By David Bell Chief Inspector of Schools for England

Mr Bell says college failure rates are a "national disgrace"

Last year, a small increase in the number of schools placed in special measures attracted a great deal of comment in the media.

But there is a greater crisis facing education in this country - a national failure that has been ignored by the media.

Almost a fifth of colleges in the south, and 12% of colleges nationally, are failing. If this situation was replicated in schools, the media would be writing about a national disgrace. It is a national disgrace.

Over the past three years of college inspections led by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) and the Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI), 37 general further education colleges have been judged inadequate.

Sixth forms

During the same period, no sixth form colleges have been judged inadequate. On the contrary, of the 29 colleges that meet the criteria for high performance, 17 are sixth form colleges and only nine are general further education colleges.

In any area, the FE college is a critical element in the education service, and where FE is good, it is wonderful, offering 16 year olds a wealth of high-quality provision.

Colleges like Blackpool and the Fylde, Knowsley, Park Lane Leeds, Barnfield, Bridgewater, City of Bristol and South Cheshire bear comparison with any educational institution in the country.

They are indispensable to the communities they serve, and not least to the employers in those communities.

These colleges are clear about their role and recruit students with a wide range of backgrounds to an equally wide range of courses.

Unsatisfactory teaching, unsatisfactory leadership and management, ineffective and often wildly optimistic quality assurance, and inappropriate support and guidance are just a few of the things going wrong David Bell

Above all, they make sure that students get the high-quality teaching and individual support which enables them to succeed. They are self-critical, know their strengths and take action to address any weaknesses.

So why are there so many general further education colleges among the inadequate colleges and what are they doing wrong?

Unsatisfactory teaching (particularly of 16 to 18 year olds), unsatisfactory leadership and management, ineffective and often wildly optimistic quality assurance, and inappropriate support and guidance are just a few of the things going wrong.

Success rates are also poor. A general further education college is non-selective, so students are starting from a lower average level of achievement than their sixth form counterparts, making the colleges' job of adding value to these students' academic careers even tougher.

Added to this, in many of the colleges, are serious financial problems that divert the already uncertain eye of management still further from the ball.

The ball, of course, is a focus on learning. Inadequate colleges tend to forget that their function is to teach young people and adults important vocational and life skills.

North-south divide

But the educational mission of these colleges is often vague, or non-existent. They refer to "inclusion" or "extending participation", oblivious of the fact that inclusion in failure and participation, irrespective of quality, benefits no one.

The pattern of this failure also reflects the north-south divide, and the equally persistent division between the educational haves and have-nots.

Only 5% of colleges north of Birmingham have been judged inadequate, but nearly one in five in the south is inadequate.

There are some structural reasons for this. Inadequate colleges tend to exist in areas where there is considerable competition for students post-16, and where the general FE college is very much the provision of last resort.

Such colleges increasingly deal with young people whose experience of school has been largely negative. They need to offer them something excitingly different and to support them expertly.

They need the best teachers, but in the expensive south they have little chance of attracting them. They struggle with an ageing teaching force that often confronts change with, at best, modest enthusiasm.

Industrial heartlands

So why are colleges in the north of the country generally more skilled at understanding the nature of a vocational mission? This is open to speculation.

Does the country's historical industrial heartland have a clearer understanding of how to educate and train the "artisans" of the 21st century?

Have the roots of many of these colleges in the mechanics institutes of the late 19th and early 20th century contributed to an understanding of the need to provide this century's learners with similarly realisable and practical goals?

Do such colleges have better links with, and respond more effectively to, the needs of local employers?

Is it too difficult to market with the parents and young people of middle England a robust vocational alternative to A-levels?

Whatever the reasons, further education matters. Young people and adults have a variety of motives for learning post-16, but all of them are important.

They include a love of learning for itself, a desire to learn new skills, a need to gain qualifications, and the ambition to proceed to university. All of these can help to get a decent job.

Indispensable

So why is nothing being done? Actually, quite a lot is.

The main government policy aimed at raising standards in FE is called Success for All. There is no doubt that it is having some impact across the sector.

It is also quite clear that the shock of being declared inadequate has a salutary effect; of the 12 inadequate colleges so far re-inspected all but one have made sufficient improvement to enable them to emerge from the category.

Nevertheless, the rate at which colleges are found to be inadequate is excessive.

A degree of polarisation is happening. The good colleges are getting better and better; the weak are continuing to flounder.

If you happen to be a 16 year old looking for a second chance, having not done very well at school, tough luck. If at first you don't succeed, you don't succeed.

It isn't that no one cares about this. Ministers worry about it constantly and officials devise strategies for support, but in a democracy change occurs most effectively where there is a coincidence of political will and a groundswell of public concern.

As yet, it is hard to discern such a ground-swell.

Grousing season

Contrast all of this with the annual furore over the A-level results which has become a fixture in the English calendar.

It sits between the start of the grouse-shooting season and the Notting Hill Carnival as a harbinger of the end of summer.

Every year, the siren voices are heard, claiming that the latest rise in standards is further evidence of exams "dumbing down" and ministerial statements are issued claiming that it is in fact evidence of students and teachers wising up.

Which ever side of the divide, we care about A-levels.

Rather earlier in the year, my annual report appears. Every year, it says that the better-qualified 16 year olds are well provided for in schools and colleges, but that the less well-qualified get a much worse deal.

It provokes no furore, but when about half our young people do not achieve five A* to C grades at GCSE, and therefore need something other than A-levels subsequently, we ought to be more concerned than we are that that something is so often not there.

Why is it that we care so much about A-level and so little about the rest of the post-16 offer?

It was apparent even recently when Mike Tomlinson produced his report on 14 to 19 education which offers hope to many more young people.

Why is it that, instead, entrance to Oxbridge attracts so much more press attention?

Could it be, I wonder, the influence of the chattering classes?

Could it be that the grander elements of the media have little knowledge of, or interest in, FE?

Quite a lot of our young people are floundering out there, and we need to stop looking the other way.