The first ever procurement process for adult education budget contracts has finally been launched by the Skills Funding Agency.

FE Week reported two weeks ago that the procurement process had been given the ministerial green light, from secretary of state for education, Justine Greening, and was expected to begin within days.

The Skills Funding Agency first wrote to training providers in October and told them that their current AEB contracts would come to an end this July, rather than having them automatically renewed as before.

Invitation to tender for education and training services – Adult Education Budget 2017 to 2018

Now letters have been sent out and a new document, called Invitation to tender for education and training services – Adult Education Budget 2017 to 2018, has revealed the funding and timetable arrangements.

FE Week also, for example, today spotted an invitation to tender for education and training services – Adult Education Budget 2017 to 2018, for the North East, North West, Yorkshire and The Humber, East Midlands, West Midlands, East of England, London, South East, South West on the SFA’s Contract Finder site.

The key section in the new guide document on funding states: “The minimum funding that is available is £110 million, for the funding year 2017 to 2018. The funding year covers the 12-month delivery period from August 1, 2017, to July 31, 2018.”

It adds: “Please note that your response to this invitation to tender must be submitted through the SFA’s e-tendering portal before 5pm on February 27.”

Notification of tender results will be announced on May 19, while applicants must be ready to deliver on the contract start date (1 August 2017).

Anyone already pre-qualified for AEB funding can apply via SFA tendering site – and a section from the letter sent out to providers explained what happens if they don’t apply.

It said: “In our October letter, we referred to the part of the Public Contract Regulations 2015 that allows us to directly award contracts up to a predetermined threshold level of £589,148 for one year.

“If you are unsuccessful in securing a new contract through the procurement, or you choose not to tender, we will offer you a new contract up to the value of your current 2016 to 2017 AEB allocation or this threshold value, whichever is the lower.”

The new guide document stated that applicants must be able to “demonstrate their readiness to deliver the service immediately when the contract starts”.

“Delivery must not be delayed in any way, such as by not having the appropriate staff, processes, premises or relationships that need to be established,” the document added.

Providers must also “have a track record in delivering high quality education and skills provision for those targeted by the AEB”.

It also explained: “An applicant must only contact the SFA by using the online message board attached to this specific ITT on the e-tendering portal.

“This is to ensure that the SFA can maintain the integrity and robustness of the tendering process, and guarantee that answers provided to questions are consistent.”

The new minimum target for public sector bodies to employ at least 2.3 per cent of their workforce as apprentices should be scrapped, a new report for the Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned.

The key chapter of the of the IFS’s Green Budget, called Reforms to apprenticeship funding in England, reiterated fears that quality could be seriously undermined in the drive for 3 million apprenticeship starts by 2020.

It warned there is a risk that “the focus on targets will distort policy and lead to the inefficient use of public money”.

The report out this morning, funded by The Nuffield Foundation is a charitable trust that “aims to improve social well-being in the widest sense”, warned against repeating mistakes of “recent decades, by encouraging employers and training providers to relabel current activity and seek subsidy rather than seek the best training”.

The government confirmed on January 20 that at least 2.3 per cent of the workforce in most public sector bodies in England will have to be apprentices, in a move requiring that 200,000 more will have to be recruited by 2020.

The target was provisionally aired a year ago, as part of a consultation on how large a role public bodies should play in meeting the government’s overall target of creating 3 million new apprenticeship starts by 2020.

But the IFS report said: “This potentially costly policy is largely designed to hit the government’s target for 3 million new apprentices, not as a way to increase the quality of public services. It should be removed.”

It added this “one-size-fits-all “approach to large public sector employers in England is “clearly not a sensible way to encourage more apprenticeships, or to help deliver efficient public services.”

The government response to their consultation on the 2.3 per cent target, published earlier this  month, described a number of bodies that, despite being defined by the ONS as public sector, will be excluded from the target.

These include the BBC and Channel 4, Post Office, and the Houses of Parliament.

FE Week exclusively revealed last January that any public sector apprenticeship target won’t apply to colleges.

The new report also noted that while there might be a strong case for expanding apprenticeships,

the government had failed to make it.

It said ministers would be better pursuing a more gradual increase “where we can ensure high-quality provision”.

“The government’s stated case for expanding subsidies for apprenticeships is weak,” it added. “There has been no collapse in training by employers (though there has been a shift from off-the-job

towards on-the-job training).”

Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden commented favourably on the findings.

He said: “The IFS are confirming what we have consistently warned the government about over the past 12 months

“Rushing to hit a 3 million target without sorting out the quality or increasing the proportion of apprenticeships under the age of 25 means they risk failing to deliver the long-term skills strategy we need.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The apprenticeship levy will boost our economic productivity, increase the country’s skills base and give millions a step on the ladder of opportunity. In 2019 – 20 the levy is forecast to raise £2.8billion, this will take the total investment in England to £2.45 billion, twice what was spent in 2010-11, with the Devolved Administrations receiving £460 million.”

“Quality is at the heart of all of our apprenticeship reforms. We have introduced new apprenticeship standards which are developed by employers themselves and rigorously checked and taken steps to protect the term apprenticeship from misuse helping us to achieve our target of 3 million apprenticeship starts by 2020 and providing excellent value for money.”

She added recent figures showed a 12 per cent increase in apprenticeships that were found to be good or outstanding in their Ofsted inspection, compared to last year, and “over the past year 60 per cent of new apprenticeship proposals have been rejected as a result of them not meeting our key quality criteria, ensuring that only high quality, skilled apprenticeships are being developed”.

“It’s essential that the public sector is representative of the country and has the skills it needs to deliver, both now and in the future,” she said. “Government believes that apprenticeships can play a major role in achieving the public sector’s ambitious goals and meeting national skills gaps. Consequently, Government has established a target to ensure public sector bodies are striving to incorporate apprentices into their workforces.”

Help is being offered to the government in an effort to define the minimum 20 per cent off-the-job training apprenticeship rule.

Chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, Mark Dawe, announced this morning in a webinar to members that they would be sending out a survey later today to find out how they currently approach the rule, as his director of policy and strategy warned the issue had “been a bone of contention for some years now and it’s not going away”.

It comes as his director of policy and strategy Paul Warner warned the issue had “been a bone of contention for some years now and it’s not going away”.

Members have just 48 hours to share their views via an online survey, and all responses will be fed back to the Department for Education and Ofsted to inform any future guidance.

Mr Dawe said during the webinar that he had been “hearing concerns about the definition”.

“The 20 per cent off the job rule is a key but crude measure to ensure there are quality apprenticeships,” he said.

But such training is “not always about being away from the workplace,” he said, and could be “possible at the workstation”.

“Senior reps from DfE and Ofsted have been willing to talk it through. They want reassurance proper learning is taking place,” he continued.

Mr Dawe said the plan was to develop “formal guidance as to what is and what is not acceptable” with DfE and Ofsted as the departments were “getting lots and lots of questions”.

Government guidance stipulates that apprentices must “spend at least 20 per cent of their time on off the job training”.

And funding rules for employer providers that apply from May state that providers must outline details of “employment including: the agreed contracted hours of employment, including paid training, and 20 per cent off the job time, and the total planned length of the apprenticeship”.

They are also required to show  “how the 20 per cent off the job training will be quantified and delivered”.

But it is increasingly feared that many apprentices, on “low quality” programmes, are not spending this time learning away from the workplace, and are instead effectively working full-time on a lower apprentices’ wage.

This rule was most recently mentioned in the Institute for Apprenticeships strategic guidance document, as one of the ‘core principals’ for apprenticeships.

It said an apprenticeship “requires substantial and sustained training, lasting a minimum of 12 months and involving at least 20% off the job training (training which is outside of the normal day-to-day working environment).”

AELP’s survey was prompted by concerns from its members that if they were delivering learning or training at the workplace – for example, via online learning – it would not meet the government definition of 20 per cent off the job training.

The SFA currently provide no formal definition of “off-the-job”, in terms of what can and cannot be included in the 20 percent figure.

Their funding rules for training providers simply says they must “make sure the apprentice spends at least 20% of their time on off-the-job training” and the version for employers says they must “record details of how the 20% ‘off-the-job’ training will be quantified and delivered.”

The skills and apprenticeships minster has hailed the “state of the art” careers advice that colleges deliver, but called on schools to “do more” as he looks ahead to unveiling the government’s ‘comprehensive careers strategy’.

Robert Halfon told an audience of education professionals at Westminster Academy today that careers guidance would play a “significant part” in the government’s industrial strategy as set out in its green paper last week.

Speaking about the government’s comprehensive careers strategy today – which was supposed to be released in the first few weeks of 2016, but has been delayed until later this year – Mr Halfon said “the facts are” that students “are not getting enough good careers advice on skills and apprenticeships” from schools and they need to “do more”.

But speaking exclusively to FE Week after the event, the minister said the work he has seen by colleges on careers guidance had been on the opposite end of the spectrum and labelled it as “excellent”.

“Whatever colleges I have visited the careers advice there has been state of the art,” Mr Halfon said.

“I cannot think of one college I have been to where the careers advice has not been excellent.

“Around 70 per cent of our colleges are good or outstanding and I’ve gone to see amazing apprenticeship schemes where they have progressed into employment and other forms of training and enterprise.”

The minister’s view will be a welcomed breath of fresh air for the FE sector after being continually lambasted by Ofsted over careers advice in recent years.

Former chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw labelled careers guidance in colleges as “uniformly weak” in July last year but was the exposed by FE Week for lacking any identifiable external source or inspection based evidence.

Mr Halfon said today that “on the whole”, the work he has seen in FE on careers advice has been “really good”.

Plans for a comprehensive careers strategy were first unveiled in 2015, and it was expected to be released in early 2016.

However, the government admitted in its green paper on its new industrial strategy last week that a review of careers advice was still ongoing, and that the strategy would now be published later in 2017.

The Department for Education has pledged to spend £90 million on careers in this parliament, most of which has gone to the Careers and Enterprise Company to fund its network of enterprise advisers, mentoring scheme and grant scheme.

The Careers and Enterprise Company, first announced by former education secretary Nicky Morgan in December 2014, was launched in the summer of 2015.

On December 2, FE Week reported that the colleges and local enterprise partnerships included in the Careers and Enterprise Company’s “enterprise adviser network” also revealed a postcode lottery for FE coverage, with 15 LEPs not covered – and London completely absent.

Claudia Harris, the company’s chief executive, confirmed that it did not work with any of the capital’s 44 FE and sixth form colleges.

She said the company was working with “nearly all” local enterprise partnerships across the country, but the list of colleges that FE Week saw listed just 24 of the 39 LEPs.