On the third Monday of every month Dr Sue, Holex director of policy and external relations, answers your questions, backed by the experience of almost a decade as principal of Canterbury College, in addition to time served in senior civil service posts at central government departments covering education and skills.

QUESTION: 1

Ofsted’s role in monitoring Prevent Strategies 

Last year, the governing body I am on signed off a safe guarding and Prevent strategy and at a recent board meeting we monitored the implementation of the action plan. We were surprised to find that in our short Ofsted inspection this was highlighted as an area we had to do more work on. We were also surprised by the level of scrutiny this area was put through and wondered whether it was proportional to the size of the issue?

College governors are expected to set the Prevent strategy for the college and to ensure that the college strategy complies with the Prevent Duty as set out in the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015.

Ofsted has been given the monitoring role and therefore have put in place a process for doing that as part of their inspection.

They are evaluating whether governors are appropriately scrutinising the practice in the college, including reviewing whether the Preventing Extremism risk assessment is rigorous enough.

Ofsted want is to see that the policies and procedures signed off by governors are in place, being followed, and that they are successful in preventing students being drawn into terrorism and extremism.

Therefore, what your college went through was appropriate to the role Ofsted has been given.

What I think might have surprised you was Ofsted’s increased focus on fundamental British values and the need for students to not only be confident to speak about those values, but can also use the precise vocabulary.

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QUESTION: 2

Vote of No Confidence

Our staff governor has told us that a group of staff intend to ballot the rest of the staff on a vote of no confidence in the principal. This is the first we have heard of it and we don’t even know what their grievance is. We are unclear what the correct process is and how we should react?

I would have hoped that before a group of staff got to the point of organising a ballot that they would have followed the college procedures for complaints against senior staff.

Depending on existing relationships and what mechanisms there are for governors to talk to staff, you could meet and ask what the issue is.

Otherwise, I suggest asking the clerk to republish the procedures and remind staff that it if they have a complaint or grievance they should use those procedures to express their concerns.

If there is cause for concern, the board should take the appropriate action

The governing body can then put in place the right process to review the complaint and, if there is cause for concern, the board should take the appropriate action.

However, looking at situations where this has arisen in the past, often the staff are taking it out on the principal when all she/he has been doing is implementing a policy agreed by the governing body or directed by the government.

In cases like this, the principal should be supported fully by the governors and they should express their full confidence.

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QUESTION: 3

Improving English and maths and what governors should be doing

In your last Q and A, you talked about the role of a link governor. I am the governing body link for English and maths. As a governing body we are keen to raise standards. What questions should I be asking?

You have a very important role as this link governor. Just as it should be, English and maths is a key priority for the government and a crucial element of every college programme.

On which questions to ask, you should‎ start with the agreed policy and ask how that policy is working out in practice.

English and maths is a key priority of the government

Enquire whether the changes the college have introduced to ensure every young person continues with English and maths are operating well?

Are they making an impact and improving performance? Do they have issues recruiting staff and, if so, how are they managing?

How is the college implementing the new guidance on GCSE resits and stepping stone qualifications for 16-18 year olds and those between 19-24?

How do they identify those who need extra‎support? Do they do catch up in small groups and, if so, what is the impact?

Ask about the programme for adults. How do they identify adults who need support and how is initial assessment done? Are they able to offer intensive provision?

Do they work with employers to support their workforce and what are they doing for their apprentices?

Your link work is vital and should be supported by the other link governors, who should also be asking about English and maths when they visit they areas of interest and they should pass on that information to you.

 

Barbara McDonough reflects on changes she would like to see for the education and training of prisoners.

In recent years, significant improvements have been made in education to support prisoners into employment.

In particular, education programmes are now geared towards helping offenders get a job or apprenticeship on release, by aligning provision to employer skill requirements.

But while it is important to recognise this positive development, it should also be acknowledged that much more can still be done.

Ideally there would be the opportunity to provide offenders with apprenticeships while they are still in prison — but currently they are not available in custody.

There are barriers that may require changes to primary legislation before complete apprenticeship programmes can be delivered in prisons.

For now, we can still do things to prepare prisoners for employment.

Novus, a not-for-profit social enterprise, currently delivers in 104 custodial and community sites across England, working with employers including Virgin Trains, Pret a Manger and Barclays and educating 65,000 offenders annually.

And getting our learners ready to be able to take up apprenticeships on release gives them a greater chance of succeeding in the world of work.

This, in turn, provides them with the opportunity to lead lives that are no longer plagued by criminal activity.

We equip them with the right skills and experience to meet the needs of employers — including completing elements of frameworks — which means they can be fast-tracked onto an apprenticeship scheme.

And our employment brokers nurture and develop the relationship between the employer, candidate and prison to support this outcome.

A wider ongoing concern for all providers in our field is that today, while a range of support is available both before and after release — it can be fragmented, duplicated and difficult to navigate.

A community-based funding model of education and training is being shoe-horned into prisons, which doesn’t fully take account the complex needs of prisoners.

For instance, 42 per cent of offenders were excluded from school, while 47 per cent of offenders have no school qualifications and 70 per cent suffer from a mental health disorder.

Not all support for them runs ‘through the gate’, and no one organisation is accountable for assisting offenders back into work.

‘Through the gate’ refers to the ‘progression route’ for offenders, in which we support them to resettle back into their local communities and help them gain sustainable training, education or employment.

Those who engage in prison education are 24 percent more likely to successfully secure employment than those who have not

We think it is important to place a strong emphasis on the needs of prisoners and supporting them to find employment, including apprenticeships, on release.

So why invest in education? Our research with Manchester Metropolitan University has identified 18 studies of prison education between 1995 and 2014.

All of these research projects have found that education in prisons had a positive impact on reducing the re-offending rates.

Five of these studies examined the effect of education on employment, and these ultimately determined that those who engaged in prison education are 24 per cent more likely to successfully secure employment than those who have not.

Apprenticeships are a critical route to support this progress into employment and a life free from crime.

Moving forwards, we are enthusiastic about proposals for greater governor autonomy over education and believe that they should have a say in the way that education is commissioned.

We are also encouraged by the calls from the Secretary of State for increasing the number of offenders to be released on temporary licence, in order to help them to gain experience of outside work and progression onto apprenticeship schemes.

So, while there are still challenges ahead, it is clearer than ever that prisoners are much less likely to commit further crimes if they leave prison with the skills, knowledge and confidence to enter the world of work.

Like most FE principals, Anthony Bravo has a keen interest in how technology can help improve teaching. He reflects here on the performance of interactive learning software that his college has been trialling and a new two-year study into the effects of blended learning.

Although the phrase ‘blended learning’ has been in use for a decade, many of us are still grappling with what it means for our learners.

However many Further Education Learning Technology Action Group (FELTAG) studies or government initiatives there are about using technology, until we as teachers are comfortable with how it can be used effectively — both in and out of the classroom — it’s not going to feature naturally in our planning.

I had the opportunity recently to explore and even influence what blended learning could mean when I met Martin Biron, managing director of digital publisher Global Vocational Skills (GVS).

It is developing a suite of interactive learning software (i-GVS) and looking for somewhere to trial it.

As a college of technology, I jumped at the chance, and enlisted colleagues from Richmond upon Thames, Highbury and Cornwall Colleges too.

We are already trialling automotive and catering i-GVS units with our students, with other technical areas to be released shortly.

What do I think so far? From a technical perspective, GVS is ticking the right boxes.

The software runs on an industry-standard Moodle platform and can be hosted on your servers or in the cloud (if you want to host it on your servers, our experience suggests a separate Linux server works best).

It will also run on Google Docs. Our IT team installed it — they tell me it was easy to install and configure — and our teaching staff have access to customise it, if they want to plan what particular groups will see, for example.

Learners can log in from anywhere; they can access it from mobile devices but ours found it works better on screens 8” or larger (remember, this is still a pilot).

So what do I think it will mean for learners?

The i-GVS software will allow our learners to be more self-directed than ever.

Feedback on units is instant, not only allowing a student to work at their own pace, but also in a supported way, even outside of college.

It has the potential to widen participation, by engaging our existing learners in new ways and by being a useful weapon in the distance learning armoury.

It also differentiates, appealing to students at different levels and giving them the opportunity to advance their own learning at their own pace — which we see as a fantastic resource for apprentices.

Benefits for teaching staff include providing an additional means to monitor learners’ progression.

In an emergency, it also means learners can still access learning resources if their tutor is ill.

An unintended, but useful, benefit is that it could also improve our efficiency in terms of contact time.

Alongside the development of the software, the partners have launched project ‘HUbBLE’ with Southampton Solent University, a two-year programme to investigate the effects of blended learning and technology in the classroom.

From a technical perspective, it is ticking the right boxes

We are delighted that Martin Doel will lead on this project when he leaves [as chief executive of] AoC in September.

HUbBLE stands for Heutegogical Unification by Blended Learning Environments (to save you reaching for your dictionary, heutagogy is the study of self-determined learning; yes, I had to check!).

So not only are we getting to trial this software, we already have plans to measure how it works for our learners.

GVS is keen to develop interactive materials that work for our sector.

For example, we want to see maths strongly embedded, so are planning a working party of other colleges later this term to bring automotive and plumbing tutors together to explore how this can be done.

No doubt other vocational areas will follow shortly, as well as embedding English.

‘Blended learning’ tools, including i-GVS, will never replace a good teacher and we know that there are no short cuts to outstanding lessons or results.

However, from what we are seeing from i-GVS so far, I certainly think they can provide innovative ideas to help every teacher become a more effective teacher.

Those of us in FE with even short memories will remember that the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) was scrapped, along with 47 local LSC councils, to remove their planning role.

It is therefore something of a return to the past with devolution of the Adult Education Budget (AEB), with providers facing even greater learner postcode scrutiny.

But new SFA figures crunched by us this week expose the challenge new local commissioners will face.

When they get their hands on the budget, why would they want to pass it on to providers spending it on learners living in another area?

They won’t, so in the absence of a national provider funding system we can expect major upheaval, particularly for colleges and training providers based near to area boundaries.

The end result may be a better one, with less subcontracting and more focus on colleges, in particular, supporting their local community.

But the SFA figures understate the issue, as they are based on the nine regions in England rather than the near 40 commissioning areas.

Any provider expecting a degree of stability over the coming years from the £1.5bn AEB budget will be sorely disappointed.

Devolved commissioning will be complex and the potential for unintended consequences are great.

So before opaque chaos reigns, if not delay then let’s at least be sure there is sufficient time for well-run consultations and pilots.