Ofsted has called off its investigation into an inspector who demanded the immediate departure of his boss Sir Michael Wilshaw — after FE Week readers jumped to his defence.

The chief inspector caused widespread anger across the sector when he told the Commons Education Select Committee on March 2 that 16-to-19-year-olds should be taught in schools rather than colleges, because FE was “in a mess”.

It wasn’t just college leaders offended by Sir Michael’s remarks — one Ofsted inspector, Tony Davis, told a recent NewBubbles Leading Aspiration FE Conference that Mr Wilshaw should be removed from his post before his planned retirement in December due to the upset he caused.

His comments prompted Ofsted to launch an investigation into whether he had breached his contract when he spoke out a month later, on April 18.

However, the inspectorate has now confirmed to FE Week that it has sensationally dropped this investigation with “no further action required” less than two weeks later, right after we emailed a long list of comments posted on our website backing Mr Davis and requested a response.

Mr Davis, who has added to his criticism Mr Wilshaw in a comment piece, told FE Week: “I am delighted Ofsted will be allowing me to continue my work as an inspector.

“However, along with many other people in our sector, I cannot accept that Sir Michael should be allowed without significant challenge to give unfounded and biased personal opinions when he is speaking to government in his capacity as chief inspector.

“I am very pleased to see the strength of opposition from so many quarters to his views.”

The Ofsted spokesperson admitted that the inspectorate dropped the investigation on April 27.

He said: “We have reviewed the circumstances and concluded that no further action is required.

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, including Sir Michael, who was expressing a personal view, as he made clear at the Education Select Committee.”

The FE Week reader comments sent to Ofsted were strident in their criticism of the chief inspector. One, submitted by Andrew Morris, said: “At last a person is brave enough to speak plainly about the damage his powerful boss done to a great part of the UK education system.

“Quite apart from the chief inspector’s abuse of professionals and students in the FE system, his crude remarks have fuelled prejudice and ignorance more generally by placing personal anecdote above clear evidence. Congratulations Tony Davis!”

Mark Hill wrote: “It seems to me the wrong person is being investigated by Ofsted.

“If there is anyone that’s brought it into disrepute and abused their status and role with unsubstantiated comments I think an objective investigation might conclude it’s not Mr Davis.”

Another reader, going by the name Louise, said: “Thankfully there are still people like Tony Davis who have the honesty and conviction to do the right thing. Thank you for sticking your neck out, many people shy away from standing up for what is right and just. Well done Tony!”

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Editorial – Getting personal

As an employer myself, it was a surprise to learn that Ofsted had decided not to take any action against one of its own employees for vehemently criticising Sir Michael Wilshaw.

But on reflection, Wilshaw’s outspoken criticism of the sector has created an unprecedented situation.

He brought Ofsted into disrepute as a witness to the education select committee, expressing personal views that did not reflect the position of the important organisation he leads.

Ofsted said in its statement, explaining why it had dropped the investigation against Mr Davis, that everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

I don’t think that can ever really apply though to the leader of the national inspectorate — who should always bear in mind the importance of maintaining its credibility with all of the education sectors.

It is little wonder then that inspectors who represent him on the front line feel let down, and Mr Davis was speaking up for them.

Mr Davis writes with a great deal of authority on page 14, and has shown a huge amount of guts by speaking out.

And given the special circumstances, Ofsted should also be congratulated for backing away from disciplining him.

 

Schools could soon be financially sanctioned if they sign students up to inappropriate A-level courses that they later abandon, Skills Minister Nick Boles has warned.

He made the comments at a parliamentary sub-committee meeting on education, skills and the economy on Wednesday (April 27), when he admitted concern that there is no current downside to A-level dropouts who might be better suited to more vocational routes.

Mr Boles said: “Currently there is no downside to people dropping out after a year. That is not ideal because in truth the value of the programme is to complete the two years.”

Given that funding was one factor that influenced schools’ decision-making, he said he would like to try to “build in something” to address the problem.

“I’ve spoken with colleges about this; they certainly feel that could make a difference alongside the transparency of destinations.”

From the summer, performance tables will include retention rates for school sixth forms.

Schools and colleges already receive 17.5 per cent less funding for pupils who repeat an A-level year, but there is currently no financial penalty if students drop out and transfer elsewhere.

Malcolm Trobe, interim general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, attacked the idea, and said the funding situation in education was already sufficiently “tight and complex” without putting “completely inappropriate fines” in place.

He said: “When students do decide to change programme it already causes trouble for schools and colleges.”

Mr Trobe added that good advice for young people should be the top priority for schools and government, but as students got older, it should be expected that they might change their educational direction.

Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said Mr Boles’ comments were not a surprise, after a 2013 report by Ofsted found three quarters of schools failed to equally promote vocational options.

In January, the Department for Education (DfE) announced that schools must give “equal airtime” to post-16 non-academic routes.

Mr Watkin said: “It is difficult to give exactly the right advice to 16-year-olds. Most schools try to get it right, but if they get it wrong it is the other providers who have to step in and pick up the pieces, and often in more challenging circumstances.”

He recommended new structures to ensure that young people were not given inappropriate advice, but added: “My experience is that the carrot tends to work better than the stick. Talk of punishing is not helpful.”

Martin Doel, chief executive at the Association of Colleges, said: “To make informed choices for the future, young people need high-quality, impartial careers information about all post-16 education and training options, including apprenticeships and technical and professional education.

“Alongside this, the Minister is right to look at how the system can best ensure schools encourage their pupils to take the best decision for them rather than automatically enter the sixth form. This could be a combination of incentives and potential penalties.”

Following Mr Boles’ comments, a DfE spokesperson said the department was “looking to examine” the incentives to schools for students to complete a full programme.

The director general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) wants the April next year launch date for the apprenticeship levy to be delayed unless the government backs down on its phased implementation plan, FE Week can reveal.

Carolyn Fairbairn said in an exclusive interview that the CBI was concerned about “a large number of unanswered questions” and risks associated with implementing a “half-finished system”.

She will raise concerns about the “extraordinarily tight timeframe” and call for a “radical rethink”,  in a speech to business leaders in the City of London today (April 28).

A spokesperson said she will stress that “the digital system which manages levy spend must be ready and able to support the delivery of apprenticeship training which businesses need, in full and from the start”.

This goes against updated government guidance on how it will work, which revealed plans for phased delivery — with the system not intended to be fully operational until 2020, as reported by FE Week reported on April 21.

When asked yesterday whether it meant the CBI wanted the launch pushed back, Ms Fairbairn would initially only say that “delay is certainly an option”.

But she subsequently accepted concern that it would be almost impossible for the government to have a fully fledged system in place within 11 months, and added: “If that is the case then we think there’s really no option but to have a delay, absolutely right”.

Ms Fairbairn also told FE Week the CBI wanted a stronger role for the new Institute for Apprenticeships (IfA), including measuring and managing the system around the levy.

“What isn’t happening [at the moment] is the involvement of the institute in the designing of the standards and the leading of the process,” she said.

“One of the things we are calling for here, is for the institute to be involved in the setting of measures that are about outcomes rather than just about number of starts.”

Ms Fairbairn said the target of 3m new apprenticeship starts by 2020 was a positive ambition for the government, but the progress of the learners must not be overlooked.

“We are calling for the institute to have a role in defining a measure that is about outcomes, that would combine the impact on an individual – maybe something about careers progress, or salary progress,” she added.

Ms Fairbairn said without this, the mass recruitment drive risked the “unintended consequence of driving quantity over quality”.

Ms Fairbairn’s speech will also call for more flexibility in how firms can spend the levy, including on existing training.

The CBI intends to push for an “allowable expenses” regime, which would let firms recover the cost of staff time and capital investment.

“They’re now having to pay 0.5 per cent of pay roll and they can only claim back a small part of their current apprenticeship spend,” she told FE Week.

“As a result of that, we’re hearing from quite a number of our members that they will reduce the number of apprenticeships, because particularly in sectors where there are very narrow margins they are having to find savings from somewhere.”

FE Week put Ms Fairbairn’s points to the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

In response, Skills Minister Nick Boles said: “The apprenticeship levy will deliver the highly skilled workers our businesses are crying out for.

“Our reforms are about putting employers in the driving seat.

“We are working closely with businesses to determine how the levy will work for them and are giving employers the freedom to purchase the apprenticeship training that best meets their needs.

“We will also be working with businesses in the coming months on the development of the independent, employer-led IfA that will ensure employers are at the heart of driving up the quality of apprenticeship training.”

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) is balloting members over strike action to fight closure plans for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ Sheffield office — which it is feared will cause an “FE brain drain”.

The ballot was launched today (April 27), on the same morning that PCS representatives have been staging a protest against the closure plans outside of BIS’s Victoria Street office in London, with the results set to be announced on May 10.

Members are being asked to vote on whether or not they would like to go on strike.

Lois Austin (pictured above right this morning), the PCS full-time official for BIS covering the Sheffield office, told FE Week outside the London BIS office at 8am: “We are balloting because we are completely opposed to the closure of the BIS Sheffield office and the loss of many civil servants who have a great deal of experience of FE.

“The complete failure of BIS to provide a business case and proof of any savings this would lead to is a further major bone of contention.

“It is why we are urging our members to vote in favour of strike action.”

Ms Austin previously told FE Week on March 3 that widespread opposition to the plans to centralise the department’s policy-making in London had forced BIS to delay its consultation by two months.

She said: “They told us back when all this was first announced that the consultation over the closure of the Sheffield office should be completed by the start of March.

“But we’ve now been told that it will be May 2, which shows how shaken up they are by the scale of opposition to this.

“They’re saying that centralising to London will save money and improve policy decisions.

“But we asked Permanent Secretary [for BIS] Martin Donnelly for evidence of the analysis they have done to prove this and no one from his team has been able to provide this.”

The ballot announcement comes after a BIS report leaked to FE Week, called ‘BIS2020 — Finance and Headcount outline’, indicated that potential savings of closing the Sheffield BIS office through rent, rates and maintenance, rail travel, and hotel stays stood at £1.5m.

But it added that additional London salary costs could run to £1.6m per annum — meaning the controversial plan could actually cost £100,000.

A former senior employee at BIS previously warned the planned closure would amount to an “FE brain drain” — as civil servants working in Sheffield “have a huge amount of sector expertise and it looks like everyone will lose their jobs”.

The source claimed BIS had not offered sufficient resettlement packages to make moving to London a viable possibility for many Sheffield staff, and failed to take into account the number of part-time female staff, who would find moving south near impossible.

BIS confirmed that it was aware of the PCS ballot.

A spokesperson added: “We have a responsibility to the taxpayer to ensure as much of the department’s funding as possible is focused on front line services.

“We have deliberately set ourselves challenging savings targets consistent with the spending review and we will continue to explore options in detail before making decisions.”

A debt-laden college will close two campuses, including a former sixth form college (SFC), and stop providing A-levels.

Central Sussex College announced on April 15 it would be closing its Haywards Heath campus, formerly Haywards Heath SFC, in 2017 due to “too high” debt and falling student numbers.

It will also move a “small number” of adult education courses to its Crawley base from its East Grinstead campus, which it will be closing later this year.

The college is £25m in the red, according to a statement on the college’s website, of which £21.4m is a mortgage taken out to cover the campus redevelopment between 2008 and 2011.

College principal Sarah Wright said: “The brutal truth is that our debts are too high and in order to protect the majority of students and staff, and the wider community, we have to substantially reduce our costs.”

Central Sussex College was formed in August 2005 through the merger of Crawley College and Haywards Heath SFC.

Ms Wright, who took over at the college in 2013, told FE Week that the college received £6.8m in government funding to support the early phases of the Haywards Heath campus redevelopment.

When funding from this programme was withdrawn, the college took out £22.5m in mortgages between 2008 and 2012 to cover the remaining cost, Ms Wright said.

She told FE Week that the college had breached its loan covenants in 2013/14 and was forecast to do so again in 2015/16, but this had not led to an increase in the interest rate it was paying.

A statement on the college’s website said the number of A-level students at the college had fallen by 60 per cent over the past three years, which was due to an “over-supply” of A-level provision in the area.

There were about 1,000 current students at the Haywards Heath campus, and between 200 and 300 at the East Grinstead campus, it said.

The closure means that the college will end its A-level provision in 2017.

Students currently enrolled will complete their courses, while those who were due to start in September will be supported to find alternative places, the college said.

Sir Nicholas Soames, MP for Mid Sussex, which includes the college, said he was “appalled and deeply saddened” by the closure.

“I have today written to the Secretary of State for Education to ask her to examine what has happened and to see whether or not the Government can assist in dealing with this self-inflicted wound by an earlier and very reckless management,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: “We are in discussions with other nearby sixth form colleges to ensure students have a place elsewhere.

“Additionally as part of the area review programme we are supporting colleges to put plans in place that will enable them to secure a strong and sustainable future.”

The closure comes at the same time as more than 15 college mergers are expected in 2016.

The Haywards Heath campus will close in 2017

The principal of Barnfield College has vowed it will be ‘outstanding’ within two years — after its Ofsted rating improved one grade from its previous ‘inadequate’ report.

Tim Eyton-Jones described the new report out this month as fair and accurate.

But he told FE Week the grade three across-the-board verdict would be treated as a springboard for further improvements.

“When Ofsted come again — if they come in two years’ time our target is for them to see an outstanding college,” he said.

It comes a little over two years after the college received a notice of concern from the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) over its finances, and 17 months after Ofsted branded it inadequate across the board with no key strengths.

The latest Ofsted report praised the leadership team for “decisive action” taken to turn around its fortunes, but recognised there was still work to be done.

It said college leaders had “developed a detailed development plan that defines precisely the expectations for all staff to provide high-quality education provision and improve outcomes for all students and apprentices”.

“They have secured financial stability and placed the college on a firm footing from which to improve outcomes for all students and apprentices,” the report added.

It recognised that the college had invested “significantly in the recruitment of experienced managers and teachers”.

However, as many of these were recent appointments, inspectors found that “planned actions to improve teachers’ and assessors practice have yet to ensure that students and apprentices make the swift progress of which they are capable”.

While it was found that “the proportion of teaching, learning and assessment that is good or better has increased since the previous inspection”, these were among key areas identified as needing improvement, along with maths and English provision.

The Ofsted verdict comes six months after the FE Commissioner, Dr David Collins, ended his involvement at Barnfield, after his adviser concluded the college had addressed all Dr Collins’ recommendations.

Mr Eyton-Jones told FE Week that he’d had to make “some really tough decisions” following his appointment in February 2015, with a key focus on improving the college’s finances.

“It’s essential that colleges have a sound financial basis to work from, and I am so proud of colleagues that have worked tirelessly to ensure that,” he said.

“I expect our improvements to accelerate, because clearly we are not happy with requires improvement.

“What’s really good about this report is that it clearly picks up the areas that we have got to work on still further and that’s something we are all focused on.”

The college was rated outstanding by Ofsted in 2007, but fell to satisfactory (grade three overall) in 2012.

The SFA declined to comment on Barnfield’s latest Ofsted report.

A group of specialist colleges say there is a conflict of interest over devolving high needs funding to “compromised” local authorities and are calling on the government to step in.

Members of the Association of National Specialist Colleges (Natspec), at their annual conference in Birmingham this week, said the conflict of interest had arisen because the funding was transferred from a national level to local authorities around 18 months ago.

Dr Tina Pagett, principal of Fairfield Farm College said: “There is a conflict of interest as a result of the Children and Families Act 2014 and the devolution of high needs funding to local authorities.

“Local authorities across the country are compromised, they have a statutory duty to write Education Health Care Plans (EHCPs) for children and young people with special needs and then commission provision from a limited pot of funding which will inevitably influence and limit options presented to young people.”

Angela North, principal of Henshaws Specialist College, also expressed concern that local authority decisions now included deciding whether to pay themselves to deliver the provision.

She said: “I know of at least one local authority with their own training provision, including a contract for high needs learners.

“It is increasingly difficult for potential students and their families to see impartiality of advice and guidance when this provision is named by the local authority in EHCP plans; as a consequence there is a loss of trust.”

A spokesperson for Natspec also said most of the conference delegates stated that they had seen a significant increase in the number of learners going to tribunals to access the training and education of their choice.

Ofsted released a report into high needs learners on March 22, calling for more to be done to ensure young people with disabilities can access the most appropriate education.

The report recommended local authorities provide “consistently fair commissioning of FE places” and regularly review their offer to ensure it reflects the full range of support and opportunities available.

Between March 7 and April 17, the Department for Education (DfE) also held a consultation on improvements to the distribution of high needs funding.

In response, Natspec wrote to the DfE to call for high needs funding to be nationally managed.

“We are sympathetic to local authorities, who are in an incredibly difficult position and under huge pressure to make budgets work,” said Clare Howard, Natspec chief executive.

“As the Ofsted report highlights, there are many inconsistencies in the ways local authorities are allocating funding, leading to big variations in provision, and we believe the focus on short-term savings are leading to higher costs in the long-term.”

A DfE spokesperson told FE Week: “The [high needs funding] consultation has closed and we’re considering all responses carefully. We will be publishing the outcome and second stage of the consultation later in the year.”