Seven years after the apprenticeship levy was introduced to reform the further education and skills landscape, its impact remains a hot conversational topic across the sector.
Maximising the opportunities presented by apprenticeship reform was never going to be a simple task, but what are the main barriers to progress?
Outdated attitudes
One of the broadest challenges for apprenticeships is difficult to influence and overcome: outdated attitudes towards the schemes themselves. Apprenticeships have developed hugely in recent years, and I have witnessed an encouraging shift in the attitudes of students when discussing their options.
However, it’s parents and guardians who may hold the key to unlocking a better understanding of the opportunities apprenticeships can provide. These stakeholders play a vital role in the decisions young people make about life after mainstream education.
A good proportion of Markerstudy’s applicants come via recommendations from friends and family who already work in the organisation. They’ve seen first-hand the commitment to and investment in our apprenticeships.
Inviting parents and guardians to our apprenticeship evenings has been an eye-opening and positive experience. It’s vital that our sector continues to find ways to change mindsets, demonstrating that apprenticeships are both a valid and valuable route into employment.
Schools weak
Unfortunately, it can be challenging to engage with schools in a meaningful and productive way. I’ve spent many hours supporting schools with their careers advice and suffered my fair share of frustrations with what appears to be a lack of strategic thought when it comes to engaging with further education providers.
In my experience, it isn’t particularly difficult getting in front of students in schools. Whether they are the right students at the right time is a very different story.
Yet there have always been and will always be a proportion who show no particular interest in university. Providing them with specific and relevant information and guidance early on works really well, but opportunities to do so are far too inconsistent.
In any case, showcasing apprenticeships can’t be confined to National Apprenticeship Week. There’s a lot more that can be done to help employers engage with the right student demographics at the right time throughout the year.
Tick-box events
But businesses don’t have the resources to support what can too often be tick-box-exercise careers events. That time would be far better spent collaborating with government, local councils and schools to help shape a more relevant careers advice strategy.
I’ve seen the very best and worst of this across the country, and it’s time we identified and shared best practice in a meaningful way. Take the Apprenticeship Ambassador Network (AAN), for example. My work with the AAN has forged relationships with like-minded staff members in schools and local authorities which, in turn, has helped to develop a more joined-up approach to advocating apprenticeships.
In addition, the AAN online hub is helping me and many others connect the dots between employers, students, parents and teachers on a broader scale. Among other things, it displays a list of careers events, often hosted by schools or colleges, that members can attend.
In my experience, these events are of higher quality and offer more value than those arranged on an individual basis.
Mismatched placements
Lastly, the provision of more targeted work experience programmes has obvious benefits for students and employers too. But before accepting any work experience placements, it is vital that all parties involved know exactly what their intended outcomes are.
This makes the matching process far more targeted at supporting students on an individual basis, and ensures their work experience is as relevant and valuable as possible.
In all of these ways and more, communication channels between employers, schools, parents and students are vital to improving the take-up of apprenticeships and changing any misconceptions about the opportunities they provide.
They should be easily accessible to businesses of all sizes with an interest in supporting apprenticeships, no matter where they’re based, and provide a more consistent platform to shine the spotlight on apprenticeships across the country.
Liz Bromley is feeling a little fragile today. She is heading home from NCG’s offices at Newcastle College by train instead of driving, because a “mad burst of floaters” in her eye, which she at first put down to stress, turned out to be a torn retina. Her eye is now filled with oil to hold the retina in place until doctors can operate.
Despite her affliction, she’s warm and open and exudes steely confidence. Bromley’s strength comes from her having grabbed every opportunity life offered her.
Her experience of both sectors has shown her that, “FE lacks the confidence that HE has. She says: “It says a lot [that] vice chancellors are in and out of education department ministers’ offices and not [college] chief execs and principals.”
Liz Bromley, chief executive, NCG
Eyeing opportunities
A torn retina hasn’t distorted her crystal clear vision for NCG.
It’s seven colleges – Carlisle, Kidderminster, Lewisham, Southwark, West Lancashire, Newcastle and Newcastle Sixth Form – are now on a “stronger financial footing” after NCG settled a four-year clawback dispute with the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
The “amicable resolution” enables NCG to repay cash over a number of years, so it won’t impact on the student experience.
Bromley says she is “hugely relieved” it’s over.
She is also eyeing the opportunities of devolution through the newly formed North East Combined Authority. Bromley says newly elected mayor Kim McGuiness is “really interested in what we do”.
The NCG head is pushing for a “far more joined-up education offer across the region”, so colleges “divide the curriculum between ourselves and have centres of excellence… rather than being in competition”.
Liz Bromley as a child
The big escape
Bromley had a “mixed childhood” on a farm in Cheshire. She said going away to study English at the University of Oxford’s Worcester College was her “big escape”.
Although Bromley was the first in her family to go to university, her mother only allowed to go if it was Oxford or Cambridge.
She got a conditional offer of two Bs, and credits Worcester College with being “sympathetic to my position”. “When people talk about Oxbridge not widening access, my experience is they really did in those days.”
After her escape, Bromley did not return to Cheshire for “many, many years”.
She married an accountant at 23, and had four children “really quite quickly”. She admits it was “far too quickly, probably”.
Her three daughters are now aged 38, 36, and 34 and her son is 31.
As well as spending six months in Abu Dhabi – then “a couple of hotels and roads that stopped in sand” – and in Oman, until their first daughter was two, the couple lived to Bahrain. This was before the island’s causeway opened to Saudis, and Bromley recalls it as a “really small, friendly island” with “very good expat and local integration”.
She worked there as an administrator for Japan Airlines, keeping their Middle East head office together as a “pidgin English translator [between] 11 Japanese, and six Arabic chaps for whom English was very much a second language”.
Liz Bromley in her younger years
Back in Blighty
Bromley returned with four children under seven and focused the next few years on raising them, while volunteering as a magistrate. The family settled in Aspley Guise, near Milton Keynes, where she got her first education role as an examinations officer for the Open University in 1997.
Four years later, an inquiry into the torture and murder of Victoria Climbié made recommendations to prevent such abuse going undetected by social workers again. The tightening of standards meant a move from the social work diploma to a new degree, and Bromley was tasked with leading its development.
Through the ’90s to the mid-2000s, Bromley saw the OU as “hugely influential”. It was “the university of the second chance” because much of the population was still not degree-educated.
Bromley took “all the CPD” she could and quickly rose to associate dean, then the first non-academic associate dean responsible for quality and students. She ran the OU’s 13 regional offices, which was “fabulous” as it meant “going about the country and seeing the OU in action”.
She learned to “seize every opportunity, never say no, and give people around you the opportunities to grow”.
“There’s no fun in being successful on your own… you have to watch others be successful. That all came from the ethos of openness at the OU and the inspiring people I worked with.”
University culture shift
Bromley became director of student life at the University of Salford in 2007 when students were starting to pay tuition fees. She said, “Suddenly, the focus was away from it being a privilege for students to get offered a place, into a business model to take students as paying customers. It was a massive cultural step.”
She was given a blank sheet to set up a new sector-leading student services department, with a mandate to “make people come visit us”.
At first, the students’ union eyed Bromley’s new department as competition. But Bromley proposed they go under one roof as an integrated service.
The two departments also began “cross-referring”, with students in financial trouble directed to Bromley’s and those with academic challenges signposted to the union.
“We talked about collaboration in the days when it just wasn’t fashionable. That was innovation in practice.”
Liz Bromley
Rebranding Goldsmiths
In 2012, Bromley became chief operating officer, registrar and secretary at the prestigious Goldsmiths, University of London. It had, until then, been massively research intensive and “wasn’t too troubled by its students until it had to be”. Bromley was tasked with remodelling how professional services supported its academic endeavour.
She says Goldsmiths had previously “always operated on a very financially challenged model. “It never viewed students as the way to solve that”.
Bromley saw the fact its senior professors who did research were actually teaching first years as a “wonderful marketing tool”. Goldsmiths had not until then thought it relevant.
During Bromley’s four years there, its student recruitment increased by several thousand students, putting Goldsmiths onto a financially stable footing.
A career low-point
Bromley’s next role as deputy vice chancellor at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) was “far less satisfying”.
UCLan had only been granted university status in 1992, and its “not particularly collaborative” working culture was very different from what Bromley was used to.
This was Bromley’s lowest career moment, and she was “very happy” to move on after three years.
She describes UCLan as having been a “very local university that drew a lot of local students in on a lot of courses that they probably wouldn’t use, because they were always going to stay in the community. They were overqualified to do the things they could do”.
UCLan was also a “very successful international student recruiter”, which meant the “money came piling in” but those students returned home after their degrees.
“That wasn’t the domestic inward investment that the university could have done with, to improve Preston,” Bromley explained.
Liz Bromley
Mickey Mouse degrees
Bromley believes that while some universities created since 1992, such as Nottingham Trent, Coventry and Derby, are “cracking”, there are “an awful lot who jumped on the bandwagon and are now taking a great deal of money from young people, probably unjustifiably”.
While Bromley would not go as far as to endorse the prime minister’s proposal to close ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’, she believes current student debt levels mean that “not everybody should assume a traditional university degree is the only way to become socially mobile”.
Turbulent times
When Bromley took over as NCG’s chief in 2019, she was “shocked that people weren’t more confident of what FE did”.
She started during turbulent times. Former permanent chief, Joe Docherty, had resigned with immediate effect the previous year after the group was downgraded to grade three by Ofsted amid poor achievement rates.
A free school NCG sponsored had been forced to close after being judged ‘inadequate’, and the group’s two private training providers, Rathbone Training and Intraining, were also closed, with a loss of 300 jobs.
Bromley sees it as “very lucky” that she had an education background, while Docherty had come from the social housing sector.
“I was recruitable at a time they were looking to recruit somebody like me – all the stars aligned.”
But things were not easy. NCG’s London colleges’ staff went on strike, with unions calling on the FE commissioner to de-merge them only two years after joining NCG.
Liz Bromley with Keir Starmer
Being a national college
The de-merger never happened, and Bromley is adamant that being part of a large college group benefits small colleges. She claims the group takes “challenged” colleges, “either financially or in terms of quality”, keeps them safe and boosts them.
Bromley said West Lancashire College, which joined NCG in 2007, is “always on the edge financially because it serves a very small community. But it’s so important that community is served by further education in Skelmersdale. Being part of NCG keeps it financially sustainable”.
Being the only national college group means NCG picks up policy and practice from all over the country.
She said they see “rural poverty” in Carlisle, “inner city challenges” in Lewisham and “being part of the creative industries” in Southwark, which gives them “a lot of understanding about the impact of education on different communities”.
That breadth of experience means Bromley has been invited into “a number of conversations coming out of DfE”. She has also engaged with Keir Starmer, who she impressed on to “never look over your shoulder at colleges”.
Liz Bromley
Reduce to produce
NCG is the biggest college group by turnover, but its apprenticeship numbers have dropped 23 per cent, from 2,504 in 2021-22 to 1,929 this year, as part of a deliberate move to “focus on quality”.
Its ‘reduce to produce’ programme means larger cohort groups, with less spread of subjects and standards and more quality and compliance measures.
Bromley claims NCG has halved the number of apprentices failing to make end-point assessment over the past three years.
Her plan is to build numbers back up again, because “now we’ve got a model that really works, so we can sell that to bigger employers who will provide a good student experience”.
Bromley’s proudest career moment came last year when NCG became the first and only college-based provider bestowed with taught degree-awarding powers on an indefinite basis. More than 10,000 students have graduated from its university centre over the past decade.
However, it wasn’t easy. Bromley described the award as “hard won” and “the devil’s job to get”.
But the hard work was worth it. “It put us on the same footing as a traditional university… with a really recognised qualification of our own,” she added.
The experience brought Bromley full circle, connecting her HE experience with her FE position.
Bromley reflects that she found FE similar to the Open University world she left almost two decades ago.
“It’s about life-changing opportunities for people who might not have had the best start.
Gavin Williamson’s much-criticised Covid lockdown Christmas party at the Department for Education’s headquarters could have gone on until past 1am, “deeply concerning” new documents suggest.
London was in tier 2 lockdown at the time. Gatherings of two or more people indoors were banned unless of an exception such as a gathering being “reasonably necessary for work purposes”.
FE Week’s sister publication Schools Week asked the Cabinet Office for data on the number of times staff swiped out of the department’s security barriers that night, and the seven previous nights.
It showed that staff swiped out of Sanctuary Buildings 34 times after 10pm on the night of the party. Eight of those were after 1am.
The next highest was nine swipes on Thursday 9, and then five on Thursday 3. Four of the days had zero swipes in that time period.
‘Deeply concerning’
A Liberal Democrats spokesperson said the findings were “deeply concerning and urgent clarification is needed on the extent of this party, which took place while teachers, parents and children were still suffering from constant disruption and uncertainty”.
Acland-Hood
The DfE said this week the gathering lasted an hour before “individuals dispersed and/or left the building”.
Susan Acland-Hood, the DfE permanent secretary, had told MPs in 2021 that about “two dozen” people attended.
But the DfE said swipes do not record individuals leaving. Staff can leave for food or a cigarette, for instance, and then return. They would also include 24-hour cleaning and security staff.
Late access to the building was commonplace during Covid too, the department said.
Asked whether the 2022 inquiry into lockdown parties led by Sue Gray was aware of this data, the DfE said the team had access to records deemed relevant and were able to speak to members of staff.
The Metropolitan Police did not investigate the party. The DfE repeated that the gathering to “thank staff for their efforts … should never have happened”.
Williamson is one of the few big-name Conservative MPs standing at the general election and set to keep their seat. He did not respond to a request for comment.
The government originally refused to release the swipe card data, arguing that it would be a risk to national security and could “enable a hostile actor to determine patterns of movement by staff in and out of the building”.
But the Information Commissioner’s Office backed our appeal. They said the likelihood of anyone being able to determine patterns of movement today are “so remote as to be irrelevant”.
Labour and the Conservatives are engaged in a “conspiracy of silence” on billions of pounds of cuts in unprotected public services, such as further education, leading economists have warned.
Both parties, with the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, published their manifestos this week providing some insight into their plans if they win the keys to Downing Street.
Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer continue to face tough questions about their tax and spending plans in the face of a tottering economy, rising national debt and low growth.
Both parties have costed additional spending commitments by bringing in money for something specific, such as Labour’s plans to fund 6,500 school teachers from VAT on private schools, or scrapping things, such as the Conservatives’ plan to fund extra apprenticeships by shutting “low-quality” degrees.
Economists have warned further education is among several public services likely to suffer cuts because of expensive commitments made on protected services such as the NHS and defence and green investment.
The Resolution Foundation last week said £19 billion of cuts was needed from unprotected budgets for any new government to meet national debt targets by the end of the next parliament. One of shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’ “fiscal rules” is for debt to fall over that time.
Responding to Labour’s manifesto, Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) director Paul Johnson said: “Like the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, Labour continues in a conspiracy of silence on the difficulties they would face.
“On current forecasts, and especially with an extra £17.5 billion borrowing over five years to fund [Labour’s] green prosperity plan, this leaves literally no room – within the fiscal rule Labour signed up – for any more spending than planned by the current government. And those plans do involve cuts both to investment spending and to spending on unprotected public services.”
Where will the money come from?
This will offer little hope for colleges and training providers looking for increases to per-student funding without, as Johnson puts it, “surprise growth” in the economy.
Bee Boileau, research economist at the IFS, singled out further education, prisons and courts as unprotected services “likely to be seriously squeezed, facing real-terms cuts that look inconsistent with [Labour] manifesto’s stated ambitions in these areas”.
At the last budget, Learning and Work Institute chief executive Stephen Evans predicted the adult skills budget’s share of the unprotected spending cuts would be about £380 million, on top of the £1 billion already cut from the sector since 2010.
Whoever becomes the next education secretary will have to make tough decisions on what they will spend their money on.
Funding from falling school pupil numbers would most likely be earmarked to school-related spending, rather than be redirected to post-16 because it is a protected service.
Below-inflation funding increases in further education funding have already contributed to a rising pay gap between school and college teachers of about £9,000, with an even larger gap between teachers in schools and independent training providers.
David Hughes, chief executive at the Association of Colleges, said the pay gap was “unacceptable”.
“We want to see the next government seriously commit to investing in FE, its students and its workforce. If Labour does form the next government, I look forward to working with them to eradicate this gap, and reverse the chronic underfunding suffered by the sector.”
Meanwhile the apprenticeship levy is set to raise a record annual £4.6 billion by the end of the next parliament, but neither party has confirmed how much of that would be spent on training, and how much would be redirected elsewhere.
The Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ election manifesto, also published this week, called for the next government to spend everything it raises through the levy on apprenticeships and skills. Its chief executive, Ben Rowland, said the sector “still lacks sufficient funding and ideas to improve [apprenticeship] achievement rates, support small and medium-sized employers, and address the decline of young people taking on an apprenticeship”.
But Labour will change the levy so funding can be spent on non-apprenticeship training, potentially freeing up funding for courses previously funded by the DfE’s other budgets. The shadow education secretary recently announced that 3 per cent of levy funds would pay for 150,000 pre-apprenticeship traineeship courses.
Non-apprenticeship levy funds could also be used to fund Labour’s “youth guarantee” of a job, apprenticeship or training for every 18 to 21-year-old. This wasn’t costed in the party’s manifesto.
Johnson added: “Delivering genuine change will almost certainly require putting actual resources on the table. And Labour’s manifesto offers no indication that there is a plan for where the money would come from.”
Nearly 200 pieces of artwork by budding student artists go on display today as the annual Sixth Form Colleges Association online exhibition goes live.
Scores of students in fine art, graphic design, photography and games design from sixth form colleges across the country have had their work selected for this year’s exhibition themed ‘living the dream’.
Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said: “Sixth form colleges represent a vital supply pipeline of the professional artists of the future, and this is their platform to stimulate our thinking about the wonders of the world we live in, to remind us of why the arts matter, to showcase their skills, and to convey their views and feelings.”
Students were given free rein to interpret this year’s theme as they saw fit, resulting in a variety of subjects including people, events, places, feelings and more abstract expressions.
This year’s entrants took to a range of mediums to produce their artwork. Examples featured the use of sculpture, collage, photography, digital art as well as more traditional use of paints, prints and inks.
Watkin said the exhibition highlighted the importance of developing creative skills in helping young people develop in to successful citizens and professionals regardless of their chosen career path.
“This is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the arts and advance their place in the curriculum, and their importance in our lives. It is also a time to recognise excellence in sixth form colleges and the talent, creativity and sensitivity of the students,” he added.
“It is imperative that we keep the arts in education secure and flourishing. If young people are to make a truly valuable contribution to society, even if they are to be successful scientists, engineers, doctors and technicians, they need to develop their creative skills, their artistic sensitivities and their ability to communicate and interact with others.”
The full online exhibition can be viewed on the Sixth Form Colleges Association’s website here.
A “clear blueprint” for a new quango to oversee post-16 education and skills strategy has been released today.
Independent research commissioned by the Association of Colleges (AoC) has fleshed out a plan for a new arms-length body that is hoped to shift England away from overly centralised and employer-led skills policymaking.
Shared exclusively with FE Week, the AoC paper has been published a day after Labour confirmed its policy to create “Skills England” – a body that would “bring together partners with a drive to give coherence and direction to our skills landscape, not replicate existing functions”.
The association claims its report, by former UK Commission for Employment and Skills deputy director Lesley Giles who now runs research company Work Advance, is a “clear blueprint” for what such a new skills body should look like, and how it would work “in practice”.
It challenges the current government’s employer-led approach, which the association said “has not been successful”.
However, aside from confirming the body would be funded by the government, there were no costings, how many employees it would need or how existing quangos would be impacted.
Treasury opposition costings estimate Labour’s Skills England at more than £10 million a year with 100 staff. Giles told FE Week her vision for such a body would not exceed those estimations.
Multi-department sponsorship
The report makes clear that the Department for Education’s analytical and research team, the Unit for Future Skills, would be subsumed into the new body.
It would operate in addition to the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE), the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) and the Office for Students (OfS) – organisations that separately oversee the strategy and policy of tertiary education.
But instead of being led solely by the DfE, the new body would be a non-departmental body sponsored by different departments.
The proposed “lead” department would be either the Department for Business because of its “oversight role on economic and industrial policy”, or the Cabinet Office, which has “already had a role running cross-departmental cabinet meetings on skills policy and programmes”.
Strategy co-ordination and ramped up research
Giles’ report said there was “limited evidence” that the OfS, ESFA and IfATE “ever meet” to consider skills issues collectively from a system-wide perspective.
This “separates” HE, FE and technical education, which “limits collaboration between providers in the sectors”. This system also “increasingly controls the levels of authority, autonomy and resources of local institutions, including around partnership working”.
While the DfE had launched a programme of skills reforms for the current system through white papers, such as Skills for Jobs in 2021, there was “no single vision, or indeed collective ambition, capturing all government skills activities as a whole”, she said.
The new body would aim to fill that gap and “enable a whole of government approach” to scrutinise England’s portfolio of skills initiatives, including by “allocating distinct roles” of policy innovation, design and delivery to the various agencies.
It would also “empower” designated providers and FE colleges to have scope to adapt and flex courses and apprenticeships to reflect local demands.
Experts would be responsible for independently assessing the “value” of different programmes and qualifications, and for proposing continued funding for those in demand or scrapping those that weren’t.
The body would have its own research budget and establish a “strategic skills research and labour market analysis programme” to provide “authoritative” evidence on skills and workforce trends.
It would develop a “national framework” for directing data collection, co-ordinating analysis and undertaking its own research directly. The oversight body would also “support and review” different partners’ work, such as local skills improvement plans and mayoral combined authorities, to produce overarching local and sectoral skills assessments.
‘Serious redesign’
A key function would be setting long-term strategic goals that involved an “overarching framework for action” which could deal with “megatrends” that have an affect globally, such as climate change and pandemics.
The oversight body would work with funding bodies to “consider how the national, sectoral and local priorities are reflected in funding allocations supporting investments in different skills programmes within the post-16 skills system”.
It would also review the future role of “macro policy” incentives such as the apprenticeship levy and propose alternatives.
Giles said: “Our current system in England is too centralised. A new oversight body can provide the basis not only to work with partners to better anticipate and understand evolving employment and skills challenges, but to innovate and find effective solutions to address them.”
AoC chief executive David Hughes added: “We have been clear that the disjointed and confused governance of post-16 education and skills needs a serious redesign.
“For the past 14 years, the government has tried to put employers in the driving seat, but … this has not been successful. Instead, we need a new national skills body which, at its core, is a social partnership that brings together the ambitions, needs, talents, understanding and resources of all stakeholders, including employers.”
Andy Westwood, professor of public policy, government and business at the University of Manchester, agreed that a skills oversight body, supporting stronger partnership and co-ordination across the post-16 skills system, is “central to enhancing a policy architecture, beset with challenges, fragmentation and churn”.
Notable in Sir Keir Starmer’s speech launching the Labour manifesto today was a lack of clear headlines on education. Though with polling showing education is not high on the public’s list of priorities for change, it was never going to get top billing.
It should nevertheless be welcomed that among the Labour’s five missions is ‘breaking down to the barriers to opportunity’. Under this heading, last year they announced an ambitious target to reduce intergenerational income persistence to Scandinavian levels – or in other words, improve social mobility.
To achieve this, they will have to go way beyond the policies set out in their manifesto – if and when there is headroom in public spending. And the further education sector will need to play a key role in any transformative plan to spread opportunity.
There were positive words in Starmer’s speech for further education, and a promise to transform FE colleges into specialist Technical Excellence Colleges.
Much of Labour’s broader narrative on growth has encouragingly focused on skills and jobs for the future. However, without tangible details on funding and how these ambitions will be met, this feels like an extension of the ‘parity of esteem’ conversation which has delivered little for the sector over the past two decades.
The establishment of a new body in ‘Skills England’ and plans to tie skills into broader industrial strategy have clear potential. But it is vital that the new body considers young people as a distinct group as well as adult learners, and that its work specifically considers barriers to training opportunities for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Devolving decision making to local areas in terms of skills needs has potential to genuinely help to level up skills across the country, but whether it has a positive effect, and where, will depend on implementation.
The promise to change the apprenticeship levy into a Growth and Skills Levy has been telegraphed since last year. While employers will no doubt appreciate the flexibility, it is absolutely vital that this does not come at the expense of high-quality apprenticeship provision that gives young people a qualification that has wider currency beyond the immediate needs of the employer.
They will have to go way beyond these policies
There is a significant danger that the levy backslides further into focusing on employers’ internal learning and development needs rather than funding a national apprenticeship offer that meets the broader skills demands of the economy and provides high quality alternatives for the 50 per cent of the population who don’t attend higher education.
Ringfencing will be necessary to protect the broader social goals of the apprenticeship programme.
While the manifesto points out the reduction in apprenticeship starts in recent years, the cannibalisation of the levy for other types of training may serve to worsen that trend. Increasing apprenticeship starts for young people will require investment, as well as a combination of carrots and sticks for employers.
The Sutton Trust has outlined a series of such options, including ringfencing a portion of the levy for young people, and extending subsidies to employers to create new opportunities.
Nonetheless, the acknowledgement of the importance of pre-apprenticeship skills is a positive one. An expanded traineeship programme has significant potential to widen access pathways into apprenticeships.
Labour are right to identify good teaching as the best thing you can offer a child to boost their chances in life. But it will be important that reforms to improve the status, pay and professional development of teachers also extends to post-16 settings.
Disappointingly, there was no mention of extending Pupil Premium funding to post-16. Socio-economic disadvantage doesn’t stop at 16, so there is no reason that dedicated funding should either.
The Sutton Trust’s manifesto of costed policies proposes an extension of the scheme. This would give sixth forms and colleges (particularly those supporting the most disadvantaged communities) targeted funding to boost learning, including targeted programmes such as tutoring, attendance interventions and staff development.
There is room for some optimism on today’s evidence. However, if we want further education to truly deliver on the promise of filling skills gaps and providing quality routes for young people into the workplace, the sector is going to need much more than warm words.
You’d have thought they’d come out fighting. Education, after all, is the record the Conservatives are proud to defend this election. Indeed, the opening sentence of the education chapter in the manifesto rightly proclaims, “English children are now the best readers in the Western world”.
And yet, just about every pledge after that seeks to put back into the system what policy decisions of the past 14 years have taken out: teachers, funding, school buildings, sports provision, a level playing field for academic and vocational qualifications at 16, 100,000 more apprenticeships and “valuable life skills” (only at 18, though) delivered through National Service.
Don’t get me wrong, “it is massive”, as Rob Halfon put it yesterday at our event to mark the Times Education Commission. Two years on, to hear a Prime Minister talking about skills – the Advanced British Standard (ABS), reaffirmed in the manifesto – has all the right ambitions to end the “damaging divide between vocational and academic education” at 16.
It’s also a rare gem of a policy in that it has cross-party support. Our recent polling with Public First found that 78 per cent of 2,000 adults would support a proposal to reform the education system in line with the ABS, while just 10 per cent oppose.
In fact, a massive 61 per cent said they thought the ABS would represent an improvement on the current system of 16-18 education. That support was steadfast regardless of voting intention.
It needs some fine-tuning: a much more serious teacher recruitment drive, collaboration with colleges and sixth forms and, crucially, the possibility for students to ‘mix and match’ academic and vocational subjects. The latter in particular is what drives public support for the policy.
It’s just a shame the party has come round to the idea of a truly broad and balanced curriculum so late in the day.
Despite much more reliable public support for the ABS, it is the new, multi-billion-pound National Service announcement (a compulsory programme of civic or military duties for 18-year-olds, backed by a Royal Commission) that takes centre stage in the manifesto.
The pledges are a far cry from tackling our pressing issues
Young people need meaningful, joyful opportunities to develop their skills for life, but why wait until 18? Why not invest this considerable funding into our schools and colleges? Aren’t they best-placed to deliver an enriched curriculum and co-curricular offer, in collaboration with businesses and the third sector, that compliments young people’s academic and/or technical study?
All in all, the manifesto pledges are a far cry from the ambition to tackle the pressing issues on the ground we heard in the room at Edge’s event yesterday.
Teach First’s Russell Hobby highlighted the immense workload burden driving teachers out of the profession, and Ark CEO Lucy Heller suggested the place to start to ease some of this pressure is accountability and assessment reform. Meanwhile, the manifesto sharply retorts: “We will back Ofsted”.
ASCL President and former headteacher, Evelyn Forde warned schools and colleges “have become the fourth emergency service”. Former children’s commissioner and Centre for Young Lives founder, Anne Longfield CBE suggested we need to “bring services together in common purpose” to help them identify children who need extra support in the early years.
Far too often, we leave it to our overstretched and under-resourced FE colleges to pick up the pieces, much too late in a young person’s life.
The manifesto confirms the extension of STEM teacher bonuses to those working in FE (and the ABS will help equalise teaching hours in schools and colleges). However, it does little to get to some of the knottier issues, like the GCSE resits policy and the adult skills budget.
As journalist and Times Education Commission chair, Rachel Sylvester concluded yesterday, “there is no policy that can change the country like education”. It underscores the talent pipelines for key sectors like health, housing, energy, digital and technology.
When the election was called, our CEO, Alice Barnard said: “What we say and do on education signals a much wider vision for the future of the UK.”
This manifesto was an opportunity for the Conservatives to address the critical needs of our young people, the education profession and the labour market. Evidently, they didn’t read the room.
A Cheshire college has been rated ‘outstanding’ for the second time in four years for its “culture of continuous improvement”.
Ofsted gave Riverside College in Widnes the highest rating following an inspection in April. Its report was published this week.
Inspectors praised college leaders for their “highly effective quality assurance” processes for monitoring and improving teaching.
Teachers used assessment “incisively” to adapt their teaching, check learners’ progress and provide “high-quality developmental feedback”.
The college teaches more than 3,600 young students, more than 2,000 adults and about 450 apprentices. It was formed in 2006 following the merger of Halton College and Widnes and Runcorn Sixth Form College.
It was rated ‘outstanding’ in all areas of effectiveness except provision for learners with high needs, which was rated ‘good’.
This follows a 2020 inspection that also praised the college’s “culture of relentless self-improvement”.
Principal Mary Murphy said the college was “overjoyed”.
“This achievement is a testament to the unwavering dedication and hard work of our exceptional staff and students.
“I am immensely proud of our college community for their pursuit of excellence and for consistently upholding the high standards that have once again been recognised by Ofsted.”
Inspectors said teachers and leaders were “passionate” about providing life-changing opportunities for young people and adults, many of whom came from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Teachers were also rated as “highly qualified” and commended for putting a “great deal of thought” into their work.
Inspectors also reported “extremely positive attitudes” from students, who felt “valued and respected”, “highly motivated” and had high attendance levels.
The college was also praised for improving the attendance of its apprentices when staff noticed that “a few” had been leaving some programmes early.
On the question of the college meeting local skills needs, inspectors found “highly effective partnerships” with stakeholders.
The college had undertaken “extensive research” to identify local needs, particularly in the north west’s emerging hydrogen industry.
It also worked with employers in the welding and construction sectors.
