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Skills Funding Agency Statement
The Government is reforming further education in England to deliver skills for sustainable growth. The National Audit Office has produced a report Reducing bureaucracy in further education in England, which focuses on the Department of Business Innovation and Skills and the Skills Funding Agency’s approach to simplifying funding, qualification and assurance systems in further education.
Skills Funding Agency statement:
The Skills Funding Agency welcomes the opportunity to debate the issue of the administrative burden the FE sector bears as a result of being funded with very significant amounts of taxpayers’ money.
However, in several important areas, the Agency takes a different view in respect of the approach used by the NAO:
- FE providers have been given almost complete freedom to respond to the demands of employers, communities and learners. This inevitably creates opportunities to reduce burdens, but these are a result of policy changes rather than their driver, as the NAO approach seems to presume.
- The report also has not sought to distinguish between administrative requirements essential for good stewardship of public money and those that may be unnecessary.
- Finally, while we agree that we must ensure no unnecessary burdens remain as we undertake this radical change, the estimates made by the NAO of the potential burden cost savings are at best speculative as they are not grounded in sufficiently robust evidence to be reliable.
