DfE ‘tore up AEB contract due to apprenticeship row’

Private provider owner also claims adult education payments were withheld as officials recovered clawback

Private provider owner also claims adult education payments were withheld as officials recovered clawback

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A training provider had its national adult education budget (AEB) contract scrapped after falling foul of the Department for Education over poor apprenticeship achievement rates, its owner has claimed.

Officials also allegedly withheld AEB payments from the provider to recover a “significant” apprenticeship clawback.

Sapphire Logistics and Consultancy, which trades as Sapphire Education and Training, delivered publicly funded training in care work until officials terminated its contracts last week.

It is believed to be a rare case where the government has used powers to terminate a provider’s AEB through the apprenticeship accountability framework.

Owner Harpal Baines claimed the DfE ended Sapphire’s apprenticeship agreement “based on low [qualification achievement rates] data for 2022/23” and following an audit which demanded “significant clawback”.

DfE statistics show that between 2020-21 and 2023-24, Sapphire, based in Dudley, West Mids, logged 80 to 180 apprenticeship starts per year, but only had “low” completers which produced a null achievement rate.

The government currently uses its apprenticeship accountability framework to assess provider performance against a range of 10 measures, including achievement and retention rates.

The framework states that providers will be classed as “at risk” if they have an overall achievement rate under 50 per cent.

Level 2 and 3 care worker apprenticeship standards have high volumes of learners but consistently low achievement rates and high dropouts. Sapphire was awarded its apprenticeships contract at the height of the Covid pandemic in April 2020.

After the provider’s apprenticeship contract was terminated, Baines alleged the DfE served notice on the company’s adult education budget contract “purely on the basis of our apprenticeship contract issue”.

Sapphire was one of only 55 private training providers to secure a national AEB contract in the government’s controversial 2023 tender. It hadn’t been inspected by Ofsted at the time it won the £448,196 deal.

Its latest accounts show the company had 13 employees including directors.

The DfE confirmed it terminated the company’s contracts but declined to comment further based on the commercially sensitive nature of the issue. A spokesperson did not respond when asked to verify or deny Baines’ account.

Under clause 42.8 of the AEB contract, the Education and Skills Funding Agency states it can terminate a contract if it has ended another contract “on fault grounds where a similar right of termination exists in this contract”.

Baines said this clause was quoted to him by the DfE and complained it had “no regard” of Sapphire’s performance under the adult education contract, which he claimed had “positive outcomes for learners”.

He added the DfE asked for a “significant clawback” of apprenticeship funding, which it obtained by withholding payments for adult education budget courses Sapphire had delivered.

Baines would not say what the clawback specifically related to.

In August 2023 Ofsted graded Sapphire as ‘requires improvement’ in its first full inspection due to “fast-paced” teaching practices that focused on the completion of assessment tasks.

A monitoring report in April this year found ‘insufficient progress’ in training delivered to the company’s 70 apprentices.

This included concerns about governance, apprentices leaving early and teaching practices.

Baines said: “Our organisation was delivering solely to the care sector and was established during Covid lockdowns.

“During this period we delivered to frontline care staff during the most difficult circumstances, most of which completed their diplomas but did not complete full apprenticeships due to the varying challenges associated to them which is why the sector as a whole has low apprenticeship achievement rates.”

After FE Week spoke to the company earlier this week its website was taken down for maintenance.

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