It is easy, in the university world, to forget that we are not the only part of education that is currently being severely shaken up.  In fact in some ways we are facing less change than other areas.  This evening I participated in a governors' meeting at a local college where I have been on the governing body for several years.  It is a hugely impressive college, doing fantastic things for the young people of a deprived area of the city. Its catchment is by some measures the third 'worst' in social deprivation terms of any sixth form college outside London, yet this year over 300 college stduents have put in university applications.

The college was founded with money from the Learning and Skills Council: that body has now gone.  It was set up to work in close partnership with a series of local partner 11-16 schools under local authority control.  Within a year it is quite likely that every one of those schools will have become an acacdemy and moved away from local authority co-ordination.  In some cases academy status is being thrust on schools by the Department for Education without any local consultation, with new executive heads also being parachuted in.  As schools become academies they are being encouraged to think of developing their own sixth form provision - something that the former partnership working saw as lying with the specialist sixth form college.  Budgets are, of course, being cut: and extra burdens are being thrust on to post-16 institutions via the requirement that they will administer the more limited funds that are promised to replace the much-lamented Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) that was administered centrally.

At the same time the government is starting to cite performance in terms of new indicators that are being applied retrospectively to situations where completely contrary guidance was previously being provided.  Thus the government is starting to cite the proportions of pupils achieving the 'English Baccalaurate' (consisting of GCSE grade C or above in Maths, English, double Science, a humanity, and a foreign language), yet dozens of schools took the earlier guidance that it was no longer compulsory for students to take a language or a humanity and dropped them from their curriculum in favour of what were seen as more 'practical' subjects.  They are now to be penalised for having done so, with the threat that low proportiosn achieving the E-Bacc will result in a poor OFSTED report and being put into special measures - whichwill almost certainly involve DfE 'intervention' resulting in a move to academy status.

It is reasonable that universities should compete against each other in many ways - for students, for research money, for staff.  Yet the delivery of pre-university education within the community environment of a single city requires co-ordination and co-operation between different providers (schools), all of them being too small individually to run their own back office functions efficiently.  Yet we are rapidly moving towards a completely fragmented local educational provision, to the possible detriment of all concerned.

The colleagues at our sixth form college seem to be approaching this chaotic situation with equanimity.  I admire them. In their keenness to do what is best for their pupils they are keeping a single priority in mind. But they are working in a landscape of such turmoil that the changes in the university world pale somewhat in comparison.