Further written evidence to be reported to the House
Education and Skills Bill
10:30 am
Paul Head: I do not think it is onerous, because it is exactly what a college should be doing. If you are a skills-based college, preparing people for the world of work, the expectation of 100 per cent. attendance is what should be there. All the colleges that I have visited have systems in place to monitor attendance and punctuality. We already work with the local authority on the 14 and 15-year-olds who have not been successful in school and who attend our institution full time—we have to do attendance reports on them. We also have more than 300 14 and 15-year-olds doing tasters every Wednesday and every Friday and we have to do attendance reports on them. So we have to do it and good colleges will do it. The vast majority of colleges will not see it as onerous but as part of their key task.
My view on the Connexions database is that it would be a mistake to take a database that has been developed for one set of purposes and believe that it can suddenly fulfil another set of purposes. I do not know the detail of whether it can be adapted or changed but, having worked in the sector for a number of years, all my experience of IT systems suggests that you cannot take one and make it do something else. The AOC is dead right to flag up a concern now, when we have plenty of time to plan for implementation. It is right to say, “If you are going to do this, look carefully at what the Connexions database was designed to do and work out what you want it to do now.” I suspect the transition from one to the other will be quite complicated.