An adult care apprenticeship provider has been judged ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted in its first full inspection – partly due to employers’ reluctance to release apprentices for training.
Franhen Consultancy, which provides the level 5 leader in adult care apprenticeship for 13 workers in care homes in Birmingham and Leeds, was handed the lowest rating in a report published this morning.
Ofsted criticised the provider’s oversight of the quality of education, a lack of preparation for apprentices’ end-point assessment, as well as low attendance to its lessons which are delivered online.
Dennis Ofinam, CEO of Franhen Consultancy, told FE Week that the provider had been delivering apprenticeships for just over a year and feels the ‘inadequate’ rating is “not a fair reflection of what our centre is about”.
He said: “We have partnerships with employers in the care sector, and we know there is a short fall of leadership in that area, so we wanted to plug a gap by training leaders and managers.”
Ofsted said apprentices’ attendance was too low and as a result many do not benefit from “collaborative problem-solving activities”.
The watchdog did highlight that staff catch up one-to-one with apprentices who miss work.
Ofinam said the low attendance was due to the healthcare industry being “quite challenging” in getting staff out of work to come in for training.
“We identified attendance was about 80 to 85 per cent there about during the time of the inspection,” he said.
“People are either at work during the time of lectures, or they are getting ready to get to work because they work late in the evening or and they come back in the morning and then are quite tired. Especially at that level of management and leadership, it was challenging getting learners on board.”
Ofsted’s report also claimed teachers at Franhen Consultancy did not sufficiently prepare apprentices to complete their end-point assessment.
“Consequently, too few apprentices have the confidence to give formal presentations or participate in professional discussions as part of their apprenticeship,” inspectors said.
Ofinam suggested the leadership criteria in the end-point assessment was “very technical”, which was challenging for the provider.
Ofsted initially found ‘insufficient progress’ in Franhen Consultancy’s apprenticeship provision in a monitoring visit a year ago.
The report criticised the provider after finding too few apprentices who are well prepared to undertake a managerial position in the sector.
Today’s full inspection report also found gaps in the provider’s assessment for improving the quality of education. Inspectors criticised leaders for not spotting the “fundamental weaknesses” in their provision.
“This means that most apprentices make slow progress and too few apprentices achieve their apprenticeship,” the report said.
Leaders “do not ensure that apprentices benefit from effective reviews of their progress”, inspectors claimed, adding that reviews focus on completing the diploma qualification in the apprenticeship but “not the skills and knowledge apprentices need to practise at work to complete their apprenticeship”.
Inspectors pointed out that advisory board members have the “appropriate” skills to hold leaders to account but that leaders have been “too slow” to respond to suggested improvements.
The report said: “Those they have implemented, such as tracking of apprentices’ progress, have not been effective in helping apprentices catch up with their learning and achieve. Board members recognise that their actions do not yet hold leaders to account sufficiently.”
Ofinam said: “We felt it [the Ofsted report] was not considerate enough, because all the learners have been supported with all their mandatory elements.”
Private training providers typically have their apprenticeship funding contract terminated by the government if they are dealt an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted judgment.
Ofinam said he hadn’t yet had a conversation with the Department for Education on the status of Franhen Consultancy’s apprenticeship contract.
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