Colleges are the true engine room of recovery: An overview of the 2009 AoC Conference by Martin Doel

The theme of change

It’s been a really successful conference, a lot of high-level speakers. If I was trying to think of what connected all of them, it’s actually the theme of change.

A degree of uncertainty, political and otherwise, Government introducing a new skills strategy.

How the college is going to adapt to that new skills strategy?

What they need in order to do their best for business, communities, and most particularly for their students.

Some really interesting proposals coming from each of the opposition parties as well, and the opportunity to question and test those policies with the politicians.

What’s next for AoC?

Next for AoC is to actually understand, continue to understand, what the interests of our members are:

• Ask them
• Understand them
• Be in touch with them

And then to promote and represent those interests with each of the three parties, in order to ensure that colleges have the opportunity to give of their best in the future.

How can we promote the FE Sector to a wider audience?

There’s always actually, all of it is by repetition. You say the same thing often enough, long enough, and it’s actually justified, it will get through.

We are getting through, this sector has a really huge, and we’ve heard it from each of the speakers, reputation. The days when it was actually seen to be the Cinderella, I don’t think it ever was really, but that those Cinderella days are well behind us.

One of the words of one of the presenters in the Conference was, “Colleges are the true engine room of recovery“.

That’s what they are: Recovery for individuals, recovery for businesses and recovery communities.

Bogus Colleges

There’s a worry on the horizon, this particular one is the review of international students. We’re very concerned that there may be a blunt instrument being born into play to actually address the problem.

One we’ve actually identified for some time that are bogus colleges. These are emphatically not the type of colleges that have a membership of the Association of Colleges, those that are closely regulated, actually regulate their own activities.

They’re the type of colleges that use the name college but are not. They’re actually set up, you know in a “small room above a fish and chip shop”, someone told me, and are actually just a factory for recruiting students for visas. You know, that’s wrong.

We want to see those types of institutions out of business and stopping them from actually marring the good work that colleges do.

What we don’t want is, as I say, a blunt instrument that takes away the good, as well as the bad.

Martin Doel, Association of Colleges, Chief Executive