Quality driving by Evans that took him from the cars to Cornwall

“If you focus on quality, the rest will take care of itself,” says John Evans, outgoing chief executive of The Cornwall College Group, shortly after the Department for Education took his college out of intervention after eight years.

It’s a guiding principle this headteacher returns to when reflecting on a career in university management which began by running motor vehicle provision at Bridgwater College almost 35 years ago.

His focus on ‘product’ and ‘customer’ led to three ‘outstanding’ Ofsted inspections at three colleges and revived the fortunes of The Cornwall College Group with stabilized finances and a repaired relationship with county residents.

But it wasn’t easy.

By the time Evans moved from Yeovil College to Cornwall in 2019, he was the third principal since Amarjit Basi resigned immediately after the college was placed in receivership over its finances.

Cornwall staff “had enough” and “too many people didn’t have a great experience” with the college. “There were buses taking students all over the place,” says Evans, and staff hopping on the ferry to neighboring colleges.

A health finance crackdown in 2016 and a damning report a year later pointed to high debt service costs as a “major cash drain”, exceptional government financial support payments needed for working capital and covenant breaches to borrow.

Officials from the DfE and the FE commissioner were all over the college, imposing strict conditions in return for a £30m “fresh start” bailout.

If you focus on quality, the money will follow

A few months before Evans joined, the college was downgraded to ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted and an FE Commissioner-led review of post-16 provision in Cornwall was published, pushing for a merger with Truro & Penwith College (which never materialized).

He says: “The people of Cornwall needed something better. I am passionate about change and getting it right for young people. We had this steady decline of, how do we save money? But at some point you have to break out of that cycle. If you focus on quality, the money will follow. You have to be brave to make that decision when you have no money.”

There are many ways Evans is an unusual college leader.

He has remained in his home region, even in his home town of Bridgwater, throughout his managerial career, which shows how deeply invested he is in the South West.

For someone brought in to restore a college once on the brink of financial ruin, he makes no apologies for his passion for teaching rather than spreadsheets.

During our interview I feel like I’m sitting in front of an educator who runs an educational institution and I didn’t need convincing that this gave him the money and credibility to bring Cornwall’s ragtag staff with him when he took the reins in 2019.

Evans is also rare in that he must be one of the few college principals to have started his technical education career as an apprentice.

And as someone who has worked and trained mechanics… he drives a Tesla.

Technical principles

Some people can identify a moment, event, or conversation that changes the trajectory of their life in an unexpected way.

For Evans, it was a moped that was breaking down.

“I was raised in a family corner store, and I think everyone assumed I would just go into retail,” he recalls.

Working as a trainee manager at Sainsbury’s, he became “fascinated” with how to fix that engine. A garage across the street was recruiting for an apprentice, and Evans got the job.

He enjoyed it so much that he stayed for seven years, but remembers watching his lecturers in training and thinking “what a fantastic job it must be”.

After a year of teacher training at Garnett College in London, he got his first job teaching motor vehicles at Farnborough College of Technology, where he stayed for four years.

Asked if he would make the same decision to teach in FE today, Evans said it would be a “much more difficult decision”.

We pay less and rely heavily on goodwill

It was an “easy choice” in 1984 because “wages were higher than you would get in the industry” and “working conditions with the silver book were much better”.

The Silver Book (apparently named after the silver-grey clip that held the 94 A5 pages together) of nationally agreed pay and conditions of employment for FE lecturers was in force from 1975 until the early 1990s, when colleges came out of control of local authorities. Some argue that the abandonment of the Silver Book led to lower teacher pay and conditions contributing to teacher shortages in the sector.

“Now we pay a lot less than anyone in the industry and we rely a lot on goodwill and people wanting to give back. It’s a much more difficult conversation today.”

It makes me wonder if Evans’ path to directorship, from industry to lecturer and then into the college ranks, is even possible.

Road to Cornwall

Bridgwater College beckoned and after a few more years of teaching, Evans was appointed head of motor vehicles, engineering and construction, simultaneously growing the motor department and achieving its first ‘outstanding’ from inspectors.

“Back then we had four lecturers in the field of motor vehicles. When I left, we had 31 lecturers and 1,400 students from all over the country. It was just massive. If you get the product right, because we’re a people business, it’s just like any market force. People will come.”

Evans spent 14 years at Bridgwater, tracking the incorporation and change of the millennium.

His next role, head of technology at South Devon College, taught him that “there are different ways of doing things without having to spend money” – setting him up, although he didn’t know it at the time, for what would follow later. in Cornwall.

South Devon’s 2002 inspection report described its provision as “inadequate”, with six of the fourteen curriculum areas inspected being rated “unsatisfactory”, as well as leadership and management.

If you get the product right, people will come

Evans joined the college in 2003 and describes the role as “starting a new college from scratch”. “Excellent confidence” from the leaders he worked with at Bridgwater helped him and the new team at South Devon achieve “outstanding” marks at his next full inspection in 2008.

This was followed by five years at Swindon College as deputy head of curriculum and quality, taking the college from ‘satisfactory’ to ‘outstanding’ and becoming an Ofsted inspector himself, before moving on to lead Yeovil College.

Cutting for quality

Evans’ time at Yeovil between 2014 and 2019 “is very close to my heart” but was a “slight disappointment” in that the college “only” improved to “good” on his watch from “satisfactory” on who inherited it.

He says he “always wanted to finish at City of Bristol College or Cornwall College because they were both long-standing problem children in the South West and I wanted to finish with a big one.”

From his office in Yeovil, Evans could see what was going on 130 miles away at Cornwall College.

One of the bailouts in Cornwall was that the FE commissioner at the time, Richard Atkins, had a say in who the next Cornwall principal would be.

But if Evans had plans for the fresh money once he got the job, he would have been disappointed.

“Start fresh, give the college £30m, of which £20m is debt of course, but there’s £10m to spend and give the same senior team to spend it? So by the time I got here, that was gone without any noticeable change.”

Evans got to work before officially starting at Cornwall, touring college campuses in the summer before the October commencement to meet with staff and present his “90 challenge” initiative to get attendance, pass rates and retention, all at 90%. Achievement rates were 71 percent a year before joining.

Then it was time for the heavy yards.

There have been disputes with an MP over the drop in A Levels in St Austell, a controversial closure of the Saltash campus affecting around 500 students and a 40 per cent drop in FTE staff from 1,600 to 956.

The college itself is spread over 113 miles with seven campuses, two zoos, two equine centres, three farms, golf academies in Spain and Portugal plus training sites at the Eden Project and Falmouth Marine School.

Evans says, “It’s a myth that you can’t reduce the cost base and improve the organization, it’s worked every time!”

“I said two things when I got to staff: You’re teaching too much, and we’re teaching too much.”

Average learning hours were around 880, he says. “What happens in colleges, especially when they’re led by finance people, is that contact time starts to increase. I have this philosophy that anything above 828 and your quality will drop. Even 828 – 23 hours a week – to do it right, well or better is almost impossible.”

Some courses, he says, were teaching hundreds of hours of unfunded overtime “and nobody really knew because MIS was so poor. We were just giving it away”.

But the stark message to staff was this: “Yes, you will teach less. But you will be much fewer.”

Staff were “desperate to go after someone they believed in” after years of interference and bad press over big payouts for former leaders.

The cultural change at Cornwall College has been swift and profound.

“Actually, the culture changed very quickly. I think whoever came in that had a clear vision that they believed in, the staff would have followed it. Because they were fed up. Staff saw that I took pride and was happy to roll up my sleeves and be directly involved in improving teaching and learning, with estates, painting walls, customizing marketing stands,” explains Evans.

The governors “supported me 100 percent,” he says. Their confidence in him has recently been reflected in the way he treats his senior team.

His deputy, Kate Wills, resigned last year after being appointed to the top job at Weston College. But the job offer was mysteriously withdrawn soon after. Even though Evans had already taken Wills’ post in Cornwall by then, he took her back.

He reflects on his journey with a sense of accomplishment and no regrets.

Cornwall’s inspection grade was improved to ‘good’ in 2022 and the government’s improvement notice was finally lifted after eight years in May.

Evans now teaches former Exeter College deputy head Rob Bosworth, but wants to continue training teachers through his teaching and learning conferences, albeit at his own pace.