Early years training providers are preparing for the toughest test yet of the new Learning and Skills Council (LSC), which took over responsibility in April for all post-16 education in England outside the university sector.
Under the new regime, training providers are paid on their predictions of their achievement levels at the start of a training period, and at the end of each four months there is an adjustment when actual achievements are measured against the forecasts. So, the first re-adjustment will test the efficiency of the new system.
Glen Mardell, finance and contract director at Smart Training, the childcare sector's largest private training provider, believes the new payment system is 'ragged, piecemeal and poorly developed'. He is anticipating 'a lot of meetings and number-crunching' before he and the LSC can agree how much Smart has really earned.
At the moment, he says, 'They can't tell me how much I've earned. I'm getting a lot of money and have to guess how much of it I'm really earning, as sooner or later I'm going to have to pay back the balance. The system will get a lot easier, but whether it will ever be a good system only time will tell.'
Early years trainers such as Ann Johnson, assessment centre manager for the leading chain Child Base, say that in a perfect world it would be hard enough to predict accurately training achievement levels and drop-out rates. But they also have to contend with factors outside their control, such as teething problems with the LSC regime and the publication of the new national standards for daycare.
She adds, 'We were delayed at the start because our local LSC was slow at sending us the forms to complete. We had to do the paperwork to access the funding, but there was a delay. It has been a catalogue of cock-ups. We put a hold on employing anyone aged under 18 until the new national standards came out. Obviously, we didn't want to start people off and then find in September there was no place for them. The 16-to-18 age group is my main target for the modern apprenticeships and I know I won't have performed as well as I predicted.'
The new organisation is intended to erase anomalies that were created when each TEC set its own funding rates for training. However, trainers are reporting inconsistencies in the application of the regulations. Indeed, a website giving a weekly e-mail briefing on the LSC is asking learning providers to report anomalies.
The Learning and Skills Countdown (see panel, right) reports that some of the inconsistencies arise from temporary expediency in the absence of national rules or products such as new forms, but that others 'appear to be carried-forward TEC procedures or other actions where local flexibility is used for administrative convenience.'
Kate Stock, training manager of Smart Training, says, 'We work across five local LSCs. This was supposed to be a national system, but a lot of decisions are being made locally, so we end up with five different interpretations of the same national horizon. They have rushed in the implementation of the new system without stopping to think it all through.' People with additional learning needs or additional social needs qualify for a further 1,000 funding to cover the extra tuition and support. However, Glen Mardell says that initially, while three LSCs paid or agreed to pay this award for students on the Advanced Modern Apprenticeship, a fourth refused on the grounds that if someone was taking NVQ Level 3 they could not have additional learning needs. 'This would have penalised students with dyslexia who are perfectly capable of completing their NVQ 3 and of working as nursery nurses but just need that extra tuition and support to help them through. I protested to the DfEE and national LSC,' he says.
Ann Johnson believes much of the confusion arises because the local LSCs have been staffed by merging personnel from the former TECs - each with their own tried-and-tested methods of doing things. 'There was supposed to be no difference in the decisions made between the LSCs, but because you have people from different TECs in there, there are differences within the local LSCs,' she adds.
Tracey Story, head of personnel and training at the Leapfrog chain, says 'There is less money, less help and more people demanding it. We have an excellent relationship with our local Staffordshire LSC, but it is not so easy with some of the others.'
A strategic target of the Early Years Development and Childcare Partnership Planning Guidance 2001/02 is: To raise the quality of childcare by raising training levels, with targets for the level of qualifications to achieve by 2004 to be set by this September. A national indicative target is being set for the LSC of helping 230,000 young people and sector workers gain qualifications.
In addition, LSCs are being asked to give priority to increasing the number of young people and sector workers achieving Level 2 and 3 quali-fications in childcare, early years and playwork, and to help workers in the sector to improve their professional development through short courses.
Partnerships will need to help LSCs achieve their targets. Julie Fisher, early years adviser for Oxfordshire, says, 'The intention is that the local LSCs are going to be knitted into the local partnerships. It is too soon to say how that will work. Part of the difficulty is that the partnership has to keep up to speed on all the things and people we are supposed to embrace. Until the LSCs are well established and fully operational it is difficult for the partnerships to begin to do more than say, "We are here and as soon as possible we need to start working together".'
What is the Learning and Skills Council?
* The LSC was established by the Learning and Skills Act 2000 as a national organisation, with 47 local arms, to oversee the planning, funding and quality assurance of post-16 learning.
* It also took on the training functions of the network of more than 70 Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) and the funding responsibilities of the Further Education Funding Council.
* It has a budget this year of 5.5 billion for funding around five million learners.
More information
* For the latest information and contact details of local LSCs visit www.lsc.gov.uk * Learning and Skills Countdown is a weekly e-mail briefing service distributed to work-based learning providers. It is published by the Training and Employment Network for the Association of Learning Providers at www.lscbrief.org.uk
