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No surprise over employer provider failures

John Hyde explains why he thinks the government’s drive to encourage more employers to run their own training will end in tears.

It comes as no surprise that firms running their own apprenticeship programmes, with some notable exceptions, are less successful in both completion rates and Ofsted grades than specialist training providers.

Indeed, in my sector, hospitality, most employers with their own direct contract are coming in well below a 60 per cent success rate while the major private providers achieve 70 per cent plus.

Quite rightly, commercial companies are in business to make a profit, and public sector organisations to provide value for money to the taxpayers.

Apprenticeships are not their primary business and their priority is to turn their apprentices into skilled employees.

On the other hand, apprenticeship training providers need not only to produce skilled apprentices for their employer clients, but jump through all the hoops Ofsted and the Skills Funding Agency throw at us.

It makes sense that to survive, to retain our existing clients and attract new clients, we need to strive for excellent achievement and completion rates and levels one or two Ofsted inspection rates.

What seems like common sense to the sector was sadly missing from the thinking of Doug Richards, and ministers Matthew Hancock and now Nick Boles.

Apprenticeships are not their primary business and their priority is to turn their apprentices into skilled employees

The empirical evidence shows that overall, private apprenticeship training providers substantially outperform those firms who have direct apprenticeship contracts.

This was never more clearly demonstrated than during the UK Commission for Employment and Skills’ employer-led pilots.

Those who suffer are the learners whose future careers are jeopardised by being taught by the wrong provider.

This is more worrying in the context of the current government’s mantra of putting the employers in the so-called driving seat.

Not only has this been shown to disadvantage learners, it is reducing completion rates at a time when apprenticeships are beginning to be seen by the public as a viable alternative route to university.

Many employers are expected to become providers themselves when the levy is introduced next year.

Lessons must be learned from the past to ensure that employers can deliver to the same or a higher level than private training providers.

The introduction of the levy will increase the funding for apprenticeships by two thirds in England from £1.5bn to £2.5bn in a full year.

While some of the funding will be underspent as some employers will opt out or have insufficient need to spend their whole levy, there will be a substantial increase in apprenticeship numbers.

All the messages we have received to date from the government regarding the levy is about process.

There is a dearth of strategic thinking. Where are all the additional trainers and assessors going to come from?

What work has the Education and Training Foundation and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills done to look at the capability of the provider base to recruit and train sufficient staff to meet this growth?

Perhaps more worrying is the financial capacity of the provider base to meet the demands of the 20,000 levy payers.

The revised register of approved training providers needs to look more closely at a provider’s financial reserve or overdraft facilities rather than simply their historical financial health.

Only six providers have an adult skills budget in excess of £20m, and just 28 have a £10m-plus contract.

Whatever else the new register contains, it must show employers searching the Digital Apprenticeship Service for a provider to deliver a multimillion-pound contract, that the provider has the financial reserves or facilities and the staff capacity to undertake such a contract.

The current structure of the provider base, with thousands of small local providers, will not meet the requirements of most of the levy-payers who in the majority of cases are multi-site national or international concerns.

Let’s add this to list of levy questions that the government will need to find an answer for soon.

Changing perceptions on mental health

Gareth Parry has depression, which hasn’t stopped him from rising to the top of his organisation. He explains here why apprentice employers need to change their own perceptions of people with mental health issues.

The government’s new Get In Go Far campaign to encourage young people to choose an apprenticeship at the start of their working life presents welcome opportunities for those who might otherwise be excluded from worthwhile careers.

The target to create three million additional apprenticeships by 2020 is ambitious, and campaigns such as Get In Go Far are compelling, but if apprenticeships are to be truly inclusive, the needs of young people with mental health problems should be understood and addressed.

Disabled people, including anyone with a declared mental health condition, are currently underrepresented on apprenticeship programmes.

The Mental Health Foundation estimates that about one in 10 children and young people are affected by mental health problems, including depression and anxiety, which are often a direct response to what is happening in their lives.

Issues with relationships, self-harm, eating disorders and the consequences of cyberbullying are all increasingly prevalent for young people today, and can challenge a young person’s emotional wellbeing.

It is critically important that a young person facing mental health challenges has the same opportunity to complete their apprenticeship as non-disabled apprentices.

Not to do so can have a negative long-term impact on their life chances, and so two things are required to ensure equality of opportunity.

Firstly, employers and providers must make sure they receive tailored, individual support to remove the risk of their not completing their apprenticeships.

Understanding the pressures and challenges facing young people with mental health conditions, and providing training, help and guidance which acknowledges their issues, will go a long way toward easing them, through their apprenticeships.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) have together to produce a programme which does just this.

I have been open with Remploy colleagues about my own mental health challenges and heartened by the response

Supporting Apprentices, which my organisation delivers for the government, is funded by DWP and is free to the apprentice, the employer, or the training provider.

It provides expert support for young people who are finding it difficult to continue their apprenticeship, or are signed off sick, because of a mental health condition.

Secondly, we should be challenging the perceptions of employers, and even training providers, around mental ill-health.

So how do we change perceptions of mental health in the workplace?

There should be no stigma attached to mental health, which is a reality of daily life for many millions of people.

Being more open about mental health helps normalise something which is all too often still a taboo.

This includes business leaders themselves talking about the issues they may face.

Company executives who are open about discussing their own anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues, can help to change a culture which often compartmentalises colleagues as unreliable and difficult to deal with.

I have been open with Remploy colleagues about my own mental health challenges and heartened by the response I received, and the number of colleagues who have since been more open about their issues.

Government figures suggest that one in six people currently in work are experiencing some form of mental health issue, right now.

Business leaders, including those in the FE sector, have the responsibility to lead by example to make workplaces much more inclusive and accessible for people with mental health issues and, in particular, apprentices, who should have so much to look forward to.

Sir David Collins to step down before area reviews complete

The FE Commissioner Sir David Collins will stand down in November — even though the long-delayed national programme of post-16 education and training area reviews will still be ongoing.

The move, which was confirmed to FE Week on Tuesday (June 7) by a spokesperson from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, raised concerns over the timing of his departure and who will replace him.

Sir David has overall responsibility for every area review, and is chair of nine area review steering groups across the first three waves – but only two of them have completed so far.

The most recent of the nine to launch was Coventry and Warwickshire, which held its first steering group meeting on May 4.

But there is a high chance that this review will not be finished before Sir David leaves, as five of the seven areas from the first wave of reviews have so far lasted more than six months.

One principal involved in one of delayed reviews has warned that the wrong choice of successor could slow things down further.

Chris Thomson, principal of Brighton and Hove Sixth Form College, part of the Sussex area review, said Sir David’s “willingness to have real open, honest engagement with listening as well as advising” had been a “hallmark” of the reviews.

“In a nutshell, he’s found a way of working with the grain, and it would be all too easy for another person to come in and start to work against the grain.

“I think that would be unwise, because without the colleges’ cooperation, the reviews would become a very difficult process, and would risk bogging down,” he warned.

Sir Geoff Hall, general secretary of the Principals’ Professional Council, praised Sir David for his intervention work with colleges which are either failing or at risk of doing so.

He said: “Supported by a very experienced team of turnaround experts, Sir David has been by any measure successful beyond expectation.

“If colleges heed his wise words there should be far fewer rescues needed in future.”

A BIS spokesperson said that Sir David’s leaving date was “in line with arrangements agreed at the outset of the extension of his appointment in 2015”, and insisted his departure would not affect the schedule for the current area reviews.

The department is “now looking to appoint his successor”, who is expected to be in post early enough to allow for a handover period before his departure.

“Sir David will continue to lead oversight of the process until his departure,” she added. “Arrangements for chairing area review steering groups will continue to be decided on an area by area basis, and we expect Sir David to continue to lead those he is chairing until his departure.”

Sir David, a former interim chief executive of the Learning and Skills Improvement Service, was principal of South Cheshire College Group for 16 years from 1993, before serving the same post in an interim capacity at Guildford College Group for 2011/12.

FE Week broke the news that he had been appointed as FE Commissioner back in November 2013.

In addition to leading the area review programme, he has also overseen interventions at more than 40 providers.

It was announced that Sir David had been given a knighthood for services to the sector in last New Year’s Honours list.

He did not respond to FE Week’s request for a comment.

Peter Kyle, chair, All-Party Parliamentary Group for FE and lifelong learning

Struggling young people often need a mentor to inspire and guide them to better things — and Peter Kyle struck gold when Body Shop founder and tireless environmental and social issues campaigner Anita Roddick took him under her wing.

The Labour Hove MP, who is chair of the all-party parliamentary group for FE and lifelong learning, met the entrepreneur when he was 18 and working in the accounts department at the Body Shop’s headquarters.

The same undiagnosed dyslexia which was a major reason for why the now 45-year-old says he left school with “no usable qualifications” also led to difficulties in keeping up with the work at the retail giant.

It meant that he would work in his own time at weekends to keep on top of everything.

“Anita Roddick walked past one Sunday – I was the only other person in the office – and she came up to me and said, what are you doing here?” he says.

“She then took me up to her office and we were chatting about a trip to Brazil she’d just got back from and showed me her photographs. Then from there, I started to get these messages saying, Anita can’t do a talk at a school, she wants you to go in her place.”

Soon after that he made the move from office work to aid work, and “went to live in Romanian orphanages” on projects Roddick had founded.

“That’s what changed my life,” says Kyle, who still exudes commitment and charisma when he talks to me in his Westminster office.

He also credits his dad, Les, a former door-to-door salesman, as a key influence.

Kyle thinks that he inherited his work ethic and ability to be “single-minded in pursuit of what you set your heart on”.

Les and his wife Jo had moved down to the Sussex coast from Liverpool so that their children – Peter, who was born in Bognor Regis, and his older brother Chris – could “grow up in a very different place to his own upbringing” in “grinding poverty”, Kyle says.

Kyle marvels during our chat at the way his father managed to go to night school at the same time as working full-time during the day.

“He was working extraordinarily hard, but also understanding the value of education because he didn’t get it the first time,” Kyle says.

But despite his dad’s commitment to education, Kyle “hated every minute” of his time at Felpham Community College, the school he attended in Bognor Regis.

His dyslexia, which wasn’t diagnosed at the time, affected him so much that, he says, “for two or three times a week in the evening, I was kept after school to do remedial and handwriting classes, and sitting in a classroom with others who had either learning difficulties or other challenges”.

“I was thinking ‘I know I’m not doing well but I know that my issue is not the same’. And it was incredibly demotivating for me,” he says.

Not only that, he was gay at a time when the infamous Section 28 banned the promotion of homosexuality in schools by local authorities.

“Not knowing anyone else at all who was out, and being dyslexic – everything just mitigated against me,” he says.

After getting “terrible” O-levels, he says he “screwed up” his A-levels too.

His second chance at education came about thanks to Roddick, who suggested, after Kyle had spent a number of years working on aid projects in eastern Europe and the Balkans, that he should go to university.

It was at this time, at the age of 25, that he was formally tested for dyslexia. This revealed he had the comprehension and reading age of an eight-year-old.

“It was a revelation to know it – it made so much sense to me,” he says.

He applied to the University of Sussex, but was rejected due to his lack of qualifications, so took the rather unusual step of going back to his secondary school in order to have another go at his A-levels.

He admits that a 25-year-old in a school classroom full of 16- and 17-years-olds was “the weirdest thing” and his old teachers would come into the room “because they couldn’t believe it was happening”.

Despite getting the grades he needed the second time around, Kyle was rejected by the university again.

He says it took an intervention by Roddick – who has an honorary doctorate from the University of Sussex – before he was offered a place.

He ended up studying at the university from 1996 until 2003, gaining a degree and PhD.

“By any standards, it shouldn’t have happened,” he says.

“I’ve always found education a battle. Even when I’ve been in my comfort zone, like when studying development studies at university, I’ve always found the system of education at odds with me.”

Kyle’s own experiences led him to be an advocate for young people throughout much of his career.

Having completed his PhD, he set up a film production company with a friend, which he ran for 18 months.

That was followed by a stint in the Cabinet Office as a policy adviser, where he worked on issues including social inclusion and early years intervention during the final days of the Blair government.

The next step for Kyle was a move into the third sector, when he took over as the deputy chief executive of Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) in 2007.

I am like a kid in a sweet shop

Kyle speaks passionately about what he describes as his biggest achievement from his six years there – setting up a commission on youth unemployment, chaired by David Miliband.

“We produced a piece of work that was absolutely outstanding,” he says.

Not only did the government adopt the key recommendations from its report, Kyle says, “the private sector got incredibly interested in it as well, because I believe the private sector is very interested in tackling the demand side of youth unemployment”.

That work led directly to Kyle being headhunted by Sir John Peace – then chair of three FTSE100 companies including Standard Chartered – to be chief executive of Working for Youth, a charity set up by some of the UK’s biggest businesses.

During his two years with the charity, he met with many “titans of the private sector” to discuss what they could do to address youth unemployment.

One result was a scheme Barclays set up, which he says resulted in 5,000 young people with no qualifications gaining an apprenticeship with the company.

“You pitch the idea and when they see the logic in it, big things happen rapidly,” he says.

In 2015, he stood for election as an MP in Hove and won – the culmination of a political ambition which had its roots in his time as an aid worker in the 1990s, where he experienced first-hand the impact of decisions made by governments, the UN and NATO.

Now that he’s in parliament he says he’s “like a kid in a sweet shop” because of the many opportunities “to get involved in something that impacts on young people’s education and the system of education”.

“If you read my maiden speech, it’s all about making sure we get it right for young people the first time, because most young people don’t get a second chance. If it was hard for me in 1989 to get the second chance I needed, it’s 10 times harder now,” he says.

It’s a personal thing

What do you do to switch off from work?

Gym, or a movie. I love going to the movies on my own. I need something to switch off – I don’t switch off unless something makes me switch off.

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

I never really knew. I remember going to my dad and saying, I want to be a policeman, and him saying something very sarcastic back at me.

Who do you turn to in times of crisis?

I’ve got a very long-suffering best mate! It depends entirely on the crisis. But I will always turn to other people. Usually it’s friends, but if it’s a big issue I’ll seek professional help. I lost someone that I loved very much, and I knew that that was an issue that you can’t get by with getting a bit of advice and a slap on the back from a friend. I think there are times when we all have to admit that our own innate life experiences will not see you through and you do need someone to guide you through it.

Who do you most admire, living or dead?

I would say Gordon Roddick, cofounder of the Body Shop. I think he’s always the unspoken one; he has no ego – which is unusual for someone of his achievements. He’s disciplined. He achieved a lot through discipline, and that means it’s something you can learn from. People like Anita were so genetically inspirational that I don’t know what I can learn from her, even though I spent so much time with her. But he is someone that I have learnt huge amounts from.

Curriculum vitae

Born:

1963 Born in Rustington, near Bognor Regis

Education & Career:

1975 – 1982 Pennyfields Junior School, Middleton-on-Sea, Bognor Regis

1982 – 1989 Felpham Community College, Bognor Regis

1989 – 1995 The Body Shop and Children on the Edge (funded by the Body Shop Foundation)

1995 – 1996 A-level resits, Felpham Community College

1996 – 2003 BA, Geography with Development Studies and Environmental Studies and PhD, Community Economic Development, University of Sussex

2003 – 2005 Running Fat Sands Films, film production company

2006 – 2007 Policy adviser, Cabinet Office

2007 – 2013 Deputy chief executive, ACEVO

2013 – 2015 Chief executive, Working for Youth

2015 – Present Labour MP for Hove, member of BIS select committee and chair of the APPG for FE

I agree with Mark

The new chief executive at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), Mark Dawe, is keen to portray his members as the apprenticeship ‘experts’ that colleges go to for help.

The scale of college subcontracting should come as no surprise to the Skills Minister and readers of FE Week, which has regularly reported on the issue since our first edition in 2011.

However, what is as welcome as it is surprising, is Mr Dawe’s decision to criticise the continued growth in subcontracting.

Readers of my previous editorials on subcontracting will be familiar with my concern over top-slicing arrangements.

But what’s surprising is that the membership body for so many of the subcontractors has criticised the growth in their use.

Many subcontractors I speak to are happiest out of the spotlight of a direct Skills Funding Agency (SFA) contract.

It’s an important intervention, although with increasingly diminished resources at the SFA it seems unlikely they will rush to issue new direct contracts.

It also leaves the Association of Colleges exposed and alone in failing to face up to the truth.

There continues to be too much subcontracting, and the SFA should step in to reverse the trend.

Will the apprenticeship levy be a subcontracting game-changer alone?

That, like so much of the levy plans, remains unclear, untested and uncertain.

Government is ‘even now’ unsure of traineeships direction

FE Week held a lively debate on the future and purpose of traineeships at the Palace of Westminster last week — featuring high profile panellists from across the sector.

The event took place on Tuesday (June 7) and speakers included shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden, Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Mark Dawe, OCR’s head of policy for FE and funding Gemma Gathercole, and Jean Duprez, the director at Duprez Consulting.

It was chaired by FE Week editor Nick Linford.

Panel from left: Gemma Gathercole, Nick Linford, Mark Dawe and Jean Duprez

Traineeships were launched three years ago, as part of the government’s drive to help low-skilled young adults onto apprenticeships. Their main aim is to steer people away from long-term unemployment, through guiding them onto other training or even straight into a job.

The debate, which came hot on the heels of an FE Week front-page story exposing low progression rates from traineeships to apprenticeships, showed there are still many questions to be resolved around this provision.

Mr Marsden, who also hosted the event, said: “One of my criticisms of the government is that having introduced this good [traineeships] concept … they have effectively frittered three years away by failing to promote, failing to explain and failing to target traineeships.

“Even now, they are still, it appears, unsure of the direction that they want to take.”

He continued: “I’m still not convinced today there is a unity of thought between the Department of Work and Pensions and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills about what the trade-off is between getting young people into some sort of job, any sort of job, as opposed to saying ‘there are things we could do to get them more skills’.”

There were 19,400 traineeship starts in 2014/15, an increase of 86.3 per cent on the previous academic year, when concern was raised about the disappointingly low level of interest in the courses.

But a Skills Funding Agency (SFA) response to our Freedom of Information request showed that just 450 (nine per cent) of 5,200 traineeship completions for 19- to 24-year-olds started an apprenticeship in the same year.

Overall progression to apprenticeships for all ages stood at just 22 per cent, with the rest moving on to jobs, further full-time education or other training.

It raised questions over the confused purpose of traineeships and provoked Richard Atkins, the former Association of Colleges (AoC) president, who called last year for traineeships to be converted into specific pre-apprenticeship programmes, to demand a review.

But, Mr Dawe said during the debate: “It isn’t a pre-apprenticeship programme.

“[Traineeships are] part of it, but it’s about getting these individuals active again and through to further learning, or it’s just getting them into employment and engaging them.”

Ms Gathercole highlighted the results of a traineeship pilot three years ago from OCR, which sponsored the debate.

It showed that the majority of trainees moved back into FE after their courses were completed.

She said: “We have an education and training system that is in flux at every position, whether it’s GCSEs, A-levels, vocational qualifications, or apprenticeships.

“I think potentially this traineeship programme is a victim of those other things.”

Ms Duprez highlighted a lack of clarity, claiming that at the start of the traineeship programme she had arranged to speak with skills minister Nick Boles, but that “he backed out”.

She said: “The progression of any learning, any education, should be the pathway to work; it’s our duty.”

The debate drew a range of questions from the audience, including one from Catherine West, the MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, who raised concerns about the collapse of a scheme in the construction industry in her constituency.

John Hyde, of Hit Training, also reflected on his firm’s negative experiences of delivering traineeships, which he said did not appeal to young people, in part because they are not paid.

The event was the second of its kind delivered by FE Week in parliament, with the previous session on May 3 focusing on apprenticeships.

Full details of the latest debate will be covered in FE Week’s traineeships supplement, sponsored by OCR, which is due for publication later this month.

Yet more fraudsters found targeting FE colleges

Colleges have again been warned to be vigilant after fraudsters posing as principals have been foiled in a string of attempted scams to hit the sector.

Harlow College first raised the alarm about bogus emails requesting money transfers, but FE Week understands that at least three more colleges — Walsall, Exeter, and Harrow — have received similar communications, with some reporting the incidents to local police.

Deanne Morgan, director of financial services at Harlow College, told FE Week that the scammers had sent several emails, purporting to be from principal Karen Spencer, requesting urgent payment.

But despite looking “very realistic”, staff identified them as fake and thwarted the fraudsters.

One email sent to Ms Morgan read: “Hi Deanne, hope your day is going on fine. I need you to make a same day UK payment for me.

“Kindly email me the required details you will need to send out the payment. I will appreciate a swift email response. Kind regards, Karen Spencer.”

Ms Morgan immediately queried the request with her principal through a different address, and it was quickly confirmed as a scam.

She has since sent an email to other colleagues in the FE sector warning them to be wary of this type of con.

She wrote: “Recently I have received several emails seeming to be from my principal which are scams.

“They obviously do their homework and know who the principal is and head of finance person is (and spell my name correctly — which is very rare), with very realistic imitation email addresses.

“One email was from the ‘principal’ requesting an urgent payment. So be aware that these kind of scams are circulating.”

FE Week reported on a similar incident last year when another fraudster, posing this time as the principal of Westminster Kingsway College, was stopped after requesting an urgent payment of their own.

Again, the request appeared to be genuine, but staff noticed the reply didn’t match the principal’s email address and checked with the boss himself.

And just last week FE Week reported of other “sophisticated” scams that have been targeted at colleges.

The Mary Ward Adult Education Centre nearly fell victim to a con involving fake faxes, before the college’s bank contacted them to question a suspicious payment.

A fraudster had sent a fax requesting a £4,437 clearing house automated payment system (CHAPS) payment after researching the college’s personal bank details, which are in the public domain.

Luckily the college stopped the payment after its bank queried the request with them.

The Education Funding Agency also sent out an alert on May 26, warning customers of an attempted scam impersonating Portakabin Ltd, which makes portable buildings often used by schools and colleges.

Portakabin said it had been able to flag up the attempt internally and report it to the bank being used by the fraudster.

Also last year, some colleges were targeted in a bailiff scam involving a series of phone calls with con artists.

Staff from at least eight colleges, including the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London and City of Southampton College, were subjected to the rip-off attempt.

The fraudsters employed the same tactics on each occasion, centring their bogus story on Northampton County Court, to which a non-existent debt running into thousands of pounds was meant to be owed.

At the time of going to press, it was understood no college had fallen for the scams. FE Week has passed details of the incidents to Action Fraud.

College Christian union supposedly banned by Prevent

A decision to ban a Christian union from holding prayer and Bible study meetings at an unnamed FE college is “clearly ludicrous” – according to the prime minister himself.

A charity called Festive, which supports Christians in FE colleges, has complained that religious students at a college it declined to name were barred from celebrating their faith using the government’s anti-terrorist Prevent framework.

The issue was picked up in prime minister’s questions on Wednesday (June 8).

Fiona Bruce, the Conservative MP for Congleton, stood up in the House of Commons and told David Cameron that “a Christian union being banned from holding prayer and bible study meetings, purportedly on the grounds of Prevent” was “never the purpose of a strategy intended to address terrorism and extremism”.

Mr Cameron agreed that the action taken by the anonymous college was “clearly ludicrous”.

He said: “People do need to exercise some common sense in making these judgments, because it is quite clear that that is not what was intended.”

Smita Jamdar, a partner at legal firm Shakespeare Martineau, told FE Week that the PM had been unwise to pass judgement.

She said: “Based on Prevent, you cannot draw a line in the sand and say ‘no Christian group is ever going to fall foul of this’.

“For him to say ‘it’s clearly ludicrous’ perhaps just says more about his subconscious biases than it does about a measured and thoughtful response to the guidance his government has issued.”

She added that though the Prevent strategy was widely interpreted as relating mostly to Islamic radicalisation, it also addressed other types of extremism.

The focus of Prevent, she said, was on promoting British values, with extremism defined as anything that might compromise factors such as democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, or a mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.

However, she added, further and higher education institutions also had an inherent duty to ensure free speech.

She said: “They have to balance it. Just because a view is extreme, that shouldn’t automatically mean it’s banned. They must look at it closely and say ‘do we feel that this is going to lead to people being drawn into terrorism?’”

The government released Prevent guidance specifically aimed at FE a year ago, which stated: “There is an important role for FE institutions … in helping prevent people being drawn into terrorism, which includes not just violent extremism but also non-violent extremism.”

The actions of the college, originally reported on by The Times on June 5, allegedly followed a similar incident in which a Christian union at a sixth form college was recently told it could no longer use the premises and had to meet at a nearby coffee shop instead.

Selina Stewart, the lead Prevent associate for the Education and Training Foundation, told FE Week: “Neither the Prevent duty guidance document nor the Ofsted guidance stops colleges from having religious societies which serve any religious faith.

“As with any activity within a college, the institution must be satisfied that any society complies with all provider policies and procedures and participants in any society are safeguarded effectively.”

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills declined to comment further.

Depth of resistance to area review laid bare

Deep divisions have been exposed between the colleges and the combined local authority involved with the Greater Manchester area review, according to leaked documents.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) has spoken of its dissatisfaction with the proposals made by the 10 general FE and 11 sixth form colleges at the review’s fifth steering group meeting on May 25 in a statement seen by FE Week.

In all, just two mergers were proposed, involving five colleges.

The GMCA said it “remains to be convinced” that the proposed outcomes will “deliver the integrated learning infrastructure that is needed, taking Greater Manchester as a whole rather than focusing institution by institution”.

It also wants to ask the Secretary of State to award it the “power to make further changes to these proposals, should it become clear that the current options cannot deliver a Greater Manchester-wide learning infrastructure that meets needs”.

A confidential document outlining all the proposals – also seen by FE Week – reveals that the authority has proposed three of its own outcomes, one of which is “an effective working relationship between the combined authority and colleges”.

GMCA was given control over the region’s skills in the first of the government’s devolution deals in November 2014.

And after last November’s spending review, it was given further power to work with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Department for Education to ensure the area review outcomes met its priorities.

A BIS spokesperson also confirmed on Wednesday (June 8) that it had installed a local authority — Theresa Grant (pictured), chief executive of Trafford Council — as chair of the Greater Manchester area, at the request of the GMCA.

Area reviews are usually chaired by the FE Commissioner, Sir David Collins, or the SFC Commissioner, Peter Mucklow – and it is understood this imposition of someone from outside the sector has been a source of tension from the start of the process in Manchester, which is now in its ninth month.

FE Week has also uncovered further evidence of strain.

According to minutes from the December 10 meeting of Bolton SFC’s board – seen by FE Week on June 3, but subsequently removed from the internet – its principal Steve Wetton was accused, along with its chair, of “not engaging” in the process in a meeting involving Bolton College and senior leaders from an unnamed council.

The minutes said: “The principal believes we are very actively engaging, just not saying what the council and Bolton College would prefer to hear.”

Meanwhile, minutes from a meeting held in December by Ashton-under-Lyne SFC’s board indicate further resistance to mergers.

They said: “Colleges had been asked to come up with suggestions, but to date there had been no suggestions as all colleges had determined they were viable as stand-alone institutions.”

The minutes also note “tensions between devolution and the area review priorities and scope”.

Minutes from a December Salford City College board meeting also indicate that a number of colleges have written to Ms Grant to outline their concerns with the process.

One of the proposed mergers involves Tameside, Stockport and Oldham colleges, and the second will see Bolton College and Bury College merge with the University of Bolton.

A spokesperson for GMCA said it had nothing further to add to its statement.

A spokesperson for Trafford Council said it would not be commenting until after the review had completed.

Anton McGrath, Ashton-under-Lyne SFC principal, said he was happy with the outcome of the process and the recommendations of the final steering group meeting.

Bolton SFC and Salford City College were unable to comment ahead of publication.