Taking full account of the sector’s diversity, the panel nevertheless
considers in section 5 of this report that a recognisable professional
identity in FE exists, not only across the broad range of providers in
England but also extending to those in similar systems abroad.
That the robustness of this identity has become a matter for
concern we believe substantially to be because FE is seen as the
sector ‘in between’ schools and Higher Education (HE), apparently
lacking a distinct and unique personality of its own. In the past, FE
and HE in England have overlapped more fully. The United States
offers an example where the community college sector (FE) is part
of HE, facilitating progression for students and conferring
professional trust and expectations on staff, in a way which we
think resembles that which the government in this country now
wishes to support. The rapidly extending provision of HE in FE
institutions, the conferral on them of Foundation Degree-awarding
powers under the supervision of the Quality Assurance Agency for
Higher Education (QAA), and the widespread direct relationships
between FE providers and the Higher Education Funding Council
for England (HEFCE), as well as with individual universities,
suggest to us that this model might be the natural direction of travel
here. We hope in time that there should be a single postcompulsory
sector of education, uniting further and higher
education and making the term ‘further education’ effectively
redundant