Large drop in number of standards lacking end-point assessors

The proportion of learners on apprenticeship standards without an approved assessment organisation is dropping rapidly, according to new figures.

Statistics published in October showed 42 per cent of all starts (1,790 out of 4,240) until July had no assessment organisation to choose from – a situation that former top skills civil servant Dr Sue Pember described as “diabolical” (pictured).

However, FE Week has crunched the numbers in the latest government data, released on Thursday (January 26), and found that the proportion of courses without assessors had fallen by more than half to 18 per cent in October.

In all, 82 per cent of apprentices were on standards with at least one approved assessment organisation at the end of October 2016.

There were 9,550 overall starts on the new standards by the end of that month, which meant that 1,680 apprentices were still forced to start on programmes that didn’t have any end-point assessment organisations in place.

And 950 of these without an end-point assessor – representing 10 per cent of all starts – were on standards that had their first start back in 2014/15.

The lack of assessors is significant because all apprentices on the new standards, which are gradually replacing frameworks, are required to pass an end-point assessment to complete their apprenticeship.

These must be carried out by AOs that have been cleared for the task by the government, on the Skills Funding Agency’s register of apprentice assessment organisations.

Dr Pember told FE Week in October that it was “diabolical” to allow an apprentice “to start a programme without explaining not only what the end test will contain, but where it will be, what shape it will take and who will be the organisation to oversee and manage the process”.

There are currently 159 standards approved for delivery, of which 81 have at least one assessment organisation in place, while 78 are without.

So while the number of standards with an assessment organisation in place is rising, the proportion without is still hovering around the 50 per cent mark.

The latest statistical release included provisional data on apprenticeship starts between August and October 2016, as well as final data on starts from previous years.

It showed that the number of standards to have attracted at least one start has increased to 90 – up from the 56 in October’s SFR.

And while 35 of these standards have not yet secured an assessment organisation, compared with 33 in October, this represents a significantly smaller proportion than before – 39 per cent compared with 59 per cent.

Six of these standards had their first starts in 2014/15, meaning that some apprentices have been studying for more than two years without knowing how they will be assessed at the end of their apprenticeship.

Five of these standards – electrical/ electronic technical support engineer, manufacturing engineer, mechatronics maintenance technician, product design and development engineer, and product design and development technician – were developed by the automotive Trailblazer group led by Jaguar Land Rover.

A spokesperson for Jaguar Land Rover told FE Week: “Although EPA is outstanding, we are still very confident that the solution will be in place when it is required.”

The sixth standard, relationship manager (banking), was developed by the financial services Trailblazer group led by Barclays.

A spokesperson for the bank told FE Week that it had no concerns about the lack of an end-point assessment organisation for the standard.

The Department for Education said in October that it was working with the Skills Funding Agency to encourage more assessment organisations to apply to the register.

The Institute for Apprenticeships board lacks balance

Independent training providers will have every right to feel aggrieved that they are not represented on the new board of the Institute for Apprenticeships.

Read more: Who’s who?

The government sensibly wants a relatively small number of board members, and the plan has always been for the majority of them to be ‘employers’.

But it clearly felt provider representation was still important, as two of the eight spaces went to college principals.

Would it not have been useful, as well as symbolic, to have given one of those spaces to someone from the independent sector, especially considering it delivers the vast majority of apprenticeships?

Sure, there will be a much larger stakeholder group, which we are told will help the board access wider sector expertise.

But the lack of board representation will be viewed as symptomatic of wider lack of understanding at the heart of government about the independent sector contribution.

Let’s hope this is just an oversight, and when practically possible the imbalance can be addressed.

Apprenticeship starts rise despite fall in vacancies

Apprenticeship starts published by the DfE this morning show a slight increase, when comparing provisional figures for the first quarter of the academic year (August to October).

Latest figures out today show provisional starts at 155,600, compared to 153,100 over the same period a year ago.

This comes as the latest vacancy numbers taken from the ‘find and apprenticeship’ government website showed a 20 percent fall (12,810 fewer) in the first quarter of 2016/17 compared to the same period last year. And Traineeship vacancies fell 29 percent (610 fewer).

As the figures below also reveal, applications to become an apprentice rose 35 percent (up 150,770) in the same period.

So as the volume of vacancies from employers shrunk the number of people applying continued to rise.

Mark Dawe at AELP has expressed “concern” at the latest vacancy numbers, adding: “We need to make sure that the incentives for employers are sufficient to make sure that more apprenticeship opportunities become available.”

FE Week has spoken to various sector insiders, and one unsubstantiated theory is that some ‘levied-employers’ are waiting for the apprenticeship reforms to take place from 1 May, when they will be able to start using their credit. And the ‘non-levied employers’ might also be waiting until May given their fee contribution for apprenticeship standards will fall from a third to 10 percent. 

Apprenticeships and skills Minister Robert Halfon said: “Apprenticeships offer people a ladder of opportunity to get on in highly skilled jobs. With 780,000 apprenticeships started since May 2015, we are well on our way to turning this country into an apprenticeships nation.

 “I want to build on this success and keep increasing the prestige and quality of apprenticeships to ensure they are on par with traditional academic options.”

Cable delighted with industrial strategy commitment to adult education

The former secretary of state for business, innovation and skills has told FE Week he is “delighted” that the government’s industrial strategy green paper places a serious focus on improving adult education, in an exclusive interview.

The new document out on January 23 acknowledged a “growing challenge” with training for older people.

It committed to exploring “ambitious new approaches to encouraging lifelong learning”, which could include how to make the training costs people face “less daunting”; and provide better information to ensure older people who are retraining learn skills actually needed by employers.

Speaking ahead of a speech this evening at a London event organised by the Workers’ Educational Association, Sir Vince Cable praised prime minister Theresa May for “buying into” the industrial strategy, and using it to broaden out the focus on vocational education.

“I think what is crucial here is recognising that adult education matters, over and above traditional university campus learning and narrowly vocational learning through apprenticeships and so on,” he told FE Week.

“That broader adult education message had got lost, I tried to bring it back but if this government are serious about running with it then I am absolutely delighted.”

However, he also warned that there would also be “various challenges” – citing funding as his foremost concern.

“The adult sector is under quite a lot of pressure and the government has indicated where additional money is going to come from,” he said.

Sir Vince added that devolution could be another sticking point.

“Adult education as I understand it is going to go into combined authorities.

“Some of them may be very enlightened, but whether Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham and the rest do something with it very much depends on leadership at that level.”

He added: “It becomes increasingly important to know what the local mayors and their advisers are doing.”

Sir Vince served as David Cameron’s secretary of state for business, innovation and skills in the coalition government from May 2010 to May 2015, when he was succeeded by Sajid Javid.

In speaking to FE Week on January 25, he emphasised that in his view “true” adult learning should be broad and relevant to many.

He said: “True adult learning as is people who are trying to rediscover their confidence having been out of the labour force, it’s fully retired, it’s people who are marginalised, people who are very busy and only have time for bitesize learning – not going off and doing traditional university courses.”

Sir Vince said that “until recently” the focus has been too narrow with too much emphasis on apprenticeships, but it is not too late for the government to make positive changes.

He added: “I think it’s actually very welcome that we’re looking at this continuing education in a much broader sense.

“We’ve had this long battle with adult education to get away from the very narrow belief in accreditation not understanding the importance of broader adult learning, and if that’s where this industrial strategy helps with that then that’s very welcome.”

He said that he would also be encouraging his former adviser Giles Wilkes, who is now in Number 10 and leading on the industrial strategy, to maintain the focus on adult education.

“He’s an intelligent guy who gets the point,” he said.

In another exclusive interview with FE Week, which will be reported in this week’s paper, apprenticeships and skills minister Robert Halfon discussed how the industrial strategy placed reviving adult education firmly back on the agenda.

Mr Cable said he “hadn’t picked up” that the minister was “singing from the same hymn sheet”, but added, “if that’s the case then I’m absolutely delighted”.

In speaking this evening he also showed his support for David Lammy’s recent move to launch a campaign to bring back night schools, which led to a debate and 61 MPs writing to Mr Halfon in support of the idea. 

Sir Vince said: “My parents, who left school at 15 to work in factories and then progressed in life through FE and adult education, were part of that night-school tradition, and they inspired my own belief in the importance of lifelong learning.”   

EXCLUSIVE: Institute for Apprenticeships appoints first director

The first permanent employee of the Institute for Apprenticeships has finally been appointed, after ongoing delays and an absence of information about who would run the important new body. 

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 on January 24.

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.

The lucky audience witnessed both a welcome to the event and a presentation from Ms Osbourne in her new post, which is just one of six deputy director positions that will help to ensure the Institute fulfils its role of ‘policing’ apprenticeships.

Individuals appointed to the other five jobs will cover assessment and quality; corporate effectiveness; data; funding; and standards, creation and review.

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”.

Delegates at the DfE conference were also informed that operational plan for the IfA would be published and its board members announced “before the end of the month”.

However, FE Week now understands that both of these announcements are expected tomorrow (January 27).

Check back with FE Week then for further details.

Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden recently attacked the government’s creation of the IfA as “a complete shambles”, claiming in an exclusive FE Week expert piece that it was “in danger of becoming a huge scandal”.

He said: “Even though it will be charged with implementing a flagship policy, it has yet to advertise for a permanent chief and deputy chief executive, and we now have less than three months before it goes live.

“The muddle has been there from day one … What is paralysing the department?”

However, when challenged by FE Week on the reasons for delaying hires to the IfA, the DfE refused to admit that deadlines had been missed.

“The roles of permanent chief executive and deputy at the IfA will be publicly advertised in due course, following the appointment of the board members,” said a spokesperson.

“The current post-holders were appointed on an interim basis to drive forward the creation of the IfA ahead of its launch in April.”

Digital Apprenticeship Service will go live in February

The new Digital Apprenticeship Service is ploughing ahead, and all levy-paying employers will be able to register next month.

Having been given a thorough “private beta assessment” by the Government Digital Service, the online service, which lets levy-payers access their accounts and make payments online, has been cleared for use, the Department for Education has said.

The next step, a DfE spokesperson told FE Week, will be to invite “some employers” to register on the system “over coming weeks”.

She said: “We will work with these employers to continue testing and improving the service, before we invite all levy-paying employers to register in February 2017.”

It is understood that levy-payers will be able to set up accounts on the DAS, choose the types of apprenticeships they want to run, the number of apprentices they take on, and appropriate training providers.

The levy will only be paid by businesses with a payroll of more than £3 million, which represents less than two per cent of employers in the country. The money will be ring-fenced, so it can only be spent on training apprentices.

The next step will be to invite “some employers” to register on the system “over coming weeks”

Gary Tucker, DAS’ service manager, explained the rigorous process his team went through to make sure it would meet employers’ needs before handing it over to GDS in a blog in December.

“Over the past three months, the service has been thoroughly tested from end to end by 100 employers and their provider partners.”

This testing covered, for example, registration, the process of “adding an apprentice to reflect the agreement between the employer and the provider”, and “submitting provider data to evidence training and trigger payments”.

FE Week revealed last October that the government expected to spend at least £12.5 million on delivering the DAS.

This would cover the costs both to the Skills Funding Agency and to suppliers of services such as web development and user research.

Sector leaders will be hoping the new service is more successful than the SFA’s FE Choices website, which was shut down in October 2015 after just three and a half years in operation.

The website performed one of the DAS’ functions in allowing users to compare the performance of providers – though this was aimed towards the public, rather than as a service specifically for employers.

An FE Week exclusive six months after it launched in January 2012 revealed that only 6,230 people had accessed it. Our Freedom of Information inquiry also revealed that FE Choices had cost the taxpayer over £2.3 million.

The website itself had cost £630,000 to build, with the remaining £1.7 million spent on gathering and producing of data.

The high cost was picked up on by Private Eye, which asked whether FE Choices “may be one of the most expensively pointless government websites yet”.

Industrial strategy? FE needs proper funding

Government’s ‘new industrial strategy’ is another grandiose vision that lacks funding and changes nothing in practice, says Sally Hunt.

When it comes to government policy on further education, things move at a fast and furious rate. Initiatives arrive like buses, a few at a time, and usually revolve around fixing the mess the last lot made. Unfortunately, we never come close to addressing the elephant in the room: what further education really needs is proper investment.

Theresa May’s new industrial strategy is a case in point. Another grandiose vision, with technical education at its centre, but once again the taste is of the same old wine in new bottles. Much was made of the £170m being invested in new institutes of technology when the plans were trailed over the weekend. Yet the ministers rolled out to give more details on the Sunday political programmes failed to do so.

A sum of £170m – the equivalent of 10 misfiring rockets or, to put it in Brexit terms, about three and a half days on Boris’s bus – is clearly not going to fund a range of buildings around the country. At less than £20m a region, the people most likely to be rubbing their hands are the brand consultants and sign writers.

The sad truth is that while politicians talk about parity of esteem between technical and academic education, their actions tell a different story. Last year, working with London Economics, UCU showed that the annual public investment for each apprentice aged 19 and over in England stands at just 18 per cent of what is spent on each higher education student annually, while the equivalent for other adult learners is even lower, at just 15 per cent.

It’s the same old wine in new bottles

This announcement does little if anything to genuinely address that fundamental problem. A real industrial policy would place investment in education and skills at its heart, and look to build human capital and capacity at every level so that our country is skills-ready, and everyone can play their part.

Indeed, when most experts agree that without the extensive retraining of adults, there will be a shortage of skilled workers, it becomes clear that government policy must address the fundamental funding crisis in adult education rather than tinker at the edges.

The great expansion of higher education in recent decades has contributed to successive increases in productivity as well as created significant benefits for society too. It is hard to imagine now that just 30 years ago only one in six young people went to university.

What we need to see now is a similar expansion of further education. How can we have a skills policy worthy of the name if we do not invest in the mum who wants to learn English so she can apply for a job; the bright school leaver who needs a bit of extra support to get into higher education or an advanced technical course; or the middle-aged man who needs a quick boost of digital skills to get another job?

Yet the truth is that we have lost over one million such people from further education since 2009. As UCU has argued, we would need an additional 15,000 teachers even to begin to restore the capacity that has been lost from the sector.

The industrial strategy contained all the banalities one would expect when politicians talk technical education: a proper alternative for people not going to university, praise for the German model, a cursory nod to improved careers advice and a mention of lifelong learning. Worryingly, the limited section on lifelong learning seemed to suggest that the answer was for people to finance their studies through loans.

However, my message to the Prime Minister is simple. Instead of another new initiative, give us something that will make a real difference: a clear mission to boost learning for all and, at last, the funding to match. 

 

Sally Hunt is General secretary at the University and College Union

SFA forced to delay publication of 2015/16 achievement rates as “technical issues” ongoing

Qualifications achievement rates data for 2015/16 will not appear in tomorrow’s FE statistical first release because of “technical issues”, the Skills Funding Agency has revealed.

The SFA announced last month that it would “shortly publish provisional 2015 to 2016 qualification achievement rates and minimum standards” covering apprenticeships and education and training.

It added: “We aim to publish the final QAR data following publication of the next SFR at the end of January 2017.”

But it has now conceded in its online Update bulletin, published this evening, that this will not happen.

This followed major problems reported on by FE Week that were experienced by providers, trying to upload QAR information onto troublesome online data collection system, the Hub.

The SFA added today: ““Due to some technical issues with provider access to the provisional data, we have extended the QAR provisional data window to allow sufficient time to deal with feedback and to implement corrections where necessary.”

FE Week reported on January 9 that there had been a week of problems, provoking repeated complaints though online forum FE Connect.

The main issue accepted by SFA was that the QAR was incorrectly only including learners as timely, where they had an actual end date in the 2015/16 year.

It meant, for example, that a learner who had a planned end date for example of July 31 last year (before the end of 2015/16), but actually achieved this in 2016/17 with an end date of August 1 or beyond (but within the required 90 days), wasn’t being recognised.

Issues were acknowledged as far back as January 4, when the QAR team announced on SFA forum FE Connect: “After investigation we found that the automated procedure to write and load the QAR data extract files to the hub had failed to include additional fields that allow you to arrive at the results displayed on the QAR dashboards.

“It also omitted age-bands for E&T. An amended extract file will be loaded onto the Hub today that fixes both these points.”

The SFA previously came in for fierce criticism on FE Connect in early December over its management of a key provider submission of learner data, which was labelled a “total farce” and “very disturbing”.

The agency’s online data collection system, known as the ‘Hub’, was understood to have initially gone down on December 5, when providers had less than a day left to submit their fourth Individualised Learner Record returns of the academic year.

It added an extra day in light of this, but providers still complained they were experiencing problems up to the 6pm deadline.

Despite this, the SFA opted against a further extension, even though the return that month, named ILR R04, was particularly significant – as it is used to calculate not only the SFA 16 to 18 monthly apprenticeship payments, but also by the Education Funding Agency to support the setting of allocations for the next academic year.

Breaking: Industrial strategy green paper explains plan for Institutes of Technology ‘in all areas’

The government’s new industrial strategy green paper has fleshed out what it expects from a “prestigious” new network of Institutes of Technology, set to be handed £170 million to improve higher-level technical education nationwide.

The government first announced plans for the institutes in July 2015, then again through its Post-16 Skills Plan in July.

The Prime Minister’s office confirmed in a press statement last night, as reported in FE Week and looking ahead to publication of the green paper called Building Our Industrial Strategy, that £170 million of capital funding would be spent on these.

Now the green paper itself has stressed that these “institutes will increase the provision of higher-level technical education”, to ensure that it is available “in all areas”.

It explained, for example, that a “person could study a level three (A-level equivalent) at a local college, before moving on to study a higher-level technical qualification at an institute [of technology] in a nearby city”.

Details on how they would be developed were still vague, but the green paper said the government would expect most “to grow out of high-quality provision”, and “harness the expertise of local employers”.

They would be expected to specialise in technical disciplines, such as science and technology, that are aligned to promised new technical routes.

Ian Pretty: “Now we must make sure IoTs deliver”

The plan is to offer high quality provision at levels three, four and five (the equivalent of A-level to just below degree); and have “a local focus to deliver qualifications of value that meet the skills needs of local employers”.

The intended reforms to technical education, which the new institutes look set to play a key role in implementing, were first revealed exclusively by FE Week last May and then announced by the government two months later.

This followed a review led by former Science and Innovation Minister Lord Sainsbury,  which was launched by the Department for Education in November 2015. It explained plans for a radical overhaul to replace 20,000 courses with “15 high-quality routes”.

The green paper was generally less than complementary about FE, indicating the government felt their underwhelming performance had created the opening for the new institutes.

It said that while there is good provision, too many of FE colleges “only offer a broad, generalist curriculum at lower qualification levels; the sector has too little provision of higher level technical qualifications”.

It added: “While our higher education system has its strengths, our poor performance in basic and technical skills is key to the UK’s persistently lower levels of productivity compared with other advanced economies.”

The green paper also acknowledged issues colleges are experiencing with maths and English and maths GCSE resits.

Since 2013 all 16 to 18-year-old students who do not already have a grade C in GCSE English and maths have had to continue studying these subjects – and in 2015, this was further tightened to require those with a grade D to only study GCSE rather than an alternative.

Last year’s annual Ofsted report, published in December, said that while the policy’s intention to improve literacy and numeracy levels was “well intentioned”, the implementation was “not having the desired impact”.

GCSE resit results were disappointing last summer, and new progress data unveiled by the Department for Education last week showed that on average, colleges scored minus 0.27 for English, and minus 0.29 for maths.

This indicated that, on average, learners at FE colleges are not progressing in these key subjects.

In apparent response to all of this this, the green paper said today: “We will explore how to support FE colleges to be centres of excellence in teaching maths and English.”

The green paper did, however, contain encouraging words for those, including Labour MP David Lammy, campaigning for more funding for adult education and a return to widespread “night schools”.

It acknowledged that there is a “growing challenge” with lifelong learning.

“People are living and working longer, but training across working life is going down,” it added.

It committed to exploring “ambitious new approaches to encouraging lifelong learning, which could include assessing changes to the costs people face to make them less daunting; improving outreach to people where industries are changing; and providing better information”.