English funding reforms demand ‘truly flexible skills system’

The awarding and recognition of credit on post-secondary courses will need major reform if the Westminster government’s plan for a “lifelong learning entitlement” is to be a success, a report says.

Under the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, currently working its way through Parliament, everyone in England will have access to flexible loan funding for four years of post-18 education, allowing people to break study into shorter, module-level segments.

However, the first report of the thinktank ResPublica’s Lifelong Education Commission, chaired by former universities minister Chris Skidmore, warns that at present “there is no standardised way of building up credit across different institutions, with higher education institutions all making separate decisions about what to accept”.

The report says that a “truly flexible skills system will need to allow people to build up learning over time through different modes and levels of participation that best suit the needs of the individual”.

As such, all post-school courses “will need to be modular and credit-bearing to enable learners to accumulate and potentially transfer credit between institutions and to build up qualifications over time”.

The report, published after a series of evidence hearings, says that the government will need to “build on the Quality Assurance Agency’s existing credit framework and regional consortia to enable the transfer and accumulation of credit for higher learning”.

It says that the smallest units of study, known as microcredentials, “could be a viable supplement to conventional qualifications, providing a way for individuals to ‘stack’ learning in flexible ways that can lead to a qualification over time”.

However, the report warns that there are “practical design constraints in stacking very small units into coherent larger ones”.

“Government needs to clarify what size of credit will define a module, which the loan entitlement will fund. This will involve unbundling existing qualifications, at Levels 4 to 6, into smaller, clearly defined elements ranging from 30 to 60 credits to form standalone courses that can be assembled into full qualifications at Levels 4, 5 and 6. But it should also provide a way to stack up microcredentials, typically between 10-15 credits, into larger units of learning,” the report says.

The report adds that ensuring “that both employees and employers trust in the value of new modules of learning will be a key policy challenge”.

As such, “explicit input or support from employers in curriculum design, development or delivery will therefore be crucial to the success of this pathway and the adoption of lifelong learning at scale. There is, however, a balance to be struck here in terms of how national and local priorities are aligned, what businesses need, and what employees may want to learn.”

Elsewhere, the report echoes calls to stop the equivalent or lower qualification (ELQ) rule being used to limit access to lifelong loans to allow people who already have degrees to access funding for retraining. Under the proposed legislation, the ELQ rule would apply to students pursuing non-science subjects.

The report, which is being launched at the Conservative party conference on 4 October, adds that ministers should consider introducing maintenance support for students studying flexibly to encourage uptake, and that there is a “strong case for strengthening HE-FE partnerships to provide integrated pathways to higher-level skills”.

Mr Skidmore said that rapid reform was needed to improve the life chances of all UK adults.

“If there is one policy to deliver ‘levelling up’, it is adult learning and skills,” he said. “Acquiring new skills is something we all do throughout our lives. Yet the formal process for acquiring them is incredibly constrained.

“There are too few opportunities to return to learning for those who have left it. And those willing to retrain or reskill can barely see the wood for the trees; the pathways are so complex.”

chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com