Winners of delayed £18m skills bootcamp tender revealed

The training providers and colleges chosen to deliver the remaining national skills bootcamp programmes have finally been named.

FE Week can today reveal that 24 organisations have won funding in the government’s £18 million tender.

Among them are 13 independent providers, six colleges, four mayoral combined authorities or local enterprise partnerships, and one university.

FE Week analysis shows that ten of the providers appear out of scope of Ofsted inspections, while four have never had a full inspection. Two of the winners are rated ‘requires improvement’, six are ‘good’ and two are ‘outstanding’.

The winners announced today bid for lot 1 of the tender that totalled £36 million. Winners of lot 2 were announced in May. Contracts were supposed to start at the end of March but have suffered delays.

No reason for the delays has been forthcoming from the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

The lot 1 tender is currently in a ten-day standstill period, in case any of the unsuccessful applicants to the tender wish to challenge the results.

Lot 1 providers will be delivering 12- to 16-week digital skills courses to adults aged 19 and over across the nine geographical regions in England.

Lot 2 winners will be covering additional sectors such as electrotechnical, nuclear and green energy, at a local or national level.

The ESFA anticipates that at least 75 per cent of all bootcamp trainees will “move into a new job or role within six months of completing training”.

Skills bootcamps were announced by prime minister Boris Johnson in a speech at Exeter College last September. He said they were a response to the “huge number” of people who are “going to have to change jobs – to change skills – and at the moment, if you’re over 23, the state provides virtually no free training to help you”.

This year’s Skills for Jobs white paper pledged the government to run bootcamps as “a flexible way to gain high-quality skills that are relevant to employers”.

Before this tender came two waves of pilot bootcamps launched last year with £8 million of funding in areas including Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire, the south west and Leeds.

These were inspired by programmes run in Greater Manchester, and the West Midlands Combined Authority’s ‘Beat the Bot’ scheme.

Lot 1 tender winners