The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) publishes a monthly update on notices of concern, which FE Week will report on regularly in our new ‘SFA Warning’ section.

The latest to be added to the list on May 10 were Cornwall College and Tower Hamlets College, which received notices for financial health and minimum standards respectively.

Tower Hamlets is the first provider this year to receive a notice of concern for minimum standards.

These are issued if a provider does not, for example, meet a minimum threshold for qualification achievement rates in different types of provision, such as basic skills maths and English.

Notices are also issued to providers that fail to meet the SFA’s criteria for financial health.

The agency collects information from colleges each year in order to give them an overall financial health rating.

It comes after FE Week reported in February that the number of notices of concern issued to FE providers by the SFA had more than
doubled in the last year.

A team of the country’s most skilled young people have been selected to represent the UK at EuroSkills 2016, but what is its purpose and what benefits can it have on our competitors? Billy Camden investigates

Twenty of the country’s top apprentices and learners will be going for gold at EuroSkills Gothenburg 2016, after being selected for Team UK.

They will compete against the most talented young people, under the age of 25, from more than 30 European countries in more than 35 different skill areas ranging from gardening and stonemasonry to bricklaying and web design.

This year’s competition, taking place from December 1 to 3 in Sweden, will be celebrated as more of a “highpoint” event for the competitors than ever before.

Ben Blackledge, director of education at WorldSkills UK, the organisation that oversees the selection process for the British WorldSkills team, told FE Week: “Being in a European final is a massive achievement and should be celebrated accordingly.

“So, while EuroSkills will still be used as a preparation event for WorldSkills, it will also be used as a motivational event for the team and highlighted as a highpoint in the training process they go through.

“We are only sending our young people who we think will do the best.”

The team will therefore be looking to better the haul of three golds, six silvers and three medallions for excellence they picked up at EuroSkills 2014 in Lille.

Mr Blackledge said the competition would also be used to “benchmark” the employability skills of the UK’s apprentices with those from the rest of Europe.

“That is not just in terms of the actual competition, but also how we prepare our competitors, what happens when they get back, how they progress, and so on,” he said.

The members of Team UK were selected after excelling in the national finals at the Skills Show.

At the national finals, competitors operate at a level three standard, WorldSkills operates around a level six, and EuroSkills is “somewhere in between”, so the team can certainly expect a step up in class when they take to the stage in Gothenburg.

No matter the outcome in terms of medals however, the competitors are set to come back with a greater set of skills that add to their employability credentials, according to Mr Blackledge.

He said: “Ex-competitors have said that being involved in these kinds of competitions improved not only their technical skills, but their professional skills, the kinds of things that we know employers are really keen on.

“These high pressure environments are closely aligned to what it would be like in industry, delivering projects on time, to high quality, so it is best to compete as many times as they can.”

Members of Team UK will now go on to complete an intensive training programme, supported by their trainers, employers and training providers, before competing in Sweden.

After the Euros the competitors will go on to compete for a place at WorldSkills Abu Dhabi 2017.

Last year, the UK team took home three gold, four silver, and two bronze medals from WorldSkills in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

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ANGUS Bruce-Gardner — Cabinet maker

Cabinet maker Angus Bruce-Gardner is hoping his tireless work will pay off with a gold medal in Gothenburg after giving up his social life for two years to prepare for the competitions.

The 21-year-old, who is an apprentice with Waters and Acland and trains at Chichester College, said he has had to dedicate his evenings and weekends to “constantly prepare”, but it was all worth it when he got selected for Team UK.

“I didn’t think I was going to get in because the competition was so tough but when I was told I was very excited,” Angus said.

“The process has been really hard and at such a high level so far. I haven’t really had a social life for the last couple of years because I’ve just been on it the whole time and focussed on being successful.”

Angus said that his dedication will also benefit his career because WorldSkills credentials are “recognised by the biggest companies”.

He added: “I’m looking forward to competing abroad and representing the UK. It will be a really good and new experience.”

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Lucy Knight — Hairdressing

Lucy Knight is hoping her day-to-day experience of owning her own hairdressing salon will give her the edge over the competition in December.

The 21-year-old, who opened Hair by Knight in Bristol two years ago, also has past experience of competing in the high pressure competitions, having previously been selected for Squad UK.

“I was in the squad but I didn’t go to EuroSkills last time, it makes you want it that little bit more now,” Lucy said.

“It is amazing to be given the chance to go over and represent the UK and show that I am one of the best hairdressers this country has.”

Lucy said her career had already benefitted from being part of the WorldSkills set up and predicted it would only get better as a result of being selected for the games in Gothenburg.

She said: “On my website I’ve got details about my participation in Squad UK, and you don’t realise that a lot of people actually do read that before coming to you for a job.

“It certainly gets my name out there and builds my reputation a bit more.”

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Julianne Lavery — Trainer

Competitors will need intrinsic motivation as well as world class talent to be successful at EuroSkills, according to veteran expert Julianne Lavery.

Ms Lavery (pictured right), who has worked with WorldSkills UK since 2012 and trains the visual merchandising competitors, also said their mental strength must be of the highest order if they want to win gold. She told FE Week: “EuroSkills is a step up from anything these young people have done before because they are suddenly facing a more international competition and market.

“The nationals help to highlight someone who is slightly more innovative than our national expectation.

“We then add on another layer to their overall ability, so that by the time they get to the Euros their confidence, interpersonal, and time management skills are more ready for industry.”

But competitors can expect an “endless” repertoire of industry ready skills once they return, Ms Lavery added.

“Every competitor I have trained has ended up getting an amazing job because their skills base is so much more advanced.

“On top of that they’ve got confidence and interpersonal skills, they’ve travelled the world and matured into adults. The list is endless.”

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Full details of this year’s competitors 

A man has been jailed for 15 months for defrauding New College Swindon out of almost £43,000 of Skills Funding Agency (SFA) cash — after he faked certificates that wrongly showed students had completed assessments.

Leonard Hay, of Cochran Close, Churchdown, was the manager of his own one-man company Update, Training and Vocational Services (UTVS), based in Churchdown, which operated as a subcontractor for New College Swindon.

He was sentenced to 15 months behind bars at Gloucester Crown Court, after pleading guilty to committing fraud between May 2013 and June 2014, with police calling his behaviour “deplorable”.

The Crown Prosecution Service subsequently told FE Week on Tuesday (May 10) that Hay had sent fake certificates falsely claiming that more than 40 level two and level three laboratory technician apprentices had “completed” their studies — and pocketed £42,863 in resulting payment.

A CPS spokesperson said: “Hay stated that a number [of students] had succeeded, and sent certificates to the college confirming that.

“The college then paid Leonard Hay, but the certificates were fake, and the named persons did not complete their assessments.”

A spokesperson for the college told FE Week that it had taken immediate action in 2014 as soon as it realised what Hay had been doing.

She said: “We were saddened by this incident and disappointed for the affected students.

“The college picked up the fraud through its robust control processes when staff spotted anomalies in the paperwork and certificates that were submitted.

“We took immediate action in informing the police and the SFA and had Gateway Assure in to audit our processes in dealing with subcontractors.”

She added the college had tried its best to help learners affected.

“Some of them worked in NHS organisations and some in private organisations.

“Where students have remained in the NHS sector, New College has been working very hard with them and their employers nationally to ensure that they can complete their awards and gain certification.

“This is an ongoing process as we’ve had to start assessment from scratch with them.

“Of the 44 [students affected], 22 had left their organisations, or changed roles, or were not interested in completing, and we are still working with the other 22.”

Investigating officer DC Simon Shaw was scathing in his criticism of Hay.

He told FE Week: “This case featured the theft of a considerable amount of money from the taxpayer.

“Equally deplorable, Mr Hay badly let down many students, who believed he was guiding them to a professional qualification.

“Hundreds of hours of their hard work was wasted as Hay kept the funding money for himself, leaving his students high and dry.”

A Skills Funding Agency spokesperson said: “In 2014, New College Swindon made the SFA aware that they were investigating fraudulent activity at Update Educational Services Ltd, one of their subcontractors.

“The college kept the SFA regularly informed of outcomes and the SFA reviewed the college’s audit report to provide us with assurance that public funds were protected and learner needs were being met.”

The government must do more to promote the newly-expanded FE learner loans, to avoid the danger of low take-up at the start of the new academic year, the Association of Colleges (AoC) has said.

The government announced that it would expand FE tuition fee loans to learners aged between 19 and 23 at levels three and four, and 19 and above at levels five and six, during last November’s Budget.

Applications for the new advanced learner loans will open on Monday (May 16) for courses starting from August 1.

But an AoC spokesperson told FE Week that “the government needs to do more to promote the scheme nationally, in the way they have for university loans and tuition fees”.

She said it would be “likely that take-up of the new loans will be fairly low in autumn 2016”, but suggested the numbers would “pick up once the scheme gets established”.

FE Week reported in February that the responsibility for promoting the new loans would lie with providers, after the government admitted it had no budget to market them.

Take-up of the existing FE loans for learners aged 24 and above at levels three and four has remained low since they were launched in 2013.

Figures published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in February showed that there had been 56,950 24+ loan applications so far in 2015/16, just up on the 55,100 application which had been made at the same time last year.

And figures published last October showed that just 38 per cent of the £397m budgeted for FE loans in 2014/15 was awarded, meaning that providers missed out on £250m in loan cash.

Loans for apprenticeships were scrapped soon after they were launched — after the Student Loans Company received just 404 applications in seven months.

And new research published on Thursday by BIS found that numbers of 24+ learners on courses eligible for loan funding dropped 31 per cent in the first year the loans were available.

A BIS spokesperson acknowledged that take-up of the new loans would be low at first.

She said: “We appreciate it may take a little time for colleges and training providers to adjust to the expanded loans system, but we expect to see greater pick-up in the future.”

While the government does not have targets for numbers of learners taking out a loan, the spokesperson said that “over time” the new loans would lead to “an additional 40,000 learners studying for high-level technical qualifications”.

She added: “We have expanded advanced-learner loans so they are available to everyone aged 19 and over studying at level three to level six, and have ensured there are sufficient funds available to allow for increased take-up.”

The loans expansion comes at the same time as the government is consulting on introducing maintenance loans for FE learners aged 19 and above at levels four to six.

The consultation opened on Mar 24 and runs until June 16.

The government has announced a taskforce to help more people with learning disabilities to access apprenticeships — but admitted that it has yet to finalise the people who will make it up even though it is meeting this month.

The announcement comes just two weeks after shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden put a written question to his government counterpart Nick Boles (pictured), asking “which groups he has met with and plans to meet with to discuss the importance of apprenticeships and other technical education for young people with disabilities”.

The taskforce was announced on Monday (May 9), and current plans are to meet three times during May and June — “once to identify issues, then to explore solutions and finally to form recommendations to make to ministers”.

The taskforce will be led by Paul Maynard, the Conservative MP for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, and will include employers, training providers, charities and educational experts. However, a spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted that the group’s full roster was “yet to be decided”, adding that it “will be announced soon”.

FE Week understands the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) has been invited to take part.

The government said the taskforce is designed to support the drive to create three million new apprenticeships by 2020, and halve the disability employment gap.

Only six per cent of people with learning difficulties are currently in employment, according to government statistics.

Learning and Work Institute chief executive David Hughes (pictured) has also expressed interest in the initiative.

He said: “Apprenticeships can and should be an attractive and inclusive route into work and training for people with learning difficulties and disabilities. I look forward to helping the taskforce.”

For shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden (pictured left), the taskforce has been a long time coming and the announcement “follows sustained campaigning from Labour and disability groups”.

He said: “We have already submitted agenda thoughts for this taskforce.

“These include issues around dyslexia, low current support for disabled people from DWP, and the need for the new Institute for Apprenticeships actively to take up access for disabled groups as a high priority.”

Philip Connolly, policy and development manager for Disability Rights UK (DR UK), welcomed the taskforce’s creation, but said his organisation “would wish to see it have a broader focus that also includes older potential apprentices and disabled people with fluctuating conditions”.

He said that DR UK had not been invited to get involved in the taskforce, but had been asked by ministers for its views.

Mr Connolly added: “We are concerned about the make-up of the taskforce, and wish to see disabled people, particularly people with learning disabilities, in the membership.”

Dr Caroline Allen, (pictured) chief executive officer of Orchard Hill College & Academy Trust, a family of specialist providers, also warned that “changes to the apprenticeships framework will need to be carefully thought through, to ensure they provide the flexibilities needed to make this positive initiative successful”.

Tim Nicholls, policy manager at the National Autistic Society, said that unemployment remained “a huge problem” for autistic people in particular.

He said: “We’ve been campaigning on this issue with autistic people,
encouraging the government to do more to increase employers’ understanding of autism, and the small changes they can make to open up the workplace to autistic people. Apprenticeships should play a key part in this.”

The first ever standalone university technical college (UTC) to be hit with a financial improvement notice must draw up a recovery plan and explain how it will increase student numbers.

The notice to Daventry UTC was sent to trust chair Professor Nick Petford on April 14, but was only officially published by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) on May 6.

The EFA issued the notice “as a consequence of the trust failing to balance its budget” and because the UTC was forced to seek “additional financial support”.

Daventry, a 14-to-19 vocational institution, was ordered to provide a “robust deficit recovery plan” based on “realistic pupil numbers” and to outline how it intends to attract sufficient pupils to “ensure future viability during the recovery period and beyond”.

Figures obtained by FE Week through Freedom of Information requests made earlier this year show that Daventry has been running at 25 per cent capacity this academic year.

It had just 151 students enrolled in 2015/16, down from 169 in 2014/15 — despite a capacity of 600.

Reflecting on the notice to improve, the principal of Daventry UTC, David Edmondson, told FE Week: “Lower student numbers than anticipated has impacted upon the income stream during our establishment.”

But he added: “A robust plan is in place to address this.”

This news comes after a separate academy trust, which administers one UTC, was handed a financial notice to improve in March, as reported by our sister paper FE Week.

Bright Futures Educational Trust, which runs nine schools in the north-west, including Wigan UTC, was told it must improve its “weak financial position and financial management” or face closure.

The trust was ordered to repay an advance of funds it received from the EFA to plug finances at Wigan UTC and another of its schools, and achieve a balanced budget by 2017/18.

Publication of the Daventry UTC notice came days after UTC Lancashire became the fourth college of its kind to announce it would be closing its doors due to low student numbers.

It said in a statement on May 3 it would close for good at the end of this term — just three years after it opened — due to difficulties in enrolling enough students “to secure future financial viability”.

Central Bedfordshire UTC announced in March that it would close in August, after admitting it had not been able to attract sufficient pupils.

Hackney UTC closed in July 2014 after problems attracting learners, and Black Country UTC closed its doors in August 2015 after a “disappointing” Ofsted inspection and low student numbers.

Charles Parker, chief executive of the Baker Dearing Trust, which promotes UTCs, said: “It is still early days for many UTCs and recruiting students aged 14, which requires them to change schools, remains a challenge in some areas.”

He added: “Over time most UTCs are becoming an established part of the local community, with high enrolment rates.”

A second standalone university technical college (UTC) has been handed a financial notice to improve over an “apparent loss of financial control”.

The notice to Buckinghamshire UTC was sent to interim principal Tony Withell on May 5 and published by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) today (May 13).

It was issued as a result of the 14 to 19 vocational institution “accruing a significant deficit” and “experiencing cashflow difficulties for 2016/17” which would require an advance of EFA funding, and failing to ensure “robust financial management, control and oversight”.

In a letter to accompany the notice, Sue Baldwin, the EFA’s director for academies and maintained schools, said: “I must be clear however that we are concerned by the apparent loss of financial control, the failure of the trust to balance its budget and the circumstances in which the requested advance for 2016-17 has become necessary.”

Mr Withell told FE Week: “Good financial management at Buckinghamshire UTC is an absolute priority and we are in discussions with the EFA about this matter.”

He added: “We have ambitious targets for recruitment for the autumn; in the meantime we continue to deliver a high quality technical education pathway for our students, equipping them with the skills and knowledge they need to go onto higher education, training or employment.”

Figures obtained by FE Week through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests made earlier this year show that Buckinghamshire UTC has been running at just 21.7 per cent capacity this academic year.

It had just 130 students enrolled in 2015/16, down from 150 in 2014/15 — despite a capacity of 600.

Today’s notice now means that the five UTCs with the lowest numbers of learners relative to overall capacity, as shown by FE Week’s FOI figures based on UTCs that opened between 2010 and 2013, have all either announced they are to close or are in financial difficulties.

Daventry UTC, which, with 151 out of a possible 600 learners, is 25 per cent full became the first standalone college of its kind to be issued a financial improvement notice, published by the EFA last Friday (May 5).

UTC Lancashire, which has 113 out of a possible 800 learners, meaning that it’s just 14.1 per cent full, announced on May 3 that it would be shutting up shop in August.

That announcement came after Central Bedfordshire UTC, which is 16.8 per cent full with just 101 out of a possible 600 learners, announced in March that it would close in August.

And the trust that Wigan UTC is part of, Bright Futures Educational Trust, was hit with a financial notice to improve in March. Wigan UTC has lowest proportion of learners compared to capacity, at 70 out of 500, or 14 per cent.

Today’s notice to Buckinghamshire UTC ordered it to carry out an “external review of financial management and governance” by June 30.

This review should look at whether it “has the right mix of skills and experience to oversee the financial recovery and ensure value for money” and consider “the option of joining a multi-academy trust”.

The notice also ordered the college to “urgently review” its finances and to have its financial recovery plan validated by “someone with both educational and financial expertise” to “test the viability of your curriculum offer against the financial constraints”.