Dozens of prison educators are suing their employers for nearly half a million pounds.
Thirty-seven workers have taken Milton Keynes College, LTE Group and PeoplePlus to court for allegedly not considering pay reviews along a pay scale as stipulated in their employment contracts.
High Court documents reveal the claimants are demanding more than £450,000, plus 8 per cent interest a year, after lodging a claim in the King’s Bench division last year.
The combined claim relates to alleged failures by the employers to honour contractual obligations around pay reviews.
The 37 claimants work in prison education services across the country run by the three providers: 14 are bringing claims against Milton Keynes, 21 against LTE’s prison education arm Novus, and two against PeoplePlus.
Anthony Sakrouge, partner at Russell Cooke, representing the claimants, said: “Our clients were told when they were taken on that they would be eligible for periodic pay increases along a pay scale.
“They consider that they had a contractual right at least to be considered for such increases and that the defendants breached their obligations in that regard, by moving away from the pay scales without any proper explanation.”
The University and College Union are supporting the staff.
The court proceedings come at the same that that all three providers placed bids for the new £1.5 billion prison education tender, due to begin next April.
Prison education has gathered damning headlines in recent years, from Ofsted handing out scathing judgments of its quality to MPs calling for it to be brought into the public sphere.
Lawyers on behalf of the claimants allege in the court documents that the providers breached “express and implied terms of contracts of employment” by failing or not properly carrying out the contractual pay review provisions.
In employment law, express terms relate to conditions of employment put in writing such as pay and/or working hours.
Implied terms are not written into contracts but are terms that are either too obvious to be written down, are part of the law or related to behaviour and conduct.
According to a blog post by the Acas arbitration service, this could involve the statutory redundancy pay rate, for example.
In the claim form, the claims brought against the three defendants are “materially the breaches of very similar contractual provisions in similar educational settings”.
This means the judge will hear all the claims in one case and can “conveniently” dispose of them in the same proceedings.
The combined claim is valued at £456,035.43, plus the 8 per cent interest at the judgment rate, taking the total claim if they win to £492,518.26. The average payout for each claimant would be just over £13,000.
The case was filed on December 20, 2023, and was officially opened by the King’s bench division on February 23 this year.
The particulars of the claim have not been published.
A spokesperson for the LTE Group said: “It would be inappropriate to comment at this stage of the legal proceedings.”
Sally Alexander, the chief executive at MK College Group, said: “This claim is being defended and it would not be appropriate for us to comment on live proceedings.”
PeoplePlus did not respond to requests for comment.
Director of Employment, Skills, Health and Communities, West Midlands Combined Authority
Start date: June 2024
Previous Job: West Midlands Group Director, Department for Work and Pensions
Interesting fact: Helene is an armchair sports fanatic but was hands-on leading the 2022 Commonwealth Games workforce delivery. Supporting Wolverhampton Wanderers on the other hand is part of her sporting life that regularly tests her commitment!
Ian Bamford
Vice Chair, AELP
Start date: June 2024
Concurrent Job: Chief Quality and Curriculum Officer, Paragon Skills
Interesting fact: Ian qualified as a chef through an apprenticeship (YTS, in those days). He has worked in several high-quality hotels and restaurants throughout the late 1980’s and 1990’s. In 1997, he fell into teaching, where he has gained his experience in the work-based learning sector.
Interesting fact: Driven by a passion for education and apprenticeships, Kelly is dedicated to fostering opportunities for hands-on learning and skill development. When not advocating for educational reform, Kelly enjoys capturing the world through the lens of a camera as an avid photographer
Rob Nitsch
Chief Executive, Federation of Awarding Bodies
Start date: August 2024
Previous Job: Delivery Director, Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education
Interesting fact: Rob trained as a professional engineer in the British Army. He led one of the Army’s 4 operating divisions in the UK, Germany, Nepal, and Brunei before being appointed to the Army’s Main Board and the Army’s HR Director from 2015 to 2018
We’re almost at the first anniversary of the publication of local skills improvement plans (LSIPs) across all 38 areas across England, though in Lancashire we’ve had the trailblazer up and running since 2022.
In our area, colleges are no stranger to collaboration: we’ve been working together since 1998 on a range of projects under The Lancashire Colleges (TLC) banner.
Together, we represent 11 colleges, including general further education and tertiary colleges, sixth form colleges, and a specialist land-based college. Our unique geography means we serve cities, towns, urban, rural and coastal communities with diverse populations, and therefore, are the perfect testbed for skills policy-making.
I was pleased to discuss the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 and our experiences, particularly around ways we can best meet local skills needs, at the APPG on FE and lifelong learning.
The act has made notable strides in several areas, particularly in enhancing employer engagement, improving the quality of technical education, and beginning to address social mobility and inclusivity.
However, challenges remain. Regardless of the outcome of the upcoming general election, the next government must work with colleges to deliver long-term local and national education and skills priorities.
LSIPs have laudable aims: identifying, articulating and delivering on the long-term skills needs within an area. TLC has been welcomed as genuine partners in the development of the LSIP; colleagues from the Chamber of Commerce have been in our colleges, at our employer partnership events, and have worked with us collaboratively throughout, to generate a plan that is owned by us all.
Connecting with local employers has always been a central priority for TLC, but this renewed focus has enabled us to form relationships with employers who have not previously engaged with the skills system.
Funding is currently too complex, bureaucratic and restrictive
We have been lucky in the approach, but for too many areas there hasn’t been enough consistency, including in the way and extent to which colleges have been engaged in LSIP development.
Colleges have unrivalled links with local authorities, employers and other key stakeholders. We are also the only part of the education system with a statutory duty to meet local skills needs. Shouldn’t we therefore be around the decision-making table? By making it a truly equal partnership, we can reduce complexity and give everyone confidence that the LSIP is the right plan.
At a time when FE funding is challenging, we have been able to deliver significant projects through the strategic development fund (SDF) and later, the local skills improvement fund (LSIF).
In Lancashire, we used the SDF to consult over 1,000 employers and developed 35 new short courses to meet their needs. Over 3,000 students immediately benefitted from new learning spaces and equipment, with over 2,000 hours of CPD delivered. This is helping employers to think differently and helping colleges to plan our curriculum for the long term.
However, the funding is currently too complex, bureaucratic and restrictive. This can undermine our ability to deliver on LSIPs. Short-term, ring-fenced pots do not allow us to invest in long-term strategies. Capital and revenue splits prevent us from spending in the way we need.
It’s all well and good having industry-grade kit, but we also need the revenue funding for the staff to deliver the courses.
The Lancashire experience – the challenges, opportunities and suggestions for development – have been captured well in AoC’s new report ‘Local skills improvement plans: a review of their impact and opportunities for the future’. This research provides early insight on how LSIPs can be supported and further improved to ensure they have continued relevance, longevity and become embedded as an intrinsic feature of the skills landscape.
As tempting as it can often be for policy makers to scrap initiatives and start afresh, my plea is for evolution, not revolution. Fairly minor changes to partnerships, funding and accountability can unlock a wealth of opportunities. These would go a long way in giving colleges the freedom and confidence to really run with tackling longstanding challenges in our local and national skills systems.
LSIPs have great core principles; let’s make them work as a strategic approach to skills improvement planning, that supports growth in the local, regional and national economy.
Al isn’t just being used by students to cheat. When it comes to apprenticeships, there are many ways the tech can be deployed to boost learning – but are providers embracing it yet?
Imagine you’re an apprentice fully immersed in the latest AI tools. Your day might look like this:
After breakfast, a personalised task manager app tells you what you’ve got on that day, based on the data it has gathered about how you learn effectively.
After doing some research that involves putting prompts into a large language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT, you start an online module with an AI mentor – a chatbot with human-like qualities.
After lunch, you strap on your VR headset and work on a simulation project using AI-powered apps to calculate measurements and analyse data.
Then at 5pm, you return to your AI mentor to reflect on what you’ve learned and struggled with.
For some educators, this scenario represents a dystopian nightmare. One in which robots hijack our ability to think for ourselves and that makes traditional training redundant.
And there are fears that cash-strapped training providers could use chatbots to do away with human tutors, and that learners’ mental health will suffer from the lack of human interaction.
So far, the government’s lead technical training body, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE), has only produced loose guidance around the use of AI, leaving many providers hesitant about its adoption.
But Jonathan Smith, co-founder of Veraxis, a company that supports training firms to embrace AI, believes they need to “catch up” but with the right policies to limit the pitfalls.
“This isn’t the future, these tools are here now,” he says. He explains many people working with apprentices already use AI, sometimes without realising it, for admin tasks such as attendance tracking and scheduling, and within learning management systems.
Tom Rogers, an early careers practitioner for BAE Systems, says AI is already being used by tutors to build lesson plans, and by applicants applying for apprenticeship vacancies.
Although he acknowledges “Gen Z are on their phones more than we would like”, he believes young people are “often looking for ways to streamline a process to work smarter, and not harder”.
He adds: “AI should be allowed to flourish with trust and confidence.”
Firebrand Training’s Richard Parker, who is chair of The Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ (AELP) IT & digital forum, believes providers are being “overly nervous” and “too slow” to consider AI.
He says: “They were sat there going, ‘we don’t really want to touch it. It’s not allowed, no one’s going to give us permission to use it’.
“IfATE needs to step in and give them proper guidance.”
Richard Parker
Personal and accessible AI training
One of the biggest potential benefits of AI is how it can customise training to each learner. Data can be analysedusing AIto understand where an apprentice struggles or disengages, then chatbots powered by generative AI can provide tailored support.
Veraxis co-founder Rebecca Bradley believes using AI in this way has a “really high impact on learner retention”.
She points out that apprentices can use chatbots to answer questions they might feel embarrassed to ask a human.
“A chatbot gathers such rich information from your data that it gives a response that feels human,” she says. “We move away from the disparity of your introverts not getting as much input as your extroverts who feel confident asking questions.”
Apprenticeship and training provider Babington recently launched a pilot programme with AI learning platform Obrizum.
Director of learning design Phillip McMullan said that 94 per cent of learners on the AI learning pathways they created felt the learning was “highly personalised to their specific needs, leading to a 1.5x increase in speed to competency”. Learner satisfaction was also said to have risen 25 per cent.
Multiverse reported this week that its ‘Multiverse Atlas’ AI learning coach, launched in February, had clocked up 40,000 queries from 3,600 apprentices.
CEO Euan Blair said uptake was higher among apprentices aged over 40 and those with additional learning needs, which shows “if you’re thoughtful about how you design AI products, they can support broader access to high-quality training”.
He added: “Crucially, the overwhelming majority of users found Atlas helpful, with ‘usefulness ratings’ above 91 per cent across all demographics, including gender, age, ethnicity, and learning need.
Multiverse founder Euan Blair
A human touch
But will chatbots replace human tutors and coaches?
Goldman Sachs economists said last year that up to 300 million full-time jobs could be impacted globally by the rise of generative AI.
But Darren Coxon, an adviser on AI in education, does not think AI will “replace anyone student-facing any time soon” because “humans are too important to the learning journey”.
The AI platform Aptem, whose customers include training providers and colleges, claims its goal is “not to replace roles such as tutors and skills coaches” but to “allow them more space” to teach.
It claims its AI can “reduce the time taken to gather data in preparation for a review”, and “give tutors more time to pull together meaningful discussion points” as they “aren’t so focused on summarising notes and inputting information”.
“If AI can notify tutors when it looks like a learner is beginning to struggle with their training, they have the best possible chance of offering support.”
AI can also be used in the recruitment of apprentices, to automate and facilitate processes and find people with the right skills.
In April, Multiverse bought the Californian AI talent software firm Searchlight to help it identify skills gaps within organisations.
Phillip Bryant, head of EPA & apprenticeships at the International Compliance Association, a professional body for the global regulatory and financial crime compliance community, believes there are opportunities for AI to be used in assessment design and writing EPA policies or procedures, as a “tool” but “not necessarily to replace the human input”.
Jonathan Smith of Veraxis
Is AI really cheating?
Some of the gravest concerns around generative AI are its ability to help learners cheat their way through assessments.
Because much of the assessment of apprentices is done through the observation of work-based activity and oral assessment, the ways that apprenticeships can misuse AI are more limited than in academic sectors. But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
Jo Wharton, an assessor at Ixion, posted last year on LinkedIn that she was “starting to notice the use of AI creeping into the evidence that apprentices provide towards their level 6 career development professional apprenticeship”.
Bryant has not noticed a spike in suspected AI plagiarism in recent months, but has seen that “a lot of higher education institutions are shifting their approach now and seem to condone it for the research aspect of assessment writing or generating ideas”.
Assessors are relying on free AI-driven diagnostic tools to spot cheating, but these are of limited reliability.
Bradley warned that “this is where we are in the wild west”, without that “legislative robustness”.
She also pointed out that if a young person is putting a “very sophisticated prompt” into a chatbot that is “not detectable”, it “shows a level of expertise” which is “entrepreneurial”.
Firebrand Training’s Parker, who is an end-point assessor of data and business analysis assessments, says there are worries about knowing how much of a report written by an apprentice was created by AI.
“But does it matter?” he asks. “If their employer pays them to have those tools to write their professional reports, should they not be allowed to use it for their assessment reports as well?”
Rebecca Bradley of Veraxis
Governance needed
Although governments and regulatory bodies have not caught up with AI in education, Bradley warns providers that they “need to put good practice in place” now, so “when the regulation does come, you’ll have the right pieces in place”.
She says when using AI to analyse an apprentice’s personal performance data, providers should “handle it securely with clear consent”. That means “letting the learners know they’re being monitored in that way” and “being clear about how that data is used”.
She advises providers to write their policies around the data rules governed by the LLM they are using, bearing in mind their company’s risk register and appetite for risk.
And Bradley explains LLMs are “biased” by nature because they take information from the internet, which is “drawing from extreme views – the left, the right and the centre”.
Those who decide therefore that sharing their apprentices’ data with an LLM is too risky might consider building their own LLM.
Lack of guidance
So far, Ofsted is taking a hands-off approach. It will not directly inspect the quality of AI tools, but said it will “consider a provider’s use” of AI “by the effect it has on the criteria set out” in its existing inspection frameworks, such as safeguarding and the quality of education.
Last year, the IfATE updated its guidance around the use of AI in end-point assessments to clarify that AI must not be used to produce a report or portfolio, and an apprentice must reference use of AI when using it within a portfolio to underpin a professional discussion or other assessment.
But Parker considers this guidance is “open ended and vague”.
“It doesn’t go anywhere near far enough to be completely helpful”, he says, because it does not state what is acceptable during the end-point assessment process.
Parker assesses the level-three data technician apprenticeship where apprentices use such tools.
He argues that it then “doesn’t make sense” if, after 12 months of using AI tools in their jobs, he as an end-point assessor has to then forbid them from using them in their assessment – because “the end point assessment is supposed to assess how competent they are at their job”.
Chatbot artificial intelligence
AI for everyone
As AI is embraced in the wider workforce, it’s slowly becoming a greater feature in apprenticeship standards outside of the digital and IT subjects you’d expect to find it.
For example, London Metropolitan College has embedded AI into its level 6 project control apprenticeships.
Derby-based provider DBC Training recently started building the teaching of how to use generative AI into its marketing apprenticeships, which its curriculum lead Daniel Adey says is “giving the learners a greater understanding of [AI] and how it can be used to strengthen their marketing efforts”.
Some experts believe the apprenticeships system needs to be completely transformed through AI.
In a recent podcast, Blair said the recent rise of generative AI tools means that “everyone needs to be taught how to be a co-pilot of AI, how to work with it, the ethics of AI – this is absolutely crucial.”
Bradley believes that we’re “moving to a world” where the prompts put into LLMs are “perhaps going to be what we assess young people on, rather than what comes out of them”.
She points out that societies were “suspicious” of coffee, the printing press and photocopying machines too when they came along. But now they’re “parts of everyday life” as, she believes, AI will be for apprentices.
“We won’t have this suspicion in future,” she adds. “But for now, there are things that we need to think about and mitigate.”
College leaders have pleaded for long-term funding to fulfil local skills improvement plan (LSIP) demands and have called on the government to spread accountability for the flagship policy to universities and other post-16 providers.
A report by the Association of Colleges (AoC) today reviewed the plans one year on from their rollout.
Introduced in the Skills for Jobs white paper, the Department for Education tasked 38 “employer representative bodies” (ERBs) with spelling out the changes needed to make frontline education and training more responsive to employer needs in their areas.
The ERBs, 32 of whom are chambers of commerce, are paid £550,000 each over three years. Colleges, employers, local authorities and other post-16 providers can feed into the plans.
The Conservative and Labour parties have suggested that LSIPs would stay in place if either were to form the next government, according to the AoC.
The research found evidence of some early success, with colleges connecting with local employers who had not previously engaged with the skills system and “strengthening ways of working across local networks”.
But colleges warned the plans will need to evolve to be a success.
They raised concerns about LSIPs existing in a vacuum of any national strategy, with colleges facing a multitude of local and regional plans, driving complexity rather than coherence.
‘We’ve got all the kit, but no staff to use it’
Leaders also slammed “piecemeal” funding that “lacks strategic direction” and any long-term commitment.
The local skills improvement fund (LSIF) was launched to help colleges and providers action LSIPs. The fund is split across two financial years – £80 million in 2023-24 (£40 million for revenue and £40 million for capital funding). Another £85 million set aside for 2024-25 is for capital only.
The AoC’s report said the “chief concern” is the capital and revenue split. College leaders all said that the lack of revenue funding prevented them from addressing supply-side challenges, particularly the crisis in recruiting and retaining teaching staff for technical subjects such as engineering and manufacturing, the most common priority identified in LSIPs.
One unnamed college boss said: “We’ve got all the kit, but we have no teaching staff to use it. We can’t afford them. We can’t recruit them.”
The capital/revenue split also doesn’t align to the needs identified in the LSIPs. For example, digital skills – the fourth highest priority across LSIPs – cannot be addressed through further capital spend.
Leaders also expressed frustrations with accountability.
Colleges must publish an annual accountability statement to demonstrate they are fulfilling their statutory duty to adhere to the aim of their LSIP. No such requirement is placed on other partners, such as universities, sixth forms or private training providers.
Some colleges told the AoC that they were confused about what they’re supposed to be accountable for. They also said colleges should be able to lead LSIPs on the same level as ERBs if they are the only institution to be held accountable for their implementation.
‘Evolution is needed’
The report also highlighted the “wicked problem” of employer engagement.
“Whilst recognising that the LSIPs are still very new, all participants described their disappointment in the low levels of employers engaging and contributing throughout the LSIP process.
“Colleges report offering ERBs access to their own extensive employer networks and forums to boost the numbers participating, but note that ERBs often struggled to accept this offer due to lack of capacity.”
There is a risk that employers “passively set demands or expectations” on the system, “without reflecting on where and how they might take action, including both in the nature of the jobs they are recruiting for and investment in training and development of the workforce”, the report said.
It concluded that there is no evidence that the LSIP process and product has “acted to stimulate investment from employers” despite this being a priority for the government.
David Hughes, the chief executive of AoC, said: “College leaders have made it clear that to truly meet the ambition, evolution is needed in how LSIPs fit within the wider system.
“The next government will need to have a strong focus on inclusive economic growth and the provision needed to help local people meet the growing skills shortages.”
Jane Gratton, the deputy director of public policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, said: “The next government must build on the success of LSIPs, ensure they are a key component of local, regional and national economic strategies and fund them for the long term.”
A long-standing training provider on the brink of collapse 12 months ago following a damning Ofsted judgment is now aiming to “rise from the ashes”.
The Birmingham-based BCTG Ltd, which launched in 2001 and trained thousands of apprentices and adults every year, saw its multi-million-pound apprenticeship, skills bootcamps and advance learner loans contracts terminated in 2023 after it was downgraded from ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’.
But the provider was allowed to keep its adult education contract with the West Midlands Combined Authority to deliver sector-based work academy programmes (SWAPs) and secured an extension worth £2.5 million, which runs until this September.
Ofsted’s first follow-up monitoring visit in May was positive, with the watchdog’s report this week scoring three ‘reasonable progress’ judgments and one ‘significant progress’.
The company’s new chief executive and former finance director, Alan Phillips, is hoping to secure an overall ‘good’ grade through a full reinspection before the SWAPs contract ends. If successful, BCTG will look to bid for more skills contracts and grow the business once more, potentially starting off as a subcontractor for other primes.
Phillips said: “We’re back rocking and rolling if we secure the Ofsted full inspection improvement. Maybe not up to the size that we were … I’d rather have something small and efficient than large and potentially another ‘inadequate’.”
Soon after it was hit with the low grade, BCTG Group sold its subsidiaries PTP Training and Eurosouce Solutions for almost £800,000.
Phillips told FE week he has tried to operate the company “with my hands and legs tied” over the past year as he reduced the staff headcount from 90 to 10.
While hundreds of SWAPs courses have been delivered this year, just 10 students were in learning at the time of Ofsted’s recent monitoring visit. More are coming on board over the coming months, but all teaching is delivered by subcontractors. Phillips’s aim is to shift BCTG to mostly direct delivery if his company does secure more funding contracts.
One of the key criticisms in Ofsted’s ‘inadequate’ report last year was a “lack of focus” on the quality of education amid a “significant strategic decision” to switch from subcontracting to direct delivery.
Phillips said the judgment was harsh, but from his perspective as finance director at the time, the company’s then owners and chief executive had “lost control”.
He said the 10 staff BCTG has now are “highly skilled, and you can see from the Ofsted monitoring, they’ve turned it around completely”.
“I’ve had to run a very, very slimmed-down organisation, but fortunately, we had the backing of the company to finance this dark period. The skills of our staff all round have been enhanced … I’m really confident that going forward, so long as we can keep grips on the growth and not get ahead of ourselves, we can provide a five-star service.”
Ofsted’s policy states that it will fully reinspect ‘inadequate’ providers within 12 to 15 months of the judgment, which means the earliest BCTG can get a full inspection is this month and the latest should be September.
Amy Williams, BCTG’s head of quality, said: “It’s been tough and it’s been a mountain that we’re still trying to climb, but we have been on a positive journey.
“We are still standing strong and still hopeful of our future, despite the many obstacles and challenges we face on a daily basis.”
Referrals from FE to the government’s counter-terrorism programme are rare and are often not taken further. So why are they increasing? Anviksha Patel investigates
A record number of FE students were referred to the government’s counter-terrorism programme Prevent last year – but a shrinking proportion of cases have been escalated to de-radicalisation intervention, show new figures obtained by FE Week.
Critics say the data adds further evidence that Prevent should be scrapped in light of recent data-sharing horror stories, including one student being denied a sixth-form place.
But FE leaders argue their statutory duty to comply with the policy is not taken “flippantly” and is vital to safeguard students and catch signs of radicalisation as early as possible.
FE Week received data from the Home Office through a Freedom of Information request that for the first time breaks down Prevent referrals from FE providers.
The figures, which go back to 2018-19, show that of the 30,162 Prevent referrals over the past five years, a third (10,025) have come from education settings. Of those, just 7 per cent (734) came from further education.
While the data suggests Prevent referrals from FE are rare when the hundreds of thousands of students taught by colleges and training providers are considered, it does show that referrals are on the rise. (see table)
There were 141 FE referrals in 2018-19, a figure that remained stable until 2022-23 when they hit 215.
But of those 215, just 10 per cent (22) were escalated to a full “channel case”, which involves bespoke support through a de-radicalisation programme. In the previous two years, 14 per cent and 15 per cent of FE referrals were taken forward to channel case.
Most FE Prevent referrals over the past five years were made for extreme right-wing ideology, followed by people with a vulnerability but no ideology detected, those with “no risk, vulnerability or ideology present” and then Islamist.
‘Prevent is not being used to prevent terrorism’
The Prevent duty was placed on schools and FE providers in 2015 and mandates designated safeguarding leads (DSL) to report concerns of radicalisation to the police-led programme.
Entering the full programme is voluntary so learners or families must consent before they are adopted as a channel case, which helps to explain why so few are taken forward.
FE Week analysis shows 683 (93 per cent) of the 734 Prevent referrals from FE to date were male and 559 (76 per cent) were aged between 15 to 20.
The highest number last year were made under the “vulnerability present but no ideology or counterterrorism risk” category, which is retrospectively catalogued by Prevent officers.
Just 10 per cent of the 83 referrals made in that category in 2022-23became a channel case.
Officials use this category to refer a vulnerable person who hasn’t expressed any extreme ideology and are not at risk of committing a terrorism offence.
Eddie Playfair, senior policy manager at the Association of Colleges, suggests these referrals could stem from monitoring software that detects and reports what learners are searching online at college or at their training provider.
“If there’s a violent narrative or if there’s misogynistic language, hate speech, they are definitely flags for safeguarding and extremism,” he told FE Week.
Right-wing extremism referrals starting to fall
More than a quarter (198) of the 734 total FE Prevent referrals over the past five years have been for extreme right-wing views.
But while in the first two years of the data, extreme right-wing referrals made up the highest proportion of referrals (33 per cent and 35 per cent) it shrunk to its lowest proportion (17 per cent) in 2022-23.
Of the 37 extreme right-wing referrals in 2022-23, nearly a quarter (nine) were adopted as a channel case, a decline from a high in 2020-21, when 42 per cent of the 26 referrals went to channel.
But Hope Not Hate, a campaign group monitoring far-right extremism, says young people are engaging more with such content.
“We see an increasing number of young people engaging online as well as in offline activism in some of the most extreme and violent segments of far-right,” says senior researcher Patrik Hermansson.
Potentially harmful outcomes
Polly Harrow, senior safeguarding lead at Kirklees College
Polly Harrow, assistant principal for student experience at Kirklees College, cannot explain the rise in FE referrals but stresses that colleges wouldn’t “flippantly make a Prevent referral”.
The disparity in referrals making it to channel could also be linked to a long-standing mistrust in Prevent and recent exposés of data collection and sharing.
In February, a report by digital rights campaigner Open Rights Group revealed Prevent referrals data can be stored on police databases for a minimum of six years and “could be justified for up to 100 years”, even when the referral does not make it to channel.
That can cause “potentially harmful outcomes” when shared between education institutions, immigration and border agencies. Referred learners do not have to consent, or be informed, of their data being shared.
The report published the case study of Tarik, a 16-year-old whose Prevent referral in school – where he corrected a teacher about the definition of jihad and the school discovered some inappropriate group chat messages – was transferred and led to the withdrawal of a sixth-form place.
“The safeguarding file is supposed to be used to support the child, not to impact decisions of admissions,” Tarik’s parent said.
Layla Aitlhadj from Prevent Watch, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that supports people who have been referred, said: “Prevent is not being used to prevent terrorism, it is instead being used to securitise innocent children and young adults.”
In the case of 17-year-old Munir, his secondary school Prevent referral was used by his sixth-form college to send him home for not demonstrating “inclusive values”.
“Neither student had done nor intended anything unlawful, yet their future prospects were hindered,” Aitlhadj says.
Harrow says the case studies “surprised” her. “The sharing of safeguarding information has to be appropriate, and it has to be on a need-to-know basis.”
Playfair added: “Are there some bad design examples of overreaction, misunderstanding, knee-jerk reactions, etc? Yes,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take that responsibility seriously.”
Aitlhadj said “many” of the individuals Prevent Watch supports report a “desire to seek support from traditional social and community services but have lost trust in these crucial relationships for a healthy society”.
‘You can’t expect educators to solve terrorism’
In the lead up to the election, the main political parties have vowed to crack down on terrorism.
The main political party manifestos include pledges on Prevent and terrorism
The Conservatives say they will foster an alliance between the National Crime Agency and counter-terrorism policing. Labour says it will update the rules around counter-extremism, including online. The Lib Dems say they will restore access to EU-wide data sharing, while the Green party promises to scrap Prevent.
Earlier this year, the Home Office updated its guidance list of extreme ideologies and refreshed the definition of extremism to mean an ideology based on “violence, hatred or intolerance”.
Following an independent review from William Shawcross last year, the government is in the process of reviewing 34 recommendations made, and will provide more ideology training for Prevent practitioners, a granular breakdown of education referrals and an increased focus on Islamist extremism.
Questions have consistently been raised about the disparity between the government and media communications on preventing Islamist terrorism and the effectiveness of Prevent in identifying Islamist radicalisation.
FE Week’s FOI data found of the 66 Islamist referrals made by FE over the past five years, five have progressed to channel.
Last year, Amnesty International found Islamophobic stereotypes have played “a major role in referrals to Prevent”, despite government guidance highlighting that Prevent was “not about targeting different faiths”.
Anti-Prevent campaigners are also worried about the “extraordinary focus and infrastructure” put on colleges to up their safeguarding responsibilities.
Harrow says that the resources needed to keep young people safe “needs more funding”.
Meanwhile, Sara Chitseko, Open Rights Group’s pre-crime programme manager, says Prevent should be scrapped in favour of investing in services that support young people “rather than surveilling them”.
Playfair added: “You can’t expect educators to solve terrorism, but it would be remiss of the education system and other public services not to be vigilant.”
More than a quarter of college support staff feel unsafe at work as the number of weapons and cases of substance abuse on campus increases, FE Week can reveal.
Unison surveyed 780 college and sixth-form support staff such as librarians and learning-support assistants and found learners were bringing in real and fake weapons and taking drugs in class. Gangs were also creating no-go areas.
Staff also reported being “threatened at knifepoint” and suffering from injuries. One was stabbed in the back with a screwdriver while a student suffered multiple fractures, concussion and severe bruising.
A similar Unison survey five years ago found a fifth of staff reported feeling unsafe. This has now risen to a quarter, according to the results of last month’s survey shared exclusively with FE Week.
More than seven in ten (73 per cent) respondents said they had no training on how to deal with students who brought weapons or drugs into college. Ninety per cent said the same thing in 2019.
“I regularly smell cannabis, but don’t feel able to confront the smokers,” one said.
Seven in ten support staff workers said student drug abuse was a problem in their college, flagging drugs such as cocaine, MDMA and the synthetic cannabis drug Black Mamba.
Two-fifths (40 per cent) said they had dealt with students who were under the influence of drugs.
“One overdosed on ketamine and had a seizure,” one respondent said, while another noted an incident when a student “left a bottle of methadone in our office”.
Eddie Playfair, senior policy manager at the Association of Colleges, said the incidents were “unacceptable”.
“Every member of a college community has a right to feel safe at all times.”
Students carrying knives ‘for protection’
The survey found just over a third (34 per cent) reported concerns of weapons-related crime at work, an increase from 23 per cent in 2019.
Weapons included machetes, hammers, crossbows, knuckledusters, air rifles and homemade weapons.
“A learner brought a sharp blade she used to self-harm on site and ‘lost’ it,” one staff worker said. “It then got into the hands of someone else who threatened to use it on another student.”
Another said: “The most recent incident was earlier this week, where a member of support staff had a knife pulled on them.”
In yet another case, a staff worker said a student brought in weights from a gym that they used to “smash up a computer keyboard in the library”.
Students told support staff they carried weapons “for protection”.
But Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said students who thought they needed to carry weapons for protection or “come to college intoxicated” were putting their own futures at risk.
The data also revealed half of the respondents were unaware of their employer’s policy on dealing with students in possession of weapons. More than half (53 per cent) thought incidents were not resolved appropriately.
But Playfair said colleges would have clear policies and codes of conduct covering behaviour, harassment, weapons and drugs.
McAnea said: “The tremendous strain placed on college staff means they’re forced to put safety and discipline over students’ academic development.”
Unison has called for more training, and better security with searches and metal detectors. Fewer than one in ten (9 per cent) said their workplace used detectors.
It also called on leaders to impose stricter punishments for students breaking college rules and increased staffing levels to deal with the problem.
Playfair added: “The report is right to highlight the need for consistency, support, training and updating for all staff about how to deal with a range of issues that can arise and ensure the maintenance of a culture where everyone is safe and feels safe.”
