatsoever at solving them. Of course, that made him super material for Chief Executive of the SFA. Doubles all round!
I'm not a fan.
The long death throes have left the general impression of a crippled donkey, limping along waiting for the bullet.
But - two agencies to replace the previous one?
What was it the UKCES said about simplification and streamlining the skills sector? And what about the LSEB's famous "confused and crowded employment and skills landscape" and it being imperative to deal with that.
Does anyone think the creation of two agencies is going to simplify or streamline or - lordy! - make the skills system more demand led?