Lord Baker has won a major concession in the House of Lords which will force all schools to give FE providers access to their pupils, a move which he concedes will likely be universally hated by them.

The move to amend the government’s Technical and Further Education Bill, put forward by Lord Baker and his fellow former education secretary Baroness Morris, was voted through on Wednesday night.

The peer, who served under Margaret Thatcher and was a key architect of the ailing University Technical Colleges programme, accused schools of “resisting” those who tried to promote more vocational courses to their pupils.

He insisted that “every word” of his proposed clause was needed because it would be “met with great hostility in every school in the country”.

It means schools will now have to ensure that a “range of education and training providers” can access pupils aged between 13 and 18, to promote technical education qualifications or apprenticeships.

The decision by the parliamentary undersecretary of state for the school system, Lord Nash, not to challenge the amendment, has been met with surprise as it is considered unusual for the government to accept an amendment in this manner.

In fact, he spoke glowingly about the positive impact it would have.

“The amendment would require schools to give education and training providers the opportunity to talk directly to pupils about the approved technical education qualifications and apprenticeships that they offer,” he said.

“I agree that it would strengthen the bill by promoting technical education and apprenticeship opportunities more effectively, so that young people can make more informed and confident choices at important transition points.”

The move was welcomed by the FE sector, which has been highly critical of the slow progress over schools’ careers advice on skills training.

Mark Dawe, the boss of AELP, told FE Week: “Training providers have the links with all of the local apprenticeship employers and their current apprentices, so why wouldn’t you want to use them to turn the apprenticeship reforms into a game-changer for young people?

“This is why the Baker clause, as it will hopefully become known, is so important.”

He added that the implementation of the new requirement needs to be “properly managed” so that head teachers don’t get bombarded with approaches.

He confirmed that his organisation is “keen to work with” the Skills Funding Agency, the Careers and Enterprise Company and the local enterprise partnerships “to make this work”.

David Hughes, chief executive of the AoC, said the amendment would be “significant for colleges”.

“Careers advice and guidance has been failing young people for too long, with many being encouraged to stay in the school sixth form without realising that there are other options available with colleges and other training providers,” he said.

“It is vital that all young people are aware of the exciting range of options that are available to them at the age of 16, whether academic, vocational or technical.”

The 13-to-18 age range included in the new amendment means that UTCs – which have faced huge problems with recruitment at 14 – will also benefit, according to Lord Baker, who admitted that a transition at 14 “presents marketing difficulties”.

Baroness Morris, an education secretary under Tony Blair, who supported the amendment alongside Labour’s Lord Adonis and the Lib Dem education spokesperson Lord Storey, said the problems with schools were caused by “incentives the government have put into the system”.

She said UTCs were “a force for good” but their “very existence” was threatened because of the “wrong incentives”.

The legislation will also apply to special schools, pupil referral units and alternative provision academies, and will require schools to prepare a policy statement setting out the circumstances in which providers of technical education will be given access.

Lord Baker scored a victory for FE – Paul Offord editorial

Do you know where the work is?

What are employers in your local area looking for?

How can you ensure the best possible future for the people you educate?

How can you be sure you are running the courses that will lead to jobs and fulfilling careers for local people?

These have long been the questions FE colleges seek to answer. While finance streams and government priorities may sometimes skew which courses can and do get funding, these decisions are best made on the needs and demands coming from the local labour market as served by the college. But engaging with this across the board is notoriously difficult, and understanding this need has always been difficult to gauge.

Until now. 

IPPR (the Institute for Public Policy Research), the JPMorgan Foundation and Burning Glass have teamed up to create Where The Work Is. This tool was created as part of a three-year collaboration called New Skills at Work, seeking to equip the UK to compete in a post-Brexit economy and improve skills infrastructure in the UK. This is an innovative digital tool that lets you know what employers in your area are looking for from the local workforce.

This will be invaluable in curriculum planning

The website is completely free to use. The current focus of the tool is on mid-skill, entry-level roles that require some qualification. The tool also delineates between those opportunities that seek candidates with FE or HE qualifications. It helps you understand, down to national/regional and many Local Economic Partnership levels, which skills are over- and under-represented in your area and what local employers are seeking and valuing.

This will be invaluable in curriculum planning. Knowing on a real-time basis what the trends are in local employment, where the gaps are and which occupations are in demand will help colleges plan ahead and ensure that their students get the most from the skills they learn.

Brexit will put a great deal of additional pressure on employers and educators to increase and use their local skills capacity. It is therefore essential that people turning to Further Education to give them the skills they need to equip them for the future can get the right advice and guidance, career paths and skills they need to fully participate in the labour market.

There can be hidden pockets of employment and skills needed from smaller businesses

While FE colleges are great at working with lots of local employers, there is a need for an overview of the whole area to balance the input from these employers who tend to be larger and more dominant. Often there can be hidden pockets of employment and skills needed from clusters of smaller businesses. These can be seen through the Where The Work Is tool in equal measure to the skills needed by these larger, more traditional employers.

As the labour market adapts to the challenges of the 21^st century so too must our skills infrastructure and providers. It is in the ability to reflect the market as it is and show trends as they develop that makes Where The Work Is a continually helpful and valuable resource that people working in FE are returning to time and again.

We know that resources in FE are notoriously tight. In this constrained landscape, every penny saved helps. That is why this tool is completely free to use. There are no stealth charges or on-selling – it’s just a resource we developed because employers, educators and the politicians who allocate resources told us it would be helpful. We also greatly value any and all feedback on your experiences in using the tool and how we might improve it. This is a community-focused tool that we want to continue to develop in consultation with its users.

We know that FE colleges are increasingly looking to make data-informed decisions that help you serve your community. It is to help you do so that we developed Where The Work Is.

 

Clare McNeil is Associate Director for Work and Families at IPPR. If you have any questions about Where The Work Is or the New Skills At Work programme please email c.mcneil@ippr.org.

In a week of two halves, a private training provider plummeted from ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’ in one of Ofsted’s most damning reports ever, while the first FE college to open in over 20 years was finally graded ‘good’.

Platinum Employment Advice & Training Limited received the lowest Ofsted grade across the board, with inspectors finding the Birmingham-based provider to have “no key strengths” in a report published Wednesday (February 15) based on an inspection carried out in January.

The 200-learner provider for 16 to 18 year olds was graded ‘good’ back in 2013 – up from a grade three in 2010.

Inspectors found that safeguarding arrangements to protect learners are “weak and ineffective”, while learners “do not develop essential skills, such as English and maths” and staff demonstrate “low expectations of what learners can achieve”.

Prospects College of Advanced Technology on the other hand received a ‘good’ inspection report which was published on Thursday (February 16) following a 90-day delay of its release.

The Basildon-based college was inspected between November 15 and 18 last year and its performance has been of key interest to the government and wider FE sector, as it was transformed from an independent training provider in to the first new FE college in more than 20 years back in 2014.

The 90-day gap is three times as long as the average 30 days between inspection and report being published.

PROCAT was rated good for effectiveness of leadership and management, quality of teaching, learning and assessment, apprenticeships, personal development, behaviour and welfare, and outcomes for learners.

The only ‘requires improvement’ headline field rating was for 16 to 19 study programmes.

Meanwhile, Mid Cheshire College was found to have made reasonable progress in all areas, in a monitoring visit report published February 14.

It was the third such visit to the general FE college after it was rated inadequate following an inspection in January 2016.

Independent training provider The Apprentice Academy Ltd saw its rating go up from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘good’, in a report published February 14.

Leaders at the Manchester-based provider were judged to be “ambitious and enthusiastic” and to have “provided good strategic direction resulting in good improvements”.

Consequently apprentices “make good progress”, and develop the “employability skills, personal attributes and the attitudes they need in the workplace”.

Adult and community learning provider YMCA Training also went up a grade, from three to two, in a report published today (February 17).

Inspectors praised managers at the Doncaster-based provider for developing “robust ways of improving the quality of the provision and its outcomes” with the result that apprentices are now “making good progress towards achieving their qualifications”.

Meanwhile, YMCA Derbyshire retained the ‘good’ rating it had first been awarded in 2014, in a report published February 16 based on a full inspection carried out in January.

The adult and community learning provider was found to have “good quality teaching, learning and assessment”, with “most learners” making good progress and moving on to further education, training or jobs.

Also holding on to a grade two this week following a short inspection this week were independent training provider Intec Business Colleges Ltd, adult and community learning provider City College Peterborough, and sixth form college Aquinas College.

No employer provider or other FE and skills provider inspection reports were published this week.

 

GFE Colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Prospects College of Advanced Technology	15/11/2016	16/02/2017	2	0
Mid-Cheshire College of Further Education	24/01/2017	14/02/2017	M	M

 

Independent Learning Providers	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Platinum Employment Advice & Training Limited	17/01/2017	15/02/2017	4	2
The Apprentice Academy Limited	10/01/2017	14/02/2017	2	3

 

Adult and Community Learning	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
YMCA Training	17/01/2017	17/02/2017	2	3
YMCA Derbyshire	16/01/2017	16/02/2017	2	2

 

Short inspections (remains grade 2)	Inspected	Published
Aquinas College	10/01/2017	16/02/2017
Intec Business Colleges Limited	18/01/2017	13/02/2017
City College Peterborough	16/11/2016	16/02/2017