Regulatory burden relief for FE colleges

Colleges of Further Education have never convincingly fit into the higher education regulatory landscape, though they do deliver a lot of higher education.

There’s currently 146 FECs registered in some capacity with the Office for Students – and eleven of these have degree awarding powers (of which five can award Bachelor’s degrees and the remaining six can award foundation degrees).

In supporting hard-to-reach students in a supportive academically-focused environment, in working closely with employers in developing programmes that help meet local needs, FECs do a lot of good and offer (when compared with the wilder fringes of franchise arrangements) a low level of risk.

Which makes it unfortunate that they bear a substantial regulatory burden – in effect, they are regulated twice.

It is this issue that the latest consultation from the Office for Students begins to address – the proposals under discussion would exempt FECs from submitting financial, governance, and access information to OfS that is already submitted to and scrutinised by the Department for Education.

Specifically the proposals remove requirements under condition A2 (the non-plan access and participation statement required of all registered providers) for all FE colleges. If you are currently on the OfS register you will not be assessed against condition D (financial viability and sustainability), or against conditions E1 (public interest) and (E2 management and governance), unless you have or are applying for degree awarding powers.

And for those FECs joining the register not seeking degree awarding powers (DAPs) there will be no need to be assessed against conditions D (financial viability and sustainability), E7 (governing documents), E8 (fraud-related), and E9 (on individuals with governance responsibilities).

FECs are held much closer to government than comparatively autonomous higher education providers (via substantial oversight and intervention powers set out in the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, and it is OfS’ judgement that:

“the statutory intervention powers afforded to the DfE in regulating further education colleges manage risk to the extent that continuing to apply the OfS conditions of registration in relation to financial viability and sustainability, and management and governance may no longer be appropriate and proportionate to risk

Despite this, OfS is hardly going to put the powers it has beyond use. If an FEC is subcontracting the teaching of (Ofqual regulated) higher education courses “extensively” (as the example has it) the right is reserved to step in with specific conditions of registration.

OfS kremlinologists will note that we are expecting a wider consultation on conditions of registration, and indeed one on degree awarding powers. That this shorter consultation has appeared first suggests that the content was judged too important to wait for proposals on the more substantive issues.

Nevertheless, this is a welcome recognition that in an increasingly tertiary world system-by-system regulation needs to be very carefully managed to avoid duplication of effort.

Responses to the consultation are required before 10 February 2026 – if successful, the proposals will come into force from early summer.