Case study: transforming business performance

In 1990-3 the UK government required the 456 Further Education and Sixth Form colleges in England to undergo traumatic changes. The 1988 Education Reform Act was the first step, requiring colleges to become “business-like” and “strategic”. It gave colleges responsibility for their budgets and transformed the composition of governing bodies to enable “business” interests to control colleges. All this proved to be only a curtain-raiser for what came next: in 1993 all colleges were taken out of local government. They became incorporated bodies with “the freedom to manage (or go bust!)”. A competitive market-place environment was created, empowering the “customers” to choose which college to attend, and “league tables” of exam results and inspection grades were published. Most threatening, productivity rises that amounted to 30% over the next five years began, and funding was conditional on the replacement of lecturers contracts, that is, the removal of six weeks holiday, the lengthening of teaching hours and the working week-all without compensation to the lecturers concerned