City College Brighton and Hove is helping disabled learners access employ-ment through a newly launched social enterprise – with the help of a famous face.
The college will be working in partnership with the charity Team Domenica, which offers learning programmes for young adults who have learning or social barriers to help get them into employment.
Part of the initiative is the new Equality Works training café at 62-63 Old Steine in Brighton, which was officially opened by actress Julie Walters at its launch event earlier this month.
The café will be open to the public during term time, to help students to develop their professional and social skills. There will also be support for students who want to work in other industry sectors, such as digital media.
So far, the charity has signed up 21 students in partnership with City College, and a number of local employers have offered placements and support for the students.
The charity was started by Rosa Monckton whose daughter Domenica has Down’s Syndrome. She began the initiative to meet the needs of young adults who were struggling to find regular employment.
Monckton said: “This is just the start of a much larger operation. Our plan is to open other centres across the south coast and then nationally. The aim is to transform the lives of the learning disabled.”
Picture: students with Julie Walters at the Team Domenica launch event
A London college has partnered with global engineering giant Siemens to train its next generation of apprentices.
The College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London (CONEL) will provide training for 17 new recruits to the company’s apprenticeship scheme, giving them access to workshops equipped with the latest engineering tools and equipment at its Enfield Centre campus.
The apprentices will train in the design and development of rail systems, including electrification of railways, road traffic systems, healthcare equipment and building technologies.
Martyn Hottas, Siemens’ general manager of skills and professional education, said: “Siemens has always believed in apprenticeships as a very good start to a career in our business.
“We chose CONEL as our partner college because of its commitment to delivering engineering qualifications to the level required by our business, to prepare young learners for a great career.”
Siemens is one of the UK’s leading employers, and has more than 500 apprentices on its training programme across all its business divisions, including 120 new apprenticeships this year.
Picture:Kurt Hints, vice principal for curriculum and learner experience at CONEL with Heather Robson, Siemens vocational skills consultant
Barnet and Southgate College’s Wella Centre of Excellence has officially been opened by the celebrity hairdresser Patrick Cameron.
A world leader in cutting and styling long hair, Cameron demonstrated his skills to students and staff at the college, before giving a talk about his career.
Cameron, who runs his own training school in London, said: “Good training is the key to the success of our industry, and this accreditation shows the great respect Wella has for the new facilities and the work Barnet and Southgate College does.
“Education is crucial for young hairdressers. I see a lot of great hairdressers throughout the country who don’t continue with their training or keep up with new trends, products and tools – which is essential.
“Hairdressing is a life choice and this will be with me forever, I’m always looking at people’s hair.”
The Centre of Excellence title was awarded to the college after impressing Wella with their hairdressing facilities and the high standard of training at the college’s new Colindale Campus.
There are only 34 colleges nationally that have the Centre of Excellence accolade, with Barnet and Southgate the only college in London to hold the accolade.
Picture: Celebrity hairdresser Patrick Cameron with students
Why are apprenticeships singled out for special treatment? The benefits of other qualifications are enormous and can be tested, says Graham Taylor, if we let levy payers to decide where to put their money.
We’re currently obsessed with apprenticeships and the emerging minutiae, which sometimes means we can’t see the wood for the trees. So let’s just take a minute and look at what we are trying to achieve.
Essentially, the government wants higher productivity and economic growth. That much is uncontroversial. However, most economists acknowledge that both are difficult to measure – especially productivity in a modern economy; how do you cope with the likes of Facebook, Amazon and Uber, for starters?
But putting that aside for a second, if there is a causal link between qualifications gained and productivity, then surely that should hold for all qualifications? The most recent government analysis on the subject examined GCSEs, A-levels and apprenticeships, and concluded they were all associated with significantly higher lifetime productivity. But what about other qualifications?
Why are apprenticeships singled out for special treatment?
It’s the customer (not the government or me) who should decide which are most relevant and helpful to them. And business will have their own KPIs to judge return on investment in training. So why is the government so obsessed with apprenticeships? Hypothecating funding and spending millions on TV adverts to promote one training route distorts the market. Building over-complex management systems is not a good use of taxpayers’ money.
The government expects to raise £3bn from the levy, effectively a payroll tax for big organisations. However, businesses will want their money back through high-quality training that demonstrably improves productivity, as well as freedom in how to spend their money, without the apprenticeships-only restriction.
Colleges are levy-paying businesses too. When we offered our training manager an extra £45k (our net college levy) for next year’s CPD budget, she didn’t mention apprenticeships once. So we’ll have to rename our professional and technical programmes, which work best for our staff CPD, as apprenticeships.
This is an artificial way of meeting the government’s £3m target, but everyone will do it. And here’s another way of shoehorning more in: NVQs are no longer funded, but NVQs under the apprenticeship banner are; strange but true.
And, of course, funding is stacked in favour of apprenticeships (with acknowledgements to FE Week’s campaign to get funding rates right). The learner doesn’t want to pay – witness the dire take-up of loans for apprenticeships and the swift policy reversal. But loans are now the norm for ‘other’ 19+ advanced qualifications, so why are apprenticeships singled out for separate funding and special systems? Because there’s a target, not because this is what works best for UK PLC.
Are adult learners sacrificial lambs at the altar of apprenticeships?
The tragedy is that there are millions fewer adult learners in this country compared with 10 years ago. Between 2013/14 and 2014/15 alone, adult learners in FE fell by 315,900 (11 per cent) despite a 1.3 per cent increase in the number of adult apprentices. With the 28 per cent cut in ‘other’ funding in 2015/16, the fall will be even greater. Are they sacrificial lambs at the altar of apprenticeships?
I believe lifelong learning is a good thing. But the dirigiste approach – that (funded) learning must be purely skills-related – is not only flawed, but impossible to enforce. Has anyone attempted to count the number of adult learners who come to adult classes for work reasons (“I’m taking GCSE French because I have to speak to my boss in Paris every Friday”)?
Warwick Institute for Employment Research considers that adult education could disappear by 2020, “because adult and community learning providers continue to be ignored by the area reviews and skills devolution processes”.
This may be an extreme prediction but what is certainly true, is that the economic and social costs of losing millions of adult learners has been overlooked. Apprenticeships are part of the solution but should not be given special treatment. Let’s not forget the millions of adult learners who study ‘other’ qualifications, who need our help and support.
The benefits are enormous and can be tested, if you allow levy payers to decide where to put their money.
With the news that the levy will effectively function as a tax, Smita Jamdar asks whether government will succeed in its aim of making it simple and attractive for employers to offer high-quality apprenticeships.
Last week, FE Week reported that employers will have to enter into contracts with the Skills Funding Agency when they access the money they are entitled to under the apprenticeship levy scheme. This seemed to take everyone, including, I must admit, me, by surprise. Having reflected further, perhaps it shouldn’t have.
The levy was introduced as part of this year’s Finance Act, which states that “a tax called the apprenticeship levy shall be introduced”. So, the levy is just another tax which, once paid, becomes public money. As others have observed, it is, by UK standards at least, an unusual tax because it is hypothecated, with the money ring-fenced for a particular purpose.
Hypothecation has never been a strong feature of our taxation system, largely because governments have rarely shown themselves responsible enough to be trusted to continue to spend the money in the way initially proposed. But nevertheless that is what the levy is.
There is a risk that apprenticeships will be among the most prescriptively documented forms of provision we have
The effect is that when the money is drawn down by employers, conditions will be attached on the draw-down to ensure that it is spent on the things it should be spent on and not those it wasn’t intended for. This is both a general feature of prudent custodianship of public funds and the only way for government to fulfil the hypothecation. Prudent custodianship requires broadly three things:
1. A clear set of expectations as to what the funds must be used for;
2. mechanisms for ensuring compliance with those expectations through a combination of assurances from the recipient of the funds and audit; and
3. the capacity to claw back funds or terminate the right to funding where there is the evidence of abuse.
In this case, the confirmation from the SFA that a contract with employers would be necessary came in response to an FE Week query about how the SFA intended to tackle misuse of the funds, specifically concerns about the prospect of employers requiring providers to ‘pay to play’.
So in some ways, the requirement for funding conditions was so blindingly obvious that one wonders whether it was news at all. What makes it news is, I suspect, the fact that it is another example of the confused and incremental nature of announcements related to the levy, which have made it difficult for both employers and providers to take plan properly for its implementation.
Employers are in any event right to be apprehensive about the requirement. The conditions the SFA has traditionally attached to funding have been complex and onerous, and ensuring compliance with them has spawned an industry in its own right. It would be really unfortunate if an overly bureaucratic approach undermined the key rationale for the levy, which was to put employers at the heart of developing high-quality, flexible and responsive skills provision.
There is a risk that apprenticeships will be among the most prescriptively documented forms of provision we have
Already there is a risk that apprenticeships will be among the most prescriptively documented forms of provision we have. In addition to the contract between employers and the SFA, there will be the contact between the employer and the provider.
There will also be a contract (whether formally described as such or not) between the employer and the apprentice, and between the provider and the apprentice. In relation to both the employer/apprentice and provider/apprentice relationships there will be a raft of legislation that affects the relationship that isn’t captured in the contracts. On top of all that, there is an expectation that the employer, the provider and the apprentice will enter into a threeway commitment statement summarising the responsibilities of each.
The stated aim of the government’s reforms is to ensure that there is the swift required growth in skills by making it simple and attractive for employers to offer high-quality apprenticeships. It remains to be seen if the levy achieves these aims.
In the end the education watchdog only handed out one ‘requires improvement’ – for apprenticeship provision – with the other eight headline fields all being rated ‘good’.
The inspection, which took place from May 9 to 13, and on June 28, covered the four colleges within the group – Newcastle College, Newcastle Sixth Form College, Kidderminster College and West Lancashire College.
Inspectors praised the group’s leadership, particularly the chief executive, for establishing a “more collaborative and consultative management culture” and noted that “after a period of decline, most 16- to 19-year-old learners now make good progress”.
The report also found that staff “provide excellent support learners and create a positive rapport in the classrooms”.
The “quality of teaching and learning” had improved as teachers had “engaged enthusiastically” with the colleges’ professional development programme.
But inspectors also noted a number of issues in particular areas – including the quality of provision at West Lancashire College, which “needs further improvement”.
In addition, “too many learners in 2014/15 did not achieve as well as expected on A- and AS-level courses at Newcastle Sixth Form College” and “not enough apprentices achieve their qualification within their planned timescales”.
Joe Docherty, NCG chief executive, called today’s result “welcome news”.
He said: “I am pleased that all four NCG colleges have been assessed as Grade 2 good in their recent Ofsted inspection.
“I am especially pleased that the report highlights the professionalism and dedication of colleagues within our four colleges and the positive difference they make to ensure that learners are given the chance to develop their skills, achieve their qualifications and positively progress in their lives and careers.”
The inspection did not cover the other two NCG members, Rathbone Training and Intraining, which are inspected separately.
As previously reported by FE Week, the delay in publishing the report was likely due to a dispute over disappointing recent retention and overall achievement rates.
For example, NCG’s overall retention rate for level two 16- to 18 year-olds in 2014/15 stood at 15.6 per cent below the national average for a general further education college, while the overall achievement rate at level three (formerly known as the success rate) for that age group was negative 7.5 per cent.
NCG had previously insisted that this data was “misleading” because it was “for all NCG provision including national charity Rathbone, which works exclusively with young people not in education, employment or training, and national private training provider Intraining, both of which have national performance benchmarks lower than those of FE colleges”.
The Skills Funding Agency appears to have been ignoring requests from several providers to boost advanced learner loan provision – just as applications from 19- to 23-year-olds are taking off.
A number of providers, who have asked to remain anonymous, have told FE Week that they are still waiting for a response on loan growth requests made as long ago as June and July.
SFA guidance states that growth requests should be responded to “within two working days”, prompting the Association of Employment and Learning Providers to demand that the process be sped up.
The latest government figures have shown, meanwhile, that total loan applications made between May 1 and July 1 2016/17 had reached 19,450 – the highest figure for that time of year since the loans scheme started for the 24-plus age group only in 2013.
Just over a quarter of these requests (5,140) were made by 19- to 23-year-olds, who were able to apply for the loans in May for the first time.
“Providers have been told they would get a quick response and they haven’t,” Mark Dawe, AELP’s chief executive, told FE Week.
“We do not believe there is a lack of loans headroom, and there’s obviously a lot of interest in loans for 19- to 23-year-olds in particular, so it is worrying that many of our providers have had no response.”
All the learners who have been promised they are going to be enrolled are just waiting, waiting, waiting…
A senior FE consultant who declined to be named told FE Week that he was aware of some providers who had waited months for news on growth requests.
“Up until May/June time it was a two-day process, but since July I know of three providers that have been waiting on various different growth amounts from the SFA,” he said.
“At the moment what it’s doing is completely stifling the process; all the learners who have been promised they are going to be enrolled are just waiting, waiting, waiting.”
An SFA spokesperson said the organisation was reviewing “a significant number of requests as the loans programme continues to grow” and that it expected “to inform the majority of providers shortly”.
The agency’s figures, published in August, also showed that while there was a healthy interest in 19-to-23 loans – applications for learners aged 24 and above had fallen to just 14,310.
This was the lowest number for that age group, during the period, since the launch.
“The response from 19- to 23-year-olds is higher than I expected and it masks the fact that the applications from 24-plus have gone down,” said Mike
Farmer, an education consultant. “I do think – based on the evidence from higher education as well – it is the case that the younger you are, the less averse you are to taking out loans.”
Julian Gravatt, the assistant chief executive of the Association of Colleges, however said his organisation had been “pleased to see that over 5,000 younger adults under the age of 24 have already applied.”
Apprenticeships and skills minister Robert Halfon told FE Week: “Advanced learner loans enable adults of all ages to gain the skills they need and move up the ladder of opportunity. It’s great to see such a good take-up from those aged 19 to 23.”
Westminster Kingsway College’s bid to have itself rebranded as Central London Colleges Group was rejected over concerns its new name would undermine its neighbours, it has been revealed.
A Freedom of Information request found that the college’s request was turned down even though another institution, formed by the recent merger between Bromley College, Bexley College and Greenwich Community College, was permitted to use the name London South East Colleges (LSEC).
FE colleges are obliged to apply to the government in order to change their legal names, under rules set out in the Further and Higher Education Act 1992.
However, it seems as though LSEC has managed to exploit a loophole in the legislation; a spokesperson for the group told FE Week that London South East Colleges was merely a “trading name” rather than a legal one – a fact confirmed by the Department for Education, which said no rules had been broken.
Results from the FoI request, lodged last month, showed that the DfE and the now-defunct Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) had received 12 name-change requests within the past 24 months. Westminster Kingsway’s petition, which followed a merger with City and Islington College, was the only one the government turned down
In a letter written at the time, seen by FE Week, the former skills minister Nick Boles told them: “In my view, the name you propose would imply a sub-regional identity that significantly overstates the geographical coverage of the merged colleges and potentially undermines the status of other FE colleges in central London.”
The spokesperson for LSEC revealed that the college’s legal name is actually the less distinctive Bromley College Corporation.
“London South East Colleges is our trading name, which doesn’t require ministerial approval,” they said. “This would only be the case if we were changing the legal name of the corporation, which we are not; it remains Bromley College Corporation.”
However, there are a number of other colleges in the south-east of the capital – which could mean their brands are undermined, and that they lose out on learner applications, when pitted against LSEC’s impressive-sounding trading name.
Asked whether they felt LSEC’s workaround was fair, a spokesperson for Westminster Kingsway said on September 12: “As a group we were disappointed that our original proposal was rejected but we do not comment on the business of other colleges or groups.”
In July, the college told FE Week: “The colleges’ plans to collaborate and create a dynamic new group at the heart of London’s evolving FE sector are independent of the name we initially proposed and were not impacted by BIS’s decision.
“We are working separately to agree a new name and develop a new overarching brand which reflects our exciting plans. In the interim we will be called ‘WKCIC Group’ which has been approved by DfE.”
A press release issued on August 1 by the colleges involved in the South East London merger read: “Greenwich Community College and Bexley College have today formally merged with Bromley College of Higher and Further Education to create London South East Colleges.”
A local rival, Lewisham Southwark College, which itself had been permitted by BIS to change its name from LeSoCo in November 2014, declined to comment on LSEC’s name-change.
A DfE spokesperson told FE Week: “To clarify, Bromley College has not submitted an application to change its corporation name. ‘London South East Colleges’ is a brand (otherwise known as a trading) name. The name of the corporation remains unchanged for the time being. Trading names do not require statutory consent.”
Battle lines have been drawn by the Association of Colleges, after it launched its first judicial review against the government in more than a decade.
The legal action, which has cost AoC £50,000 so far, concerns the Department for Education’s decision to fund a new sixth form at Abbs Cross Academy and Arts College in Hornchurch.
It claims that DfE’s regional schools commissioner failed to follow the government’s own rules after approving the request from the Loxford School Trust.
These state, for example, that sixth forms should only be created in schools which expect to enrol 200 students or more.
They should also be graded ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, offer a full programme of at least 15 A-levels, and not impose a financial burden on the rest of the school.
David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: “We thought long and hard about this action, recognising that the legal costs would be high.
“We will have invested over £50,000 on this process; an investment we felt was necessary at this stage because we wanted to secure clarity on such an important issue.”
We will have invested over £50,000 on this process; an investment we felt was necessary at this stage because we wanted to secure clarity on such an important issue.”
Abbs Cross fell from a ‘good’ Ofsted rating to ‘inadequate’ in its last full inspection in June 2015.
Since then, it has been subject to two section eight special measures monitoring inspections, one in December 2015 and the following in March this year.
The latest report says that although both the trust’s statement of action and the academy’s improvement plan were “fit for purpose”, the academy’s leaders and managers were “not taking effective action towards the removal of special measures”.
It also advised that the academy should “not seek to appoint newly qualified teachers”.
Nick Linford gave his opinion on the move by the AoC – read it here.
The review, due to be heard in early November, is being launched by AoC in partnership with Havering Sixth Form College, which is 1.5 miles away from Abbs Cross.
AoC has suggested that the outcome of the judicial review could have a bearing on the way the government approves new selective schools, and could even establish the status of guidance to the regional schools commissioners.
Abbs Cross declined to comment, but a DfE spokesperson said: “We are aware of the judicial review launched by the Association of Colleges and Havering Sixth Form College. It would not be appropriate to comment while proceedings are ongoing.”
FE Week also contacted Dr Tim Coulson, the regional schools commissioner responsible for the decision to go ahead with the sixth form, but he did not respond.
At a Public Accounts Committee hearing in March on ‘overseeing financial sustainability in the further education sector’, Chris Wormald, a former permanent secretary for the DfE, commented on the new guidance, saying “we have just tightened our arrangements for approving new sixth forms.
“You can’t just set up a sixth form; you have to apply to us. The regional schools commissioner takes the decision on behalf of ministers, against the criteria.”
Chief executive of the Association of Colleges, David Hughes (pictured above) told FE Week:
We felt we had no choice but to initiate a judicial review when official government guidance designed to ensure the quality and viability of post-16 education was seemingly ignored.
We were delighted when the government responded to our calls for clear guidance on the establishment of new-school sixth forms, as for too many years the lack of it had allowed the creation of inappropriate school sixth forms.
All we are seeking for here is that the guidance is adhered to.
AoC has long been concerned about the quality and breadth of education available in small-school sixth forms.
Research shows that results in small-school sixth forms are often inferior to other options.
The risks are that young people are not given the advice, guidance and options which allow them to make an informed choice about the best route for them.
All we are seeking for here is that the guidance is adhered to
This is an area about which I’d urge the DfE to carry out more research and analysis on, to help us understand it better.
It would be helpful for Ofsted to carry out a thematic review of the information it already holds, as well as focus on it in future inspections.
The Sainsbury Review and skills plan [unveiled over the summer] provides welcome impetus to the development of high-quality technical education routes for young people.
This will require sufficient investment if it is to be implemented well.
Having too many small-school sixth forms will divert funding that would be better spent in colleges; the college blend of academic and technical education suits many young people.
In some circumstances, such as rural areas, a small-school sixth form is inevitable. In this instance we would want to see more support for partnerships between these sixth forms and colleges so that young people have the widest range of options available to them.
