FE champion Shakira Martin elected NUS president

FE champion Shakira Martin [pictured above] has emerged victorious in the race to become the next president of the National Union of Students – and only the second to have attended an FE college.

The outgoing VP for FE beat incumbent Malia Bouattia and another challenger, Tom Harwood, in a stunning victory announced today at this year’s annual conference in Brighton.

Ms Martin won with 402 votes, and Ms Bouattia came second with 272 votes. Mr Harwood received 35 votes, while 8 people voted to reopen the nominations.

She said: “I am honoured and humbled to have been elected as NUS’ National President. I take this as a vote of trust that our members believe I can lead our national movement to be the fighting and campaigning organisation we need it to be, representing the breadth of our diverse membership.

She referred directly to the sector in her acceptance speech, saying: “FE made me who I am today and look forward to sharing stories of just how powerful all forms of education can be when we’re all given access to it. During my term in office, I want to spend my time listening, learning and leading.”

Ms Martin has been a strong advocate for the learner and apprentice voice since being elected VP for FE in April 2015, when she was president of the student union at Lewisham Southwark College. 

She beat her closest rival – Amy Smith from Sheffield College – by 141 votes to 55 votes at the national conference in Liverpool on April 22, 2015.

After taking over from former VP for FE Joe Vinson, Ms Martin was then re-elected for another term in April 2016.

She was uncontested for the post and won at stage one, with 152 votes compared to only 11 votes to re-open the nominations.

Speaking to the conference floor last year, Ms Martin said: “FE stands for free education, further education, for everyone.”

Results of the election to find Ms Martin’s successor will be announced later today.

 

Technical and FE bill passes: what does it mean for the sector?

The Technical and Further Education Bill received final clearance from the House of Lords this afternoon, and it is expected to be granted royal assent within the next few days.

A major consequence of this will be the introduction of an insolvency regime for colleges, which could for the first time allow them to go bust.

It will also extend the remit of the Institute for Apprenticeships – most notably to cover technical education – and enshrine into law the right of FE providers to go into schools to promote vocational courses through an amendment introduced by Lord Baker [pictured above] and Baroness Morris.

Widely known as the ‘Baker clause’, this means schools will now have to ensure that a “range of education and training providers” can access pupils aged 13 to 18.

He said during today’s debate: “I think it’s generally agreed by both side that this is an important bill, it’s a beneficial bill, it’s a major step forward in improving the state of education in our country.

“We should speed it to the statute book.”

A further clause, given final clearance today by peers, outlined a duty for Ofsted to “comment on the careers guidance provided to relevant students at the institution” when inspecting FE providers.

But an amendment previously passed by the upper house, that would have seen child benefit extended to apprentices, was voted down in the Commons last week because it would “involve a charge on public funds”.

Gordon Marsden, shadow skills minister, told FE Week today that he was “quite angry that, as in so many other areas of FE, the words haven’t been matched by actions [with implementation of the bill], particularly on the issue of child benefit which still means that apprentices are treated as second-class citizens”.

There was further disappointment over Liberal Democrats’ education spokesperson Lord Storey’s move to protect future learners from being left with huge debts but no qualifications – a key aim of FE Week’s #SaveOurAdultEducation campaign.

The attempt through the bill to require FE providers to maintain contingency funds, to protect students incase they fold, was voted down by peers.

Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said it was “important to get this bill passed to give the IFA powers to sort out the standards and assessment issues as well as preparing to advise on the future funding bands”.

Stephen Evans, chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute, said the IfA now had “all the backing it needs to fulfil its important role in developing world class apprenticeships and technical education for learners and employers”.

The bill features provisions to apply an ‘education administration’ regime to insolvent FE and sixth form colleges, to put the interests of learners ahead of those of creditors.

When the proposals were first announced in March last year, the DfE said it would not provide financial support to failing colleges, following implementation of area review recommendations, and would instead allow them to go bust.

But its subsequent response to its consultation on developing an insolvency regime for colleges, published in October, indicated extra cash could be made available.

“The Secretary of State would of course want any special administration to be successful and will have wide powers to provide funding if necessary to achieve this,” it said.

The bill gives the IFA additional powers in its role of overseeing apprenticeships, and extends its remit to cover technical education.

The institute will be responsible for monitoring the 15 new ‘professional and technical’ routes with planned through the post-16 skills plan.

As reported by FE Week, the panel chairs for the 15 routes were announced by the IfA last week.

 

Meet the candidates for new NUS vice president for FE

In around 24 hours the FE sector will have a new representative, when the National Union of Students chooses its next vice president for FE at this year’s national conference in Brighton.

The election vote will take place at 12:15 tomorrow (April 26), with results announced soon after. Voters will choose between Emily Chapman, student union president at Leeds City College, and Myriam Kane, president of Lewisham Southwark College Students’ Union, to represent students in the FE sector.

Ms Chapman’s manifesto calls on students to “work in partnership” with the aim of “sharing best practice and building power for students’ unions” to “make education better”.

She says she wants “to ensure NUS is somewhere for all FE learners, a place where they can feel both comfortable and supported”.

If elected, she promises to “lobby the UK government to ring fence ESOL [English for Speakers of Other Languages] funding”, “support the development and profile of the National Society of Apprentices across the UK”, and “create a Students’ Union visit plan” targeting “colleges that need the most development”.

After experiencing racism in education, Ms Kane says being part of her students’ union inspired her by showing “how collective power can challenge the injustices we see”.

She has pledged to “lead a fighting NUS that puts defending FE centre stage – no fees, no cuts”, as well as challenging “Tories, racism, Brexit and Trump”.

Ms Kane’s proposals include bringing back “EMA [Education Maintenance Allowance] and grants for adult learners” – a key demand of FE Week’s #SaveOurAdultEducation campaign, supporting apprentices to get “more involved in NUS and campaign for better pay and working conditions”, and launching a “new campaign tackling racist harassment and campus bullying which are impacting on students mental health”.

She follows in the footsteps of current VP for FE Shakira Martin, who was president of the student union at Lewisham Southwark College when she ran for the VP post in April 2015.

Shakira Martin

Ms Martin has now held the NUS leadership position for two years, having beaten her closest rival – Amy Smith from Sheffield College – by 141 votes to 55 votes at the national conference in Liverpool on April 22, 2015.

After taking over from former VP for FE Joe Vinson, Ms Martin was then re-elected for another term in April 2016.

She was uncontested for the post and won at stage one, with 152 votes compared to only 11 votes to re-open the nominations.

Speaking to the conference floor last year, Ms Martin said: “FE stands for free education, further education, for everyone.”

Now Ms Martin is embarking on her next adventure, having confirmed on May 7 that the top job at the National Union of Students is in her sights.

She said: “It is now more than ever that we need to build a strong, fighting union that is campaigning to win for students.

“The government is slashing our education left right and centre, and you need a strong national union to fight on your behalf … We need to put NUS back in your hands.”

If she beats incumbent president Malia Bouattia, who was elected on April 20 last year, and another challenger Tom Harwood, who says in his manifesto he wants a “credible, includive NUS”, Ms Martin  would also be the second NUS leader to have attended an FE college instead of studying at university.

Ms Bouattia, who was previously the NUS’ black students’ officer, won the election last year in stage one of the count – by 372 votes to 328 for previous national president Megan Dunn.

 

The results of this year’s vote are expected to be announced tomorrow lunchtime.

Labour pledges to bring back education maintenance allowance

Labour will raise corporation tax to fund the re-introduction of the education maintenance allowance, the party has revealed today.

The payments, aimed at supporting pupils from lower-income households who stay in education between the ages of 16 and 19, were scrapped in England by the coalition government in 2010, although they carried on in Wales, Scotland and Norther Ireland.

Labour pledged to re-instate the payments last August, and Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, spoke passionately about the need for help for poorer pupils at the Labour Party conference last October.

Now the party has re-affirmed its commitment to the policy, including it in ‘talking points’ for campaigners on the doorstep, a move which indicates that it is likely to be included in its election manifesto ahead of the poll on June 8.

FE Week has asked Labour for clarification on if it thinks EMA should also be for 16-18 apprentices and part timers, with the response to be reported subsequently.

We have separately been calling for the introduction of FE maintenance grant loans for adult learners, through our #SaveOurAdultEducation campaign.

The hope is that this would make retraining possible for many more older people, by helping cover their living costs while studying, something that is already available to mature students in higher education.

Labour sources estimate that restoring EMA would cost £700 million in 2016/17, and plans to raise corporation tax by between 1 per cent and 1.5 per cent in order to fund that, and the £1.7 billion cost of university maintenance grants.

The party claims that HMRC data shows that a 1 per cent increase in corporation tax would raise £2 billion.

However, it is not known whether the new system will be the same as the one which was scrapped in 2010, which offered means-tested weekly payments of £10 to £30 to pupils from households with incomes below £30,810.

When the payments were stopped in 2010, pupils received £30 a week if their household income was less than £20,817, £20 if it was between £20,818, and £25,521 and £10 per week if it was between £25,522 and £30,810.

Speaking at the party’s conference in Liverpool last year, Rayner said that as someone who had “relied on further education after I left school”, she was “proud that we have pledged to bring back educational maintenance allowance for students in FE”.

The EMA announcement is the latest in a string of education policies announced by the party since an announcement last Tuesday that a snap election will be held on June 8.

The Conservatives, Greens and Liberal Democrats are yet to make any big education announcements, but are expected to publish their manifestos in due course.

Exclusive: Call for long-term AEB procurement pause after election delay

A long-term pause on the first ever procurement process for adult education budget contracts has been called for – after FE Week learned it’s now unlikely any tendering results will be published before the general election.

The former Skills Funding Agency first wrote to independent training providers last autumn and told them that their current AEB contracts would come to an end in July, rather than having them automatically renewed as before.

FE Week then reported in January that the resulting first ever procurement process for such contracts for ITPs, had finally been launched by the Skills Funding Agency – with original government guidance stating that notification of the tender results would be on May 19.

We asked DfE for confirmation of when these would be revealed when that deadline passed, and were told that at the present time they do not know if it will be delayed beyond the snap June 8 general election called last week by Prime Minister Theresa May, but think it “likely”.

After learning of this, Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ boss Mark Dawe told FE Week: “If there is a delay on the procurement outcome, it will put more pressure on ITPs when the colleges have already got their allocations.

“The ESFA have just set a precedent for placing a pause on the non-levy apprenticeship procurement, so why not set aside the AEB ITT for a year and give ITPs an allocation for the year 2017/18 essentially based on what they had before?”

The Education and Skills Funding Agency announced on April 12, that the decision over non-levy funding allocations had been be paused, to allow more time for the situation to be reviewed.

This was followed by more government guidance on this last week explaining how “to maintain stability through the transitional period, we will continue to apply current subcontracting rules to the delivery of new starts to non-levy-paying employers through to December 2017”.

The latest request for a pause, this time on the non-levy apprenticeship procurement after the procurement results delay caused by election purdah, comes after the Skills Funding Agency first wrote to ITPs on the issue in October.

It said that changes to contracting regulations, which came into force that February, meant that the SFA could no longer automatically renew contracts when they ended and instead would have to “procure future training provision”.

We subsequently exclusively revealed in early January that education secretary Justine Greening had given the ministerial green light for the first ever procurement process for AEB contracts to begin within days.

It is thought around 500 training providers will have applied for a share of the AEB, which totals around £1.5 billion.

But only around £250 million of the budget is up for grabs through the tendering process.

This is because colleges, local authorities and universities – which contract with the SFA through a grant funding agreement – have not been affected by the changes and will not have to tender.

Purdah refers, in the above case, to limitations set on civil service work in the build-up to general elections, due to the importance of it being seen to have no party affiliations.

DfE blasted for flip-flopping on GCSE maths and English resits

The government has been blasted for flip-flopping on its review into GCSE maths and English resits.

All 16 to 18-year-old students with a near-pass (previously grade D, now grade three) GCSE in the subjects have since August 2015 had to continue studying and resit them through the rule, alongside FE courses, rather than a level two functional skills qualification.

FE Week heard from multiple senior sources that the policy was going to be scrapped, with all such students being allowed to study functional skills instead, but 2017/18 funding guidance published on April 10 indicated that the government had decided to stick with GCSEs.

The situation has now been further confused, as when FE Week subsequently asked the Department for Education for more detail on its apparent decision, we were told that “nothing has changed” and it will “continue to examine” the policy “as stated in the Industrial Strategy Green Paper”.

It’s hugely irresponsible of the government to flounder on this issue

After learning of this, shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden told FE Week: “At a time when every report and research finding is detailing the damage to the life chances and morale that the resits policy is causing both apprentices and providers across the sector, it’s hugely irresponsible of the government to flounder on this issue.

“FE deserves a decision now, hopefully to replace automatic resits with alternatives relevant to functional skills and the real world in which apprentices need to operate and prosper.”

The Industrial Strategy Green Paper published in January, which contains a consultation question on this issue, said the government was “reviewing the effectiveness of current policy to help as many young people as possible leave compulsory education with a good standard of maths and English”.

That review appeared to have been scrapped earlier this month, judging by the key section from the 2017/18 funding guidance which caused the confusion.

It stated: “Full-time students starting their study programme who have a grade three or D GCSE, or equivalent qualification in maths and/or English, must be enrolled on a GCSE, rather than an approved stepping stone qualification.”

The 2016 annual Ofsted report had previously said that while the resit policy’s intention to improve literacy and numeracy levels was “well intentioned”, the “implementation is not having the desired impact in practice”.

Implementation is not having the desired impact in practice

It pointed out that many students – “just over a quarter” – were still not getting at least a grade C by the age of 19.

Further to that: “Inspection evidence shows that, for some students, having to retake their GCSE can be demotivating and that attendance at these lessons is lower.”

Just 34,486 – or 26.9 per cent – of the 128,201 learners aged 17+ who took GCSE English in 2015/.16, up to last August, got at least a C. And of the 173,628 learners aged 17 or above taking GCSE maths, only 51,220 – or 29.5 per cent – achieved a C or above.

In comparison, the previous year 35.1 per cent of the 97,163 learners aged 17+ achieved a C or above in English, while 35.8 per cent of the 130,979 GCSE maths learners aged 17+ got at least a C.

Education secretary Justine Greening previously strongly hinted, at November’s AoC conference, that a change of heart over GCSE resits was imminent.

She told delegates that students must not be spending “time running upwards against a brick wall that they’re not going to get over”.

Apprenticeships and skills minister Robert Halfon also told delegates: “It is clear that we need a credible, high-quality option for students for whom GCSEs are not appropriate or achievable.”

Chief executive role for new IfA finally advertised

This afternoon the Institute for Apprenticeships advertised for a chief executive. The IfA launched this month and is expected to have an annual budget of around £8m and up to 80 staff.

Perhaps surprisingly it is only a fixed term contract, of up to five years, with a salary of up to £142,500.

The advert says a key role will be “to guide the Chair and Board through the tension inherent between being an independent Crown body and one that is funded by public money. This is a tension with which the board is likely to be unfamiliar and successful navigation through it will be key to the organisation’s success.”

Click here to see the advert in full.

FE Week understands the government wanted the IfA to have a permanent chair in place, which was recently announced as Antony Jenkins, before advertising for a chief executive. 

 

The minimum wage has gone up – but are apprentices getting paid?

The minimum wage for apprentices changed on April 1 this year, soaring from a measly £3.40 per hour to a princely £3.50 per hour.

And though this extra cash – which represents an impressive 2.9% increase – is probably very welcome for young apprentices, we at FE Week started to wonder whether employers were paying attention, after the new rate came in without much fanfare.

So we set ourselves a challenge: could we find 15 job adverts on the government’s own apprenticeships portal advertising the wrong rate in 15 minutes? If we could, we reckoned that might constitute a problem.

In the end, a 15-minute scan on April 12 uncovered 11 separate apprenticeship adverts featuring illegal wages – not total endemic, but not statistically insignificant either.

We reported these to the providers, including Vision West Nottinghamshire College, which was listed as provider for seven of the adverts.

The other three providers affected were the London Hairdressing Apprenticeship Academy Limited, Bexleyheath-based Skills for Growth, and Walsall-based Performance Through People.

To be fair to them all, when we alerted them, they did quickly acknowledge and correct the errors.

We decided to take our findings to the labour market tsar Sir David Metcalf, who was appointed by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in January to help protect apprentices paid below the minimum wage.

We wanted to know what action he would be taking to crack down on employers who pay their apprentices illegal wages – and why these inaccurate adverts had been allowed on the site.

A spokesperson for Sir David at BEIS said he was still putting together a strategy for his priorities, and that it would be available in due course.

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: “Employers are responsible for ensuring that their apprenticeship vacancies comply with the minimum wages,” we were told. “As soon as we become aware of any adverts which do not comply, we ensure these are taken down.”

As soon as we become aware of any adverts which do not comply, we ensure these are taken down

Employers not paying apprentices the minimum wage would “face the legal consequences”, she added.

Our little experiment came almost a year after a major survey on apprentice wages and training kicked off, with results long overdue.

Even though FE Week has learned that the final draft of the 2016 Apprenticeship Pay Survey was given to the government way back in January by the researchers who carried it out, its results have still not seen the light of day.

The survey, announced in May by the former Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, aimed to help the government monitor whether employers were paying the national minimum wage.

Interim “high-level” results were released in October as part of a report for the Low Pay Commission – indicating that the proportion of apprentices earning below the NMW had gone up – but the full findings are still under lock and key.

Mark Winterbotham, the director of the firm which carried out the survey, told FE Week that he didn’t know why it hadn’t yet been published.

He described the project as a “large scale survey of 9,422 apprentices, conducted by telephone from early June 2016 to the end of July 2016”.

He insisted that his organisation had handed the final drafts of the reports over to the government in January, but admitted he had “not had any communication since early March” with the research team at BEIS, which replaced BIS in July.

“They’d be the only ones able to say why it’s not been published yet,” he said.

But the government, asked this week when the report could be expected and what had caused the hold-up, would only say it would be published “in due course”.

The survey was described by BIS as an “important research project providing information on training, hours and pay from current apprentices”.

The survey findings were to be “used by government to help set pay policy generally and make improvements in apprenticeship training” and would “enable us to look at wage levels nationally, measure changes with previous years and monitor whether employers are adhering to the rules on fair pay”.

According to the Low Pay Commission’s report: “The 2016 survey shows that the vast majority (83 per cent) of apprentices, where an assessment can be made, are paid at or above the appropriate NMW rate” – suggesting that 17 per cent were not.

This is up from the 14 per cent found during the 2014 survey, which was based on telephone interviews with 9,367 apprentices.

In 2012, the Apprenticeship Pay Survey, which takes place every two years, found that 29 per cent of the 5,635 apprentices it interviewed were underpaid.

A first step to loans justice for learners in the lurch

Learners left with huge loan debts and no qualifications when their providers went bust have had their repayments deferred for a year in a partial victory for FE Week’s campaign for loan justice.

We have been demanding government action on the issue since January, when we discovered hundreds of learners were on the hook for thousands of pounds in FE loans they couldn’t use after their provider John Frank Training suddenly went bust – and the government wouldn’t write off their debt.

We soon found many more learners affected by the collapse of Hampshire-based Edudo Ltd and Darlington’s Focus Training & Development Ltd, and immediately launched a campaign to force the government to let them off their debts – part of #SaveOurAdultEducation.

Now, after months of sustained pressure, the government has indicated for the first time that it could be softening its position.

FE Week has seen a letter sent to the thousands of students affected by provider collapses, telling them that the government will “defer your repayment status for one year”.

“Our priority is to help support affected learners and make sure they can transfer to a new provider as soon as possible and continue with their learning,” said a spokesperson for the Department for Education.

“To ensure affected learners are supported, we have written to the Student Loans Company asking it to take appropriate steps so that any loan repayments will be deferred during the April 2017 to March 2018 tax year.”

He added the department was “considering whether any further action is needed to avoid learners being unfairly disadvantaged”.

We have written to the Student Loans Company asking it to take appropriate steps so that any loan repayments will be deferred

An SLC spokesperson also conceded that “in some cases, repayments had already started and SLC has notified the employers of those in this situation to stop any further payments being taken”.

He added: “SLC has written to all students affected to confirm that their repayments have been deferred for one year.

“If they do not meet the criteria for repayment in April 2018 we will not start to make any repayments until they are eligible to do so.”

Asim Shaheen, aged 49, was a former learner with John Frank Training who was left more than £8,000 in debt after it went bust under murky circumstances in November.

He works nights as a chef and told FE Week that his bosses at a restaurant in Stoke had recently received a letter from the SLC asking them to start deducting loan repayments from his wages. Another was sent a week later, saying there had been a mistake and that deductions were not necessary, he claimed.

Mr Shaheen also received the letter sent to affected learners, which said: “We can confirm that we will defer your repayment status for one year.

“This means that if you meet currently meet the criteria for repayment of your advanced learner loan, or meet the requirement within the next tax year, we will not start to take any payments before April 2018.

“This is to allow you sufficient time to make alternative arrangements to complete your qualification.”

He told FE Week that he was pleased the government had recognised the leaners’ plight and had held off on repayment demands.

However, he insisted that “they haven’t solved the problem”, and “are just putting it on hold for a year. It isn’t fair of them to carry on demanding repayments in the long term, and I hope the deferment gives them time to think and do the right thing: write-off our loans.”

FE Week will continue campaigning for the loans to be scrapped, so watch this space.