“Philip who?”, was the reaction when Augar was named chair of the expert panel on the Theresa May’s post-18 education funding review. The good-humoured, authoritative and intellectual Augar would never claim to be an household name or a education heavyweight – although he was on DfE Board for six years and was briefly bursar of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. But he is an expert on broken markets. The former equities broker has spent two decades analysing the City’s systemic flaws, institutionalised failures and unethical practices and how all that contributed to the global crash in 2008 and all that followed.
Augar is playing his cards close to his chest on what his final recommendations might be. It’s tough to imagine, however, that his panel won’t tackle the collapse in adult and part-time learning; boost maintenance support; and creating a stable FE funding model. One emerging theme, hinted at, is reframing the language the current system is couched in. Badly understood policy is, after all, bad policy.
But the Power List panel had a heated debate about whether or not to include Augar at all – let alone rank him so highly. That’s because his review is at the mercy of such huge political forces that the recommendations could well be dead on arrival.
First, there is still no clear consensus in Whitehall about the main objective of the review. No.10 need a “retail offer” to compete with Labour’s pledge to abolish tuition fees and restore maintenance grants. DfE want broad funding stability given many universities’ precarious finances – but also needs to inject more cash into tech-ed. And the Treasury needs a post-18 system able to underpin regional growth, industrial strategy, and boost productivity. The end result is anyone’s guess.
Second, the review was commissioned and launched by Theresa May personally. So it likely needs her to be in power next summer to have real impact. If she is not, it risks sinking without a trace. Another Tory Prime Minister will want to “own” his or her reforms. Labour will rip it up and start again, given its pledge to abolish fees altogether. Either way, change will be slow – any reform won’t be in place before 2020 to 2021 at the earliest.
And third, Augar’s hands are tied. The panel cannot unpick the current system of income-contingent repayments. It has to stick within the current “fiscal framework” set by Treasury. And ultimately, it will need to fit with ONS’s changes to national accounts (see our number one entry this year John Pullinger). Perhaps the work of the review panel this year is just the beginning, Augar might need to keep working for some years to come to be able triangulate a real political consensus and true sustainability for the system.