The FE commissioner is attempting to drum up support for a three-way merger that was cancelled after one of the colleges involved was handed a grade four rating from Ofsted.

The education watchdog gave Hereward College, based in Coventry, its lowest possible rating in a report that was published November 21.

It had been in talks with two neighbours, City College Coventry and Henley College Coventry, earlier this year about a possible link-up.

But the Coventry and Warwickshire area review, which was part of wave three of the reviews, finished by proposing that just City and Henley should join forces.

However, FE Week understands that the FE commissioner has visited both colleges in order to persuade them to add Hereward back into their plans.

It is also understood that City College governors were due to discuss the proposal at a board meeting last week, though a spokesperson for the college declined to comment on this.

This intervention follows the sudden departure of Hereward’s principal Sheila Fleming.

She is understood to have left due to illness during Ofsted’s visit in October, and has not returned to the college since.

FE Week understands that the Association of Colleges Create, the commercial arm of the AoC, has failed to find an interim principal for Hereward despite a search that has now lasted two weeks.

The AoC declined to comment on the status of the search.

Hereward Colleges played host to around 570 learners during the last full-contract year, and provides full-time learning programmes at pre-entry level to level three for around 270 learners with high needs. Of these, 26 are in residential provision.

Ofsted inspectors were particularly damning in their assessment of safeguarding at the college, which was deemed “ineffective”.

Their report said: “Governors, leaders and managers have not ensured that the college meets its responsibilities.”

It said that its performance self-assessment is inaccurate, and found that governors, leaders and managers had underestimated the significance of serious weaknesses in safeguarding learners, and had failed to comply with the Prevent duty.

A spokesperson for Hereward confirmed that Ms Fleming, who took the top job at the college in 2011, was on sick leave but gave no further details on her current situation.

The spokesperson also said in an email dated November 22 that a temporary replacement for Ms Fleming was expected to be appointed “this week”.

The new appointment will be an interim principal, as it is believed that Ms Fleming may yet return to the post.

As reported by FE Week in May, the three-way merger involving City College Coventry, Henley College Coventry and Hereward College was endorsed by the former FE commissioner Sir David Collins (pictured above).

City College Coventry, which has 6,000 learners, was itself given a grade four in its most recent Ofsted inspection in November 2015, while 3,350-learner Henley College Coventry was given a grade two in January 2014.

Henley College and City College confirmed in a joint statement that their merger plans were still going ahead.

“Both colleges are open to possible future strategic developments and have an open dialogue with Hereward College whilst their board considers its options,” the statement said.

“Any proposal for a wider merger would be a separate matter for our boards to consider.”

The Hereward spokesperson said the college had not been aware of merger talks with the other two Coventry colleges.

The Department for Education was also unable to comment ahead of publication.

A struggling Greater Manchester college has dropped back down to ‘inadequate’, Ofsted inspectors have found.

Stockport College was hit with the grade four verdict in a report published today.

It leaves the college’s future looking as uncertain as ever after the report stated: “The college is still in administered status and will be dependent on funding agencies’ continued support to ensure that it can continue to operate in the future.”

The college, which was rated ‘outstanding’ by the education watchdog in 2008, originally fell to a grade four in 2013 when former FE commissioner David Collins said it could be forced to make up to 150 redundancies to “balance the books”.

Stockport then climbed out of administered status when it was rated ‘requires improvement’ in January last year and was lauded for making “rapid improvements” by the inspectorate.

But today’s damning report leaves the 4,400-learner college in deep water.

“Leaders and governors have not halted the decline in standards since the previous inspection,” the report said.

“Managers have not rectified areas for improvement noted at the last inspection; they do not identify gaps in college performance, nor do they take effective action to tackle them.

“Managers and the quality improvement processes they use have failed to identify significant weaknesses in the quality of the provision.”

Inspectors found that the “very large majority” of apprentices at the college do not complete their programmes “successfully within their planned time” and the “rate of achievement has declined significantly”.

They also found the quality of teaching, learning and assessment is “weak” with teachers failing to plan “effective learning to meet the specific abilities of all learners”, especially in English and maths where teachers “do not ensure that learners develop the skills they need”. Attendance in these subjects is also “significantly low”.

But inspectors did find that governors are having a good impact on the college.

“Well-qualified and experienced governors now offer effective challenge to the senior leadership team,” they said. “They have shown very effective strategic leadership during the area-based review and are committed to ensuring continuing further education for the local community.”

Simon Andrews, who took over from Ian Clinton as principal of Stockport College in February last year, said the report does not “accurately reflect” the improvements made at the college over the past 12 months and he would be appealing the judgment.

“We are naturally extremely disappointed with the outcome of the Ofsted inspection,” he said.

“The inspection judgement does not accurately reflect the distance the college has travelled over the past 12 months, nor does it reflect upon the hard work, effort and enthusiasm both learners and staff have put in to improvements across all aspects of what we do.

“We will be appealing Ofsted’s judgement.”

“We have many areas across the College to be proud of, for example; we currently have the best maths GCSE A* – C results of all Greater Manchester colleges, as well as being fourth best in English.

“Indeed, FE Week in their overall college league table rank Stockport at 117th out of 214 colleges which puts Stockport College ahead of around 50 per cent of colleges in the sector.

“The college is committed to providing high quality professional and technical education for the local community and is engaging positively with the agencies and stakeholders to do just that.”

The government has announced that it is devolving the adult education budget to London, through today’s autumn statement.

Details emerged in the online document published on gov.uk following the end of chancellor Philip Hammond’s speech in the House of Commons this afternoon.

It said: “The government remains committed to devolving powers to support local areas to address productivity barriers.

“We will devolve the AEB to London from 2019-20 (subject to readiness conditions).

It added: “The government will continue to work with London to explore further devolution of powers over the coming months.”

The Association of Colleges called in May for wider devolution of the AEB to be delayed, because the Skills Funding Agency had still not decided how the system will work for providers that cross regional boundaries.

Provider groups based in multiple regions have been lobbying the SFA for different treatment under the now-imminent devolution plans.

When asked about this, an SFA spokesperson said the body would “consider how funding and commissioning arrangements will operate for colleges and other providers which deliver in multiple areas” in 2018/19, “as part of the programme of work being undertaken to support the devolution of the adult education budget”.

However, Julian Gravatt, assistant chief executive at the Association of Colleges, admitted that he was still concerned that the problem remained unresolved, telling FE Week: “It would be better to delay the budget devolution rather than move ahead with half-completed plans.”

When asked for AoC’s views following today’s announcement, chief executive David Hughes said: “The chancellor today confirmed that the Adult Education Budget will be devolved to Greater London in 2019-20. There are clear potential benefits if this leads to greater flexibility for colleges to meet local employer, community and student needs, but there is a lack of detail currently about how it will work in practice. 

“We will continue to recommend that the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) publish a Skills Devolution Green Paper to help clarify responsibilities and priorities and encourage debate about the potential benefits and risks.

“It is important for colleges to be given the flexibilities to deliver the learning that London and Londoners want and need but there are too many unknowns about how this will work for us to be confident of that outcome. ”

Control of responsibility had already been passed to the Greater London Authority LEP, FE Week reported in May 2015, for European Social Fund cash – although that will now change due to Brexit.

The government had previously planned to give Leps a “direct role” in decision-making over ESF spending for skills training schemes up to 2020.

But it wrote to LEPs telling them that only the London Enterprise Panel would now be allowed to “manage and take decisions” over ESF and other European Union structural and investment funds.

His letter said the commission had “advised that this approach is non-compliant” with European Structural and Investment Fund Regulations, which state that only the managing authority — central government in England’s case — could decide where the money goes.

Answers have finally been given to key questions over staffing levels for the new Institute for Apprenticeships.

The body, which will play a key role in policing apprenticeships and technical education, will have around 90 employees once it is fully up and running.

The figure was revealed by Peter Lauener (pictured), shadow chief executive of the institute, during a committee hearing for the new Technical and Further Education Bill this morning.

He disclosed that the body would have “around 60 employees” when it launches in April next year.

He added: “The planned running costs next year are about £8m, but the number of staff will need to build up as the additional responsibilities – subject to the department – are added, and that will probably be another 30 or so staff.”

The question was posed by shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden, who accused Mr Lauener and apprenticeships and skills minister Robert Halfon of being “rather coy” about giving out the information.

Previous probes by shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden about the number of people who will work for the institute had been dodged by ministers.

He told Mr Lauener, who is also in charge at the Skills Funding Agency and Education Funding Agency, that “we’ve had to rely on rumours and leaked papers” about staffing levels.

These included a leaked document called ‘BIS2020 — Finance and Headcount outline’, seen by FE Week in May, which indicated that the IfA would take on 40 employees in 2016/17 — and the number would not increase over the next three years.

This morning’s hearing was part of the committee stage for the Technical and Further Education Bill, following its second reading in the House of Commons on November 14.

The bill proposes to introduce an insolvency regime for colleges, to allow them to go bust, and to extend the remit of the Institute for Apprenticeships to cover technical education.

Other witnesses giving evidence during this morning’s session included Lord Sainsbury, who led the panel that resulted in the proposals put forward in the government’s new Skills Plan, and Association of Colleges’ chief executive David Hughes.

Mr Hughes defended colleges’ track record on apprenticeships, after FE Week revealed that they were delivering a smaller proportion than a year ago.

He said that colleges needed “stability and certainty” rather than “constant change and churn” to be able to invest in apprenticeships.

“We’ve had a blizzard of changes over the last 10 years, 15 years perhaps, and that causes my members and others to be cautious about the investment that they make,” he said.

“And I think that’s the biggest risk to all of this – the lack of certainty to the future,” he warned.

Funding was also a critical issue, Mr Hughes said.

“If we want a high quality offer at 16 to 18, which we do, we need to get the investment right,” he said.

Another panel member, Professor Alison Fuller of University College London, also highlighted the importance of funding.

She raised concerns about the low number of contact hours that FE learners have, and stressed the need to be “realistic” about what could be achieved in two years for those following the technical route without further investment and resources.

“Good quality technical education does not come cheap,” Prof Fuller said.

Ian Pretty, chief executive of the Collab Group, suggested that the insolvency regime and Skills Plan – which is set to replace over 20,000 post-16 courses with “15 high-quality routes” – should have been introduced before the current area reviews of FE education and training institutions.

“We’ve spent a huge amount of time on the area-based reviews, a lot of displacement time there,” he said.

“If we’d had the Skills Plan in place and the insolvency regime in place, I think the ABR process might have been a smoother process because there would have been a logic to it then.”