governance good practice guide

self-regulation: the risks

There are risks and uncertainties attached to the process of self-regulation, including whether:

• government and the regulatory agencies will - in practice - reduce their demands as the sector takes greater responsibility for its own affairs; or will self-regulation simply become an additional burden on providers
• all those involved - colleges and other providers, stakeholders and government - have the resilience, stamina and persistence for a strategy that will take ten years to implement fully and will not satisfy aspirations immediately
• the various, very different, national agencies have the will and the ability to work with each other (and with the FE system) in order to streamline national arrangements
• a critical mass of providers understand the challenges of self-regulation sufficiently and are prepared to accept individual and collective responsibility (including funding) for quality assurance and accountability
• an increasing percentage of providers will deliver their individual responsibilities effectively
• providers will not only sign up to - but also play a full part in - collective, effective and rigorous peer assessment, support, intervention, discipline and sanctions processes
• there is sufficient funding for the infrastructure and processes needed for the proposed arrangements to operate according to plan.

• whether in-house governance arrangements across the FE system are sufficiently robust to reassure Government and the public that FE can be trusted to self-regulate