Over half of the delegates at the 2016 Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) conference have voted to reject membership of the Chartered Institution for Further Education (CIFE).

A majority of 54 per cent said they were not interested in applying for membership, or it was not relevant to their organisation, in an poll taken after the chair, Lord Lingfield, delivered a speech about the CIFE.

Just six per cent said they would be ready to consider membership now, while the remaining 40 per cent of voters said it might be something for the future.

The poll results came after Lord Lingfield said in response to an audience question that membership of the CIFE would cost £5,000 per year, on top of the £,3000 entry fee.

Despite the conference survey results, a CIFE spokesperson told FE Week there have already been some applications for membership.

He commented that “there are organisations going through the review process” and the CIFE will “make announcements about membership as and when organisations go completely through the process and are accepted into membership”.

He also said that his speech at the AELP 2016 conference was Lord Lingfield’s first in this role.

Lord Lingfield himself was not phased by the poll results.

He told FE Week: “I was not in the least bit surprised. This is going to take a long time quite obviously.

“This will be for a small number of providers at first.”

He added that there was some interest at the event, saying: “I’m encouraged, I’ve just spoken with somebody who said, ‘this is perfectly the thing we have been looking for, for a long time’.

“I wouldn’t for one moment think the vast majority of the people here today are going to be flooding in.

“But I think that we shall see a trickle which is followed by a flow and that finally, when we’ve got some hundreds into memberships others will be considering it – it’s very early days.”

AELP chief executive Mark Dawe showed some reservations about CIFE membership.

He said: “We can see a Royal Charter is a valuable recognition, but it has to fit in to all the other quality systems.

“If some want to get involved great, but we also want to work with them  to understand how this might fit into a wider quality system if it is going to.”

He added: “There’s a lot of discussion to be had yet. I think that the vote showed that there was still uncertainty and people weren’t going to just jump into this.

“The cost feels high and I’m sure that’s what put a lot of people off voting from definite to maybe.”

Plans were originally drawn up, by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, for the Royal seal of approval to be granted to high-achieving FE institutions in July 2012.

It was almost another year before the appointment of Lord Lingfield as chair.

The Queen then approved the grant of a Royal Charter to the Institution for Further Education in June 2015, and the body announced in October that it had been given the “Great Seal of the Realm” – the legal stamp of approval that led to its change in name.

Then in November it was announced that colleges and independent learning providers could apply for membership.

In January this year, FE Week also reported that a student’s competition-winning logo for Chartered Status for FE providers had been abandoned.

Lisa Cassidy from The Manchester College was given the award in 2013 for her winning design, after a competition was launched by the Department for BIS.

The CIFE subsequently told FE Week that the logo would no longer be used.

 

The Chartered Institution for Further Education (CIFE) is an independent body run by its own professionals.

As chair, Lord Lingfield holds a “facilitator” role, but he confirmed at AELP 2016 that “as the organisation matures it will elect a leader from the sector and already it has an embryo council and a group of advisors all drawn from FE”.

He also commented that though fellowships will be granted to “distinguished leaders in the sector”, membership of the CIFE will be strictly corporate and “open in principle to all providers of FE in England on the condition that they reach and maintain the high standards of entry which the Chartered Institution is developing”.

Lord Lingfield added that prospective members must demonstrate to reviewers, the first group of which were appointed in April, “the highest quality of teaching and learning, of governance, of financial structures and probity, of initiative, of management, of leadership, of student satisfaction and that employers, both locally and further afield, are persuaded of the high quality of the students coming to them for jobs”.

Learning providers should “push their foot through the door” with local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) and not be “downhearted”, the chair of one LEP told conference delegates on Monday morning.

Ann Limb, chair of South East Midlands LEP also urged members of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) not to worry about LEP board representation and to focus their attention on chief executives and skills leads.

Her remarks came after a welcome address by AELP chair Martin Dunford, in which he revealed that almost half of AELP members felt LEPs weren’t involving them in strategic planning.

Honestly, the boards of the LEPs are the last places where you get any business done

Ms Limb told the audience: “Every LEP does have a skills lead.”

“I would like to encourage you not to be downhearted by any reaction you’ve had, and to find out who that skills person is, to push your foot through the door if you need to in terms of getting a meeting,” she continued.

LEPs’ focus on apprenticeships and willingness to engage with private sector business provided a justification “to go and have that conversation” she said, and find “a way in which you might be able to work with them”.

Responding to comments by Mark Dawe, AELP chief executive, that some LEPs had colleges on their boards, Ms Limb said independent training providers shouldn’t “worry about being there on the board”
of LEPs.

“Honestly, the boards of the LEPs are the last places where you get any business done,” she said.

“The important thing, in any real sense, in terms of the real what we understand as ‘business’ – because that’s at such a high level, a strategic level – you do need to get in with the chief exec and the skills lead. That is critical.”

She urged: “That’s the level to get in at, don’t worry too much about board representation.”

Earlier in her speech Ms Limb had acknowledged it was difficult for ITPs to get in to the “LEP space” at the moment, “because if LEPs are thinking about skills they are having, predominantly, to think of it in relation to the area based reviews”.

She added: “But I do think you can build on that, and this is an opportunity to try and position yourself as the area based reviews get implemented now.”

Ms Limb told ITPs not to think of colleges as “the bogey person”.

She said: “You’re equally as valid in the training space as they are. You just need to get in there and make your case.”

Ms Limb said the AELP “brand” was a good one, but it wasn’t as “well known as it should be” by LEPs.

She added: “But there’s an opportunity if you keep that brand in people’s minds, and keep it in mind because of what you deliver. Please don’t be too downcast. Please don’t get too swayed out of the zone that you know best, which is fantastic training delivered very effectively because more than ever those training programmes are needed, the skills are needed and valued by LEPs and you have a very significant part to play in helping us work with you to get people skilled up,” she concluded.

Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden has accused the government of wasting three years that should have been better spent promoting and targeting traineeships.

He told AELP conference delegates on Monday (June 27) that the original concept for traineeships when they were launched three years ago – that of improving job prospects for young people who have slipped through the education and training net – was a good one.

But he felt they should have been targeted more carefully at preparing learners for good quality apprenticeships.

Mr Marsden said: “I was a very strong supporter of traineeships when they were originally introduced by the government.

“It was the right concept, but ministers have frittered away three years failing to promote it, failing to explain it, and failing to target. Even now they are unsure of the direction they want to go with them.

“Are they entry points to the world of work – sometimes any sort of work handed down by Job Centre Plus – or are they stepping stones for achieving apprenticeships?”

The criticism follows calls for a review over the purpose of traineeships after FE Week revealed shockingly low progression levels to apprenticeships.

The government repeatedly refused to answer questions about how many young people had progressed from traineeships to apprenticeships — so FE Week obtained the figure through a Freedom of Information request to the Skills Funding Agency.

The figures showed that just 450 (nine per cent) of 5,200 completions for 19- to 24-year-olds in 2014/15 started an apprenticeship.

The figure was slightly higher for under 19s — with 2,280 (31 per cent) of 7,400 completions progressing — but it still meant that overall progression to apprenticeships stood at just 22 per cent. Publicly available statistics provide only overall “positive” progression numbers to a job, apprenticeship, further full-time education or other training.

Mr Marsden told conference delegates he understood providers’ wider concerns about traineeships.

“You want to be able to use the funding to do something useful for those young people,” he said.

“But it is true that the government utilises traineeships as a key point of entry to get far more young people competitive as a starting point for high quality apprenticeships.

“The lack of promotion or a clear strategy is in my view hindering that progress.

“They must be progressive. If they are not, we are in danger of having some of the issues seen in the 1980s, where a generation of young people felt like hamsters never quite getting to the top of the wheel.”

He called for a “joined up situation, which takes me onto careers advice in schools”.

“I regard the complete inadequacy of careers advice over the last three to six years in schools to be one of the government’s biggest failings,” he added.

When asked last month to respond to concerns about low progression to apprenticeships, a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills spokesperson said: “We will continue to expand traineeships to create opportunities up and down the country so we can help as many young people as possible to get on.”

Ofsted has been accused of favouring traineeships that concentrate on classroom-based maths and English provision rather than getting young people out into the work place.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ (AELP) chair Martin Dunford (pictured right) spoke out on the issue during the conference’s opening question and answer session on Monday (June 27).

It came after the organisation’s chief executive Mark Dawe (pictured below) claimed in FE Week two weeks ago that providers were being given “required to improve” gradings by Ofsted “based solely on English and maths outcomes, as Ofsted is not willing to accept destination data as robust evidence”.

It provoked a strongly-worded letter to the paper from Paul Joyce, deputy director for FE and skills at Ofsted, denying that ratings of the subjects had an “overriding influence” on overall inspections.

Mr Dunford returned to this at the conference.

He said: “The extreme example [for traineeships inspections] would be, if you keep everyone in the classroom, everyone does maths and English, and never sees an employer.

“With the way Ofsted is judging at the moment, they would probably get a higher grade than somebody who has got a lot of young people in work for the first time, or re-entry to the labour market if they are in their early 20s.”

Mr Dawe, who took part in the same question and answer session, added AELP had been in encouraging talks with the government and Ofsted on this issue.

He said: “We have had some really positive meetings – getting understanding of why this is important.

“It [maths and English] is important, but if it is the only thing you are judged on that isn’t so good. I think we have that understanding now. If you get that right it [traineeships] will start to fly.”

Conference chair Jan Murray (pictured right) challenged the pair. She said, “playing devil’s advocate”, they could be accused of sidestepping the issue.

Ms Murray added: “Young people need English and maths to get on in life, so how would you suggest they develop those skills?”

Mr Dawe replied: “Every young person going on to that programme should be assessed up-front for English and maths, and assessment should be carried out at the end.

“But if a traineeship is, say a 10-week programme, it may not be long enough to get a qualification. If a job offer comes along, we can’t say ‘sorry you can’t take the job because you haven’t finished your English and maths’ – that is not what we want to say.”

He added functional skills were crucially important for helping the learners to develop their numeracy and literacy.

He said: “I get it that with some students with a marginal C or D at GCSE, it’s worth trying again to see if they can get that qualification.

“But for many who have really struggled with the subjects, you need to take a different approach and that is where functional skills are so successful.”

 

Membership boost to over 800

The AELP has passed 800 members for the first time, and picked up dozens of colleges in the process.
Mr Dunford told conference delegates in his opening speech that the organisation had never been more in demand.
It now has 804 members, including over 40 colleges.
The latest college to join was Burton and South Derbyshire College, which quit the Association of Colleges, as revealed by FE Week last September.
A spokesperson said: “We’re delighted that Mark Dawe has taken the helm at AELP at this critical time and look forward to engaging with the association on these and other important issues for the sector in the coming year.”
Former chief executive of awarding organisation OCR, Mr Dawe, was appointed as the new AELP boss in March.

All “credible cases” from the latest round of growth requests for apprenticeships and traineeships have been funded, the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) announced today.

This is the result of the agency’s recent “targeted growth exercise”, which also included increases in providers’ 2016-17 allocations “where there is evidence of increased performance”.

It comes after the SFA announced on May 11 that growth requests were being offered for the delivery of any of the new apprenticeship standards.

A statement uploaded onto gov.uk at the time said the offer would apply to standards — not existing apprenticeship frameworks — but did not specify which ones.

But when asked by FE Week if this meant providers needing more funding could lodge growth requests for “any of the new standards”, an SFA spokesperson said: “Yes, on standards, we have not been specific on sector areas”.

“Requests are subject to affordability and our normal credibility checks,” she added. So far 112 new standards have been approved by the government for delivery.

The SFA announced the result of this process today.

A spokesperson said: “We have funded all credible growth cases to grow delivery in these priority areas ahead of the start of the funding year.

“Alongside this exercise, we have also reviewed the baseline data used in calculating 2016 to 2017 apprenticeship and traineeship allocations, reflecting provider earnings for 12 months up to March 2016.

“Where there is evidence of increased performance, we have increased providers’ 2016 to 2017 allocations accordingly.

“All increases will be included in 2016 to 2017 contract variations which we will be issuing shortly.”

The targeted growth request – which included traineeships as well as apprenticeships – also covered delivery at higher and /or degree level, food, farming and agritech, and those that are science, and technology, engineering and maths (STEM)-based.

Earlier this year providers branded “ridiculous” the overdue news that many of their 16 to 18 apprenticeship and traineeship growth requests had not been funded in full by the SFA.

The agency announced in early February that it had awarded an additional £25m to colleges and training providers to deliver 16 to 18 apprenticeships — but there was no extra cash for 16 to 18 traineeships.

The announcement, which should have been made on January 8, was in response to growth requests submitted by providers to help fund apprenticeships and traineeships in 2015/16.

It came just a week after FE Week exclusively revealed that the delay in confirming the growth requests was due to an over-spend by the Department for Education.

The SFA was unable to say how much funding had been allocated ahead of publication.

The shadow education secretary Pat Glass has announced her intention to stand down from Parliament at the next election – having served less than two days in her new role.

Glass, an MP appointed by Jeremy Corbyn to succeed Lucy Powell yesterday morning, has written to the Labour Party to give notice she will not be a candidate “whenever the next general election takes place”.

Speculation is rife that a snap election could be called in the autumn in response to political turmoil following the EU referendum result.

Glass, a former council education advisor, said she had found the last six months as an MP and as shadow Europe minister – during which she received death threats – “very, very difficult” and described the referendum as “incredibly divisive”.

“It divided families and communities and I have found it bruising in many respects,” Glass said. “It has had an impact on both me and my family as I am sure it has had on many others.”

Glass said it had been a “privilege and an honour” to work with her local party, but said that she wanted to give officials as much time as possible to select a new candidate “given that the election could come as soon as October 2016”.

The announcement is likely to exacerbate concerns about Labour’s ability to hold the government to account on behalf of schools, which are already rife following the resignation of a further four members of the shadow education team.

 

A former civil servant at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), has challenged the head of the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and Education Funding Agency (EFA) – saying it is “morally wrong” to start an apprentice on a course without knowing what the end-point assessment will be.

Dr Susan Pember, who worked as a senior civil servant at BIS for 12 years – including six years focused on FE funding, spoke out against Peter Lauener, chief executive of the SFA and EFA, over the lack of clarity around end-point assessment for apprenticeships.

Dr Pember said: “I think it’s really morally wrong to start an apprentice on a programme when you don’t know how they are going to be tested at the end.

“You wouldn’t start somebody on the equivalent of an A-level without knowing the assessment at the end.”

She added that she felt the new infrastructure being developed by BIS and the SFA, with a new set of providers that only offer end-testing, is “open to fraud” and “misuse”.

The comments came in a debate at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) annual conference on June 28, and Dr Pember’s remark elicited a round of applause from the audience of delegates.

In response to a subsequent audience question on how to avoid providers teaching for these end-tests, Mr Lauener described end-assessment as “the servant of the process, not the master”.

This was then disputed by Mark Dawe, chief executive of AELP, who said: “You can say that but it never happens.

“The end-point assessment drives behaviour and you will get teaching to the test.”

He added: “The whole thing around end-point assessment … I just think is a nightmare.

“I have heard it in so many corners now that it is a car crash that is going to happen.”

The government’s director of levy implementation has sought to reassure AELP delegates over the new register of apprenticeship providers, telling them it will be open to providers that are “best placed” to deliver.

But Keith Smith, who heads up the levy implementation team at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, was unable to give any detail about what the criteria for the new register will be, despite being pressed for it by FE Week’s editor Nick Linford.

It comes after Mr Smith told delegates at FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference (AAC) in March that the government would be consulting on a new set of criteria for providers who want to deliver apprenticeships.

He told delegates at today’s conference that providers who currently subcontract would “absolutely” be able to access the new register, in response to a question from the audience.

“It’s central to what we need,” he said.

“For me it’s about who’s best placed to do the right programme.

“If that’s employers who want to take control, great. If it’s new providers coming onto the market, great. If it’s the current stock of providers that want to offer their good quality offer, great. All of those things are great.

“Everyone can come forward equally, level playing field, and let the employer choose,” he continued.

But when asked by FE Week’s editor Nick Linford about the consultation promised in March, Mr Smith was unable to provide any detail.

Alongside the existing “old stuff” around due diligence, capacity and capability, Mr Smith said the register would include “some new stuff around quality”.

He added: “That’s particularly the bit we want to make sure we’ve got absolutely right”.

The consultation – which Mr Smith said was “imminent” – would help the government to “build this around the best that you do”.

He continued: “What we want to do is find is find a simple, fair way to test everybody about the sorts of things you know is what should happen in a good performing or high performing college or training provider.

“We won’t make any decisions on the detail or the substance of it until we’ve engaged on that conversation with you.”

In March, Mr Smith told AAC delegates that he would “no longer be the middle man” and employers would be able to contract directly with training providers once the levy is introduced in April 2017.

He said the new register of training providers was needed because “what employers are telling us really clearly is, we need to know bits of information about the providers … we actually want to get some confidence that these providers are going to deliver a certain set of services to us”.

At the time, Mr Smith promised the consultation on the register would be taking place “over the end of spring, early summer time”.