After secondary education, comes tertiary education. But whereas the secondary sector is relatively easy to describe - it’s overwhelmingly made up of secondary schools – the tertiary sector is a lot more diverse, including FE Colleges, universities and other HE providers, Independent Training Providers, Adult & Community Education providers, and specialist areas such as prison education. Maybe that’s why the phrase “tertiary sector” is less commonly used than “Post-16” or “Post-18”.
Labour government policy clearly views the tertiary sector as a single entity which should be operating in a coordinated way – this was apparent from their manifesto promises to develop a “comprehensive strategy for Post-16 education” and “to better integrate further and higher education.” The Education Secretary’s recent statements on Higher Education reform emphasise FE/HE partnership (“I will expect you to collaborate…with partners in the further education sector”), and of course in Jacqui Smith we have a Skills Minister responsible for both FE and HE.
Meanwhile the Welsh government has since 2022 established a Commission for Tertiary Education and Research – now know by its Welsh name of Medr – which places a statutory obligation on universities and colleges to collaborate. Might the UK government follow suit?
The relationship between FE and HE is at the heart of any plan for a more integrated tertiary system, but it has proved far from straightforward to get this right. This is due to a number of factors, including a policy environment that has tended to promote a market model of competition between providers, an HE funding system that has incentivised universities to prioritise three-year degrees over everything else, and a lack of clarity around whether FE or HE should be taking the lead in delivering self-standing Level 4 & 5 qualifications, now badged as Higher Technical Qualifications. This latter issue has been particularly prominent in the Institutes of Technology initiative, which set up over twenty partnerships between colleges, universities and employers across the country with a remit to grow the delivery of HTQs.
Historically there have been four partnership models. The most common is the “Feeder” model, in which FECs feed successful students into HEIs, including through Access to HE courses designed for adults. Also prevalent is the Franchise model, through which FECs negotiate validation agreements with HEIs that enable them to deliver all or part of degree level courses using their own staff and premises. Many FECs deliver this provision in separately identified “University Centres”. It’s worth remembering that a small number of FECs in England have been granted Degree Awarding powers and can deliver their own Foundation and Honours Degrees, but all still retain a range of validation agreements with HEIs as well.
In Scotland there is a long-standing policy commitment to an Articulation model, through which students completing HNCs can progress directly to the 2nd year of a degree course; HNDs directly into the final year. While the Scottish model is based on formal articulation agreements, many English HEIs follow a similar model, some with and some without formal institutional agreements.
Finally, a small number of universities in England have absorbed FECs through merger, and there is one example of an FEC absorbing an HEI. This has always been the result of the merged institution needing to be bailed out of financial crisis, and the merger process is fraught with technical hurdles due to the very different regulatory and funding regimes in the FE and HE sectors.
Most of these tertiary institutions are LEI members, and at our online event on 12th December – “Models of Tertiary Integration” – we’ll be hearing directly from three of them about their experience of merger, their reasons for going down that route, and the progress they have made since. We’ll also be hearing from a university with over twenty years experience of managing a formal franchise consortium with four FE colleges, and from the Leeds institution that is the sole example of a college taking over an HEI.
It must be emphasised that the LEI is not promoting merger – or indeed any other model – as a preferred solution to FE/HE collaboration. The event will be an opportunity to explore the pros and cons of different forms of tertiary integration as we wait to find out more about the government’s approach. If the future is tertiary, what exactly might that look like? What are the challenges of moving in this direction? And what can we learn from experience in the field so far?
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