In December 1996 Tony Blair made his famous ‘education, education, education’ speech as Labour set out its priorities for the 1997 General Electionmanifesto, keen to put clasrooms at the top of the political agenda.
According to the BBC, the government is now spending £1.2bn on education every week. For colleges and universities the main topic of discussion over the years in Parliament has been over tuition fees. What will happen in the future is now up to Gordon Brown and his new higher education secretary John Denham of course. But this autumn also sees a government Comprehensive Spending Review. Many fear that despite Brown making attempts to make a decent early impression on voters, spending will be cut across various government departments.
In the horticultural sector colleges and universities have had more than enough to cope with. Encouraging young students to take up production horticulture courses has long been a problem as the industry competes against, on the outside,visibly more appealing courses such as media, finance or marketing.
But one of the areas that could be affected by the Comprehensive Spending Review is higher education type courses. Higher Education is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). HEFCE introduced the concept of Knowledge Exchanges or Central Knowledge Exchanges (CKE)in 2004 when it started to fund them under the Higher Education Innovation Fund round 2. It was announced in August 2006 that it would be funded for another two years but beyond that there is uncertainty surrounding whether it will continue and what this will mean for colleges and universities.
“There is a feeling that CKE’s would get one further year of funding through to the end of September 2009 but I speculate this is looking increasingly unlikely as generally it is felt that CKE’s are not working quite as well as had been hoped,” explains Mike Hall, director of knowledge transfer at Writtle College. “And also because of the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review that looks to be making savings across all government spending,”
Hall’s comments refer mainly to the Lambert Review that was undertaken in late 2003 and alluded mainly to the obstacles between academia and industry and business. (The full report can be found at www.auril-cpd.org/links/publicdocs/lambert_review_final_450.pdf/file_view).
There are 22 Knowledge Exchanges nationally and the two most relevant to horticulture are the National Rural Knowledge Exchange and i10.
National Rural puts rural businesses in touch with university and college services. It also works in partnership with rural development organisations to identify and promote successful examples of knowledge transfer in the rural sector and gain additional funding for collaborative work. It also has a National Rural Directory, an online database of 2,000 rural organisations and a team of people whose job it is to act as a link between universities and colleges and rural businesses and other professionals. It currently works with 14 educational establishments including the University of Reading, Warwick and Harper Adams.
i10 is specifically a East of England regional activity (Herfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex) and it embraces every sector including horticulture.i10 was founded even earlier than NRKE, andd was set up as the Regional Infrastructure for Innovation (RII) under the first round of HEIF.
i10’s website, www.i10.org.uk, is a useful site. On it users can learn about GradsEast, which is the East of England’s free graduate career and recruitment service, an initiative from the region’s University Careers Advisory Service. Writtle College for example, links students, graduates and alumni to employers in the East of England. It also offers professional help with companies looking for recruitment and employment needs, without the agency fees. GradsEast is funded by the region’s top universities, EEDA and is supported by i10.
Although funding could be cut centrally for CKE’s after the Comprehensive Spending Review, Writtle’s Mike Hall does not think the industry will lose out in terms of funding. “What CKE’s have brought is the understanding that colleges and universities need to work together on projects and I think we are seeing the success of that, and will continue to do that with or without them,” he says, adding: “So instead of CKE’s being funded separately the funding will go to the colleges, who will then have to prove their allocation, which is fine with us.”
LANTRA plays a key part in the horticulture sector. It says that ‘supporting the needs of employers in production horticulture’ is central to its work. It wants to help raise skill levels, improve business success and help enable high quality, affordable training. It also offers help and advise on funding for the sector.
The HTA is working closely with LANTRA to make sure the quality of education is relevant to the industry. “There is always a danger that colleges and universities may inevitably be out of touch with what is going on in the industry,” says Tim Briercliffe, HTA’s business development director. “Quality of delivery has been variable in the past but this is always linked to funding and the less people that do the courses then the less funding there is,” he adds. He believes that, overall, most colleges and universities are offering a good service to students. He also reckons more businesses are looking into doing training themselves. “Its happening and the intentions are there but a lot of companies still see it as a cost rather than an investment and, that is totally understandable considering margin are getting tighter.”
The NFU is backing a European-wide scheme aimed at promoting people who are looking for work in the horticultural sector. “The most important thing is that training on offer is the right balance between theory and practical and that it is the type of subjects and modules most relevant to commercial horticulture in its current form today,” says chief horticultural adviser, Philip Hudson.
Elsewhere it still remains a challenge for universities and colleges to attract people to commercial horticultural courses. York based college Askham Bryan, which offers a number of horticulture courses at all levels, is however witnessing a slight upturn in interest. “We have had a dramatic interest in our horticulture foundation degree courses which is especially pleasing,” says Andy Mahy, section leader for horticulture and landscape industries at Askham Bryan. “There seems to be a genuine interest in the growing of plants and we are trying to incorporate more business management as well,” he adds.
Work based learning is one area of education that has increased in popularity in the horticultural sector. Hadlow College has a dedicated coordinator who is in charge of developing thison behalf of thecollege.
Hadlow’s Paul Bannister says he would like to see more companies engaging with colleges on work-based learning projects. “On the amenity side it has been a fantastic success although on the production side there is still work to do to convince companies to take students,” says Bannister. He thinks work based learning has a bright future but suggests as it is developed going forward it should still only form part of the whole educational experience.
“Work based learning has become vital for students to learn what it is really like out there in the industry but it is still very important that students learn the theory, do the exams and learn how to run a business,” he explains.
Many in the industry would like to see horticultural based companies engage with schools more or sponsor a student. “We think we have a divine right to lots of labour being poured into this sector and that simply isn’t the case,” says Tim Briercliffe. “It’s up to us all collectively to sell this industry more and make it attractive, make people understand and believe they can have a very rewarding and successful career in horticulture,” he stresses.
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