Steve Frampton leads a sixth form college which decided against applying for academy status following an area review. He explains here why this decision was taken and advises other senior managers facing the same choice.

The area based review process is about change – it may be your wish to be stand-alone, as we did, but this will require internal change.

For example, you will need to consider whether you plan to increase set sizes, specialise or rationalise your provision to create economic efficiencies and improvements to quality and the student experience.

Or will it involve one of several external change models? This options appraisal work informed by thorough research, cost benefit analysis and risk analysis by governors is very time consuming, and demanding.

My advice is, ensure you know the candid views of your stakeholders, especially all your governors, your students and their parents, your staff and key partners (secondary/primary schools, employers, trading partners) and the three parties who may have seats around the table: your local authority, LEP and HE sector.

You will need to identify a range of options, and your preferred option at an early stage, and be able to confidently articulate this in line with your college strategic plan, linked to your financial and accommodation strategy.

Our board — based on a community consensus viewpoint, and looking at what was best for the students in our city — concluded that remaining as a stand-alone SFC was their preferred option.

As a very innovative, rapidly growing college, in a locally declining demographic environment, they wanted to communicate this very robustly and very regularly to both the area review team, and all local audiences, including our staff, parents and students.

Staff especially valued this approach.

Financial stability for the sector is the driving force behind the area review process and colleges who are showing financial weakness enter the process under pressure to have a miracle cure for their financial ills or face merger.

Going into our review, Portsmouth College’s financial challenge was also its saviour due to the impact of the lagged funding for 16-18 growth.

Leading up to 2015/16, the growth in applications was so significant that the governing body agreed to recruit additional staff to ensure a quality experience could be enjoyed by all students in the anticipated swollen student body.

This decision was taken in the knowledge that a deficit would be incurred in 2015/16, and a financial health score of ‘satisfactory’, but in the calculated hope that there would be ‘jam tomorrow’.

The college curriculum teams were able to clearly demonstrate that the claimed efficiencies would be made and that despite further anticipated growth in 2016/17, a reasonable surplus would be posted.

Colleges who are showing financial weakness enter the process under pressure to have a miracle cure

The on-going surpluses predicted were reflected in the three-year financial forecasts allowing cash reserves and liquidity measures to improve and a financial health score of ‘outstanding’ by year three.

On April 28, our local draft area review report validated our governors’ assessment that we are a high quality, innovative, viable, resilient and sustainable stand-alone institution. We’re an agile and very responsive SFC that wants to serve all its local secondary and primary partners.

This is the most appropriate outcome for our city and our current and future students, but is by no means the right option for all other colleges and communities.

It has been a very time consuming process, especially for college principals, chairs of governors and their senior governors, and our finance director, but it has forced us to look very closely at our mission, values and future strategic direction.

It was based on a very secure understanding of our college finances, student recruitment, partnerships, curriculum offer and delivery, accommodation strategy, and staff recruitment, retention and succession planning.

This has been the real bonus for us, and brought all of our staff and students even closer together and focused on what is right for our learners now and as we go forward.

It does seem ironic that as an educator, we have learned so much from going through the process, and working with the area review team, that we might never use it again.

The recent schools white paper was essentially geared at simplifying the system by making them all academies.

It seems that simplification is planned for post-16 academic and vocational learning.

The FE sector’s very own skills white paper will strip away many post-16 qualifications to make way for the introduction of 15 technical and professional education (TPE) routes.

But in an effort to funnel young people into a university or recognised work-related route the government should avoid creating a two-tier system and restricting choice.

It should think very carefully about provision below level two as well as bridging courses between the pathways at level two and beyond.

And in the creation of 15 routes, Ministers could go as far to seek simplification in accreditation, by tendering for a single awarding organisation for each.

It was considered by the previous Secretary of State for the new GCSES and A Levels, but quickly dropped in 2013.

So this might be a once in a generation opportunity to reorganise who accredits TPE routes, but surely the single point of failure problem is unsurmountable?

John Hyde raises grave doubts about apprenticeship reform plans.

I once owned a small part of a racehorse, which has long since gone to that great pet food factory in the sky.

However this introduced me to the world of bookmakers and betting odds, no better demonstrated that Leicester City’s 5,000/1 winning [the football Premier League] bet.

I wonder what odds the bookmakers would give on the government achieving their 3m apprenticeship starts.

Before last weeks’ Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)/ Skills Funding Agency (SFA) announcements, I thought it could be achieved.

Now I doubt it achievable, unless they fudge it by stuffing thousands of government employees onto apprenticeships.

While there are trepidations about the Digital Apprenticeship Service software programmes being ready and fit for purpose, many other concerns of the government’s own making will frustrate achieving their target.

What a waste of taxpayers’ money and bureaucratic overkill

Apprenticeship growth has mostly come from small and medium size enterprises (SMEs).

Most SMEs, while funding their own apprentices’ wages, have made no financial contribution to the cost of the programmes.

Despite funding being discounted by up to 50 per cent for certain age groups and categories of apprentices, the majority of employers have made no cash contribution to their training provider.

This is well known in work-based learning circles, but continues to come as a surprise to ministers and Treasury officials.

It is going to come as a surprise to most SMEs that they will have to make a financial contribution to their training provider from April 2017.

Bizarrely, most employers will receive more cash back than they pay out from completion payments.

So we have this absurd scenario of cash going backwards and forward, closely monitored by the reduced SFA.

What a waste of taxpayers’ money and bureaucratic overkill.

Providers will encourage SMEs to bring apprenticeship plans forward, bringing a surge of starts before next April.

Thereafter, a sharp drop-off is likely unless the whacky paper-chase of invoices and cash payments both ways is eliminated.

SMEs are facing a tough time, with the increased minimum wage and mandatory pension contributions.

The second announcement concerned the SFA wanting to implement the new standards in all sectors immediately.

When Skills Minister Nick Boles was appointed, he promised the Trailblazer standards would be properly piloted and evaluated.

Yet without any new standard having been completed or any end-assessment tested, priced, available or even sat, the department is still hell bent on changing over, frequently rubbishing the existing frameworks with no empiric evidence to support its arguments.

Moving to the standards without completing a single pilot is like Ford going into full mass production of a new model without even completing a prototype or testing it.

Unless the new standard has a qualification, you don’t even need qualified trainers/assessors/tutors to deliver or assess. How does this improve quality?

Outside of BIS/SFA and a few vested interests, the whole sector is highly critical of the new standards and see them as a train crash waiting to happen.

There are many horror stories emerging from employers intending to abuse the levy, especially regarding paying young people the apprenticeship slave wage and sacking them after completing, especially in the retail sector. BHS ethical management comes to mind!

Now we know the IfA will have a total staff of just 40 to monitor the quality of apprenticeships.

With one million apprentices on programme by 2020, up to 800 standards/frameworks and 4,000 providers, who is kidding who quality will improve?

Around 710,000 apprentices are on-programme today, and this is set to expand by 2020.

If the government has its way, the end tests would mean in excess of 1m face-to-face interviews and practical skills tests in-year.

Assuming 230 working days per year, there would be over 4,000 practical tests and face-to-face interviews taking place every day across England.

Where is the workforce and structure to implement this?

Only within the current providers’ workforce and facilities, not with the awarding bodies or professional institutions who are coming forward to be assessment organisations.