Growth requests for advance learner loans have been paused until further notice, after FE Week exposed lengthy delays with processing.

The announcement was made by the Skills Funding Agency in this evening’s online Update bulletin.

It said the agency was “changing the way providers apply for growth to their loans facility” and would not accept any new growth requests “until the new approach is in place in autumn”.

FE Week revealed on September 23 that providers had been left waiting for a response on loan growth requests made as long ago as June and July, with the government understood to be struggling to cope with extra demand for new 19 to 23 loans.

That goes against SFA guidance that growth requests should be responded to “within two working days”.

The agency published a longer statement on gov.uk today explaining why the action was being taken.

It said: “The advanced learner loans programme continues to grow and establish its market within the FE Sector.

“This is in line with the planned expansion of the loans programme to support 19 to 23- year-old learners for the first time.

“We wish to continue to support growth in 2016 to 2017 and beyond, so we are taking the opportunity to review our approach to managing loans facilities.”

It added the agency has seen a 25 per cent increase in loan applications compared to this time last year, and the review would help ensure the programme “continues to be effectively and robustly managed”.

Latest government figures showed that total loan applications made between May 1 and July 1 2016/17 had reached 19,450 – the highest figure for that time of year since the loans scheme started for the 24-plus age group only in 2013.

Just over a quarter of these requests (5,140) were made by 19- to 23-year-olds, who were able to apply for the loans in May for the first time.

An SFA spokesperson told FE Week last week that the organisation was reviewing “a significant number of requests as the loans programme continues to grow” and expected “to inform the majority of providers shortly”.

The Association of Colleges’ has for the first time added its voice to organisations calling for a delay to the implementation of reformed apprenticeship funding from May 1.

Chief executive David Hughes spoke out after FE Week exclusively revealed yesterday that publication of the controversial new apprenticeship provider register has been delayed – news that was later confirmed by the Skills Funding Agency.

The register was meant to open for applications on October 3, but this has now been put back to at least the end of the month.

Mr Hughes told FE Week after it is understood the matter was discussed at an AoC board meeting yesterday: “The changes being proposed to apprenticeship funding and regulation are complex and risk undermining the high quality provision already in place.

“If there is a delay in opening the register or confirming funding rates, I would like to see a more phased implementation.

“More than anything colleges, providers and employers need certainty and confidence about the changes, with a timetable they can rely on to plan how they will continue to deliver apprenticeships.

“It is a tough call for the minister, but perhaps now a delay in implementing the new arrangements would be the most prudent.”

The AoC previously stopped short of calling for the process to be delayed after the National Audit Office raised significant worries about poor government management of apprenticeship reforms in a report published on September 6.

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers had previously demanded a transition period between the existing register of training organisations and the new apprenticeship training provider register.

Its response to the government consultation on the new provider register called for non-levy paying employers’ apprenticeships to be delivered by existing providers on their current contracts until the end of July next year.

And, as exclusively reported by FE Week in July, the Confederation of British Industry is calling for the launch date for the apprenticeship levy – currently set for next April – to be put back.

Mr Hughes’ comments come on top of widespread concern over the findings of exclusive FE Week research showing how proposed funding changes, to work alongside next April’s apprenticeship levy launch, could mean rates being cut by up to 50 per cent for the most deprived 16 to 18-year-olds.

The research, published in August, provoked a huge national backlash.

Damning letters were sent by more than 50 Labour MPs, led by Tottenham MP David Lammy and shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden, to new apprenticeships and skills minister Robert Halfon.

The damning figures have also prompted FE Week’s first ever official campaign, launched last week in the Houses of Parliament, to oppose the cuts.

 

Peter Lauener has been appointed shadow chief executive of the Institute for Apprenticeships with immediate effect.

He will take on the role on a part-time basis alongside his existing responsibilities as head of the Skills Funding Agency and Education Funding Agency, the Department for Education announced this morning.

Mr Lauener’s appointment comes four months after former IfA shadow chief executive Rachel Sandby-Thomas announced she would be leaving – after just two months in the job.

The DfE’s statement today said that Mr Lauener would work closely with Antony Jenkins, the shadow chair for the institute.

Mr Jenkins is the former group chief executive of Barclays and the current chair of business in the community.

Michael Keoghan, currently director of FE at the DfE, will be supporting Mr Lauener as deputy chief executive, the DfE said.

DfE Permanent Secretary Jonathan Slater said: “I am delighted to announce that Peter Lauener has been appointed as Shadow Chief Executive for the newly formed IfA.

“He will be able to apply his deep knowledge of skills and apprenticeships, as well as his senior experience as chief executive, to great effect in establishing the IfA in the run up to its go live date in April next year.”

Mr Jenkins said: “I am very pleased with the appointment of Peter, who I know will apply his excellent skills and expertise to ensure that the institute is up and running from April.”

On June 9, FE Week reported that the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) had appointed former Barclays chief executive Anthony Jenkins as shadow chair of the IfA, and former managing director for Trade at UK Trade & Investment Nicola Bolton as shadow chief operating officer.

At the time, a BIS spokesperson said the remaining board members of the institute would be appointed through a public appointments process by the end of 2016.

On June 27, BIS advertised eight board member roles for the new Institute, with a salary of up to £15,000 available for each position. The application closing date was set as July 20, with interviews scheduled for September.

FE Week also reported on May 27 that Rachel Sandby-Thomas – the first appointment to the Institute – was leaving her role as shadow chief executive of the Institute, just two months after it was announced that she had been appointed.

A BIS spokesperson confirmed at the time that she would instead join Warwick University as its registrar from September.

The shadow education secretary Angela Rayner has reaffirmed her support for FE Week’s #SaveOurApprenticeships campaign at a Labour Party Conference rally this evening.

Speaking at the rally in the Pullman Hotel in Liverpool, Rayner described it as a “really important campaign”, and one which is very close to her heart.

The campaign aims to send out a message to the government that cuts of between 30 and 50 per cent to apprenticeships funding, which are planned for 16- to 18-year-olds in some of the most deprived areas of the country, are simply not acceptable.

“I came up through the FE route with a national vocational qualification in care, and let’s face it, it’s a lifeline for learners like me, to do well in our work, and people who maybe failed in their GCSEs but actually have some really good solid vocational skills,” Rayner told FE Week.

She said apprenticeships offered young people a “really good career” in whatever they wanted to do, but said they needed to be “proper quality apprenticeships” and warned that the government would damage the economy if it failed to listen to the campaign.

The stark drop in funding recently exposed by our exclusive analysis has prompted a furious backlash – more than 600 people have already written messages pledging support for FE Week’s first official campaign.

Our damning findings on the impact of apprenticeship funding reform plans have already provoked shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden and more than 50 other MPs led by Tottenham’s David Lammy to write a letter to the government begging for a change of heart.

Marsden told the event tonight that the government needed to be “very clear” that they were being “watched very carefully”, and warned they had form when it came to “disappointing 16 to 18-year-olds over apprenticeships”.

Senior politicians from across the political divide, including skills minister Robert Halfon, who defended the cuts, spoke at the launch of the campaign earlier this month.

It took place on the same day that Theresa May was asked about the issue during Prime Minister’s Questions, when she told the Commons that she “does not recognise” that there will be cuts of 30 to 50 per cent – even though the numbers come from her own government.

Mr Lammy insisted during his campaign launch speech that “it’s an absolute scandal for the PM to say she doesn’t recognise the figures. It’s her funding agency, they’re her figures.”

However, he insisted: “We will force a U-turn.”

Mr Marsden warned that the cuts were “an elephant trap in his [Mr Halfon’s] in-tray”.

Education secretary Justine Greening was also asked that morning about how proposed cuts might affect social mobility during an education select committee hearing.

Controversial plans for a post-16 academic and vocational divide have been rejected by key backer of under-fire university technical colleges Lord Baker.

The Tory peer, who founded the Baker Dearing Educational Trust to promote UTCs for 14 to 19 year-olds, took his stand in a new Edge Foundation report called ‘14 – 19 education – a new baccalaureate’.

The government’s ‘Post-16 Skills Plan’, which followed-up on from Lord Sainsbury’s recommendations also unveiled two months ago, involves replacing 20,000 post-16 vocational courses with just 15 “high-quality routes”.

It said that 16 year-olds would be “presented with two choices: the academic or the technical option” in the form of these 15 routes covering “college-based and employment based (apprenticeship) education”.

But Lord Baker said in an Edge Foundation report out this morning that while he backed Lord Sainsbury’s “ideas for simplifying technical education for young people aged 16 to 19”, he has “concerns about reinforcing an artificial divide at 16 between the academic and technical routes”.

He added: “I am convinced that many young people would benefit from taking a mixture of technical and academic programmes, in varying proportions according to their talents and ambitions, throughout the period from 14 to 18/19.”

Lord Baker’s opposition to the conservative government’s plans come as little surprise – as he was the principal architect behind the UTC model of technical-based education starting from 14 instead of 16.

Yet in July Ofsted’s former chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw slammed UTCs, telling them that they need to make “radical improvement” if the model is to survive.

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 now 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”.

Lord Baker also spoke out in the Edge report against the government’s “narrow” English Baccalaureate.

The EBacc is a new performance measure, brought in by the coalition government, which is achieved when school pupils get a grade C or above in a “core” group of seven subjects: English (x2), maths, science (x2), a modern foreign language (MFL), or history and geography.

Lord Baker called on the government to expand it to take on technical qualification from age 16 – with programmes delivered in “cities and large towns by clusters of mainstream schools and colleges and specialist institutions modelled on UTCs, career colleges and studio schools”.

In rural areas, he called for “dual enrolment” with students spending the bulk of their time in their local school, and travelling “one or two days a week to a college or specialist institution to learn from people with first-hand industrial, creative and commercial experience”.

He added: “In my vision for 2025, all students would follow a single, coherent 14-19 framework leading to a leaving diploma recognising the full range of academic and technical achievement including GCSEs, A-levels and technical qualifications.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The EBacc is studied as part of a broad curriculum and provides a strong academic foundation, while allowing students to study additional subjects that reflect their individual strengths and interests. We agree that subjects like technology are important and have worked closely with employers to review the curriculum to make sure young people have the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century.”

Lord Baker slams government over ‘narrow’ EBacc | FE Week

 

The principal of a troubled college is stepping down just six weeks after he was given the “full backing” of his governing body, following a damning grade four Ofsted verdict.

Stuart Wesselby’s resignation from Tresham College of Further and Higher Education will take effect from September 30, the college has confirmed.

It comes after the college was rated inadequate overall in a report published by the education watchdog published on August 10. It was previously rated ‘good’ in 2009.

A Tresham spokesperson said at the time that Mr Wesselby, who has been in the post since 2012, had the “full backing of the college’s governing body to remain as principal” despite the verdict.

But Simon Evans, Tresham chair of governors, told FE Week today: “It is with regret that I must confirm that Stuart [Wesselby] has decided to step down as principal of Tresham College.

“I would like to thank him for the contribution he has made to the development of the college and its students during his time as principal.

“Stuart has always been a passionate advocate of Tresham, its students and staff and I wish him well in all his future plans.”

He added Corrie Harris, vice principal for curriculum and quality, will be interim principal “pending the recruitment of a longer term appointment”.

According to his LinkedIn profile Mr Wesselby took over as principal at Tresham in January 2012, having previously led East Durham College from 2010 to 2012. Prior to that he was vice principal at Tresham from 2008 to 2010.

FE Week understands that the Ofsted report took longer to be published than the usual six weeks for a grade four, as the college tried and failed to challenge the verdict.

The college, which had an Education Funding Agency allocation of £13.3m and a Skill Funding Agency allocation of £5.7m in 2015/16, was heavily criticised by inspectors for poor achievement rates.

The report said that learners on study programmes, who made up the majority of the college’s 4,700 students, “make inadequate progress towards their learning outcomes” with the proportion “who achieve the grades expected of them” also inadequate.

Apprenticeship achievement rates, particularly for 19- to 23-year-olds, were also “too low”.

At the time, a spokesperson for Tresham told FE Week that Mr Wesselby was “extremely disappointed” with the verdict, particularly on outcomes, which was based on results from 2014/15.

The college had already put in place a number of improvements which were predicted to lead to better outcomes in 2015/16, but these had not been taken into account by Ofsted, the spokesperson said.