I was just about to start this blog with the words “The government has launched…”, but then I remembered that opening lines are meant to draw the reader in, and I’m afraid these fail that test!

It’s a pity, because much of what the government does has a big impact on our lives – for the better, if it works, and because it costs us all money, whether it works or not.

And the initiative which caught my eye (you knew I’d come back to it!) is just such a case. Under the new “Framework for Excellence”, employers and learners are to be told how every college and government-funded trainer scores on a four-point scale – much as we all now get such information on hospitals and local authorities.

In the further information sent to colleges we have been told that employers and learners will be offered “some drill-down capability” (how Shakespeare would have swelled with pride had he thought of that phrase first) – which seems to mean that they will get to peer at the detail. So instead of learning simply that a particular college rates “good” for “employer responsiveness”, for example, a firm will be able to see how well the college scores for responsiveness in, say, the hospitality sector.

The question we asked ourselves last week as a college board, however, was whether employers, or potential students, would change their decisions once they had this information. If you knew that we consistently rated four (which means “inadequate”), I can well see that you might look elsewhere – but how much would you worry about the distinction between grade one (“outstanding”) and grade two (merely “good”)?

I’d like to think that employers at least – as sophisticated repeat buyers – would make the effort, and as a college we’re certainly not slackening our pace in working towards “outstanding” across the board, but I wonder how much employers and students really will use these new signals when they are published.