Hair and media make-up students will be using their specialist skills to transform themselves and terrify members of the public during special Halloween boat trips.
The level two and three students from Walsall College in the West Midlands will use their specialist make-up skills to turn into ghosts and vampires, and scare guests at the Dudley Canal and Tunnel Trust’s annual Halloween event.
Their spooky looks will form part of an assessed unit on their course, alongside providing makeovers for the college’s travel and tourism students, who will also be frightening guests at the attraction.
The tunnels, which date back to the late 1700s, attract over 80,000 guests a year.
Rebecca Cooper-Sayer, volunteer coordinator at Dudley Canal and Tunnel Trust said: “We’re very excited about working with Walsall College and its talented students. They will be integral in helping us to ensure our guests have a unique Halloween experience.”
Dudley Canal and Tunnel Trust’s Halloween boat trips will take place from October 28-31 on Birmingham New Road.
Five students from Chichester College had the opportunity to showcase their furniture-making skills at a special exhibition in London, with one student even receiving special recognition.
The Young Furniture Makers’ Exhibition, organised by charity The Furniture Makers’ Company, gave talented youngsters the chance to show off their creations to liverymen and the public.
Student Paul Ferris (pictured), was ‘highly commended’ in the Young Furniture Makers Bespoke Award for his television cabinet made from olive ash.
The level three apprentice is currently employed by Rolls Royce, and splits his time between working for the manufacturing company and studying at the college.
Chichester College lecturer Christian Notley accompanied students to the event, and said: “This is a great opportunity for students to show their work and allow them a chance to make connections with employers in the industry.
“We were delighted to be able to take several pieces to the Furniture Makers’ Hall and the icing on the cake was Paul’s award.
“He was up against university students and graduates – all of the highest standard – so to be highly commended is a fantastic achievement.”
Featured image: Paul Ferris with his olive ash cabinet
Your weekly guide to who’s new, and who’s leaving.
Paul Eeles has been appointed as chair of the Federation of Awarding Bodies.
Eeles will be the fourth chair at FAB since its inception in 2002, and will take up the role alongside his current position as chief executive of the Skills and Education group, where he is responsible for the strategic direction of the company.
The FAB is a membership organisation for vocational awarding bodies in the UK, with current members including City and Guilds, the Prince’s Trust and McDonald’s.
In his role as chair, he is most looking forward to “supporting members as they navigate change in policy”, helping FAB to “raise its voice as a membership body” and perhaps most crucially, “promoting the value of vocational, technical and professional assessment and qualifications”.
With an extensive career in FE sector spanning almost 30 years, Eeles has held positions at AELP, Ofsted, and City and Guilds; beginning his career as a lecturer in food service at Walsall College.
Speaking of his passion for learning, Eeles said: “I left school with nothing, not an O-level to my name, and FE made a huge difference for me.
“I’ve been lucky enough to work in the sector over the last 30 years in roles that enable me to contribute back into the FE and skills sectors. For me, FE is part of who I am and what I do.”
The City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College has made two senior appointments, with a new deputy principal and assistant principal.
Matthew Marshall will take on the role of deputy principal at the college, which teaches around 1,800 pupils.
Previously, he worked as a senior examiner for OCR and has held roles at three other sixth form colleges, most recently as an assistant principal in Solihull.
Speaking of his new role, Marshall said: “What attracted me to the City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College is the culture of community here, both inside and outside of the college.
“There is a good level of communication between the college, local universities, local council and schools, with everyone working in partnership to genuinely make a difference to the lives of young people.”
Marshall has aspirations to take the college from its current Ofsted rating of ‘good’ to ‘outstanding’ in his new role, and plans to develop a “culture of learning” which will allow pupils to progress professionally beyond the college, whether through work, further training or university.
Rachel Jablonski will take up the position as assistant principal of the college, a role that has been newly created this year.
The position will involve curriculum planning and leading the college’s ‘future programme’, which ensures students develop essential employability skills.
Jablonski has worked at the college for nine years, starting out as a curriculum coordinator in BTEC Sport and working her way up the ranks before taking up her new role as assistant principal.
She hopes her knowledge of the college’s course pathways will stand her in good stead in her new position, as well as her experience navigating the changes from modular to linear A-levels, and how the college delivers its BTEC qualifications.
Speaking of her new role, Jablonski said: “My main goal is that when students leave us, they will leave with confidence, experiences and skills which will help them to flourish in their chosen careers.”
Travellers using the facilities at a Shropshire train station could be forgiven for thinking they’ve taken a wrong turn, after its toilet was transformed to resemble an African savannah, reports Samantha King.
Station toilets generally don’t have the best reputation, but thanks to students at Derwen College, the toilet at Gobowen train station has had a dramatic makeover – and won an award in the process.
Visitors can spend a penny on the African plains, surrounded by giraffes, zebras, elephants, an orangutan and a lion – all in mural form, of course.
The quirky project came about as part of celebrations for Gobowen station’s 20th anniversary, which included the redecoration of the station’s office and waiting room.
When it came to the toilet, however, Severn Dee Travel, which runs the station on behalf of travel company Arriva Trains, decided to draft in students from the neighbouring college to do something a little bit different.
The college provides residential FE for students with learning difficulties and disabilities, and has run the station’s café for the past four years, allowing students to practice real-life skills to prepare them for the world of work.
Creative arts teacher Jane Carrington oversaw the project and guided students with the mural. Explaining the process, she said: “There was just one group of four students working on the mural. We spent four weeks designing it in the classroom, and then for two hours a week over 10 weeks, we were actually in the station painting.”
The somewhat unusual African savannah theme was suggested by a student, who was inspired by Jane’s time as an arts teacher in Botswana.
Jane said: “We were even going to plumb music into the loo as well, like an African choir – so you’re totally transported on this loo with a view. We wanted to buy a toilet seat with lions on it, and we talked about painting the floor – but we never got that far. Severn Dee were thrilled with any idea we’d come up with, it was just whether legally or health and safety-wise we could do it, really.”
The project, aptly named the ‘Loo with a View’, clearly impressed, scooping second place for the ‘community art project’ category in the annual Community Rail Awards. The station’s café was also recognised in the awards, taking first place in the ‘involving diverse groups’ section.
Derwen College’s Community Rail Award winners
The Community Rail Awards, which began in 2005, aim to recognise the unsung heroes of the community rail world, and have their work and achievements recognised and rewarded. Awards on offer include everything from ‘best floral displays’ and ‘small projects award’ to ‘most enhanced station buildings’.
Passengers have been quick to praise the new facilities at Gobowen station, with people who weren’t even travelling going out of their way to take a peek at the impressive mural.
Martin Evans, finance director at Severn Dee Travel, said: “The toilet was basic. It was immaculately clean and well decorated, but we thought we’d do something different and see how we could improve it for our passengers.
“We thought it would be a good idea if we could involve the students from Derwen, and now passengers that use the loo think it’s very impressive.”
The delay in advance learner loans is not down to a lack of resources, but has come about because the Skills Funding Agency is trying to build funding for higher-level qualifications, according to a senior civil servant.
Janet Ryland, the SFA’s head of technical and professional education, said that growth requests had been halted by the government for the first time while the agency investigated “opportunity to build higher level qualifications and loans”.
The SFA reluctantly announced a month ago that it would pause growth requests until further notice, after FE Week exposed lengthy delays with processing.
Ms Ryland made her comments during a workshop at the Federation of Awarding Bodies conference last week, confirming that while the SFA doesn’t mind that it mainly receives loan requests for level three courses, “part of the challenge” that it faces was not having a “critical mass” of qualifications at levels five and six coming through.
Latest government figures show that numbers of learners aged 19 and over taking courses at level four and above appear to have been cut in half since loans were introduced in 2013 (see table).
Worryingly, just seven per cent of all learners accessing loans last year were taking level four and above qualifications (see pie chart).
“We are taking stock of growth requests, just making sure that if we are to respond to them we can respond to them in the right way in the interest of learners and those providers,” Ms Ryland told the workshop.
“It would be great if we had higher levels there. I’m not saying it is wrong that we got nearly all level three; I think part of the challenge is we haven’t got that critical mass of levels five and six qualifications coming through in the last few months.”
FE Week revealed on September 23 that multiple providers had been waiting as long as four months for a response from the SFA on loan growth requests – which they had made as far back as June and July.
The government was understood at the time to be struggling to cope with extra demand for new 19-to-23 loans.
However Ms Ryland insisted the delay was not – as has been suspected – due to a lack of resources at the agency.
“I don’t think it is lack of resource or anything like that; I just think it is taking stock and I think we can anticipate that there will be movement on that shortly,” she said.
However, she deflected questions from FE Week on whether the Treasury was delaying fulfilment because it expected to get a better return on investment from loan requests for higher-level courses, reiterating that she believed the loans system had negatively impacted on the higher levels.
“I think part of this is reclaiming what used to be a real strength in the FE sector, which was the delivery of what we used to call ‘non-prescribed high-level skills’,” she said.
“There used to be a lot of level four, five and six provision.
“We have the opportunity to build higher-level qualifications and loans, and it is a question of how we can do that.”
The government welcomed the Sainsbury Review recommendations, but will they deliver on implementation, asks Catherine Sezen?
From a college perspective, there is a lot to be positive about in the Sainsbury Review of Technical Education, and the government’s response to it in the Skills Plan.
These documents, published in early July, outline a new structure for technical education centred on 15 occupational routes leading to higher apprenticeships or higher technical education at levels four and five. There is a welcome focus on the crucial importance of skills to the economy, and college-based routes into employment. Schools will be required to allow other education providers access to young people as part of information, advice and guidance.
Could this be an opportunity to consider contextualisation and employment-related content?
There is also a glimmer of hope that the current arrangements for English and maths will be reviewed. Could this be an opportunity to consider contextualisation and employment-related content?
But there are questions. Perhaps the most fundamental is funding. In his introduction to the Skills Plan, the then-minister for skills, Nick Boles, outlined the unequivocal support for Lord Sainsbury’s recommendations “within current budget constraints”.
The panel recommended a review of funding for technical education in light of evidence from European and international models, where students study at least twice as many hours a week as they do in England.
Messaging about the technical option is important. The concept of 15 occupational routes provides much-needed clarity for parents, carers, students and employers. There must also be a cultural shift in the way technical education is perceived in the country; we must demonstrate that the combination of GCSE, A-level and university is not the only route available.
There will be more detail on the routes themselves in the government’s implementation plan, which is due to be published before the end of the year. What will the common core at the current levels two and three leading to a specialist option look like?
We still require information about what the transition year will consist of and at whom it’s aimed. We need to know how courses at levels four and five will work in practice and where the study will take place. Will it only be in career colleges or in FE colleges with specialisms?
Some of the 15 routes are apprenticeship-only, but few 16-year-olds get apprenticeships; there is a particular question over how this will work for protective service apprenticeships in the police and fire service.
Oversight of technical education will sit with the Institute for Apprenticeships, but how will that work in practice? Who will sit on the expert panels that will oversee the technical standards?
Perhaps the most fundamental question is funding
The Skills Plan refers to a review of applied general qualifications in art and design, business, and performing arts, among others. These applied ‘academic’ subjects sit alongside A-levels in the future plans, rather than within the technical route. They meet the needs of young people with a particular vocational passion, but who might wish to go onto higher education and/or work in these areas. These qualifications cater for over 140,000 young people a year and we await the outcome of the review with interest.
There is an emphasis on more substantial work placements rather than work experience, but some colleges are already struggling to meet the requirements for study programme placements in areas such as construction and health-related occupations for reasons of health and safety and confidentiality.
Finally, possibly the most contentious issue is the concept of a single awarding organisation or consortium for each technical qualification. This could lead to greater consistency and transferability and support understanding of the qualifications, but how and when will these crucial decisions be made? We should know by the end of the year when we see the implementation plan. For the next couple of months, however, it is a waiting game; after that it will be all hands on the college deck.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville, chair of the Independent Panel on Technical Education, will be speaking at the Association of Collegesí Annual Conference and Exhibition (15-17 November 2016)
Catherine Sezen is senior policy manager for 14-19 and curriculum at the Association of Colleges
The new mandatory post-16 resit policy for GCSE English and maths is setting young people up to fail, and government should allow other progression routes, says Graham Taylor.
Mandatory English and maths aren’t going away. They are vital and underpin most things we do. But any way you slice it, this year’s GCSE resit results were awful.
It’s shocking that 31,038 more people sat GCSE English this year, but only 382 more passed nationally. Crudely, for a grade-D school leaver, the probability of gaining a C for English was 27 per cent and for maths, 30 per cent. For those who left school with an E or below, it was just one per cent.
We’re setting young people up to fail. And ‘failing’ can demotivate learners in other subjects, too.
Frankly, we’re setting young people up to fail. And ‘failing’ can demotivate learners in other subjects, too.
Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw has blamed FE colleges for these poor outcomes, saying the quality of English and mathematics provision in colleges was so poor, it would be preferable that all 16-to-19-year-olds be educated in schools. But unless the success rates for all providers are published, there is no way we can verify this.
Colleges can certainly do better, but how many retries do we attempt? Maths is particularly tough; in one survey only 44 per cent of MPs knew the probability of getting both heads from two coin tosses! And even if you argue that a 30 per cent pass-rate is a great achievement after missing out at school, Ofsted will no doubt lambast colleges for ‘failing’ so many.
The FE sector excels in giving learners a second chance and provision that is different to school. We must keep trying. However, perhaps it is also time for government to accept that some will never ‘get’ whatever it is we are trying to measure at GCSE.
For learners’ benefit – which surely is ultimately what this is all about – we need the government to agree to different progression routes.
Employers are pleading for this. Take early years, for example, where the English and maths requirement has blown recruitment to pieces: more jobs are available because of the 30-hour childcare entitlement rule but they can’t get the qualified staff. Yet these employers are happy with functional skills and have worked with them for years.
Fundamentally, what is wrong with offering learners different routes? The core maths syllabus is a good applied alternative to the standard maths A-level. Why not have an employer-approved, real-world alternative level two syllabus – keeping the same standard and rigour as the GCSE?
The nearest thing, functional skills level two, counts towards the new level two English and maths measure in post-16 performance tables, but should count as a full level two. A similar option could be found in English, combining communication and writing styles.
We need the government to agree to different progression routes
Colleges face significant challenges in trying to deliver the GCSE resit policy in England, and sector leaders are pleading with the government to scrap it.
Dame Sally Coates in her report, ‘Unlocking Potential: A Review of Education in Prison’, seems sympathetic, arguing for a “core basic skills curriculum” that includes new adult modular GCSEs in English and mathematics, “because the GCSE brand is more familiar to employers”.
The government accepted all of Coates’ recommendations but she said in July that schools minister Nick Gibb wouldn’t approve any new GCSE qualifications because he was “concerned that introducing an adult GCSE would lead to two tiers, with one not as prestigious as the other”. Likewise, Ofqual have said they have no plans to change the linear structure of GCSEs, with examinations taken at the end of the course.
One ray of hope in all this is Robert Halfon, the minister for FE and skills, who has previously said he remains “open-minded” about the idea of an adult GCSE, with the proviso he would “need to look at it and take advice”.
All in all, it doesn’t look likely we will win this battle any time soon, but for the benefit of learners, we need to keep trying.
Graham Taylor is principal and chief executive at New College Swindon
Sitting before me in smart suit and tie, Bill Watkin, the chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges’ Association chief executive looks the epitome of respectability.
But that wasn’t always the case for this self-confessed former troublemaker, who rebelled at school during a largely unhappy stint as a boarder.
Watkin recalls one incident when, egged on by a friend, he set off a banger in his school’s cavernous dining room – which, thanks to “the widest unsupported dome of any building in the country at the time” tended to amplify noise.
“So I lit it and rolled it a few tables away from me, and it went off. The huge noise was followed by this deathly silence and a plume of smoke going up to the ceiling,” he says, smiling at the memory.
Watkin, born in 1958 in Middlesbrough, was just seven when he was packed off to boarding school, where his older brother John was already a pupil.
He describes being taken to Paddington Station by his parents, who “put me on the train and gave the trunk to the porter and waved goodbye – and that was it. I was sent off to a boarding school in Shropshire and didn’t see my parents for quite a long time after that.”
As head of MFL at St John Rigby School 1992
It was a strict school, where “corporal punishment was a regular thing” and by the sounds of things, neither boy enjoyed it.
“We used to have these dreadful end-of-holiday scenes where we knew it was about time to be packed off to school again and we’d be wailing about how awful it was and not wanting to go back,” he says.
Although he “got through it absolutely fine” in the end, the experience clearly had a lasting effect.
“As a concept it’s not a good one. It’s not something that I would ever, ever consider doing to myself or to anybody else,” he acknowledges.
Despite his mischief-making tendencies, Watkin managed to knuckle down and pass both his O-levels and A-levels. At the same time, his future career began to take shape.
Around the age of 15, he’d started doing some holiday work coaching people in French – a subject that came easily to him – and realised he really enjoyed it.
“So I decided at about the age of 16 that I was going to be a teacher, and I was going to be a teacher of French,” he says.
After a gap year working as a teaching assistant, Watkin headed off to study French at Bristol University. His time there included a year abroad in France, where he taught English to 14- to 18-year-olds in a small town near the Swiss and German borders.
It was during Watkin’s teacher training, which he began a year after finishing his studies, that his professional life “took a very definite course”, with a work experience placement in a school in a deprived area of Bristol, serving a “very disadvantaged community”.
“I found my metier, my niche, there,” he says.
I found my metier, my niche, there
Watkin says he was inspired by the school’s head of modern languages, Richard Eon, who taught him how to teach French to pupils “for whom the relevance wasn’t always immediately obvious”.
This stood him in good stead for his first job as a fully qualified teacher, at Rock Hills School in south London, which served a “difficult group of students”.
He describes an incident involving a girl coming into class with her arm covered in “badly put on bandages”. On closer inspection, it transpired there was a sharpened screwdriver tucked into the bandages, which she was planning to use later in the day.
The job was so challenging that he came close to quitting after less than a year, until a supportive colleague told him, “Bill, if you can cope with this, you can cope with anything.”
Despite these challenges, Watkin went to great lengths to engage the pupils in their education.
“Relationships with the young people were at the heart of everything,” he says.
He was involved in careers advice, sports clubs and a number of extra-curricular activities – which included writing, directing and appearing in a staff pantomime every Christmas, as well as dressing up as Michael Jackson.
“It was all about trying to make their experience of schooling very positive, a lot of fun, and I always believed that learning would happen best when young people were happy to be there,” he says.
After three years in this job, the school closed down and Watkin was redeployed to another school.
I always believed that learning would happen best when young people were happy to be there
There followed a series of roles teaching modern languages, including a stint at St John Rigby School in Bromley – at a time when the school’s headteacher, Colleen McCabe, was secretly embezzling huge sums of money.
She was convicted of theft and deception in July 2003 and the case was later turned into a BBC docu-drama starring Pauline Quirke, called The Thieving Headmistress.
When I ask Watkin if he knew what was going on, he recalls that he and the other staff accepted McCabe’s claims about lack of money – for example, that the school couldn’t afford to fix the broken boiler, or to pay for cleaners – because they had no way of knowing otherwise.
Bill was a keen tennis player
It was during Watkin’s next position, as vice-principal at Leigh City Technology College, that he made the move from teaching to management.
This led to 10 years at the education organisation SSAT (then the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, now relaunched as the Schools, Students and Teachers network) where he was heavily involved in the early days of the academy programme.
Watkin is evangelical about the transformative power of those early academies, which he says were “able to make a real difference to the lives of the young people they were teaching”.
“I met lots of young people who were disengaged from schooling. Persistent absenteeism was a problem, and on subsequent visits I would go back to an academy and see happy, healthy, productive environments,” he says.
This focus on academies was good preparation for his current role heading up the Sixth Form Colleges’ Association. He took over from former chief executive David Igoe in April this year, just as sixth form colleges were digesting government guidance on converting to academy status and says he’s “absolutely loving” his new job.
“It’s an extraordinary sector,” he says. Sixth form colleges “get better value for money, they get better grades with more needy young people, and they deserve a lot of recognition and should be celebrated.”
With the first sixth form colleges starting on the road to become academies, and many more considering it, Watkin is keen to stress that the SFCA will continue to support all its members – whether they become academies or not.
“I have no doubt at all in my mind that sixth form colleges will go on being a very important part of government thinking, of the educational landscape, and they will go on being an invaluable family supporting each other,” he says.
As if getting to grips with a new job and a new sector weren’t enough, Watkin tells me he’s recently taken up a new hobby – he and his partner Sally have started to learn the ukulele.
When I ask if he’ll be up on stage with his ukulele at the next SFCA conference in November, he says he’d need a bit more practice, but “it’s a possibility”.
If there’s an auditorium involved, however, it might be an idea to hide the bangers.
This is going to sound really cheesy, but life is a wonderful tapestry of adventures and it has elements of comedy and tragedy running through it. The important thing is to make sure that whatever comes your way you find the time for some stillness, for some humour and for some love, and that you value the here and now without investing too much in the past and the future.
Bill aged seven
Who do you most admire – living or dead – and why?
I was going to say Sir Dave Brailsford, who was the person who steered British cycling to where it is now, and Team Sky. And I’m really sad to read at the moment that there is some doubt about how Team Sky has achieved what it has achieved. The other person that I want to mention is Michelle Obama, just because the speech that she gave last week when she was talking about human decency and the place of women in society I thought was just a fantastic, impassioned and completely honourable.
Who do you turn to in times of crisis?
Even at my age I have to say my parents have always been there for me, and are still a wonderful source of support, advice, encouragement and wisdom.
What are your three most treasured possessions and why?
My first one is my bicycle – I cycle everywhere. It’s vital to me and I’m on it all the time. My second one is my passport. I really love travelling. My third thing is my Kindle. I love reading and I read all the time.
Do you prefer films or music?
I love both. I do very much like going to the cinema. I’ve seen a brilliant film recently which I made everyone who I know watch – Wild Tales. It’s an Almodovar film, and it’s six short stories about revenge and it’s just so funny – but darkly funny. And clever, incredibly clever.
1958 Born in Middlesbrough
1963 Starts primary school in Hertfordshire
1965 Sent to boarding school
1971-76 Attends Haileybury boarding school in Hertfordshire
1977-81 Studies French at University of Bristol
1983 Completes PGCE
1983-86 Teacher of modern languages at a number of different schools
1986-88 Modern languages teacher, Hayes School, Bromley
1988-90 Deputy head of modern languages, Beaverwood School, Bromley
1990-99 Head of modern languages, St John Rigby School, Bromley
1999-06 Vice principal, Leigh City Technology College
2006-16 Operational director, SSAT
2016 Chief executive, SFCA
Following its second monitoring visit since the education watchdog’s damning report, Mid-Cheshire College was deemed to have made ‘insufficient progress’ in improving the quality of teaching, learning and assessment and with ensuring learners make good progress and achieve their potential.
The report said that while improvements had been made by learners in a number of areas including GCSE English, public services, and information and communication technology, achievement rates had fallen further “in many other areas” in 2015/16.
The report said: “Too few learners achieved their qualifications on diploma courses and level two courses, and achievement rates were too low in many subject areas including health and social care, science and mathematics, construction, engineering, and hairdressing.”
This, Ofsted said, was down to “poor-quality” teaching, learning and assessment and some teachers’ low expectations of what learners can achieve.
It added: “As a result, a culture of low expectations persists in the college.”
Despite leaders and managers taking action to improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment at the college, such as appointing mentors to support underperforming teachers, these actions were found to have had “insufficient impact on the quality of provision”.
Ofsted found that “too much teaching, learning and assessment is still weak” at Mid-Cheshire, “too many lessons lack purpose”, and “teachers too often use unchallenging and inappropriate activities”.
Some students were said to have, “poor attitudes to their learning”, while other lacked proper additional support.
Mid-Cheshire’s performance management process has been “delivered with increased rigour” since the last inspection, but this “resulted in a number of the weakest teachers leaving the college”.
Other teachers were not improving fast enough, and therefore were having a negative impact on their students.
Ofsted said the senior leadership team had “taken action to improve learners’ attitudes to their study and their readiness for work” and also “improved the learning environment in many areas”.
But while leaders and managers had worked to be more visible around the college and challenge learners to be punctual, the report said “these actions have not yet improved all aspects of behaviour sufficiently”.
Areas where the college was found to have made reasonable progress included: a re-written post-inspection action plan after the first monitoring visit, to include specific actions for improvement; “is well advanced” plans to ensure that all learners carry out a placement in 2016/17; and leaders and managers introducing an improved system for gathering and analysing data at the college.
Finally, leaders and managers were said to have improved safeguarding arrangements, meaning safeguarding is now effective.
The report into the FE commissioner’s intervention at the college, published last week but dated April, pulled no punches about its problems, describing the leadership at Mid-Cheshire as “dysfunctional”.
Mid-Cheshire College was part of the Cheshire and Warrington area review in wave two, which is now completed.
