Dr Sue answers your questions. This week, she addresses Progress 8, college performance and grammar schools.

 

Question One: Progress 8

I went to a link meeting last week with school governors and head teachers, and they all seemed to be obsessed with their Progress 8 mark. I didn’t like to ask what it is, but then thought, if I don’t know then others might not know either. So, what is ‘Progress 8’ and why is it important?

Answer: These days I am a school governor and I know what you mean. At our last meeting we spent as much time on Progress 8 as we did on GCSE results. Progress 8 aims to capture the progress pupils make from the end of primary school to the end of secondary school. It is a type of value-added measure, which means that pupils’ results are compared to the actual achievements of other pupils with the same prior attainment.

Trying to explain Progress 8 to parents is a nightmare

It is designed to encourage schools to offer a broad and balanced curriculum with a focus on an academic core at Key tage 4 and reward schools for the teaching of all their pupils, measuring performance across eight qualifications. Every increase in every grade a pupil achieves will attract additional points in the performance tables.

It looks like a good measure and does seem fairer than just looking at how many got an A*, for example. However, it is not shared with the pupil. The school only gets an aggregate score and the score isn’t that user – friendly. For example, if a school progresses pupils as predicted and they reach their assessed potential, that works out as just a “0”. Trying to explain it to parents is a nightmare.

 

Question Two: College Performance

I am pulling my hair out and don’t think I can go to another governing body where we get a mound of papers, tons of data with no interpretation, and we are told that performance is improving when it really is not. How can I break into this and start to have some meaningful conversations?

Answer: The best way in is to raise it with the clerk and the chair and say: “There must be a better way of doing this.”

In previous replies I have written about establishing a balanced scorecard where you drill down into the data as you need it. There are lots of good models around which your clerk or principal can seek out and bring back to the board.

As governers you need to feel secure that you are being told the truth

However, what makes your question different to previous ones is that you are being told that performance is improving when you clearly think it is not. You need to act now and ask for a data review – don’t leave it. As governors you need to feel secure that you are being told the truth and if you have just one doubt then you should get to the bottom of it.

It is your role as a governor to challenge, but you should not have to be a detective. If you are not happy then try to get the board to agree to getting in some expert external advice.

 

Question Three: Grammar Schools

What will grammar schools do to our enrolment?

Although we have had the green paper this week we don’t really know what the final grammar school policy is going to be and what sorts of tests are going to apply before they can be set up. If it goes ahead I hope the response to the consultation is robust and something sensible comes out of it. I am expecting the tests that are in the green paper to be extended, and to include criteria such as:

•    Is the area well served already?
•    Is there really a demand for selective education at 11?
•    What will it do to the other local schools and will it create a situation where good secondary schools have to close because lack of numbers?

I also want all the schools in the area to be looked at, including UTCs and free schools. It’s time for them to be reviewed anyway and this would be a reason.

Is there really a demand for selective education at 11?

But what about your enrolment, I hear? Well, there is only a finite number of pupils to go around and it depends where you position your college. My experience of being in Kent was: “Yes the grammar schools took the high achievers” an “Yes it annoyed me a lot!”

However, with the right sort of partnership and an exciting curriculum offer, most of the students in the other secondary schools looked towards the college for their post-16 programme. If you can offer a broad curriculum and provide a mix that the grammar schools can’t match, you could find that the bright, savvy or ambitious secondary modern pupils migrate naturally to you at 16.

With the sector reeling from proposed rate – cuts to 16-18 apprenticeships, the government needs to heed the findings of the consultation, says Mark Dawe.

All the signals under Theresa May’s new administration are that the government is sticking with its three million manifesto target for apprenticeships and, that it is determined the levy will start next April. AELP is comfortable with this position although we are aware that other organisations are not.

At one time, our view was that the 3 million target was achievable without the levy or any of the proposed reforms to the apprenticeship programme at all. After all, 2.7 million starts happened in the last parliament so – providing the SFA was prepared to fund our members’ growth requests – it would not have been a tall order to deliver an extra 300,000.

The situation has changed though, with the government saying that the programme will soon be funded entirely by the levy. This means we can’t afford any delay on the levy’s start if the target is going to be reached by 2020.

The other change under Mrs May is the new emphasis on the social mobility agenda. AELP and others, including new skills minister Robert Halfon, have always argued that apprenticeships can play a major role in advancing this. It came as a big surprise, therefore, when we opened the latest apprenticeship consultation documents on August 12 to find that a large cohort of 16 –  18-year-olds potentially faced a block on their career prospects because of a proposed set of totally unviable funding rates for many of their apprenticeship choices. Almost equally alarming was that the picture for 19 – 23-year-olds didn’t look much better.

Messages from training providers immediately poured into my inbox, which prompted AELP to commission an expert analysis of the proposed rate – changes. It was very clear that we are not just talking about private providers’ margins or charitable providers’ surpluses taking a hit. Having crunched the numbers, we were looking at the real possibility of providers and their employers withdrawing from 16-18 apprenticeships altogether.

Independent analysis from FE Week supported our conclusions by identifying rate – cuts in many key sectors, of around 30 per cent to over 50 per cent. These are in sectors where, unless a generous work – permit scheme is in place, employers will need to replace EU migrants with home-developed talent once Brexit has taken place.

Government really needs to reconsider its proposals

The issue is made worse by the government encouraging employers to negotiate with providers on the price of delivering the training. As AELP said in its consultation response, we are already seeing employers asking providers to pay them to have access to their levy. Not only is this wrong, but the whole practice of negotiating on funding will have a negative impact on quality, so it’s good that FE Week has picked up on this aspect of the reforms in its campaign.

To be fair, the government has conducted a proper consultation and given the weight of feedback, and employer and provider agreement on the key issues, we expect that the evidence will be reflected in changes to the proposals and a manageable transition.
AELP is now heavily engaged in discussions with officials and the DfE’s permanent secretary has been among those to visit our members in London, where the proposed removal of the inner-city funding and disadvantage uplifts would be devastating for the programme.

The funding rates will hopefully be sorted soon but two major concerns remain. Firstly, why are 16-18 apprenticeships the only part of DfE 16-18 provision not to be fully state-funded? It is simply discriminatory, especially when young people are being encouraged by ministers to choose apprenticeships as a high-quality alternative to traditional academic learning.

The other big worry is whether all of the levy proceeds will be used by the levy payers themselves, leaving little or no funding for non – levy paying employers who currently account for at least half of the apprenticeships on offer. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that with levy funding eventually reaching £2.5 billion, the programme will be one billion pounds larger than now. The social mobility agenda will be ill-served if swathes of the country are left with little apprenticeship provision because large employers are located elsewhere and the funding rates make provision unviable. The government really needs to reconsider its proposals.

 

Mark Dawe is CEO of the association of employment and learning providers