MPs have given Sir Ian Bauckham the nod to continue as the chief regulator for Ofqual.
Parliament’s education committee today agreed that Bauckham, government’s preferred candidate to continue leading the exams watchdog, is “appointable to the post”.
The committee said it hopes he “fulfils his commitment to serve a full term in office and restore much-needed stability” to Ofqual, after a churn of chief regulators in recent years.
Bauckham, who attended a pre-appointment hearing earlier this week, has been serving as interim chief regulator but has now been approved to do the role permanently.
His “ambition to enhance Ofqual’s reputation further to be ‘ever more trusted by the public and by students as the guardian of safe, fair and trustworthy qualifications’ is welcome,” MPs added.
Greenlighting the appointment, the committee noted his “extensive experience in schools in leadership roles” and “significant contributions to the education sector”.
He took over the role of chief regulator in January 2024. Before that, he had served as chair of the board of Ofqual from January 2021 and had been a board member from March 2018.
“He told us that his roles in schools had provided him with a good understanding of the educational landscape and a deep appreciation of the value of qualifications,” MPs added.
Bauckham previously led Tenax Schools Trust, a multi-academy trust. He is also chair of Oak National Academy, an arm’s-length body of the DfE.
Finalists for this year’s record-breaking Apprenticeship and Training Awards have been revealed.
Formerly known as the AAC Apprenticeship Awards, over 600 nominations were submitted from employers, training providers, colleges and universities, nearly doubling last year’s tally.
Run jointly by FE Week and the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) and delivered in partnership with City and Guilds, the eighth annual awards celebrate top-of-the-class training, outstanding outreach and exceptional employers.
This year’s categories celebrate innovative training, employer support for social mobility, and excellence in learner support, alongside the coveted awards for employer and provider of the year.
Lloyds Banking Group, Bagnalls, London Ambulance Service and Pendennis Shipyard are this year’s finalists for large employer of the year.
Meanwhile Cardiff and Vale College, Merseyside Fire and Rescue, Salford City College Group and Truro and Penwith College are each up for apprenticeship provider of the year.
And either Learning Curve Group, Baltic Apprenticeships, Catch or Pearson TQ will be named training provider of the year.
Finalists were selected by a 20-strong panel of judges including AELP’s CEO Ben Rowland, apprenticeship influencer Holly Hobbs, former skills minister Anne Milton and UCAS head of apprenticeships Lindsay Conroy.
A parliamentary reception will take place at the House of Commons as part of National Apprenticeships Week in February to recognise this year’s finalists. The winners will be announced at the Apprenticeships and Training Conference gala dinner and awards evening on March 11 in Liverpool.
Shane Mann, chief executive of FE Week’s publisher EducationScape, said: “I know I speak on behalf of all the judges in pointing out what a tough job we had this year. We saw so many examples of great practice from employers and training organisations thinking outside the box, taking risks, and genuinely putting their learners first.
“Congratulations to all finalists. I look forward to celebrating your achievements at the parliamentary reception next year before announcing the winners at the Apprenticeships and Training Conference in Liverpool.”
The awards have been refreshed with a host of new categories.
PTP Training, Exeter College, Serco and South Essex Colleges Group are up for innovation in training delivery.
Battling it out for the outstanding apprenticeship programme of the year are Cardiff City Football Club, EMTEC Automotive Apprenticeships (part of Nottingham College), Gateshead College and Northern Trains.
The awards will also mark the best workplace readiness scheme, specialist training provider of the year and best new apprenticeship programme.
Principal and CEO, Weymouth and Kingston Maurward College
Start date: December 2024
Previous Job: Deputy Principal, The Cornwall College Group
Interesting fact: Kate to this day still maintains her registration as a nurse, recognising the importance of industry skills in FE
Liam Sloan
Principal and Chief Executive, Bolton College
Start date: January 2025
Previous Job: Provost, Federation University Australia
Interesting fact: A native Scotsman, Liam has spent the past decade in Australia and New Zealand serving in senior leadership roles. Represented two nations in sport, Scotland in badminton and England in dressage
Teachers say they are more productive, save time spent commuting and enjoy a better work-life balance now they work from home each Wednesday.
St Charles Catholic Sixth Form College in West London is trialling a timetable that compresses classes into four days to give teaching staff one dedicated day a week for planning, preparation and assessment.
Most of the 80 teaching staff have praised the change, saying the opportunity to work from home mid-week reduced exhaustion and gave them more time to focus on their subject knowledge.
Meanwhile, the college’s 1,100 students participate in volunteering, work experience and cultural visits when their teachers are away.
One-year pilot
Principal Martin Twist told FE Week leaders first discussed the four-day teaching week 18 months ago to make the sixth form a more attractive place to work and a more competitive place to study.
Leaders tested the water with a small trial in May, and after a review the switch was extended across the college this academic year as a “one-year extended pilot”.
The college claims the initiative is at the “most radical end” of changes in the sector.
Twist said: “We know some schools and colleges are trying to go to a nine-day timetable over 10 days, so having a day off every other week. We haven’t seen or heard of anyone who’s doing it like this.”
To maintain teaching hours across four days, classes have been stretched from 55 minutes to 100 minutes.
Staff teach three lessons per day, with a 30-minute morning break, a 45-minute lunch and a further 45 minutes at the end for directed time or student interventions.
Teachers have also been taken off additional duties such as tutoring so they are solely subject experts delivering their curriculum on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
“It does mean the other four days are busy, but we’ve consulted with them all throughout,” Twist said.
Martin Twist, principal of St Charles Catholic Sixth Form College
Though teachers are asked to come into college to do their PPA one Wednesday per month for “quality assurance”, the principal said leaders did not audit their time, and staff are free to cater to family needs such as doing their own school run.
St Charles initially made cost savings by not needing agency staff on Wednesdays.
Twist said the college is now looking into alleviating resourcing issues that have arisen for the small team of staff who deliver trips and organise work experience on Wednesdays.
Energy boost
Based on initial feedback from 39 teachers, seen by FE Week, 58 per cent said they were more productive due to the dedicated PPA day.
Staff members told the college they had ample, uninterrupted time to plan good lessons from home, resulting in better classroom delivery.
One teacher said: “There is an enormous improvement in teaching impact for pupils, removing the midweek to end of week low points in energy.
“I am able to teach up to the bell on Friday afternoons with no complaining about tiredness.”
Another teacher said they had time to work on subject knowledge, “which is the biggest hurdle to teaching GCSE retake classes”. It also let them “rest and recover between days to burn out less quickly”.
Some staff were also saving up to three hours of commuting on their work-from-home day and one hailed the “slower start to the day”.
Another said: “I would not want to return to five days, and this would affect my choice of workplace.”
‘Race to the canteen’
However, a small number of teachers who gave feedback were less enthusiastic.
One said having a day dedicated to PPA made “little difference” to them, and three teachers also complained the 45-minute lunch break was too rushed.
“It isn’t a break, it’s a race to get to the canteen, breakroom and back to the classroom,” one noted.
Another teacher said: “The condensed delivery has left little time (and energy!) at the end of the college day to deal with department business.
“This is compounded further for part-time staff; in my case, I don’t work in college on Fridays, which means I only have face-to-face contact with the whole team three days a week.”
Positive attitude
Parents were generally positive about the sixth form’s Wednesday activities for students, which include volunteering at charity shops and soup kitchens, and doing work experience in hairdressers and nurseries.
Some said their children had a more positive attitude to studying and were more refreshed and active.
Most agreed that allocating Wednesdays for home study in the lead-up to mock exams was effective for Year 13s.
Twist said it was too early to say student attendance had been impacted by the four-day teaching week but leaders said they expected improvements since an absence meant students missed more learning given that classes are now twice as long.
While four-day weeks aren’t common in education, St Charles Catholic Sixth Form College isn’t the only one to trial the concept. South Essex College closed classrooms on Fridays two years ago to save energy costs, encouraging students to do independent learning and teachers to complete marking and admin.
An apprenticeship provider has been downgraded to ‘inadequate’ after leaders were “too slow” to improve long-standing teaching failures.
Ensis Solutions received Ofsted’s lowest possible judgment this week after it found tutors relied on apprentices “teaching themselves” and almost a third of its learners should have already finished their courses.
When inspected in late October, the private provider, in Leigh, Gtr Manchester, had 164 learners on level 2 to 5 apprenticeships, mostly in the health and social care sectors. A further 80 had paused their learning and Ensis staff could not say how many intended to return, though many apprentices subsequently told Ofsted they had quit.
Ensis was rated ‘inadequate’ for its quality of education, leadership and management and apprenticeships, while behaviour and attitudes and personal development were deemed ‘requires improvement’.
The firm previously had a grade three rating from two consecutive inspections in 2019 and 2022.
The report said of Ensis: “They do not identify accurately the reasons for apprentices leaving their apprenticeships early, nor do they put in place appropriate actions to stem the decline in quality of the apprenticeship provision.”
The watchdog also condemned leaders for presiding over “a continued decline in the quality of education” which included relying on apprentices “teaching themselves” for most of their programme.
“Leaders have been too slow to rectify the areas for improvement from the previous two inspections, when inspectors judged the provision to require improvement,” Ofsted said. “Leaders’ self-assessment of the provision is too positive.”
Inspectors said too many apprentices had fallen behind in their training and Ensis failed to provide the support needed to help them catch up swiftly. As a result, too few apprentices achieved their qualifications.
While employers were invested in helping apprentices gain knowledge and skills, “skills coaches do not plan opportunities for apprentices to link theory to their workplace practice, or to further practise their skills,” inspectors found.
Ensis Solutions created masterclasses in equality and diversity, safeguarding, and restrictive practices, but inspectors criticised leaders for not imposing expectations for apprentices to attend.
“Leaders do not monitor apprentices’ attendance at these sessions or whether they have watched the online webinars,” the report said. “Therefore, leaders cannot assure themselves that apprentices have gained these skills.”
The report also found “ineffective” governors did not sufficiently challenge leaders to swiftly improve the quality of education or increase the proportion of apprentices who successfully complete their apprenticeship.
The report did highlight the positive and professional attitudes of apprentices, who gain confidence and new skills to be proficient in the workplace.
The Department for Education typically terminates apprenticeship contracts with private training providers that are judged ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted.
Ensis Solutions did not respond to requests for comment.
A government-sponsored construction training body has negotiated a near-£5 million reduction in a huge clawback of apprenticeship funding.
The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), which is funded through a levy on 67,000 employers, faced a liability of nearly £17 million from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) due to “non-compliance” with funding rules between 2018 and 2021.
But the board’s annual report, published yesterday, said a “detailed investigation” into the ESFA’s audit meant it was able to “provide additional assurance and resolve potential errors” in its claims for apprenticeship levy funding.
This has lowered CITB’s likely overall liability to £12.3 million.
The report revealed poor record keeping meant the CITB was initially unable to evidence various funding claims.
It said: “We have taken steps to transform this part of the organisation, improving processes and introducing new technology, and are confident we will not experience similar issues for 2023-24 or future academic years.”
FE Week understands a large part of the apprenticeship levy clawback was due to high levels of sub-contracted training delivered through its branches of National Construction College, which it has now withdrawn. It has now settled £1.6 million of the clawback, a spokesperson confirmed.
CITB is an executive non-departmental public body for England, Scotland and Wales whose purpose is to “attract construction industry talent” and “support skills development”.
Last year it received £202 million in funding from a levy on construction employers of 0.35 per cent on payroll staff and 1.25 per cent on construction industry scheme subcontractors.
It spends the levy on grants for apprentices, qualifications and short-duration grants.
CITB’s board has been chaired by former ESFA chief executive Peter Lauener since 2018 – other members are senior representatives from large construction and property companies including Kier, Robertson Group and Keltbray.
An Ofsted visit last year resulted in its training centres’ grade dropping from ‘outstanding’ to ‘requires improvement’.
The watchdog’s latest report in June said CITB had made ‘significant progress’ in three out of four areas of concern by ensuring a significant proportion of apprentices caught up with their studies and improved their English and maths skills.
Since 2017 the number of apprentices on its books has fallen from 9,000 to about 400.
The report also reveals that CITB has “ceased to invest” in its ‘Training Model Improvement’ project because it “failed to deliver” on expectations.
The project was reportedly funded through a £1.5 million investment in Shared Services Connected Ltd (SSCL), a European technology consultancy giant that was co-owned by the Cabinet Office until late 2023.
CITB is attempting to recover costs through “formal contractual dispute proceedings” but the outcome “remains uncertain at this time”.
A spokesperson said: “Following extensive due diligence and close working with ESFA, the outcome of their audits of 2019-20 and 2020-21 Apprenticeship Levy provision has resulted in an agreed clawback against future apprenticeship levy claims of £12.3m.
“A significant proportion of this liability relates to subcontracted provision, from which CITB has withdrawn.
“We have since taken steps to transform apprenticeship delivery through the National Construction College, which is already having a positive impact on learners with retention rates increasing.
“We have also improved processes and we’re confident that we will not experience similar issues in future academic years.”
Apprenticeships will be allocated UCAS tariff points from next year, the university admissions body has confirmed.
Level 3 apprentices who want to apply for higher education courses will be awarded up to 112 points on the University and College Admissions Service applications system from May.
UCAS initially scheduled the rollout for September this year, but following a summer consultation pushed back the timetable again by eight months to give university admissions teams more time to adopt the new proposals.
It means learners applying for courses starting in September 2026 will be able to use UCAS points from their apprenticeship.
UCAS said it will review the model from autumn 2025 to autumn 2026 and publish data assessing the use of tariff points, the impact on university admissions decisions and evaluate any “external changes” to the apprenticeship landscape across all four UK nations.
The points will only apply to apprenticeships at level 3 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) at level 6. UCAS confirmed it currently has “no plans” to broaden the scope of the tariff beyond level 3.
To be eligible for the points, apprentices will have to meet the conditions of their degree offer, such as passing their end-point assessment, by September 4 of the forthcoming academic year.
UCAS chief executive Jo Saxton said: “Bringing parity to vocational and technical qualifications was one of my key priorities during my time as chief regulator at Ofqual, and I am delighted that UCAS is continuing that drive for parity by allocating tariff points to apprenticeships.”
Jennifer Coupland, who heads up the Institutes for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, added: “Apprenticeships are already recognised by prestigious employers and professional bodies. Getting recognition from universities completes the hat-trick.”
9 in 10 colleges support changes
UCAS launched a four-week consultation to universities, colleges and representative bodies in May over its proposals to allocate points based on the size and grading structure of an apprenticeship in the four UK nations.
It was floated in 2023 with the aim of putting level 3 apprenticeships on a level playing field with A-level, T Levels and other UK level 3 programmes.
The consultation received over 200 responses. 89 per cent of colleges that responded were in favour of the model, followed by 85 per cent of schools and 77 per cent of universities.
The “most divided” consultation response was agreeing with UCAS removing grade bands above pass (e.g. merit, distinction). 50 per cent agreed but 35 per cent disagreed, saying it was “unfair” not to recognise achievements and could “demotivate” students in seeking more than a ‘pass’.
Incoming system
The points are as follows; apprenticeships typically lasting between 12-17 months would give successful apprentices achieving a ‘pass’ 48 UCAS points.
An 18 to 23-month apprenticeship would be awarded 64 points, and a two-year apprenticeship would be awarded 96 points, equivalent to three A-levels with grade C, or a T Level pass grade.
An apprenticeship lasting 36 months or longer would accrue 112 UCAS points.
Previous FE Week reporting pointed out that the most popular apprenticeship among under-19s last year – the 18-month-long level 3 business administrator – would award successful apprentices 64 UCAS tariff points, short of the typical minimum university 72 to 128 UCAS point entry requirements.
UCAS acknowledged the concerns around the number of tariff points in an FAQ document.
It said: “[UCAS] appreciates the significant learning, experience and preparedness for higher education that an apprenticeship can bring.
“However, UCAS has a responsibility to ensure that the UCAS tariff does not indicate that an apprentice is necessarily better prepared for higher education than those that have completed an A-level, T Level, Scottish Highers, or other equivalent programmes of study.”
Duration vs credits
The tariff will use the expected duration of an apprenticeship set out by IfATE to determine the number of points, which previously received criticism from two university groups for having “pitfalls”. The groups suggested a credits system that awarded one credit for 10 hours of teaching, following the Scottish system.
Half of consultation respondents agreed or strongly agreed with using duration as the best measure of the size of an apprenticeship. Over a fifth were neutral and another fifth of respondents disagreed.
Susanna Kalitowski, head of policy at University Alliance, said its concerns that the model will “undermine” the aim of parity of esteem “still stands”.
She told FE Week a two-year apprenticeship being worth no more than 96 points “risks signalling that these qualifications are less rigorous or prepare students less well for HE study, when that is very much not the case”.
“We know UCAS will do all they can to mitigate this, and we welcome the commitment to regularly reviewing the policy,” Kalitowski added.
UCAS doubled down, saying it was the “best and only viable” model and had tested using credits but “it did not show any significant difference”.
Bridget Phillipson is at odds with her own department about whether employers will be able to use “up to 50 per cent” of their growth and skills levy contributions on non-apprenticeship training.
Labour pledged to introduce the threshold in opposition under a plan to widen the apprenticeship levy announced by leader Keir Starmer in 2022.
But the figure was missing from the party’s general election manifesto and hasn’t been mentioned by the Department for Education ministerial team since. Sources close to the government told FE Week the threshold had been all but dropped.
Children and families minister Janet Daby told a Westminster Hall debate on apprenticeships last month that the 50 per cent pledge was “currently being reviewed”.
But education secretary Phillipson suggested the threshold was still policy this week during education questions in the House of Commons.
Shadow education minister Neil O’Brien asked: “Before the election, Labour promised to let businesses spend 50 per cent of their apprenticeship levy money on non-apprenticeships, but now ministers say the commitment is under review. Will the secretary of state confirm when the review of her own policy will conclude?”
Phillipson replied: “We remain committed to reforming the failing apprenticeship levy and turning it into a growth and skills levy with up to 50 per cent flexibility for employers, driving new opportunities in growth areas across our country, alongside ensuring that we deliver many more apprenticeship starts for our young people.”
FE Week asked the DfE to confirm Phillipson’s suggestion that the “up to 50 per cent” threshold was still the plan, or whether the education secretary had misspoken, but the department did not provide a straight answer.
Background information was issued instead which only said the “new growth and skills levy-funded offer will deliver greater flexibility for learners and employers” and the DfE “will set out more details on the offer in the new year, when Skills England will also publish their report following engagement with employers over the autumn”.
The conflicting messaging has been criticised.
O’Brien said: “This is just the latest example of confusion and chaos in Labour’s education policy.
“With ministers once again saying one thing before the election and another entirely after, the government urgently needs to clarify whether their pledges on apprentices still stand, or if they are just another broken promise.”
Ben Rowland, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, added: “Critically, there was no manifesto commitment on allowing employers to spend up to 50 per cent of their levy on non-apprenticeship provision, a sensible move given that 98 per cent of the programme budget is now spent.
“The government, though, needs to quickly adopt a clear position on all of this, and communicate it to employers, many of whom are increasingly confused about what is happening and their role in skills and productivity.”
Skills England, the DfE’s new arms-length body, has been tasked with implementing the growth and skills levy.
Plans for its design are so far unclear, and no timeline for implementation has been released, but the DfE has said it will involve widening the levy to fund other forms of training, the introduction of shorter apprenticeships, foundation-level apprenticeships and the removal of levy funding for level 7 apprenticeships.
South Yorkshire metro mayor Oliver Coppard says getting national, regional and local agencies to pull in one direction is crucial for his region’s progress
Oliver Coppard believes he’s on the verge of gaining powers that could join the dots between health, employment and education services and make a dent in South Yorkshire’s deep-rooted inequalities.
Any day now, the government is due to publish a devolution white paper that promises to give metro mayors like Coppard “the tools needed to boost economic growth”.
Greater Manchester and the West Midlands have already been promised so-called ‘single funding pots’ from March to replace dozens of separate income streams. South Yorkshire, along with Liverpool City Region, the North East and West Yorkshire combined authorities hope to get theirs in 2026.
And Coppard’s team – buoyed by success in taking the region’s tram system under public control – are already working out how they’re going to spend it.
Oliver Coppard at AMRC Training Centre
Skills on the doorstep
At 43, Coppard is one of England’s youngest metro mayors. He had name recognition locally before being elected in 2022, having stood against the then-deputy prime minister Nick Clegg in his Sheffield Hallam constituency at the 2015 general election, losing out by around 2,000 votes.
We meet at his glassy Sheffield office the day before the US election, significant for Coppard who confesses a “love affair with American politics” having interned for Dick Gephardt, then Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, during his University of Leeds politics degree.
He returned in 2012 to volunteer for the Obama campaign, but wasn’t one of the Labour activists campaigning for Kamala Harris that Donald Trump accused of “blatant foreign interference”.
Coppard says: “I would’ve gone out on the same basis now if I wasn’t mayor, it’s got nothing to do with the Labour Party. It’s just because I care about American politics, and I like campaigning, I like knocking on doors.”
On the doorstep, he admits most people associate him with transport issues, rather than his skills agenda.
Transport plans
This is hardly surprising, given one of Coppard’s most notable achievements has been his combined authority taking control of the Supertram network in March after 27 years, as part of plans for an integrated transport network to connect communities.
The combined authority also recently invested £5 million in school buses to boost capacity because the cost-of-living crisis means “some people can’t afford to get their kids to school”.
But last year it scrapped the Zoom Beyond travel pass launched in 2021, which gave 18 to 21 year olds cheaper bus fares. “We couldn’t sustain it because of the funding challenges that come with the privatised bus market,” he says.
Coppard believes public transport cutbacks are partly to blame for the rise in NEETs (not in education, employment or training) in South Yorkshire.
In 2021, 16 per cent of South Yorkshire’s working-age population had no qualifications compared to 12 per cent nationally, and the region has “a problem” with “very basic level skills and being able to make sure that people can access opportunities”.
Coppard is equally passionate about skills training for those already in work. He believes “that’s one of the big areas where this country has always fallen behind… working with people in work to target those areas where we need to increase productivity”.
The combined authority does this through its skills bank, a public-private investment fund which match-funds employer contributions to skills training.
Oliver Coppard visiting a South Yorkshire school
Coppard says where employers have a “specific training programme that contributes to growth”, South Yorkshire offers to co-fund it.
After being funded for the first four years by South Yorkshire’s local economic partnership, the combined authority took over in 2022 with a £5 million cash injection until 2025.
“For me, that’s a really good example of where devolution gives you those levers,” he says. “But we need to be able to do more. Devolution hasn’t gone far enough in the skills space. This government would hopefully argue the same.”
Going local
When Coppard is given access to a single devolved pot, his skills strategy reveals he wants to set up new community skills hubs to “deliver the next generation of programmes targeted at reducing economic inactivity”.
These will “bring together skills, health and employment support”, requiring “close partnership working with Job Centre Plus, health services and community groups”.
His optimism comes from experience of joining up different systems in the health and work space to improve outcomes for residents. South Yorkshire’s WorkWell, initially launched by Coppard’s predecessor Dan Jarvis in 2018, is now one of 15 pilots each getting £3.5 million for “tailored early-intervention work and health support and assessment, and a single, joined-up gateway to other support services”.
Greater Manchestermayor Andy Burnham
But he is facing some criticism of his proposals.
At a recent combined authority meeting, members expressed concern about Coppard’s pledge for a single point of entry for skills and employment services in South Yorkshire, saying commissioning on a regional level wasn’t local enough.
And there are capacity issues at the combined authority – a report said its “demand for analysis and insight outstrips supply” – which is partly why the implementation plan to deliver the skills strategy, published in spring was delayed by at least four months to January.
Coppard speaks quickly and at times erratically. He is hard to pin down on policy specifics, partly perhaps because of uncertainty about exactly how much he will get from central government under the next devolution deal, and for what.
When asked to explain the difference between his powers and those of Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, he pauses to consider how he can best articulate the complexity of the current devolution landscape.
“As a mayor, I struggle with some of this,” he says candidly.
Devolution is a complex issue, but particularly so for the residents of South Yorkshire. Their combined authority was, for its first three years, called Sheffield City Region, but to stop the spotlight shining so brightly on the Steel City as opposed to neighbouring Doncaster, Barnsley and Rotherham, it was renamed South Yorkshire in 2021.
Oliver Coppard reading a book to a child
Missing money
Unsurprisingly, Coppard gushes enthusiastically about the intentions of the current government. As for the last one, he has a large chip on his shoulder over how South Yorkshire was short-changed in competitive funding allocations.
A £560 million bid for its Bus Service Improvement Plan “didn’t get a single penny”, and with “levelling-up funding in general, we didn’t get the support that we wanted or needed”.
What’s more, Coppard, who was director of the regional Remain campaign during the 2016 referendum, says that until 2014, South Yorkshire was one of the country’s biggest recipients of the European Union’s objective-one funding which gave more to “particularly egregiously worse off” areas. But from 2014 to 2020, the government changed the funding formula to “particularly disadvantage” South Yorkshire and Liverpool City region.
While South Yorkshire received €111 per head, the North East got €273 and Tees Valley €300.
He claims that because his region has become more deprived since then, “we would technically be back in objective one funding now if we were still part of the EU”.
South Yorkshire got £38 million over three years from the UK shared prosperity fund (intended to replace EU structural funding), and Coppard claims the last government “promised” to double its share of that to match the money it previously received from the EU. That increase “never materialised” in what Coppard describes as a “political trap” for the incoming Labour government.
“They’d never accounted for any of that money… it just so happened that that coincided with an electoral timetable. Now this government’s having to figure out how to actually fund some of these things where no money was ever set aside.”
Oliver Coppard at Barnsley College
LSIPs from a ‘previous age’
Coppard is equally dismissive of the last government’s attempts to encourage joint working between skills providers, employers and local government players through local skills improvement plans (LSIPs), saying they “feel like a product of a previous age”.
Coppard admits his region has “not always worked hand in glove” across private and public sector institutions.
This is evident in the fractious birth of the combined authority itself; after a deal was signed in 2015, several local authorities pulled out, and both Barnsley and Doncaster backed an alternative proposal for a giant pan-Yorkshire combined authority before the government quashed the idea.
But Coppard claims that in recent years, relationships between key players have “changed quite dramatically”. He wants “more of a connection to the way South Yorkshire works now” as regards LSIPs, to “speak to the wider objectives and approach” that his region is trying to take.
Meanwhile, Skills England is about to start flexing its muscles over mayors, as part of its remit to hold local and national partners to account to ensure pledges made on skills are delivered.
It is not a prospect that Coppard seems to be relishing.
He points to Homes England as an example of a national arms-length agency that works successfully with South Yorkshire, partly because it provides the “capacity and expertise” that his combined authority lacks in planning for the delivery of new homes. But it still “recognises we have a leadership role to play”.
“So working much more on our priorities, rather than being mandated to by a national organisation, has to be the way forward,” Coppard adds.
Skills England will also help oversee South Yorkshire’s growth plans, as part of its work to ensure areas meet the government’s blueprint for its industrial strategy and green prosperity plan.
Coppard is concerned that “if you’ve got national organisations sitting outside of the system, you’re not going to be able to push all those levers to genuinely influence things”.
Angela Foulkes, Sheffield College chief executive
College relationships
But he brightens up when we talk about his relationship with local colleges. He is in “regular conversation” with them about “all sorts of things,” not just skills.
He recently held a roundtable on the local police and crime plan, chaired by David Blunkett and attended by Sheffield College chief executive Angela Foulkes, who “helped us think through some of the challenges for policing and crime when it comes to our colleges”.
He is “lucky” in South Yorkshire because, being a smaller region with a “limited number of colleges”, it is “easier” for him than some other mayors to develop those relationships.
Coppard is keen to build on Sheffield’s reputation as a hub for advanced manufacturing.
He wants more sway over careers advice in schools, to influence pupils to consider professions in sectors like advanced manufacturing that are key to his growth plans.
Plus he wants to expand Rotherham’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, which is “massively oversubscribed”, and use bus reforms to remedy the fact only 1 per cent of the region’s population can access that centre by public transport within 30 minutes.
If all this can be done, Coppard says it will be a “really good example” of what can be achieved through devolution.
“Knitting up this system so people can genuinely access opportunity feels like my challenge, and it’s where I’m proudest to be working.”
