Key issues and activities

In line with our growth, Landex has increased its capacity and developed its reputation. We have engaged more closely with a greater range of organisations. In particular we have sought to influence the:

• Impact of the machinery of government changes, particularly the re-routing of funding through local authorities. We alerted legislators to the fact that most of our colleges recruit learners from many (often over 100) local authorities because of the specialist nature of their provision. The importance of the principle of funding following the learner was secured.
  
• Consultation on discretionary Learner Support Funding (dLSF) and the issue of providing, and meeting the costs of, student transport. We facilitated a visit by managers with policy responsibility in this area to Sparsholt College and provided an opportunity for them to talk directly with students who depend on support from dLSF in order to study and to see for themselves the kind of residential and transport arrangements that are typical of most Landex colleges.
  
• Direction and content of the Agri-Skills Forum strategy, called “Towards a new professionalism” presented to Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Food, Farming and the Environment on 24 November 2009.
  Development of the concept of a professional body for agriculture by working with the Institute of Agricultural Management and others.
  
• The call from LSIS for provider representative bodies to be more active in supplying quality improvement services to the FE sector and subsequently submitting a successful bid to provide ‘SWOT’ type visit to colleges that are mid-way between Ofsted inspections. This will entail an application of the principles of peer review that have been central to the Landex model of quality improvement.
  
• Level of funding for the type of provision that is typical for Landex colleges that is high cost and dependent on expensive resources.
  

Quality improvement:

2009 has been another year of progress towards achieving the goal of good quality being achieved and seen in all member colleges.

Landex has continued to utilise peer review as an effective way of sharing practice and forming shared views of standards required. We are grateful to the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) for continued funding to support this activity. The programme of peer review visits in 2008/09 has benefited from increased participation from managers from the different colleges indicating the value placed on the process by members.

Our programme of continuous professional development has engaged managers, senior managers, governors, wardens of residential provision, staff responsible for both further and higher education work. In all cases, we have focussed on what it means to provide quality to our customers.

More detailed benchmarking data on course success rates has been collected, collated, and shared between members. With more colleges now offering to share their data with the wider membership; this benchmarking data is starting to be used more effectively in member colleges own assessments of their provision.

A particular focus this year, however, has been on our progress in recognising the distance that we need to travel in supporting all members towards our quality goals in “aspiring to excellence”.

Landex now has five of its member colleges rated as ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted in its second cycle of inspection. Most have improved their Ofsted inspection position overall in comparison with their previous inspection. Almost all members who have received a review of their higher education provision have received a judgement of confidence in its quality. We have also recognised the challenges of delivering high quality further education in a higher education institution.

However, a few members with further education provision have struggled to achieve Ofsted ratings which they and Landex would wish. This is not a situation unique to Landex colleges and each is now working hard to make improvements using external agencies and Landex, including where appropriate, support directly from other member colleges. This is forming a significant test of our collective capacity for improvement, and while the challenges will not be underestimated, support is beginning to show improvement with one member already having demonstrated improvement on its original inspection ratings.

A self-improvement/regulation model
From grey to green

During 2009, discussions, consultations and considered debate took place to move the Landex Quality Improvement Strategy forward and develop it in a way which would accelerate the pace towards a position where colleges entitled to use the Landex logo could be identified with high quality provision in all its manifestations. The ambition is to be increasingly true to our strap-line: Landbased colleges aspiring to excellence.

This suggested a need for greater clarity and rigour in terms of our structures and processes. This Landex debate coincided with two other important debates in the wider world of government and further education. The analysis in the Cabinet Office publication Excellence and Fairness (August 2008) argued that the time was right for a switch from a compliance–based approach to performance management to a more self-motivated and professionalised one. The underlining implication was that whilst the former approach was producing some ‘good’ results, to become ‘great’ there is a need to move to the latter position in terms of public service delivery in particular.

This was picked up and explored in detail through a series of Learning and Skills Improvement Service seminars as it looked at Self-regulation – shifting the paradigm during the Spring of 2009.

The Landex response resulted in the development of our own version of moving from good to great called from Grey to Green described in the following diagram. It provides a framework for both greater self-regulation and improvement. It is designed to be used as a tool to enable individual colleges to monitor their own journey in terms of improving the quality of what they do in relation to the criteria which Landex member colleges have collectively agreed are most relevant to them and the services they provide to learners and their industries. It is not intended that this should be used to colour code or rank colleges in terms of their current position on that journey. This information will remain confidential to the College and the small sub-committee of the Landex Board that meets annually to determine the extent to which member colleges are continuing to conform to membership criteria. It is intended that this will indeed accelerate the speed of the journey to excellence for all Landex Colleges.