The Labour Government’s commitment to widening educational opportunities has brought renewed focus on collaboration between FE and HE and sparked a new debate about the potential advantages of moving towards a more integrated Tertiary approach across England.
The DfE has just announced that the Institutes of Technology programme – which had at its heart FE/HE partnership - is to be extended for at least a further three years until 2027/28, while the department works to “establish coordination as the default way of working across all providers”. This is good news for the 21 IoTs, but it’s unclear how this fits in with the Labour manifesto’s proposal to create “Technical Excellence” colleges, and how exactly FE/HE collaboration could be made standard practice. To find out we’ll have to wait for the upcoming Post-16 Strategy, due in the summer. One big question is whether this will involve some kind of move towards encouraging the creation of more Tertiary institutions.
The starting point is complex. Most FE colleges deliver some Level 4+ provision – an often overlooked aspect of England’s higher education system that is highlighted in our new report “Taking Higher Education Further” which will be launched at an online event on March 25th. At the same time, many HEIs deliver Level 3 courses, including Foundation Years and Apprenticeships. But that doesn’t make them Tertiary. A Tertiary institution is a legally incorporated body that delivers courses at both FE and HE level – i.e. from Level 1 through to at least Level 6 (degree).
The argument in favour of the Tertiary approach is simple: a single institution under a single leadership team is best placed to develop coherent, quality assured educational pathways of equal status. The model avoids unnecessary competition for students between institutions and enables much smoother student transition from one level or one pathway to another.
England currently has eight such institutions, four universities and four FE colleges.
The four universities all became tertiary institutions through merger with a struggling FEC.
They are:
The University of Greater Manchester (formerly Bolton University)
Derby University
London South Bank University
The University of West London
The four colleges have evolved over the years into Tertiary institutions through being granted Degree Awarding Powers by the Office for Students (OfS) either on a temporary basis or indefinitely:
NCG (national) – indefinite
Luminate (Leeds) – to August 2028
The TEC Partnership (Grimsby region) – to October 2026
Hull College – to September 2025
Unfortunately, the recent decision by the OfS to pause decisions over Degree Awarding powers until the summer of 2025 poses a risk to those with time-limited powers. There are at least three other FECs – Blackpool & the Fylde, Cornwall and the Warwickshire College Group - which have Foundation Degree Awarding powers and may have aspirations to gaining bachelors awarding powers in future if the application process is re-started. But this is now far from certain.
Apart from merger and FECs gaining degree awarding powers, there are only two other existing mechanisms for encouraging FE/HE collaboration. One is the long-standing franchising process, through which universities enable FECs to deliver elements of their degree provision, a mechanism in which the government plays no part. The underlying problem with this model is that the HE partner has complete control over partnership decisions, and can make unilateral changes or even withdraw completely at any time.
The second mechanism, the Institutes of Technology initiative launched in 2019, is based on a partnership model through which there has to be a lead FEC, one or more university partners, and also employer partners. This makes for a much more equal partnership than is the case with franchise arrangements, but these are still not Tertiary institutions, since partners remain legally independent and don’t deliver courses beyond Level 5.
If Tertiary institutions are marriages between FE and HE, collaboration is a form of cohabitation well short of wedlock. Most institutions are happily single, so it will be fascinating to see whether any move to encourage closer relationships between colleges and universities will prove popular. What tangible incentives might the government put in place to push them together? And is any form of “shotgun wedding” really a good idea?
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