A proposed new levy on foreign workers could net the FE sector millions a year — but businesses warned it would be “unfair and unnecessary”.
Details of the proposed new levy, called the Immigration Skills Charge (ISC), were published in a report by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), a quango sponsored by the Home Office, on January 19.
It recommended that all employers should be charged £1,000 per year for every highly-skilled foreign worker they recruit from outside the European Union, in order to encourage businesses to upskill UK workers.
The government had already “signalled its intent” to introduce the charge, according to the report, and the committee had been asked by the government to look at which workers the charge should apply to, and how much it should be.
“We consider that the imposition of an ISC will serve to incentivise employers to reduce their reliance on employing migrant workers and to invest in training and upskilling UK workers,” it said in the report. “
Further, the ISC will provide a source of funding to help with this training and upskilling,” it added.
No detail is given about how the funds would be used, but, the report said, “we assume that the funds raised will be reinvested into the general provision of skills”.
Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said that investing in apprenticeships would be the “most effective solution” as it would encourage employers to retrain existing and new staff.
“Many providers are working with employers to meet the skills gaps such as ITC so the focus should be on investing on these programmes,” he said. But the report’s proposal to reinvest funds generated has provoked strong criticism from industry leaders.
“We are concerned that the proposed ISC will prove to be an unfair and unnecessary barrier to growth for small employers desperately seeking to fill skilled vacancies,” said John Allan, Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) national chairman.
He added: “While we support measures to encourage and improve investment in the training and development of UK workers, we do not think that making it even harder and more expensive to fill vacancies is a helpful solution.”
Neil Carberry (pictured), director of employment and skills at the Confederation of British Industry, said the proposal “could hold back firms’ ability to grow and create jobs, particularly for exporting, medium-sized businesses”.
“They would increase the cost of hiring skilled workers at a time when businesses are already having to manage government policies like the apprenticeship levy,” he added.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are grateful to the Migration Advisory Committee for its report. We are considering its findings and will respond in due course.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills declined to comment.
A South Cheshire College learner shaved off her locks and raised more than £450 for Macmillan Cancer Support.
Chelsea Palfreyman, aged 17, is now sporting short hair after deciding to go through with the fundraising stunt.
It was part of Macmillan’s ‘Brave the Shave’ campaign, a fundraising effort which encourages men and women to have their hair shaved off so they can stand proudly alongside people with cancer.
The campaign raises cash to give people with cancer and their families the support they need.
Chelsea, who studies a BTec 90 credit diploma in health and social, said: “It all feels very strange having short hair but I wanted to do it for a fantastic cause.
“I’ve always wanted to do something like this and when I saw the appeal I just decided to go for it.
“I’m very grateful to everyone who has supported me by giving generously so far and I’m hoping to raise even more cash in the weeks ahead.”
Graham Taylor questions whether apprenticeships are really worth all the funding and special attention being lavished on them by the government.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against apprenticeships but I’ve nothing against the hundreds of other qualifications in the adult skills budget.
‘Other’ says it all, but it encompasses some great qualifications. The budget has been cut by 28 per cent this year.
We could overspend it three times over, such is the demand from learners and business, but the money has dried up.
Whisper ‘apprenticeships’ and politicians go weak at the knees, but what’s so special about them? And can we sell more to meet Cameron’s 3m 2020 target? The product content keeps changing and so does price (who pays and how much?) Standards are uncertain and quality is, at best, ‘variable’.
As Mrs Merton says ‘let’s have a heated debate’.
So what are they? In essence they ape occupational standards. NVQs had a rough ride under Train to Gain — deemed to be ‘deadweight’ qualifications.
Apprenticeships were only ‘NVQs with knobs on’, the useful knobs being functional skills or GCSEs English and maths GCSEs.
Trailblazer content is still a work in progress. Many frameworks are still to be released.
Most now combine a competence-based NVQ with a substantial knowledge qualification. For example, the level three business diploma is now a huge beast counting 58 credits.
Other key considerations are who pays and how much? Why wouldn’t apprentices take out loans? Uncle Vince [Cable] rapidly withdrew this option as a growth strategy. Why not treat them just like any other loanable qualification? Let the learner decide what’s best.
How will large companies react to the levy [that they will be forced to pay]? The government expects to raise £3bn. Businesses will want their money back through high quality training which demonstrably improves productivity.
Like all assessment-based qualifications, there aren’t really any national standards, but devil’s contracts between assessor and apprentice
One thing’s for sure, the levy and the Digital Apprenticeship Service will add complexity and additional costs to the process.
Then there are standards to consider. Like all assessment-based qualifications, there aren’t really any national standards, but devil’s contracts between assessor and apprentice.
It leads to variations in quality and output. Quality could vary wildly as the supply side expands (get yourself on ROTO) and companies and colleges chase the money.
Companies like Next and the Priory Group have been accused in the national press of taking on low paid trainees without giving them proper training to develop skills and complete qualifications.
Sir Michael Wilshaw condemned such schemes that wasted taxpayers’ money on accrediting low level skills “such as mopping floors and making coffee”.
It’s true that most apprenticeships are level two and many are in service occupations where it’s sometimes hard to see the added value (shades of Train to Gain).
It’s hard to tell whether an Institute for Apprenticeships or the assessment organisations can help to ensure quality across each standard, no matter where, how or by whom they’re being delivered. Good luck with that.
The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) aims to increase competition “to help employers make an informed decision….”
There’ll be no distinction between primary (who have direct SFA contracts) and sub-contractors. Anyone can submit information about their organisational viability and quality assurance. If they meet due diligence standards and get on the Registers of Training and Organisations and Apprenticeship Assessment they can become a lead provider and negotiate commercial terms directly with employers, to deliver apprenticeship training.
Employers can choose any registered organisation. A competitive price and quality bunfight will ensue.
So get the content right (some are much easier to pass than others) and bring on the competition.
Judge providers by the quality of their work and the outcomes they achieve. Stiffen the standards so that short cuts can’t be taken.
Will the planned changes shake up the market the way the government wants?
Let’s see, but favouring any group of qualifications distorts the market and leads to unnecessary waste, increased bureaucracy and expensive national marketing campaigns.
The chief inspector does not understand first-hand what it is like to work in a sector that is often a ‘second or third chance’ for those who have not achieved sufficiently.
From what was reported, these are personal opinions that appear not to be based on facts derived from the primary source that should be inspection evidence.
Those who conscientiously work for Ofsted must be embarrassed by these latest pearls of wisdom cast down to the sector by Sir Michael.
Of course, part of this is down to him not understanding that a real inspector should only make a public judgement if it is based on fact and as such can be proven by evidence.
So Ofsted, please show us where data on inspections supports the headline statement in the article that the FE sector is “inadequate at best”?
Strangely, this completely contradicts the statistics contained in the chief inspector’s report, published only a few months ago.
At this moment in time, I would seriously question the consistency of Ofsted in terms of being led and ‘managed’ as a champion of quality.
I can think of a number of examples of variable performance by Ofsted.
Firstly, with publishing reports on time. A college report was published in January, over seven weeks after completion, with the target of five weeks missed (there are many more examples of no contact made by Ofsted to acknowledge dates agreed for accuracy checking not being met).
Secondly, wasting taxpayers’ money and resources. For a report on a small private provider published in December, five inspectors took three days to inspect 22 apprentices. Is inspection resourcing really being well managed?
Thirdly, equity of resource allocation. A college was inspected under the new CIF, with 1,038 apprentices, by one inspector for four days. How can this hold water with the above case?
Fourthly, website information not being available, data dashboard questions for Learning and Skills governors, link not working.
Fifth, consistency and checking of judgements in the much simpler report structure. A ‘safeguarding effective’ judgement made for a training provider report contained the judgement that ‘staff are not trained in the Prevent strategy’.
Sixth, carrying out inspections on time. A Sixth Form College that required improvement, with a latest date to be inspected in the 18-month window up to early May, was actually inspected in the first week of December, with no apology
Seventh, judgements about apprenticeships nationally in a survey. Many ‘apprenticeship training agencies’ have gone uninspected, or judged as to their ‘fitness for purpose’, despite being around since 2009 and involving thousands of apprentices and millions of pounds in funding.
Although Sir Michael did well in the past as executive principal at Mossbourne Community Academy, in Hackney (although the best college principals that I meet, give the credit to their staff, students and the ethos created), what about the pupils it failed, who did not stay on in that sixth form?
Yes, they probably went onto FE to pick up the pieces, but with far less funding.
I thought the concept of a ‘level playing field’ was finally acknowledged in the recent chief Inspectors report, or does making a controversial soundbite statement reflect a new un-evidenced approach to Ofsted judgements?
Is there real equity in the implementation of the CIF?
Where are similar statements about schools? Looking at national first time pass rates for English and maths GCSEs in schools, too many young people do not achieve A-C grades and the gaps in success between males and females, and between regions are too wide.
Locally to me there are many outstanding schools. Are the same criteria equally applied as in FE?
Anjelica Finnegan looks at what needs to be considered to make the apprenticeship levy work for charities.
In April 2017, all employers with a pay bill of over £3m will be required to pay the new apprenticeship levy.
The government believes this will significantly increase the quantity (with an expected 3m apprenticeships by 2020) and quality of apprenticeships in England.
The exact details of how the levy will work in practice are still being thrashed out, but what we know so far is that the levy will be set at 0.5 per cent of employers’ pay bill.
Redistribution outside of the charity sector of apprenticeships levy funding could call into question whether money given for public benefit should be allowed to leave the sector
Every employer will receive a £15,000 allowance to offset against payment of the levy.
As an example, if Employer X’s pay bill is £3.2m, the cost of the levy will be £16,000. Employer X will receive £15,000 to offset this cost and so the total payable to the levy is £1,000.
Employers that pay the levy will receive a digital voucher to the value of the amount they have paid. This voucher can then be used to buy training, from an approved trainer, for apprentices. So, Employer X from the above example will receive a £1,000 digital voucher.
Employers will have a fixed amount of time to spend the voucher — this time limit is still to be decided but initial discussions suggest it will be two years.
After this time the money will be redistributed to other organisations, potentially outside of the charity sector.
Initial estimates suggest that around 1,200 charities will be affected by the apprenticeship levy and will cost £70m collectively.
So will the levy work for charities? In a meeting with 35 of CFG’s members last week, it became clear that the levy poses significant and unique challenges to the charity sector.
Perhaps the most significant challenge is that there has been a lack of strategic oversight and investment in apprenticeship programmes across the sector.
It is because the sector is still in recession and facing a £4.6bn funding gap by 2018, as such charities have scaled back on their investment in skills.
Moreover, the sector has not had a skills council in place since 2013, so there has therefore been no strategic oversight of development and quality of apprenticeships, both of which are critical to a successful apprenticeships programme.
The levy should therefore be made available to charities to develop new apprenticeships and recruitment as well as paying for training.
It will help to ensure that they can provide meaningful, high quality apprenticeships, thereby attracting people into the sector.
Secondly, there is the question of how this levy interacts with the principles which underpin the use of charitable resources.
For example, redistribution outside of the charity sector of apprenticeships levy funding could call into question whether money given for public benefit should be allowed to leave the sector in order to subsidise private sector employers and support private benefit.
Neither is it clear that funding given to one charity by a funder or donor should be allowed to leave it in order to subsidise another charity’s operations which was not the donor’s intention?
It is because of these unique challenges, and that the charity sector is a major contributor to the British economy, that we have urged Skills Minister Nick Boles to ensure a representative from the charity sector will sit on the board of the new Institute for Apprenticeships.
From our conversations with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, we are confident that this is being considered, but we have not yet been given confirmation that this will happen.
It is vital that someone who understands the charity sector is able to inform and shape the apprenticeship levy to ensure that charities are not just crowbarred into the policy, but actually benefit from it.
After a visit from FE Commissioner Dr David Collins in 2014, Weymouth College went from an Ofsted rating of inadequate to good in just 11 months last year. Nigel Evans explains how the feat was achieved.
Then FE Week asked me to write something on the turnaround at Weymouth College, it would be true to say that I was very flattered. However, I appreciate that we have been on a somewhat unique journey over the past year.
One of the key features of our ability to address the (critical) issues at Weymouth College has been leadership and management, and that doesn’t mean it is all about me. Quite the reverse.
I read the Barnfield College article in FE Week and was interested by the comments: ‘We’ve achieved a lot in 10 months. We now have a fantastic staff team, as over one third of the staff have changed, mostly managers.’ This may have been true at Barnfield — it certainly isn’t at Weymouth. We significantly reduced our staff ratio percentage but lost very few staff during our journey, and I think that single factor has probably contributed most to our success. The Weymouth College staff know this isn’t just about continuous institutional review, restructuring, retracting and redundancy.
I also read with interest, the FE Commissioner Dr David Collins’ words: ‘‘Dr Collins said that he had also identified issues with the background knowledge of some principals, however he said that this ‘doesn’t matter if you have got a very strong team around you’ but warned if the management team as a whole was weak the college ‘was at risk of getting into difficulties’’.
This is what I wanted to dwell upon. Dr Collins has provided real clarity for us at Weymouth. What he has said is true, we didn’t have it right and what was worse, we didn’t know what was wrong. So last year we had some painful reshuffles at senior level where we did lose a small number of senior staff where we didn’t have sufficient expertise, particularly at financial level. As a consequence we engaged Andrew Tyley (ex-finance director and principal and now part of the commissioner’s team) to help lead us out of our financial mire. Crucial here was also the ability of our new senior leadership team to provide accurate management information. The college culture was always going to be another key factor that brought Weymouth College out of difficulty.
We have rapid and effective decision-making and with the notable lack of egos
The current corporation and senior leadership team are the best that I have ever worked with and all staff contributed to our current position as we continue our journey to outstanding. The lessons from us are — teamwork, trust, openness and transparency, everyone working together for the benefit of the college’s future. We are now very lean (and mean) and it is a really good place to be, we have rapid and effective decision-making and with the notable lack of egos this creates a great formula for being a responsive and effective College.
And anyway, if you want my personal view, I think we all need to remember that, at principal level, we are only custodians of our colleges. It simply isn’t our role to lead our colleges as a reflection of ourselves — but it is about us ensuring that our colleges are fit for purpose, financially viable and serve our communities to the upmost.
It isn’t about us — and that, for me, is a potential danger facing the sector as we sit in the middle of a very ambitious and all-encompassing Area Review process following a government steer towards ‘larger and more resilient Colleges’. Even if a college is ‘larger and supposedly more resilient’ — whatever the size and makeup, you only need one errant principal and unreliable financial management information to bring it to its knees.
We need to be aware that what can come with ‘larger’/federated colleges can be, multi-layered hierarchies, where decision-making is constipated and sometimes impossible. The problems we had at Weymouth were nothing to do with being a small college and the fact we are back on the right track so quickly shows how much can be achieved without mergers, shared services or federations.
‘I don’t know, or if I did I wouldn’t tell you’ — it’s quite a statement for Skills Minister Nick Boles to make to FE Week readers.
And to be clear, our presence at this exclusive round-table had been cleared with him.
So it’s disappointing to hear his refusal to give straight answers to simple questions about apprenticeship quality.
As a holder of public office, he cannot simply bluster away such questioning and nor should he want to considering the question asked could well be key to paving the way for standards. Employers and providers are understandably anxious about the shift from frameworks — and here’s just more evidence of this.
So if the Apprenticeship Delivery Board serves just one purpose then it would be most helpful if that purpose were to get Boles to be more forthcoming.
David Hughes is quite right to air concerns about giving employers the job of policing employers. We’ll just have to wait and see if it’s a view heard by Boles.
And while the minister may well not want to share his views with the public, the sector would like to share its views with him on this with a consultation — it might just be the only hope of slowing down the mad dash to launch the Institute for Apprenticeships.
As both a former FE learner and lecturer, Labour MP for Birmingham and Selly Oak Steve McCabe knows the sector intimately.
Born in Thornhill maternity hospital on the West coast of Scotland in 1955, McCabe was the middle child between two sisters, Sandra and Susan.
His mother was a housewife who later worked as a dinner lady in a local school, while his father’s jobs included working at a Rootes car factory.
Steve spending some quality time in North Wales with his children Rhianna and Kieron when they were young
McCabe’s first experience of education came at Boglestone Primary School in Port Glasgow, which he remembers fondly for its expansive playing fields. He and his sisters then went to the same local secondary school, Port Glasgow High School.
“Boys were primarily prepared for jobs in the shipyard. Clever boys went to work in the drawing office, and then you worked your way down the trades,” he explains.
“Girls were primarily trained for childcare, domestic science or factory work.”
Taking the Scottish Higher exams — the equivalent of A-levels — in his fifth year opened the door for McCabe to attend Moray House College in Edinburgh, where he studied social care.
I think in order to be able to accommodate a changing employment market, we probably do need to rationalise and specialise
The college, which is now part of Edinburgh University, specialised in teacher training, PE teaching and social and community work skills.
In hindsight, he says that 18 or 19 years old was quite young to train in the social care profession.
“We had a broad range of subjects that we were taught, we did a number of practical placements and in theory I acquired some skills – but if I’m really truthful I was pretty clueless!” he says.
His first full time job took him to Wolverhampton to join a social work area team. His mentor at the time was his boss, Doreen van Hiley, who he says was a very positive influence, and helped him to survive the first 18 months.
Steve on a week long walk from the top of Mount Snowdon to the centre of Birmingham with volunteers from Kings Heath Cricket Club, to raise money for the Anthony Nolan Trust and other charities
As the work went on he found himself engaging with the world of FE again, working with students from local colleges in both Wolverhampton and Newbury in Berkshire.
“In those days it was quite common to take students sometimes for placements, experience and opportunities … I worked for a spell with young offenders and I had contact with FE colleges through helping students to get through their training courses.”
He found working with colleges a “patchy” process.
“Although there have been dramatic changes in the FE sector over the years, some of it doesn’t strike me as that different,” explains McCabe.
“There were always arguments about funding, there were always arguments about people who want to offer courses in a particular way, and there were always customers who were seeking something that didn’t quite fit the model that the college was trying to sell — the challenge is how you make those things responsive to real demand.”
Steve shows off his pancake flipping skills in a House of Commons Charity pancake race
McCabe had a chance to experience this challenge head on when in 1985, after a decade in social work, he completed a Master’s degree in the subject at the University of Bradford. It made him think more about the way social work education was being offered in colleges, and he took a position as a lecturer at North East Worcestershire College in Bromsgrove.
He taught mostly older students over three years, and says it was a great experience.
“They were fascinating people, usually people who were a bit frightened by education, because their earlier experiences hadn’t been so great. But they were really clever, interesting folk to work with,” says McCabe.
“I did teach a class of young people who were doing a primary social care course, which was quite entertaining and amusing, and I also taught one class for adult returners — people who had no formal academic qualifications at all.”
McCabe then moved to do two years of part time child care work with the Family Protection Team, combined with a part time research job for the British Association of Social Workers, looking at childcare for young offenders.
Now in his 30s, he did five years working for the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CETS), as a regional adviser responsible for advising on changes in curriculum and inspecting and setting up social work training programmes, including the launch of the health and social care NVQs.
Steve takes part in a sponsored walk for MacMillan nurses
“It was an exciting and interesting time when issues like gender, equality and racism were surfacing where social work training had almost been devoid of content in those areas for years before,” he says.
Alongside working for CETS, McCabe was also selected as a local councillor in Birmingham in 1990, and later became a father to Rhianna and then Keiron, who are now 22 and 19 years old. Rhianna is completing an information and administration apprenticeship with the local authority and Keiron is in his first year of a law degree at the University of Bristol.
In 1997, McCabe won the seat of Birmingham Hall Green, holding it until 2010 when the boundaries were changed, making him the MP for Birmingham Selly Oak.
He has worked with the colleges in his constituency in a variety of ways, particularly South and City College which was created through the amalgamation of South Birmingham College & City College Birmingham in 2012.
It’s an experience that has helped him form a view of today’s sector and the issues it faces.
Steve and Kieron at the Aston Villa vs Arsenal FA cup final last season
“I think in order to be able to accommodate a changing employment market, we probably do need to rationalise and specialise a bit. But with anything like that there will be good historical and territorial arguments which will make that very difficult for people,” he adds.
During his political career McCabe has taken a special focus on education, working as Charles Clarke’s Parliamentary Private Secretary when he was Secretary of State for Education and then taking up the position of Shadow Children and Families Minister under Ed Miliband’s leadership of the Labour Party.
He still follows developments in the education sector, including the government’s post-16 education and training area review process. McCabe, who is divorced, now lives in King’s Heath with his partner of 10 years, Fiona Gordon, and his local area and constituency fell under the first wave of area reviews.
“I’m a bit sceptical about [area reviews] because I think maybe this is the government just simply thinking about money, and the danger is it may become a cash recovery exercise,” he says.
“But the idea that we have a review that seeks to develop a greater knowledge of the demands of the market and sectors, and tries to come up with a rational plan with a significant degree of specialism where it’s appropriate quite appeals to me.”
Looking to the future for FE, McCabe says he would like to see more coherence across the education sector as a whole.
“We waste a phenomenal amount of resource, and we fail to capitalise on the best practice,” he explains.
“We need to create a facility for lifelong learning. People are going to have to train, update, and retrain throughout their lives now — that is part of living in a flexible economy with changing demand.”
————————————————————————————————————————-
It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
It’s probably The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist, because it had such a big impact on me when I was at a young age, and it made me think a lot about politics
What do you do to switch off from work?
I read, I cook and I watch Aston Villa getting beat
What’s your pet hate?
People on the bus with headphones on that they’re sharing with me
If you could invite anyone to a dinner party, living or dead, who would it be?
I’d definitely invite Jose Mourinho [former Chelsea football team manager] and his banker, and I would ask his banker to buy Aston Villa and Mourinho to manage them
Key FE figures have spoken out in defence of the sector following a scathing attack by Ofsted boss Sir Michael Wilshaw.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills.
During a speech on Monday (January 19) for thinktank CentreForum, the education watchdog’s chief inspector accused the sector of being “inadequate at best” and criticised the sector for offering “uniformly weak” careers advice.
“It is a real pity that Sir Michael chooses to use such outdated and incorrect language to describe the education and training provided by FE colleges,” said Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges.
Far from being the “large, impersonal and amorphous” institutions failing to deliver “high-quality vocational education” that Sir Michael referred to in his speech, Mr Doel said that FE colleges “provide excellent pastoral support, work hard to ensure that all students are supported to help them succeed and advance their valuable employability skills and develop their career opportunities”.
Martin DoelDr Sue Pember
Dr Sue Pember, director of policy and external relations at Holex and FE Week agony aunt, said that, while Sir Michael was “right to draw attention to vocational education” the sector should not be held responsible when government changes to the education system fail.
“Colleges and providers have been the pawns in these policy changes and really can’t be blamed if the systems that governments have advocated don’t actually succeed,” she said.
“What vocational education and training in England needs is policy stability and sustainable funding.”
In response to Sir Michael’s comment that 16 to 19 study programmes have “yet to make an impact” on maths and English GCSE pass rates, Dr Pember said it was “unrealistic to think that any college can turn round 6 to 10 years of poor schooling”.
“We need to put the emphasis on getting it right in secondary school,” she said.
Malcolm TrobeSally Hunt
Malcolm Trobe, deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said that FE colleges should be “celebrated” for the “enormous contribution” they make to meeting the needs of learners and employers.
“They are doing extremely good work under circumstances in which they have received horrendous budget cuts,” he said.
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), agreed with Sir Michael’s call for better careers advice for college students, but warned that providing it “will require proper investment”.
She added: “Sir Michael is wrong to dismiss further education colleges as simply having failed the pupils that struggled academically at his schools.
“All young people deserve access to the best education that most suits their needs.”
During his speech Sir Michael also outlined his vision for what he called “federations” of schools, which would include university technical colleges “that would admit youngsters across the ability range to focus on apprenticeships at levels four, three and two”.
“It would not be a dumping ground for the disaffected and cater just for the lower-ability youngsters,” he said.
