The controversial new apprenticeship levy was drawn up in “a darkened room”, leading FE organisations to feel they were left “outside the tent” during the drafting process, according to speakers at an FE Week parliamentary debate.

The event, which was hosted by shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden and sponsored by OCR, featured a panel including Gemma Gathercole (pictured top right), head of policy at OCR; Martin Doel (pictured middle right), chief executive of the Association of Colleges; and Mike Cox (pictured bottom right), operations director of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP).

Ms Gathercole insisted that examining bodies had been shut out of the reforms, in a speech to a packed committee room at the Palace of Westminster on Tuesday (May 3).

She said: “At this point I couldn’t even tell you where the tent was, that’s how far outside of the tent I think awarding organisations have been kept.

“I think I can speak on behalf of the awarding organisation community — we have a lot of experience in this sector, a lot of experience on assessment, [but] we’re not even allowed to talk to employers and providers on assessment policy because we’ve got to be invited in.”

Saying that bodies like OCR had been kept “at arm’s length would be the most positive understatement” she could make for the situation, she added.

Mr Marsden also addressed sector engagement in responding to a question from Linda Hausmanis, director of education at BIFM (pictured left), who asked: “Is anybody looking at employers, who say for instance may have a current employment bill of £3.5m?

“Some sharp corporate lawyers might be thinking we are going to start splitting the companies up so that it will take them below that £3m parapet.”

He stressed the importance of sector engagement, saying: “If you don’t want to get the mass displacement that’s been talked about, such as chopping up groups to escape the levy, you’ve got to engage with the sector.

“If you don’t involve people who are on the ground, providers, learners and all the rest, the finest minds in the civil service will get it wrong.”

Mr Marsden added that the government should “be prepared to take the flack”.

“Better to do that and get it right”, he said, “than plough ahead regardless and find yourself in an undignified scrabble after being rejected by many of the people you need to work with, because basically you haven’t listened to them”.

Fellow panellist Mike Cox, shared the concerns and said: “We have been consulted very lightly.”

He stressed that AELP had been “very strong and robust” in answering the government’s formal consultation process, but added that “outside of that” there had been few opportunities to comment.

“The parallel I suppose I would draw is with the introduction of the study programme and traineeships — I felt there was a lot more consultative behaviour and there were working groups that we put in place to really help hone the detail on those,” he said.

“I suspect as a result of that there will be an awful lot of follow-ons and clarifications, and that worries me a little bit because at the moment we can’t answer the questions.”

Mr Doel drew a parallel between the levy preparations and his previous work in military planning.

“One of the things we did in any operation is scenario-plan the reaction to whatever we would do, from the opposition’s perspective.

“The way you get to that is actually not just having extraordinarily clever civil servants writing rules in a darkened room,” he said.

“They should come out to the sector and ask how you will react to this bit of policy guidance, then try to anticipate that and how you might go ahead with that policy.”

FE Week put the concerns to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but it declined to comment.

The government should delay the devolution of the adult education budge, because the Skills Funding Agency has still not decided how the system will work for providers that cross regional boundaries, the Association of Colleges has said.

Provider groups based in multiple regions have been lobbying the SFA for different treatment under the now-imminent devolution plans, FE Week understands.

An SFA spokesperson said the body would “consider how funding and commissioning arrangements will operate for colleges and other providers which deliver in multiple areas” in 2018/19, “as part of the programme of work being undertaken to support the devolution of the adult education budget”.

However, Julian Gravatt, assistant chief executive at the Association of Colleges, admitted that he was still concerned that the problem remained unresolved, telling FE Week: “It would be better to delay the budget devolution rather than move ahead with half-completed plans.”

He said: “The chancellor of the exchequer has now agreed nine devolution deals that promise the local share of the adult education budget to new combined authorities in 2018.

“The National Audit Office recently described this as an experiment with the government drawing the map as it goes along. The nine deals all have six readiness conditions, which must be satisfied and important questions answered before devolution goes ahead.”

This comes after the SFA published geographic funding data for the first time, as reported in FE Week on April 13, in support of the devolution plans.

This was based on learners’ postcodes and related to non-apprenticeship adult skills budget (ASB) delivery in the 2014 to 2015 funding year — also setting out the proportion of provision each provider delivers within both their home local authority and region.

An SFA spokesperson said at the time that it was “publishing this data to support you [providers] in discussion with local government authorities in future adult education budget commissioning discussions”.

She added: “This will help establish a shared understanding of the current pattern of delivery.”

Concern has also been raised about how employers will operate if they run apprenticeships across several devolved countries within the UK.

A spokesperson for the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said it wanted to see “greater clarity at the earliest opportunity” on the matter.

He said: “Firms of all sectors and sizes are still in the dark on some vital areas of the levy. We won’t find out until well after the elections how the system will work in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.”

A Department for Business, Innovation and Skills spokesperson said it was aware some employers had “cross-border operations and training activity” and it was working with the devolved administrations to “make this work for employers”.

“We are developing rules on which employees and training providers can use funds in their digital account or government support to pay for,” she added. “We will publish more details about these rules in June 2016.”

A college is preparing to cut ties with two academies currently under its control — claiming that it is no longer “feasible” to sponsor them.

Oldham College will relinquish control of the nearby Waterhead and Stoneleigh academies at the start of the summer break, and has blamed the move away from vocational education in schools policy as one reason for its decision.

The college said that because the world of education had changed so rapidly, it no longer had the “capacity” to cope with school improvement, aside from worries about the curriculums.

A spokesperson said: “The school curriculum no longer embraces any of the vocational or technical subjects which the college teaches. Even more significant is that academy sponsorship is no longer feasible on a small scale.

“Sponsors need to be committed to growing large groups of schools with all the associated capacity which this brings to the challenge of school improvement.”

He added funding and policy changes to the college’s “core business” of post-16 education had been “dramatic and disruptive”.

“The future promises to bring even greater change [for FE], through devolution and the structural reorganisation of the college system, all of which have huge implications for employment and economic growth in the town,” he said. “This must, therefore, be the college’s sole priority.”

The decision was supported by Richard Atkins, former president of the Association of Colleges, who is currently the principal of Exeter College.

He said that, in order to be successful, multi-academy trusts (MATs) run by colleges would need around a dozen schools.

Mr Atkins added: “Colleges get into difficulty when senior management attempts to run one or two schools on a day-to-day basis. They start to take their eye off the ball and college standards start to drop.

“You need enough capacity to, for example, appoint a chief operating officer, a head of finance and an executive headteacher for the schools who report to the MAT.”

Sir David Carter, the national schools commissioner, said in March that academy trusts needed to expand, as those with fewer than six schools “will struggle to be sustainable”.

Atkins also warned colleges of the difficulties of taking over “one or two seriously failing schools”, because it would be tough to find the capacity to deal with them.

He said the best MATs would have a mix of both outstanding and failing schools. However building MATs could be a “win-win” for both schools and colleges.

“I think colleges have quite a bit to offer in terms of governance, leaderships and management of running autonomous education institutions, so we have quite a bit to bring,” he said.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “It is for colleges to decide whether to apply to become sponsors and for the regional school’s commissioner to decide on their suitability based on their capacity and their track record in supporting underperforming schools.

“Post-16 education plays a crucial role in supporting future economic growth, which is why we will be protecting the national base rate paid to all schools and colleges, of £4,000 per full-time student. This will bring stability to the sector.”

One of the UK’s largest legal firms has turned its back on new apprenticeships as a way of training lawyers.

Clifford Chance told FE Week that it had rejected the three Trailblazer apprenticeship standards for lawyers, which are now approved for delivery by the government, because they were “not the right model” for its training needs.

The decision will be seen as a blow to the reputation of the new qualifications — as the company, which employs more than 3,000 lawyers and 6,000 other legal workers, is the second largest law firm in this country.

Despite this setback, Law Society president Jonathan Smithers (pictured left) said he was still optimistic about the apprenticeship route to careers legal world.

He said: “The solicitor profession is an ideal environment for training through apprenticeships, where practical skills learned from more experienced members of the profession is key.

“The Law Society is supportive of alternative routes of entry into the solicitor profession as long as the quality achieved by new solicitors is maintained at the current high level.”

He added: “Legal apprenticeships which allow apprentices to go all the way to admission as a solicitor are new, and it is possible that more firms will look at including this route to train their staff in future.”

The Law Society is one of 23 different organisations, including other law firms, that helped design the new standards.

There are three standards, which cover training as a paralegal at level three, as a chartered legal executive at degree level six, and as a solicitor at level seven.

Dentons was one of the law firms involved in developing the standards.

Jo Wilson, HR manager at Dentons, said: “Dentons anticipates recruiting a cohort of apprentices each year, who will undertake a combination of classroom and work-based learning.  The apprenticeship scheme will work alongside Dentons’ existing recruitment and provide increased opportunity and access to a career in law. 

“Dentons was keen to be involved in the employer group that developed the apprenticeship standards from the start … We have enjoyed working with other firms to help shape the future of the legal sector and increase access to the profession.”

Mark Dawe, chief executive officer of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), also commented on the issue.

He said: “The law firms involved in the Trailblazers for the three approved standards for law make for a very impressive list of supporters, so we don’t think the opt-out [by Clifford Chance] will have a negative impact on overall delivery.

“In recent years, there has been arguably an oversupply of law graduates from higher education institutions, and as an alternative, firms have been increasingly attracted to the idea of training their recruits on the job.”

He added that AELP believed the new standards would “offer further opportunity for growth”.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills declined to comment on the topic of legal apprenticeships.

Two more colleges have quit the troubled Gazelle Group, including one of its founder members, FE Week can reveal.

There are 11 colleges still listed on its website — but Gazelle has now indicated that two of them, Warwickshire College Group and City College Plymouth, have left.

Warwickshire was one of five colleges which helped found the group five years ago, of which only City College Norwich remains.

Gazelle’s executive director Carolyn Chapman-Lees told FE Week that the group had “undergone a restructure”.

She said the group’s other remaining members were Activate Learning, Amersham & Wycombe College, Barking & Dagenham College, Cambridge Regional College, Cardiff & Vale College, Glasgow Kelvin College, Highbury College Portsmouth, and South West College.

She added: “Our website is currently being updated and this information will be amended accordingly.”

Eight months ago, Gazelle published the results of a membership review, which was prompted when several other colleges left the group, and which led management to slash annual membership fees from £35k to £15k.

In June 2014 meanwhile, FE Week revealed that it had raked in around £3.5m from more than 20 member colleges, in membership subs and other fees.

The group was formed in around 2011 with a promise to “develop innovative new learning models and new partnerships with business to deliver an improved outcome for students, their communities and the economy”.

It came under fire, however, over a perceived lack of return-on-investment analysis, and its failure to justify such expenditure of public money amid shrinking FE budgets.

Companies House also confirmed that the Norfolk-based Gazelle Global Ltd and the Gazelle Foundation had missed their April 30 deadlines for filing accounts.

However, no accounts are due for Gazelle Colleges Group — which was only set up three months ago — until November 2017.

Asked to clarify the situation, Ms Chapman-Lees revealed that Gazelle Foundation and Gazelle Global had “now ceased trading” and were therefore “not required to file accounts”.

She said: “Gazelle Colleges Group is a new legal entity and will be required to submit accounts in the future.”

A Warwickshire College Group spokesperson told FE Week: “After careful consideration, we decided not to proceed with membership of the newly created Gazelle Colleges Group organisation.”

City College Plymouth was unable to comment before we went to press.

Fintan Donohue retired from his role as Gazelle’s chief executive at the turn of the year, after more than four years at the helm.

At the time, Stella Mbubaegbu, principal of Highbury College Portsmouth and an officer for Gazelle Colleges Group, said: “All of the members past and present pay tribute to the vision and groundbreaking thinking that Fintan has brought to the enterprise and entrepreneurship agenda in our sector.”