Students and staff at Chichester College have made colourful blankets out of recycled grey utility covers to keep homeless people in the local area warm.
Working with Blanket Angels, a local homeless charity, students and staff at the West Sussex college produced 57 blankets to distribute to those in need.
The blankets include labels with information about local shelters, plus contact details for organisations which can offer them help and support.
Set up by Anna Stephenson-Knight, the charity usually works with local sewing clubs to create the blankets that not only provide warmth and comfort – but also details of where homeless people can seek help.
Anna said: “I’ve been really pleased by the response from the college. All day, people have been dropping in to design and make blankets – including people who have never used a sewing machine.
“I’m amazed we have made so many, I’m really grateful to all the staff and students who have given up their time for us.”
Shelagh Legrave OBE, Chichester College’s principal, added: “As a college we pride ourselves on our community involvement, and enjoy helping out with projects like this one where we can.”
Featured picture: (L-R) Shelagh Legrave, Anna Stephenson-Knight and deputy principal Andrew Green
A group of fine art students have used their creativity for a good cause, creating artwork for people with dementia in order to help them trigger happy memories.
The group of extended diploma level three students from West Suffolk College researched dementia, and created artwork based on the five senses, all around the theme of happiness.
The artworks will be displayed around St Peter’s House, a residential care home in Bury St Edmunds.
Amongst the art is a painting of a boat on a beach made with real sand and rope, sensory cushions, a multicoloured painting with working lights, and pictures with touchable, embroidered flowers.
One of the home’s residents, Pam Norman, was impressed with the students’ work, saying: “It’s very, very good. They have spent a lot of time and thought about it and people will appreciate it”.
Kathryn Smith, director of operations at the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “It’s great to see this coming together of generations in Suffolk.
“It’s very interesting and moving to see this work transformed the students’ perceptions from being scared to being comfortable to work so collaboratively with people affected by the condition.”
Featured picture: Shannon Wade, left, and Alice Buckmaster with their work
North Shropshire college has begun holding integration classes for local refugees to help them with their English skills and teach them key phrases.
Currently, there are 12 students in the class; 10 from families taken in from Lebanon by the UN, and two from Bangladesh.
Alongside English skills, there will be a focus on employability, with training also covering interview techniques.
Everything they learn in class, including names of medication, is designed to help the students transition into their local communities and let them access healthcare.
The class, which is being delivered with help from Refugee Action, a national refugee charity, has been running since September 2016, and will continue until summer this year.
The charity assists with refugee resettlement, homelessness and poverty, and offers help and advice to asylum seekers who are adjusting to their new environments. It also offers resources to organisations who are looking to help with the process.
Rosemarie Sellers, who tutors the group, said: “They are a pleasure to teach. I wish all of my students were as polite as they are. It’s an honour to be able to help in any way I can.”
Refugee Action reports that the United Kingdom is accepting up to 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020.
Featured picture: Some of the refugees in the class
English indie pop band Blossoms performed a secret gig for creative media and music students at Salford City College’s FutureSkills centre.
Media students were on hand with video cameras as the band performed six songs from their chart-topping debut album ‘Blossoms’, including hits ‘Charlemagne’ and ‘Honey Sweet’, which were filmed as part of the BBC Introducing series.
The singers also participated in a Q&A hosted by presenters from BBC Radio Manchester, with fans from around the world sending in questions for the band’s frontman Tom Ogden and drummer Joe Donovan to answer during a live broadcast.
The band, from Stockport in Greater Manchester, formed in 2013, and were recently nominated for British Breakthrough Act of the Year at the 2017 BRIT Awards.
David Gate, creative music tutor at Salford City college, said: “This is the biggest event we’ve ever had at FutureSkills and it was an honour to have Blossoms perform here. We have the perfect gig venue here, so we’re now looking forward to hosting more of the same in 2017.”
Featured picture: Tom Ogden, centre-right, and drummer Joe Donovan, centre-left, take part in a Q&A
Ofsted has blasted a college for “endemic” sexualised behaviour and incidents of sexual assault in a damning new report.
In November, the inspectorate awarded Hereward College the lowest possible grade for its most recent inspection, which saw it fall from the ‘good’ rating it had earned just 18 months ago.
That report said the college’s safeguarding was “ineffective”, and brought to light a number of alleged incidents of peer-on-peer abuse – at least one of which was under investigation “by another agency”.
The scale of the problem has now been laid bare in detail, in a monitoring visit report published earlier this month.
Based on a visit in December, the new document said that a “worryingly high proportion” of the safeguarding incidents had “involved sexualised behaviour” or “in some cases sexual assaults by one learner on another”.
“Leaders do not have a sufficiently wide range of strategies to tackle this endemic issue,” it found.
Consequently, it urged college leaders to “urgently devise a specific strategy” to deal with “incidents of unwanted sexual attention paid by one learner to another”.
A spokesperson for the Hereward said the college had taken the report on board and had “put in place a number of actions to make the necessary improvements”.
A new safeguarding manager, who will enable the college “to progress safeguarding issues more rapidly”, has been in post since January 3.
“The college is moving forward with a new chair of governors, new board members, a new interim principal and a determination from its dedicated staff to embrace the challenges that the college faces, a resolve to put things right and build upon the good work the college has done and continues to do in supporting its students,” she said.
Hereward is currently led by interim principal Geoffrey Draper, who was appointed in November after the former principal Sheila Fleming left at the time of Ofsted’s visit in October, reportedly due to an illness.
A college spokesperson confirmed to FE Week that Ms Fleming, who took up the post in 2011, is still on sick leave from the college, but refused to say whether she is being paid.
The college provides full-time learning programmes at pre-entry level to level three for people with disabilities and additional needs, and offers both day and residential provision. It had around 570 learners over the previous full-contract year, and receives high needs funding for around 280 learners.
As previously reported in FE Week, the FE commissioner is understood to have urged neighbouring Henley College Coventry and City College Coventry to consider merging with Hereward.
A number of issues raised in the report related to the specific needs of the college’s learners.
These included shortcomings in its newly revised safeguarding policy, which it said “fails to explain the college’s approach to child sexual exploitation, female genital mutilation, restraint, intimate care or bullying, all of which are important issues for this group of learners”.
The policy also failed to address “how learners with profound and multiple learning difficulties or communication difficulties might communicate their concerns or disclose if they were being abused or harmed”.
The report conceded that the college had begun to review its admissions policy, and one local authority has now agreed to “avoid placing learners with challenging behaviours at the college”.
However, it noted that leaders and managers had “paid insufficient attention to how to manage the current mix of learners more safely and effectively”.
“Leaders and managers acknowledge that they are finding it challenging to balance the delivery of the accredited curriculum with the need to increase greatly the focus on personal, social and health education, and in particular sex and relationships education,” it said.
The report found that leaders had “given initial thought as to how to help learners to behave more safely”, but that further work was needed.
Tethering a TV presenter high up to a tree is something that many people will go through their entire lives never having done, but the chance arose for three forestry lecturers from Plumpton College. Samantha King reports.
To mark the 90th anniversary of AA Milne’s beloved children’s character, producers from Channel 4 decided to mark the occasion with a programme called ‘Winnie-the-Pooh: The World’s Most Famous Bear’, a programme exploring his history, friends and exploits.
I don’t think it was too alien what we were doing with him
To get to the heart of the matter, producers recruited Plumpton College’s forestry lecturer Dean Bell, and his colleagues Matt Moss, a programme manager for foundation degrees in forestry and woodland management, and Ollie Perry, a programme manager for level one and two students, to help tie the show’s presenter Alan Titchmarsh to a tree overlooking Ashdown Forest – one of Winnie’s favourite haunts.
Tying him to the tree took the lecturers around five minutes, with a further 10 spent keeping the ropes out of shot.
Dean Bell said: “We were asked if it was possible for us to put Alan Titchmarsh in the tree. To fasten him in, we used a rock-climbing harness instead of a tree-climbing harness. It was thinner, which allowed us to get it higher up his body and he could put his coat over the top of that.
“The rope was tied securely around a branch and fastened to Alan and his harness so there was no way he could move. We daisy-chained the tail of the rope and tucked it down the back of his jacket, and his left leg covered another bit of rope.”
Luckily, Mr Titchmarsh had himself trained as an arborist, which made the process easier both for him and the forestry team securing him.
“He was very easy to work with, a very nice man, and he understood what we had to do. He did train as an arborist, so he said it’s been quite a few years since he’s been up a tree but he has himself previously climbed. I don’t think it was too alien what we were doing with him,” he said.
Presenter Alan Titchmarsh
The experience has helped to bolster the college’s connections with the media industry, and inspired students to think about the various career pathways available to them with their qualifications; one of M Bell’s students is already considering a career filming at height in the Amazonian rainforest.
“I’ve got a canopy access qualification that I got for future career options such as canopy research abroad, but a lot of people do it to get qualified so they can rig up a tree and film up and down the canopy,” continued Mr Bell.
“We have the facilities at the college to show and emulate what you would learn in that course. It’s good to show the students a different climbing method that you adopt in a certain situation such as filming.”
The one-off programme first aired on the December 31, 2016, and is still available to watch online.
Featured picture: (L-R) Matthew Moss, Alan Titchmarsh, Ollie Perry and Dean Bell
Your weekly guide to who’s new, and who’s leaving.
Dame Martina Milburn, the chief executive of the Prince’s Trust, has joined the board of City and Islington Westminster Colleges in central London.
A former journalist, Dame Martina became chief executive of the BBC Children In Need appeal in 2000, a post she held for four years before moving to the Prince’s Trust, which has an annual turnover of £66 million.
She says she is “passionate about quality vocational teaching and offering students an outstanding learning experience”, and hopes to bring her experience in leading large-scale organisations, community relations and managing change programmes to her new role on the board.
She said: “In my personal and professional life I have seen first-hand the excellent work undertaken at the City and Islington and Westminster Kingsway colleges.
“In fact, I was so impressed by their work I recommended the college to my nephew when he was looking for somewhere to study.”
Westminster Kingsway and City and Islington Colleges merged to form the new group on August 1, 2016. With a combined enrolment of over 26,500 students and a combined income of £85 million, the two founding colleges now form the largest FE institution in London.
The current principal of Myerscough college, Ann Turner, has been appointed as the new chair of the Lancashire Colleges.
TLC comprises 12 further education and sixth-form colleges in Lancashire, securing funds for education and training, and supporting collaborative work and projects.
Ms Turner has been principal at Myerscough College for more than a decade, since 2006. During this time she has helped establish the college’s reputation as one of the UK’s leading specialist land-based and sports colleges.
Alongside her principalship, she is the current chair of Landex, the national association for land-based colleges, as well as a director of the National Land-Based College, Cultiva, and a rural advisor to the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership.
Speaking of her appointment, Ms Turner said: “Individually, colleges have such a positive effect on the lives and education of the county’s young people and adults, but working together we achieve even more. I’m excited to take on this role and driving forward the next chapter for the Lancashire Colleges.”
Ms Turner will take over from existing chair David Wood, who has been in the role 11 years, bringing in more than £20 million in additional funding for Lancashire during his tenure. He will step down in March 2017.
Wes Johnson has been appointed principal at Lancaster and Morecambe College, based in Lancashire.
Mr Johnson will step down from his existing role as campus principal at the Penrith-based Newton Rigg College after almost five years at the helm.
Mr Johnson joined Newton Rigg college in 2012 following its acquisition by Askham Bryan college and, under his leadership, has seen student numbers grow from 350 to
around 1,000.
He has overseen a number of improvements to the college during his tenure, including the installation of a £3 million dairy unit at the home farm, updating existing buildings on the main campus, and a new equestrian centre.
Mr Johnson commented: “I look forward to taking up my new role, working with the local community and industry to ensuring the technical and professional qualifications the college delivers meet the needs of both individuals and businesses, and drives forward the economic wellbeing of the region.”
If you want to let us know of any new faces at the top of your college, training provider or awarding organisation please let us know by emailing news@feweek.co.uk
The government has finally announced the eight Institute for Apprenticeships board members (listed below), with the chair to be confirmed at a later date.
This will come as a relief to the sector after FE Week’s front page last week reported concern that the government remained silent on board members and other permanent leadership posts, under three months before the Institute become “fully operational”.
This has been welcomed by chief executive of the Association of Colleges David Hughes, but the immediate response from the independent training provider sector was one of disappointment that it is not represented (see quotes below).
The government has also published the long-awaited IfA operational plan which “sets out how the Institute for Apprenticeships will take forward the programme of reform and raise the quality of apprenticeships.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: “One of the Institute’s main jobs when it starts operating in April 2017 will be to support the government’s drive to deliver three million quality apprenticeships by 2020 and that businesses get the skilled workforce they need to prosper, so it is vital that employers are well represented. That is why the board will be made up primarily of employers, business leaders and their representatives.”
FE Week can also reveal that the first deputy director for the new apprenticeships policing body has been appointed.
Anastasia (Ana) Osbourne, formerly employed in the Enterprise Directorate at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, was introduced as the IfA’s new ‘deputy director of approvals’, to an audience of over 100 delegates at a private Trailblazer Conference.
The conference, which was run by the Department for Education, took place in Birmingham and was attended by employers who have been designing apprenticeship standards.
According to the Department for Education’s deputy director job pack, the deputy director of approvals will carry out four main functions.
Ms Osbourne will be expected to “coordinate and support the operation of the approvals process for apprenticeship standards and technical education standards”.
She will also “work with route committees and others to ensure excellent quality assurance practice governs the approvals process including induction, standardisation, monitoring, review, risk assessment and feedback mechanisms”.
Finally, her position awards her responsibility for building “effective relationships with stakeholders” and working with “analysts and others to develop occupational maps”.
Reactions
Update (Monday, January 30):
The Department for Education biographies for the Institute for Apprenticeship board members did not identify anyone from an independent training provider.
However, FE Week has subsequently been made aware that Paul Cadman is chief executive of Crosby Management Training.
Crosby Management Training does not have a direct contract with the SFA, but does subcontract from Dudley College and Walsall College, through contracts worth £281,380 combined.
AELP told FE Week this morning that its criticism of the weighting of appointments towards colleges, and not ITPs that are direct providers, still stood.
Another highly profitable training provider has suddenly gone bust in mysterious circumstances, leaving hundreds of learners on the hook for thousands of pounds of student debt.
John Frank Training, a London-based provider with a satellite office in Preston, went into liquidation on November 30, leaving no assets, despite recording a profit of £1.3 million in the first half of 2016.
The Skills Funding Agency is now investigating the circumstances of the firm’s sudden collapse – but its former learners are struggling to claw back their loans cash.
These students took out loans to pay for their training, but never actually saw the money, as loans money gets paid directly to the provider. In this case it was JFT, which went bust with a loans black hole of nearly half a million pounds.
The SFA is currently refusing to write off their debts, even though they won’t get the training through JFT.
The provider, run by its owner John Frank, used the government’s advanced learner loan scheme to deliver and subcontract courses in areas such as IT and health and fitness, and had been allocated £10 million in loans facilities over the last two years.
Of this, £6.4 million was paid for around 2,200 learners to complete their training with the provider.
However, up to another £464,000 of SFA funding is thought to be effectively missing, which FE Week understands should have covered another 500 learners who are yet to complete their training – and may not now get the chance.
One of the learners who has been left out of pocket approached FE Week alleging the government had been “negligent and incompetent” in the aftermath of JFT’s demise.
John Frank Training website
“I’ve emailed the SFA three times and got no response and the loan company haven’t been helpful,” she said. “They finally emailed me on December 22 to say transfer your loan to a new provider. I’ve tried to do this but you can’t transfer if you have already started a programme.”
She added that the responsibility lies with the SFA, and asked “surely I should be refunded or transferred? It isn’t my fault he closed down overnight”.
The learner claimed that up to 500 students had been left in a similar position: expected to pay back loans for courses they can’t now complete.
FE Week was told that the affected students will not be able to cancel the loans, but if they are able to transfer to another provider, their training would be paid for.
It is understood that accounts presented to the provider’s meeting of creditors showed that JFT made a profit of £1.3 million between January and August last year, a period of good business. Just a few months later, in November, the company was wound up.
A spokesperson for the SFA, which is among JFT’s creditors, owed around £42,000, said it was “looking into” the issues with JFT.
“Our priority is to help ensure learners can continue with their courses with minimal disruption, and we are actively working to identify suitable alternative training providers or colleges with whom learners can complete their studies,” she said.
“The Student Loans Company has already written to all affected advanced learner loans-funded learners. Any learner with questions or concerns should contact us at SFA advanced learner loans.”
The Student Loans Company declined to comment on the matter, other than to say “it is the role of the SFA to regulate and authorise providers”.
Lee Morris of Marshall Peters, the liquidator, said: “As liquidator, we have a duty to investigate issues with transactions and to identify whether there were antecedent transactions which can be clawed back into the estate for the benefit of creditors. I cannot tell you where that investigation is up to, because it could jeopardise future outcomes.”
A number of other providers who used JFT as a subcontractor, as well as awarding organisations and other creditors, have confirmed to FE Week that they have launched internal investigations of their own into their dealings with the provider [see box outs].
JFT’s former operations consultant, Craig Hughes, spoke to FE Week about the company’s downfall and said he believed “over 500” learners were affected.
He said the set-up at JFT had been a “very closed-up shop”, and alleged that John Frank dealt with all of the finances himself.
After JFT went bust, Mr Hughes said he wanted to distance himself from the company “as much as possible” because it was “an awful situation”.
Mr Frank is understood to spend much of his time in the south of Spain, where it is believed he bought a house last summer.
FE Week has made repeated attempts to contact him without success.
However, a former employee said he had passed on our enquires and that Mr Frank had told him that he did not wish to comment.
The SFA has previously recognised they have a problem overseeing loans funded provision, particularly where much of it is subcontracted.
Since August, the SFA has banned new subcontracting contracts for advanced learner loans, with a complete ban coming into force from August 2017.
In addition, growth requests for advanced learner loans were paused in September last year, while in November the SFA introduced caps for how much loan money can be allocated to a provider.
For example if an approved loans facility is £500,000 or less, a maximum growth limit of £250,000 will apply.
ALL ABOUT JOHN FRANK TRAINING AND THE MAN IN CHARGE
As well as being a sole director of JFT, John Frank was also appointed a director of Anydriver School of Motoring Limited on July 23, 2012, though that company is also now dissolved.
JFT was founded in December 2011 and had a registered office in Preston, according to Companies House.
It was a major provider of training, with an SFA advanced learner loan facility – some of which was subcontracted – of £4,329,224 in 2015/16 and £5,000,790 in 2016/17.
According to the SFA register JFT were also a subcontractor for apprenticeships and traineeships across four providers, with contracts totalling over £700,000.
Clive Morris, from the firm Marshall Peters, was appointed as the company liquidator for voluntary winding up last November.
FE Week understands that John Frank is currently living in Liverpool with his family, but that he is often to be found at his property in Marbella, Spain.
LEAD PROVIDERS
JFT was a named subcontractor for four lead providers, according to the latest Skills Funding Agency list of declared subcontractors, from July 2016.
The largest contract was for £260,000 with Softmist Limited, a training procurement consultancy specialising in government-funded work-based training, which trades under the name Skillspoint. It was acquired by national outsourcing organisation Staffline Group in 2014.
In a statement, the director of Softmist told FE Week: “We have launched an internal investigation on this matter.”
Summerhouse Equestrian and Training Centre LLP had a £216,000 contract, and confirmed to FE Week that JFT was their subcontractor for apprenticeship and traineeship provision, but not advanced learner loans.
Peter Thompson, its development and operations director, said: “Our first priority is always to protect the learners.
“Summerhouse has worked with the affected learners, their employers and two other training organisations to, where possible, transfer the programmes to another provider to ensure learners are not disadvantaged.”
Ixion Holdings Limited, a not-for-profit group of companies that is a subsidiary of Anglia Ruskin University, had a contract worth £144,441 with JFT, and gave it an award for ‘outstanding subcontractor’ in 2015.
Chief operating officer (skills, employment and enterprise) Jacqueline Oughton told FE Week: “John Frank did not have a contract in 2016/17 with Ixion Holdings.” She declined to comment on past contracts.
Rochdale Training Association, a company which provides lifelong learning, development and business support services, had a contract with JFT worth £121,000 last July.
But a spokesperson said this week it only had four students with JFT at the time of liquidation.
Chief executive Jill Nagy declined to comment because “we have such little dealing”.
CREDITORS
At its liquidation JFT owed £373,064 to 41 creditors, according to a statement of company affairs uploaded to Companies House last December.
This ranged from £200 owed to City and Guilds, to £67,830 to Ruby Elite Training, which specialises in personal training qualifications.
The creditors also included government bodies, with a sum of £42,888 owed to the Skills Funding Agency, £2,500 to HM Revenue & Customs in VAT, and £10,000 for PAYE.
A training provider named 360 GSP, which is located in Wembley, London, and which specialises in information technology, is owed £40,460 and a spokesperson told FE Week about its experience, saying: “Sadly, this is correct and John Frank Training left many learners in a position without a learning provider.
“We have continued to provide training to the John Frank learners to allow them to complete their courses, as we felt that it was not right to leave the learners high and dry.”
The spokesperson said JFT sudden end came as “a shock”, but 360 GSP has been working with the SFA to provide “alternative arrangements” for learners, and it hopes to “finalise this shortly”.
“We did not sub-contract with John Frank Training, we were a delivery partner responsible for providing training to the learners and we too were negatively affected by John Frank Training going into liquidation,” they said.
A spokesperson for the liquidators confirmed that it is investigating whether any transactions took place before JFT folded, which could give cause for cash for the creditors to be “clawed back”.
AWARDING ORGANISATIONS
A number of awarding organisations were also listed on JFT’s website.
A spokesperson for NCFE said: “JFT is a centre that was approved under our normal approval process to deliver several of our qualifications.
“It did not register any learners on any of the NCFE qualifications it was approved to deliver.
“We are aware of the allegations that have been made against this centre.
“In such circumstances, where there may be an impact on learners, we follow our routine investigations procedure.
“We have now invoked this procedure and are taking all the appropriate action.”
Pearson, which is also a creditor of JFT to the tune of £4,304, told FE Week that it was looking into the dissolved company.
“Pearson monitors the quality of all the centres we work with through a rigorous and published process,” said its spokesperson.
“We are currently looking into concerns about this centre so cannot comment further on this case.”
He added that Pearson would “do all we can to support learners in finding a suitable alternative centre to complete their qualifications”.
Active IQ told FE Week: “We have assisted separate training providers in supporting some affected learners who have managed to complete their studies elsewhere.
“To date we have had no response from repeated attempts at communicating directly with John Frank Training Ltd and approval was withdrawn from this centre at the end of November 2016 as a result of lack of response.”
A spokesperson for the YMCA said: “We approved them as a centre a few years back but they’ve never registered a single learner with us and we removed them from our provider list last November. We’re now in the process of updating our website.”
