A strike by Hull College staff has been set for next Thursday (October 13), after staff voted to walk-out over planned redundancies.

It comes after FE Week reported last week that former shadow attorney general and MP for Kingston upon Hull, Karl Turner, had renewed his war of words with the college bosses over the job losses on the eve of the ballot for industrial action on Friday (September 30).

Almost nine in ten UCU members (86 per cent) who voted backed strike action, while 96 per cent backed action short of a strike, with the walk-out now set for next week.

The dispute follows the college’s announcement that it would make around 70 redundancies and close its three nurseries before the end of the year.

UCU regional official, Julie Kelley, said: “Strike action is always a last resort, but after several years of redundancies, staff have said enough is enough.

“These plans are damaging for the college, staff and its students, as well as members of the local community who stand to lose out on vital learning opportunities.

“We hope to meet with college governors in the coming days. It remains possible that the college could avoid being hit by industrial action if it is willing to engage positively with UCU to find an alternative to the current plans. The ball is now in the employer’s court.”

Mr Turner told FE Week the college’s actions would “hit students the hardest”.

He previously joined college workers on strike in May, supporting their dispute over pay and a controversial new lesson observation system.

He ended up calling for an investigation into the college’s chief executive Gary Warke, after he was allegedly sent a “threatening and derogatory” letter.

The MP uploaded a copy of the letter to his blog, in which Mr Warke allegedly wrote to “express my sincere disappointment that you chose to address striking UCU members without the courtesy of informing me”, adding: “We find your actions, two days before local elections, highly inappropriate and disrespectful to the Hull College Group.”

Speaking ahead of Friday’s ballot, Mr Turner told FE Week that “redundancies have become a yearly exercise at Hull College, which will not help staff morale”.

He said: “It is deplorable that many staff found out about redundancies during the summer holidays, reducing their ability to organise effectively, and have an input in the consultation period.”

In a statement issued today, the college said: “Hull College Group has been informed that members of UCU intend to join in industrial action at some of our sites on Thursday.

“This follows a vote by approximately 8 per cent of the Group’s workforce to participate in strike action as a result of the proposed restructuring programme.

“The proposed redundancy programme equates to approximately 70 full time equivalent posts, around 32 of which are in academic areas. This has been communicated to trade unions and staff as part of the on-going consultation.

“The group is also in the process of recruiting up to 45 potential new jobs through the delivery of commissioned areas of work as part of our highly successful HCUK Training commercial arm. We received confirmation this week that it has successfully secured the Humber Skills Support for the Workforce and Redundancy contract valued at £6m.

“The group continues to meet with the UCU to resolve the dispute and all campuses will remain open as normal on October 13.”

Ministers were in fine voice on skills at the Conservative Party conference this week, but the FE sector must now wait to find out if the lip service they paid will translate into extra financial support.

Skills were at the top of the agenda at the event in Birmingham, and featured in the speeches of numerous party heavyweights including education secretary Justine Greening, chancellor Philip Hammond, defence secretary Michael Fallon and even prime minister Theresa May, who proclaimed training a key element of the government’s new industrial strategy.

This show of support for skills – and in particular apprenticeships – follows a commitment from the government to implement the recommendations of the Sainsbury Review in full as part of its skills plan, albeit without a whiff of additional funding.

However, following Ms Greening’s insistence that the skills plan is “a big focus for me as secretary of state”, and an admission from Mr Hammond that more work is needed to address the skills gap, has led to speculation that more cash could be made available in the chancellor’s upcoming autumn statement.

Ms Greening, who was introduced by Fujitsu marketing apprentice Jess Shaw before her speech on Tuesday, made a firm commitment to “transform” technical education, and claimed there had been a “renaissance in apprenticeships” over the last six and a half years.

The education secretary said she was now determined to put technical education “on a par” with academic-based study.

“For too long the technical education they want hasn’t been good enough,” she said.

“We’ve already set about changing that with our skills plan and this will be a big focus for me as secretary of state.”

Ms Greening said her new, beefed-up department, which was recently enlarged to include post-19 skills policy and higher education, would help bring together the “building blocks” of success for young people.

“Knowledge and skills, the right advice at the right time. Great, challenging, life-shaping experiences.

“These are the building blocks to help young people be successful in their years ahead.

“And that’s why we’ve put responsibility for early years, schools, further and higher education, adult skills and apprenticeships all under one roof, in one department.”

Ms Greening added that the work of FE colleges and University Technical Colleges needs to be “pulled together” with extra investment in apprenticeships “from our biggest companies”, adding: “We are transforming our academic route; now we must do the same for technical education and skills.”

Mr Hammond, who next month will preside over his first autumn statement since he was appointed by the new prime minister in July, admitted that progress in skills had not kept up with the Conservatives’ reforms to academic education.

“We’ve made huge progress over the last six years,” he said. “How many people, 10 years ago, would have believed that in every year since 2014, maths would be the most popular A-level subject in English schools? But it was. What a tribute that is to Conservative education reforms.

“But despite the progress, there is still a huge gap between our skills base and that of our key competitors.”

Apprenticeships were also on the agenda for Mr Fallon, who announced that the armed forces would aim to deliver 50,000 over the course of this parliament, while environment secretary Andrea Leadsom boasted that the government was “trebling” starts on food- and farming-related frameworks.

The skills plan will see 20,000 post-16 vocational courses replaced by 15 ‘pathfinder’ routes – covering college-based and employment-based training.

This reflects the recommendations of an independent panel, led by Lord Sainsbury, which was set up by the government in November 2015 to look into reforms to technical and professional education.

Plans were also unveiled ahead of the conference on Saturday to fully fund IT courses for adults, putting ‘digital literacy on a similar footing to English and maths.

The apprenticeships minister Robert Halfon has sought to play down fears in the business community that some companies will “game” the new apprenticeship levy system to subsidise their own in-house training.

Halfon told a fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham this morning that although it was “inevitable” that there may be some “gaming of the system”, he did not believe it would be widespread.

From next May, employers with a payroll bill of more than £3 million will have to pay the apprenticeship levy, but they will be able to potentially claw back more than they put in to fund training of their own apprentices.

But some fear that companies will take advantage of the system and “re-badge” their own training in order to make the most out of the levy.

Inevitably there may be some gaming of the system

This morning those fears were voiced by Daniel Pedley, a top adviser to the Chartered Insurance Institute, who later told FE Week that the sector was “potentially setting ourselves up for a fall” by underestimating the potential for misuse of levy funds after he pushed the minister for answers on how the government would tackle it.

Pedley told Halfon that he had spoken to “lots of employers” and had heard that firms were “not necessarily looking to bring in new talent and help with the social mobility side”, but rather “re-badging existing training and chasing as much levy as they can to claw it back”.

In response, Halfon said employers had an incentive to use the system properly because they were designing the new standards themselves and would want “the best people for their company”.

“I’m not going to lie to you, inevitably there may be some gaming of the system but I don’t actually believe it will be widespread,” he said.

“I don’t think this will be as widespread as one may think. If there is evidence of it after the levy is in operation it will come through and then we will look at it.”

He said there were “all kinds of organisations”, including the Institute of Apprenticeships and Ofqual, set up to regulate apprenticeship quality, and said that where gaming was identified, the government would aim to “stop it as much as possible”.

But Pedley warned there was “a lot being put on the Institute of Apprenticeships” and said the issue had to be taken seriously.

Speaking to FE Week, he said: “Given that [the Institute of Apprenticeships] is a new entity and that we’ve already had one chief executive come and go, my worry is that putting so much store in that, we’re potentially setting ourselves up for a fall.

“Because the whole levy’s new, there will be people trying to game the system as he said, and we’ve got to take it seriously, not assume that only a couple of people are going to do it. There are big amounts of money at stake and you’ve got to keep a good eye on behaviours.”

During the event this morning, Halfon once again dismissed calls for a delay to the implementation of the funding changes, which some fear will lead to cuts of up to 50 per cent for the most deprived 16 to 18-year-olds.

He also acknowledged that FE Week would “have his head” if he did not get the levy right in May.

Apprentices should be sent into classrooms to tell school pupils about vocational career and training options, according to two learners who chose apprenticeships despite having been discouraged by their schools.

Ellie Newton (above left) and Liberty Hobbs (above right), both business administration apprentices with Pimlico Plumbers, told a fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference this morning that they had not been told at school that apprenticeships were an option.

Their comments have sparked calls for better targeting of careers funding and for a change to allow the apprenticeship levy to be used to pay for measures to help more young people access apprenticeships.

I was told in my school that if I got an apprenticeship I would be wasting my time

The fringe event, co-hosted by FE Week, the Association of Colleges, the Learning and Work Institute and the Association of Employment and Learning Providers focused on proposed funding reforms and on whether enough was being done to promote apprenticeships.

Ellie Norton, who is currently completing her level two qualification, said she had heard about the opportunity through a friend at the company, and said she would have benefited from hearing from other apprentices when she was at school.

“Not everybody wants to go to uni,” she said, “and at the end of the day, you can come out the end of uni and not even get a job. As an apprentice I know I am guaranteed a full-time job afterwards and I can take my qualification anywhere.”

Liberty Hobbs, who is doing a level three qualification and plans to move into management, said she wasn’t enjoying sixth form and happened upon the vacancy at Pimlico because other employers had told her she needed a qualification.

“I think we should actually go into schools and actually speak, word of mouth, like we’re doing now, just to get the younger kids aware of everything,” she said. 

“I was never told about apprenticeships. It was always ‘uni is the way forward, uni is your life now’, but it just wasn’t for me. I was even told in my school that if I got an apprenticeship I would be wasting my time and I wouldn’t have a job, I wouldn’t have a career, that I would need uni behind me to actually make something of myself.”

Hobbs added that she was never even taught how to write a CV, and encouraged instead on preparing for her Ucas personal statement.

Mark Dawe, the chief executive of the AELP, said he was yet to hear a story from an apprentice which did not talk about schools discouraging them from taking a vocational pathway.

“I I think it’s an absolute disgrace that we’re hearing that yet again,” he said, and called for immediate action from the Careers and Enterprise Company (CEC), which was set up in 2014 to boost exposure to careers and training opportunities for school children.

“I don’t know what the Careers and Enterprise Company  is doing but they need to do something quick about this,” he said. If we don’t change this, we’re not going to change apprenticeships and get the prestige that [apprenticeship minister] Robert Halfon talked about.

“The advice is not getting into the schools, and maybe more money needs to be given to WorldSkills and not CEC, because actually they’re demonstrating what good apprenticeships and good work-based-learning is.”

But Dawe said careers advice also had to target parents, as they often discouraged their children from taking up an apprenticeship.

“It’s not just the schools,” he said. “I’ve heard, on a number of occasions, that dads were resistant. Us dads can be a bit stick-in-the-mud. That ‘there’s no way you’re doing an apprenticeship, you’re going to university’ type of approach.

“I do think actually parents are another key target we need, to help them understand what the opportunities, especially the new opportunities are.”

He said parents whose children had flourished in apprenticeships should be used to promote the route too.

Other ways of attracting young people to take up apprenticeships and to help them get into the sector if they were at a disadvantage were also discussed, including proposals in the government’s skills plan for a “transition year”, although David Hughes from the AoC said he had concerns.

Hughes said he was “really keen” on the idea, branding it “sensible” and “long-overdue”, but he warned it could fail without additional funding. “I’m worried they’re trying to do it on the cheap,” he said. 

He also called for changes so some of the money raised by the apprenticeship levy could be spent on access – encouraging poorer pupils and those in hard-to-reach areas to go into further education.

“In higher education, there’s about £1 billion spent on access. In apprenticeships there’s nothing. And all we’re saying here is could you use some of the levy to spend on access?”

The government was also urged to listen to learners more, as Stephen Evans, chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute, warned that although the employer voice was “important”, the apprentice voice was also key, but often got “lost”.

Photographs: David Lake

Plans have been unveiled to fully fund IT courses for adults, putting ‘digital literacy’ on a similar footing to English and maths.

A consultation on the final details of the plans will be undertaken in due course, which will be funded from the existing £1.5bn annual Adult Education Budget.

At present the Skills Funding Agency pays half the full funding for adult short courses in basic computing, with the learner typically paying something towards the costs. 

It is unclear when the change to bring in full funding will come in to effect, although typically these would occur from August at the start of the academic year. 

The government is currently seeing through their plans to devolve funding for the AEB to over 30 local commissioning authorities in 2018. This will empower the local bodies to decide how and where the AEB is spent. 

It is understood that the plans will be included in an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, which is currently working its way through parliament. 

According to the government too many adults do not have the digital skills required for the modern world and should be considered as important as English and maths. At present the government fully funds English and maths at level two and below for adults.   

Announcing the plans secretary of state for culture, media and sport Karen Bradley said, “In today’s digital economy, being able to use modern technology and navigate the Internet should be considered as important as English and Maths. But too many people struggle to get by, with more than ten million adults in England lacking the basic digital skills they need.”

Skills and apprenticeships minister Robert Halfon added, “We are committed to making sure that everyone, regardless of age or background has the digital skills they need to enjoy the benefits of modern technology. Whether it’s applying for a job, accessing vital services or as consumers, our world is increasingly moving online – and we don’t want anyone left behind.

Our reforms will mean that people who lack basic digital skills will get the training they need to get on the ladder of opportunity for the jobs of the future.”

The plans come 13 years after the then prime minister and leader of the Labour Party, Tony Blair, tabled the idea of ‘basic ICT skills becoming a third area of adults basic skills’.

A financial notice to improve has been issued to The Heathrow Aviation Engineering University Technical College by the Education Funding Agency, due to an “apparent loss of financial control”.

The UTC, which opened in North London in September 2014, had failed to balance its budget and suffered with cash flow problems since 2015, according to a letter issued by the EFA on August 23 and published on the gov.uk website today.

Heathrow is the third UTC to receive a financial improvement notice this year, following Daventry UTC and Buckinghamshire UTC which were both issued with notices in May.

Mike Pettifer, director: academies and maintained schools group, highlighted in his letter to Heathrow UTC interim principal Barry Hersom that failing to set a balanced budget breached the UTC’s funding agreement, meaning that improvements in financial management, control and governance were necessary for it to stay in operation.

The EFA’s decision to issue the letter also triggered the cancellation of the UTC’s delegated authorities and meant all its transactions must go through the EFA for approval.

Delegated authorities may be returned to the UTC once the notice to improve has been satisfied.

The conditions of the notice include a revised three year financial recovery plan from 2016/17 to 2018/19; an external governance review; monthly management accounts; audited accounts for 2015/16; and proof of the qualifications held by the UTC’s accounting officer, chair of governors and chief financial officer.

Mr Pettifer wrote in the letter that the EFA “will monitor progress made towards meeting the requirements associated with this notice” and will “lift the notice when the requirements set out in the annex have been met”.

If the requirements are not met, the UTC could face having its funding agreement terminated.

According to the letter, Heathrow UTC has already engaged in “extensive discussions” with the EFA, and made some changes “to reduce expenditure”.

The challenges faced by Heathrow Aviation Engineering UTC come next in a long line of problems that have hit the 14-19 vocational institutions.

On September 7, the Department for Education confirmed that a UTC developed in partnership with Burton and South Derbyshire College would never open, despite the government spending more than £8m setting it up.

It followed FE Week research in February, which found that forty per cent of UTCs opened between 2010 and 2013 saw student numbers fall for the last academic year.

Many have since been forced to close, such as UTC Lancashire which said in a statement on May 3 that it would close for good just three years after it opened — due to difficulties in enrolling enough students “to secure future financial viability”.

Meanwhile Central Bedfordshire UTC had announced in March that it would close in August — after admitting it had not been able to attract “sufficient pupils”.

Hackney UTC closed in July 2014, also following problems attracting learners, and Black Country UTC shut in the summer of 2015 after a “disappointing” Ofsted inspection and, again, low student numbers.

Heathrow Aviation Engineering UTC was unable to comment by the time of publication.