Most colleges run some form of survey to find out the views of their students. Most also have a student union, who act as the students’ voice and a sounding board for new initiatives and policies. Some even have student representatives. Box ticked.
Well, not quite. Student voice is critical to enhancing the learner experience, but only when it leads to meaningful change.
Research has shown time and time again that we should be ‘designing in’ ongoing student voice mechanisms in the classroom, not just sending out mammoth surveys once a year that many students don’t complete or take seriously.
If you’re ‘doing student voice’ to compare your students’ thoughts and feelings with a college in another city or down the road, you’re not really doing it to find out what they want and need. They will sense that.
But when students feel their opinions are valued and play a role in shaping the organisation, they are much more likely to be engaged, motivated and committed to their studies. Just like us at work.
Allowing students to contribute to decision making and really making an effort to hear their voices creates a stronger sense of belonging and community. It makes students feel like they are an integral part of the college and not just passing through.
FE colleges are rooted in their communities; They make up the fabric of a place. Given the well-documented rise in poor behaviour in and out of the classroom, whatever its cause, the solutions must come from the students themselves.
Let’s face it, we’re not really down with the kids – no matter how much we like to think we are. Colleges that listen to students’ fresh perspectives and innovative ideas will be better equipped to develop policies and practices that improve satisfaction – and outcomes.
At the heart of this work must be genuine accountability and transparency – a two-way dialogue instigated by the college with a view to creating a more inclusive environment. In that regard, it’s crucial to seek out the voices of minoritised student groups, especially if your staff (and senior staff in particular) do not reflect the students your serve.
At the heart of this work must be genuine accountability
Minoritised groups often face systemic inequalities and discrimination inside the classroom and in society. Hearing their views helps address unconscious bias, identify issues and create pathways for change. It won’t do to say “I don’t see colour”. If you don’t, then you don’t see the whole of me and what I am experiencing every day in college, on placements and on the street.
For these reasons, we can’t let student voice be skewed towards majority groups. We do this every time we brush aside feedback as the views of ‘only three or four students’. If those three or four are wheelchair users who can’t access parts of the college, we need to address this. Likewise with three or four students who experience discrimination of any sort.
This work is hard and it can cost, financially as well as in staff time. But as my mother used to say, “nothing good comes easy”. Students need to trust the process. If you say responses will be anonymous they must be. Invest in external support if necessary.
Here are my top tips for getting it right. Perhaps they can save you some of the effort:
Be transparent and honest about what you are going to do as a result of feedback – and equally about what you might not do.
Reach out to all students, and put in the leg work to involve minoritised groups.
Offer incentives for engagement to ensure you hear from as many students as possible.
Get the support of the whole staff to promote and explain the opportunity. (Students come and go. This is their chance to leave a legacy.)
Give students the time and space to participate, and don’t be scared that they might say something negative. In this instance, you are the learner.
Make participation easy and flexible, bearing in mind your adult learners and apprentices.
Do run an online survey, but don’t limit yourself to it. It takes longer, but you will get richer data and feedback from one-to-one interviews and focus groups.
Every college governor and governance professional is aware that there is some flexibility in governance arrangements among the regulatory and legal musts. But when is it right to make use of that flexibility? And how?
Colleges that are performing well don’t typically pursue it, though there is a compelling case for those seeking elusive ‘Outstanding’ judgements to consider governance innovations. For colleges that are not performing well, the argument to change or flex governance is clearer.
How to go about it depends on the nature of the underperformance.
The safest bet here is to focus mainly on quality or financial shocks (or even nasty surprises), staying within areas that are short of triggering an ‘Inadequate’ judgement or central government intervention.
The first step a chair might want to take in these shock or nasty surprise circumstances is to review their meeting frequency, those with the principal and chief executive, and those of the college triumvirate.
Those meetings might need to increase, bearing in mind that face-to-face meetings are more effective when it comes to holding senior leaders accountable. Working with their governance professional, the chair might also want to document these meetings.
A second step would be to draw together a group of governors with the skills needed to work through the issues, ideally including some of the committee chairs and the vice chair. This ‘turnaround steering group’ would work closely with the executive leadership, either informally or formally, and its meetings would be action-orientated and – critically – time-limited.
Properly, significant decisions should not be taken outside of existing governance. However, by documenting the discussions and any proposed actions, decision making could be progressed more swiftly with the support of your director of governance through the full corporation.
It is also important to note that this new grouping is not designed to replace any existing committees. Indeed (and this is a third step the chair might consider), if a ‘Carver-type’ model of governance is in place it could be best to suspend it until the issues are worked through.
The approach governors decide represents a key leadership moment
At the same time, a relevant committee could be established. (For example, a finance and resources committee, a quality committee or both). Full corporation would of course continue to meet, although its agenda would most likely be tailored to prioritise the issues in question.
The purpose of the steering group is two-fold: to manage through the specific issues but also to satisfy key governors as far as possible that there are no other shocks on the way. In some situations this will effectively amount to restoring damaged trust.
There will be all sorts of reasons why this approach might be resisted: the chair worrying that they are creating a ‘two-tier’ board, anxiety about increased workload for volunteer governors or the executive team being uncomfortable with the proposed arrangements. Of course, care should be taken to ensure governors are not overstepping the line into the executive realm.
In our work as consultants for Rockborn, we generally see governors working effectively with the college executive. However, there is no doubt that the accountability profile for governors has changed over the past decade.
Governors know that central government holds them as well as the executive leadership accountable for a college’s performance. Following reclassification, there is also now a good chance it will be prepared to intervene at the governance level.
In high-performing colleges, it will usually be right that the board sets the vision and strategic objectives for the college and monitors progress against them. In colleges where something has gone wrong, it is equally right that governors reflect on the balance of their time spent on this versus a more forensic approach to areas of concern.
They may well need to get more ‘hands on’ or ‘lean in’ to the business. And working with the governance professional, the chair may need to sponsor time-limited changes to allow for this to happen.
This might not fit with your leadership culture. Increases in governor workload are also a valid concern. But insisting on an improvement plan is an entirely legitimate and conventional response to serious issues.
In any event, the approach governors decide represents a key leadership moment. After all, failing to make timely changes following a serious issue could result in government flexing your governance for you.
As the use of generative AI (artificial intelligence) expands across our sector, there is much discussion around its advantages and disadvantages.
Does it present a chance to modernise outdated methods of teaching, learning and assessment? Or does it put us at the top of a very slippery slope towards lower standards and a reduced real-world understanding of disciplines and an overall love of learning?
We believe the truth lies somewhere in the middle. With the right management, integration and stewardship of the technology, AI gives us the tools we need to take a well-timed and much-needed look at how learners learn and teachers assess.
We need to embrace this, because we can’t keep using nineteenth-century assessment methods in a twenty-first-century economy.
With a self-proclaimed digital optimist at its helm, the team at Hull College have made a conscious effort to embrace and maximise the use of generative AI for teaching, learning and leadership.
Students are encouraged to use it as a research tool, to support assignment structure, to consider different viewpoints, to create inspiration and give ideas, to simplify complex ideas and to evaluate feedback.
Leaders and teachers are encouraged to use it to strategise, to provide ideas, to analyse data and to summarise the sometimes overwhelming wealth of material educators are expected to digest.
AI gives us the opportunity to redefine the role of teachers and to elevate their practice. To move away from the ‘sage on the stage’ and lean towards the ‘guide on the side’. By allowing AI to support teachers in the more bureaucratic areas of their workload, we free them up to focus on what teaching is really about – igniting sparks, sharing passions and building meaningful relationships with students.
These are the things AI can’t do. Which, incidentally, should also reassure those who fear that one day it could replace teachers altogether. Teaching is about a lot more than the transference of knowledge, and it’s hard to imagine it generating the types of ‘light bulb’ moments every good teacher lives for.
If we don’t equip students to use AI, we’re doing them a disservice
Used effectively, AI can lead to huge efficiencies, innovation and increased accessibility. Anecdotal evidence also suggests it helps with levelling up – by potentially providing every student with a digital virtual assistant.
That said, it does provide challenges we need to be aware of and ensure we navigate effectively. And this is where the stewardship comes in. These are issues such as job displacement, changes to the labour market, ethical and privacy concerns about how data is used and concerns about a loss of control.
Used well, the majority of these risks can be minimised. It’s also important to remember that society as a whole is using AI. It is and will continue to be used in the workplace. So if we don’t equip and empower students to use it, we’re doing them a disservice.
Concerns have also been raised about how teachers can no longer trust the work any student does from home, given the amount of AI tools at their disposal.
We would urge all teachers to trust the detection tool you already have access to – your knowledge of the learner. Compare their work to what they have done in the past and don’t be afraid to ask the question: How have you created this and come to the conclusions you have?
AI invites us to consider how we could do things differently. AI literacy is a vital part of modern society. We need to use it to celebrate the art of the possible. And we need to focus on the benefit.
You can hear more from the authors on this theme in the latest episode of the Skills and Education Group podcast, Let’s Go Further. The current series is being produced in collaboration with FE Week
For more than a century, London’s City Lit has been a global beacon of hope and empowerment for deaf people. Jessica Hill finds out what makes the college’s approach to deaf education and training so important to the community.
Helping deaf people in crisis is a proud tradition of adult education college City Lit. Once a haven for soldiers returning from the First World War with bomb-damaged hearing, today its Centre for Deaf Education provides a refuge for around 100 deaf refugees and asylum seekers who have fled turmoil overseas, as well working to support the capital’s wider deaf community.
The centre – the largest of its kind in Europe – is one of very few post-age 16 establishments in England that teach classes using British Sign Language (BSL), so deaf students can learn subjects in their own language. And having a large deaf cohort of over 600 students gives learners the priceless opportunity to mix with their deaf peers both inside and outside the classroom, which they don’t get at mainstream FE colleges.
The college also teaches BSL and lip reading as subjects in their own right, and as the only college in the country offering teacher training courses in those skills, City Lit is vital to the upcoming rollout of a BSL GCSE in schools.
I visited the college, in Holborn, Central London, on its annual Deaf Day, which is thought to be Britain’s biggest event for the deaf community. College principal Mark Malcomson, a BSL user himself, is in a buoyant mood, eager to champion the deaf community which he says is “in the DNA” of college.
Mark Hopkinson, head of the Centre for Deaf Education, with reporter Jessica Hill and interpreter Charmaine Moss
Costs of coronavirus
He admits the last two years have not been easy for City Lit. The coronavirus pandemic blew a hole in the college’s finances, causing the FE Commissioner to step in with a financial notice to improve due to its ‘inadequate’ financial health in 2022.
Later that year, disaster struck in the form of a ransomware attack which caused a month-long IT outage, with major disruption to online classes and enrolment, and causing around £800,000 in exceptional costs.
But things are looking up. The college reported improved ‘requires improvement’ financial health “two years earlier than anticipated” according to its latest accounts. And in May 2023, the college went from ‘good’ to ‘outstanding’ across the board in its first Ofsted inspection for eight years.
Malcomson says: “In usual circumstances [the rating] would have been a significant achievement. However, in the context of the unprecedented and hugely challenging times that the college has recently been through, this result is truly heroic.”
Being lauded by Ofsted improves the college’s prospects for long-term survival, which is vital for the wellbeing of the country’s deaf community.
City Lit students on Deaf Day outside the college
Deaf day ‘summer fete’
Many members of that community are at City Lit for Deaf Day, which Malcomson describes as being like an “enormous summer fete”. Although City Lit is just a stone’s throw from Covent Garden, as I enter the building feels eerily quiet given that it’s bustling with around 4,000 people. All you can hear are footsteps and the odd murmur.
“You’ll probably never see a more diverse community in central London,” says the principal. Some of the cultural differences that can divide people within hearing communities, within spoken English and accent, are absent here.
I’m joined for the afternoon by one of the college’s interpreters, Charmaine, without whom I’m like a foreigner in a new country.
But not everything can be translated easily between languages. Charmaine tells me with a smile how the first time she interpreted for Malcomson, “he talked about the funding for education being like the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads”. That was a tough one for her to communicate.
Mark Hopkinson, head of the Centre for Deaf Education with City Lit staff
Hiring deaf teachers
City Lit’s deaf provision is unique in the college world because it employs deaf teachers – five of them full-time teaching English, maths and computing studies, as well as several interpreters and deaf tutors on hourly contracts.
Malcomson says it was “hugely important” to appoint a member of the deaf community to lead the Centre for Deaf Education.
Before Malcomson joined that wasn’t the case and the college had a separate deaf department with its own office and code on the door.
This “reinforced” the feeling of those staff being “separate” to the others, he says. When the team moved to an open-plan office, its deaf staff wanted to be integrated – but with caveats.
It was important their desks were not positioned so other staff had their backs to them, because “if you’re deaf you want to see people coming towards you”. The deaf education desks were placed right in the centre of the open-plan floor – “fully integrated” – which Malcomson says has been of “huge benefit” to those staff.
To further boost inclusion, the college’s full-time hearing staff are required to take classes in either deaf awareness or BSL in their first six months, so they can communicate with deaf students and staff. Employees see it as an opportunity to explore a different culture.
After starting as a communications executive at the college in November, Daniel Cringean did an eight-week Introduction to BSL course. Before that, he “didn’t know much about the [deaf] community”. “I’ve since fallen in love with the language, it’s so expressive,” he says.
City Lit is “not a bilingual college yet”, although it’s an “aspiration” that Malcomson would “love to get to”. “But just being able to say hello to your [deaf] colleagues as you walk down the corridor is hugely important,” he says.
Deaf BSL mosaic event during City Lit’s Deaf Day
Hope for deaf asylum-seekers
Knowing BSL doesn’t mean staff can necessarily communicate easily with all City Lit’s deaf learners. Over 100 are refugees and asylum seekers (an increase from only around 30 in 2022) who are predominantly from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Iran, and they use different sign languages.
Even countries that share the same native tongue use different sign languages, with British, Irish and American sign languages all differing. BSL also has regional dialects.
Malcomson shows me a picture of the college’s former head of deaf interpreting, James Fitzgerald, with three other signers interpreting at a conference for the Pope in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. They’re all signing the same word but in different languages.
Those differences make life challenging for City Lit’s deaf asylum-seeker and refugee students. Their journeys to the UK are typically traumatic, and when they arrive, digital translation technologies such as Google Translate which would normally help in communication with immigration officials and other services are of limited benefit.
Malcomson explains that there’s not yet a video app equivalent to Google Translate for sign language speakers.
Such is City Lit’s international reputation for deaf provision that Mark Hopkinson, the head of the Centre for Deaf Education, says some asylum seekers and refugees come to London specifically in the hope of being able to attend the college.
“They target London because they know that we have good access here”.
Vasyl Yarema with reporter Jessica Hill and interpreter Charmaine Moss
One of them is Vasyl Yarema, who came to London from a small town in Ukraine 18 months ago. He’s now completed his level two in BSL, and is currently taking an English course.
He describes deaf education provision in England as “much better” than in Ukraine. “There are lots of things that I can do here, and services that I can access that I can’t in Ukraine where there are lots of barriers for deaf people,” he says.
“There’s definitely a sense there that deaf people are lower status, whereas here in the UK we’re equal.”
BSL is “completely different” to Ukrainian Sign Language, which uses a one-handed alphabet. So Yarema had to learn to communicate with his left hand too when he arrived in the UK, which he at first “really struggled” with.
Yarema tells me that in Ukraine, he worked in a branch of McDonald’s, but adds: “Now, I’m totally open to anything as I’ve got lots of opportunities. But I’ve got to find the time to do all the learning I would like.”
BSL for hearing people
BSL is predominantly taught at the college to hearing people working in education, health, care, the Metropolitan Police or Transport for London.
It’s the only UK college to offer a Certificate in Rehabilitation Work with Deaf People, aimed at those working in the public sector.
Kate Persaud took BSL courses at City Lit two decades ago when she was a carer, initially to help her communicate with some of her deaf clients.
Kate Persaud, headteacher of Elmfield School for Deaf Children
Persaud, who is now headteacher of Elmfield School for Deaf Children in Bristol, found that learning the language in a deaf environment was “brilliant”.
She says: “Between lessons, you’re sat talking to deaf adults, who are advocating for what the deaf community is. It’s hugely motivating.”
City Lit has seen a rise in hearing people learning BSL this year. Malcomson believes this is partly because a new GCSE in BSL will be available for schools and colleges from September 2025, which will require a pipeline of teachers to be proficient in the language.
Worryingly the percentage of fully qualified teachers of the deaf is declining, a report by the Consortium for Research into Deaf Education (CRIDE) found, despite the number of deaf children rising.
Malcomson questions whether there will be enough teachers with those skills to teach the GCSE.
Meanwhile, Hopkinson says the biggest challenge the Centre for Deaf Education faces is a nationwide shortage of interpreters, rather than teachers. Most interpreters choose not to specialise in education because they can earn more working in other sectors.
Deaf students can only enrol in the courses City Lit offers to the wider public, in counselling, art and drama, for example, if an interpreter can be found and paid for to accompany them. And that’s expensive, Hopkinson says.
The funding from the government is “not enough” as the same pot has to cover support services for other learning needs and disabilities too.
“We have a lot of deaf people who want to do a counselling or an art course, and we’re happy to give them a place,” Hopkinson adds. “But that then means the funding runs out very quickly.
“We have to pay quite often from our own pocket to ensure the students get the support they need.”
CityLit
Courses for deaf students
Putting on courses specifically for deaf people is therefore more cost efficient for the college than teaching those students in mainstream classes with individual interpreters.
Hopkinson says the classes delivered in BSL are “the best learning strategy” for deaf students, as “it’s better to be taught 100 per cent in your first language”.
Deaf students come from across London for the provision, with some also joining remotely from further afield.
In 2023, the college delivered nearly 5,000 courses in total – 40 per cent of which were online. Malcomson sees its online offering as giving the college a “genuinely national reach”.
Deaf provision beyond City Lit
Elsewhere, deaf education is being impacted by local authority budget cuts.
In Birmingham, deaf students aged 16 to 18 will no longer be able to use council-funded taxis or minibuses to get to their colleges.
Persaud describes post-16 deaf provision outside London as being “not good at all”.
When her pupils in Bristol reach 16 they either attend City of Bristol College, where they can get support from communications support workers, or a residential unit 90 minutes away in Exeter. Bristol Council is currently working with Persaud to set up sixth-form provision at her school, but even then “post-18 specialist provision is missing completely” in the city.
But some new deaf adult provision is springing up.
In March, a residential and learning centre for deaf adults, claiming to be the only one of its kind in the UK, opened in Exmouth in a former convent. Prior to its launch, The Deaf Academy’s 19 to 25 cohort stayed in the same building as younger students, but now they have their own residential and learning space.
There is also the Communication Specialist College Doncaster (CSCD) which provides vocational provision to students whose main barrier to learning is communication and social needs.
Meanwhile, back at City Lit, Malcomson sees City Lit’s deaf provision as a “celebration of what FE does best”.
He says: “It’s a huge part of the college’s heritage and bringing together an incredibly diverse community.”
London’s deputy mayor for business is taking on the capital’s £402 million skills budget, following a reshuffle of Sadiq Khan’s top team.
Khan announced last Friday that his recently appointed deputy mayor for business and growth, Howard Dawber, will oversee the capital’s skills and adult education spending – the largest budget of any devolved authority in the country.
The move pairs skills with business after eight years under Jules Pipe, who was also deputy mayor for planning and regeneration.
However, it is unclear why Dawber’s job title does not include “skills”, despite the brief being the largest of the Greater London Authority’s (GLA) budget areas and four times larger than the mayor’s £102 million business and economy budget.
A spokesperson for Khan did not respond to questions about the title, but said pairing the two briefs would require “close collaboration” between London’s businesses and training providers.
“The mayor will continue to champion adult learning and build on his previous success in this area to support even more people to attain the skills they need to acquire good jobs,” the spokesperson added.
Dawber was a managing director at the Canary Wharf Group until 2022 and has an advisory role at the University of East London’s business school.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, he said he met with shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson this week to talk about Labour’s plans for “skills and future reform”.
The GLA has had responsibility for the capital’s skills spending since 2019, following devolution of the adult education budget from Whitehall.
According to the GLA’s most up-to-date statistics, there were 230,000 funded learners in London in the 2022-23 academic year, up from 213,000 in 2019-20.
An external review of its skills policies between 2019 and 2022, published last summer, found the capital “performed well” in learner participation and enrolments, which have increased 10 per cent.
Areas that are managed directly by the Department for Education have increased 2 per cent.
Pipe, who is now deputy mayor for planning, regeneration and the fire service, said it had been a “pleasure to work with stakeholders and partners across the adult education sector over the last eight years and to have played a part in delivering skills programmes that support Londoners”.
Previous Job: Principal Consultant FE, Peridot Partners
Interesting fact: Sarah has had a varied career. She has found herself ordering diggers, recruiting call handlers, advising on mortgages, spotting shoplifters, and most recently appointing over a 100 chairs, governors and senior leaders across the FE sector
Martin Rigley
Chair, East Midlands Institute of Technology
Start date: April 2024
Concurrent Job: Business Development Associate, Devtank Ltd
Interesting fact: Martin’s OBE for ‘services to the community’ during the first Covid lockdown was for organising fellow manufacturing businesses to donate PPE to frontline medical staff
Philip Le Feuvre
Governor, London South East Colleges
Start date: May 2024
Concurrent Job: Chief Operating Officer, NCFE
Interesting fact: Philip worked as a hospital porter, in a muesli factory, on an airport check-in desk before getting into teaching and then the FE sector
Staff at the University and College Union are planning to strike at its upcoming national congress to protest allegedly “shameful” handling of workplace racism and breaches of a collective agreement.
They voted this week in favour of action that will target day two of the union’s flagship annual meeting in Bournemouth from May 29 to 31.
The union could be forced to cancel FE and HE-related policy motions, fringe meetings and the conference dinner on May 30 as it “cannot guarantee appropriate staffing levels”, according to an email sent to congress delegates seen by FE Week.
It urged delegates not to cancel any plans to attend and said it was “fully committed” to finding a solution ahead of the meeting.
“UCU’s actions as an employer go against the core values of trade unionism”
A spokesperson said it was “unfortunate” the strikes would disrupt the “important policy-making functions of our union”.
Talks between the UCU and Unite, which represents UCU staff, began this week, but the strike remains on the cards.
UCU bosses will meet with Unite at an ACAS meeting on May 24 and have invited Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, to attend as an indication of how “seriously” it is taking the dispute.
If the strike goes ahead, it will be the first in UCU’s 18-year history that its own staff have taken action.
Nearly three-quarters of the union’s 182 members of the Unite voted earlier this week to strike. Turnout was 79 per cent.
The ballot followed an internal dispute over UCU’s “institutional failings” into how it allegedly treats black staff, the Unite black members’ group claimed in March.
The group alleged that black staff were disproportionately targeted for punitive action – 45 per cent of all UCU cases handled by Unite had an element of race discrimination.
UCU said in March it was in the midst of “sourcing an external independent party” to review the allegations, but did not confirm at the time of publication whether an appointment had been made.
According to a provisional timetable, the final day of UCU’s congress will hear a call from the equalities committee for general secretary Jo Grady to take “decisive action” on the black group’s allegations.
“The failure of UCU leadership to offer anything more than warm words in response to a situation that is unacceptable to us as members of a union which should be anti-racist,” the motion stated.
The move is a further escalation of the ongoing internal dispute at the union after Unite ramped up a pay dispute with UCU and accused bosses of “prioritising” senior management pay.
Shortly after, FE Weekrevealed that Grady had accepted a near-£18,000 salary rise to help her pay damages from a libel case.
Unite also accused UCU of repeatedly breaching its agreement that it be the sole union for UCU workers, after it recognised a separate staff union for senior leaders.
A Unite spokesperson said: “It is shameful that as an employer UCU has overseen a culture of racism within its own workplace, imposed new working conditions on staff without agreement and continues to breach collective agreements with its staff union, Unite.
“UCU’s actions as an employer go against the core values of trade unionism that we and the rest of the trade union movement campaign for every single day.”
A UCU spokesperson said: “UCU is proud to offer its staff some of the best pay and conditions in the movement – our staff work incredibly hard, and their work is rightly valued and rewarded highly.
“We recognise the strength of feeling amongst staff and are fully committed to finding agreed solutions and creating the best possible working environment for our staff.”
The Department for Education will go to trial this December to defend allegations it acted unlawfully in last year’s adult education budget (AEB) procurement.
Learning Curve Group and its seven subsidiary training companies are suing the department for “acting unlawfully” in evaluating their unsuccessful bids for a contract.
New High Court documents reveal Learning Curve’s case will be heard at the Technology and Construction Court, Manchester, in a four-day trial that begins on December 16.
The trial will finally determine whether the DfE broke procurement rules by rejecting Learning Curve’s bid.
Alongside claims for damages and costs, Learning Curve Group also wants the court to rule that the AEB procurement was run unlawfully and should be re-run.
It launched its case in August last year after it was one of several major training providers to have their adult education budget bids rejected by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
The DfE has denied Learning Curve’s claims that it acted unlawfully in its evaluation of their bids that “deprived” them “of a real chance of winning a contract”.
Government lawyers filed their first defence against the claim in October.
The case rests on a dispute over a section in Learning Curve’s bid that forecasts training courses and learner numbers, known as its Q1B1 submission. The DfE’s defence claimed Learning Curve’s tender “fails to provide the forecast of the number of learners per course, which is an entire deliverable asked-for”.
Learning Curve refiled its claims in November, following disclosure of procurement evaluation documents. The company alleged that documents showed evaluators had initially scored its Q1B1 response as 100 – enough to be considered for a contract – but this was downgraded to 50 by “non-evaluators” that “did not apply the published award criteria”.
The DfE’s next defence admitted that the initial evaluators “failed to apply” the award criteria for that crucial question. As a result, the usual “consensus score” process, where two evaluators agree on a final score for a question, did not apply and a moderator decided the lower score.
At a court and case management conference earlier this month, Judge Stephen Davies ordered that a liability trial take place this December. Once the court rules on liability, additional proceedings may then follow to decide the value of any costs or damages.
Government forecasts of teacher recruitment should include further education as it is the “worst impacted” sector, MPs have said.
At present, the Department for Education’s teacher workforce model, which sets annual recruitment targets based on projections of incoming learners and teacher flows, only looks at the needs of primary and secondary schools.
This is despite FE facing an increasingly acute staffing crisis, widely understood to be caused by salary increases failing to keep up with inflation and falling short of what is offered in schools and industry.
Following an inquiry into teacher recruitment, MPs on the education committee have urged the DfE to include post-16 education in its modelling to ensure it has a more “holistic picture” of staffing needs “throughout all stages of education”.
During the inquiry, schools minister Damian Hinds said the range of expertise needed and competition with “really well-renumerated” jobs in the private sector left FE facing “particular” challenges.
It is unclear why the DfE does not include FE in its workforce modelling, which it has run for at least a decade.
However, it is unclear if inclusions would boost staffing numbers.
Statistics published by the initial teacher training census suggest recruitment targets for schools have only been achieved once since 2015-16.
Anne Murdoch, a senior adviser at the Association of School and College Leaders, said it made “no sense” for colleges and other FE providers to be excluded from the model.
“The post-16 sector is woefully underfunded, and this is the greatest barrier to improving recruitment and retention.
“Schools and colleges must be properly resourced to enable to them to afford levels of pay which attract and retain teachers.”
Low pay is widely understood to be the main cause of FE’s staffing crisis, with one in four staff in 2019 leaving within their first year of work.
David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges (AoC), said that while he supported the committee’s call for the government to include FE in its modelling, challenges such as the pay gap should also be “eradicated”.
According to AoC estimates, based on DfE workforce data, the average gap between annual salaries of school and FE teachers reached £9,000 last year.
This follows years of real-term cuts to FE teachers’ pay, which has increased at a lower rate than inflation in every year since 2010, except 2015.
The government has long recognised that recruitment is a problem and has tried to increase public awareness of the sector through its Teach in Further Education recruitment campaign, launched in early 2022.
Committee members also called for the expansion of government schemes to boost the appeal of the sector, such as financial incentives of up to £6,000 for teachers starting in STEM and technical subjects.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are investing £470 million over two years to help FE providers address key priorities – including the recruitment and retention of staff.
“We will continue to support the sector to attract new staff with measures including teacher training bursaries worth up to £30,000 tax-free, a national recruitment campaign and programmes supporting providers to recruit those with relevant knowledge to retrain and teach.
“We are also extending the levelling-up premium to all FE colleges for the first time. We will give eligible early career teachers in key STEM and technical shortage subjects, working in colleges, up to £6,000 after tax annually on top of their pay.”
Committee members also want the department to plan for a “demographic bulge” in secondary school pupils, which is expected to peak this year.
