As restrictions are lifted on delivering traineeships, with the government claiming excellent results mean they are no longer needed, questions remain over quality. The change has led to accusations that the Government is “desperate for numbers”.

Until last Monday, only providers rated “outstanding” or “good” could deliver traineeships. However, provision has now been opened up to providers who have been rated as “requires improvement” or “inadequate” by Ofsted.

According to the Government, the earlier restriction was to “ensure quality from the outset” and the change has brought traineeships in line with rest of FE and skills provision.

“Now that traineeships are fully established and getting excellent results for young people, from 2016/17 we will place them on a par with other provision by removing this requirement,” the Government said in its English Apprenticeships: Our 2020 Vision report, published in December.

Its own evaluation of traineeships focused on outcomes, and did not address the quality of provision. “Around two thirds of trainees progressed to positive destinations including apprenticeships,” said the 2020 Vision report.

In addition, “94 per cent of employers consider traineeships to be an effective way of preparing young people for work”.

When asked by FE Week about the quality of provision, as judged by Ofsted, the Government remained silent, so we took a look.

In 2014/15, just 21 out of 272 inspected providers received a grade for traineeships. Of those 21, five received a grade 3 (requires improvement) rating, and a further three had been slapped with a grade 4 (inadequate).

Since the introduction of the new Common Inspection Framework in September 2015, only five out of 88 inspections have included a grade for delivering traineeships. One of those five was a grade 4, while the remaining four were all grade 2.

This means since September 2014, of the grade one and two providers delivering traineeships that have been inspected, more than a third have subsequently been given a grade 3 or 4 rating for their traineeship provision.

“In my view, the Government has opened up the traineeship programme because they’re not recruiting enough people on it. They’re desperate for numbers,” said John Hyde, chair of HIT Training, which used to run traineeships.

Mr Hyde said that young people who could get a paid job would do so, leaving traineeships for those who “need more guidance to get a job”. Rather than open up provision to all providers, Mr Hyde said he believed it should be run by specialists.

“I think that is where the marketplace is now. Providers that are specialists in helping the hard to reach are the only people that will benefit from the Government opening up traineeship provision,” Mr Hyde said.

“For everybody to dabble in it, I think it’s going to be very messy and not produce really good results,” he added.

Andrew Cleaves, principal at Birmingham Metropolitan College, said he welcomed the opening up of traineeship provision. The college had been delivering a small number of traineeships, but was hit with a grade 3 rating from Ofsted in May last year.

“We have worked with a number of employers to design and deliver appropriate employability programmes that progress successful recruits on to jobs and apprenticeships.

“The traineeship brand will help us to deliver more training that can provide people with the skills they need to enter employment,” said Mr Cleaves.

Traineeships were introduced in 2013 for 16- to 24-year-olds as a pre-apprenticeship programme. According to provisional government figures, 7,600 people have started a traineeship so far in 2015/16. In 2014/15, there were 19,400 traineeship starts, up from 10,400 in 2013/14.

The restriction on delivering traineeships was due to have been lifted in August, the government had said in December, but the date was brought forward in January.

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said it had nothing further to add beyond the information given in the 2020 Vision report. Ofsted confirmed that it had not carried out a thematic review into traineeships, but declined to comment further.

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For everybody to dabble in traineeships it will be very messy

John Hyde (pictured), the chair of HIT Training, explains why the company no longer provides traineeships and why the government is wrong to open the programme up to all providers.

In my view, the government has opened up the traineeship programme because they’re not recruiting enough people on it. They’re desperate for numbers.

The economy has improved since the programme started. There are a lot of entry level jobs available, so if young people want to work there is work now for them.

I can’t see the programme lasting much longer. There is no incentive to young people to sign up for a traineeship.

Why would a young person commit themselves to up to six months in a traineeship with no pay, when they could get paid straightaway in a job at which the employer would have to train them anyway?

So you get young people who are “hard to help” doing traineeships – the ones who need more guidance to get a job. Those are certainly the kind of young people we were getting in the last few months we were running the programme.

The problem was that our staff weren’t geared up or trained for that. We came into it as mainstream provider, not as a specialist unemployment provider working with the hard to reach.

We saw it as a service to the hospitality industry and not as a service for the hard to help.

I think that is where the marketplace is now. Providers that are specialists in helping the hard to reach are the only people that will benefit from the government opening up traineeship provision.

It’s not an easy programme to run. You need expertise in dealing with employers, and the ability to work with the employers to offer places for people that are reluctant, or unable, to get a job without the existence of this programme.

Essentially, you need two specific sets of skills. You need employer liaison people, who can sell the programme and the young person to the employer. And then you need the specialists that can prepare that person, from whatever background or social problems they’ve come from.

That’s why you need specialist providers. For everybody to dabble in it, I think it’s going to be very messy and not produce really good results.

You’re going to get more disappointed young people who are not getting the expertise from a specialist provider that they need to get them back into work.

We went into delivering traineeships because we thought it was a good way for unemployed teenagers to come into the hospitality sector. It was to be sold to them as a way of getting qualifications and a job.

That was our entire raison d’etre for doing them – to get young people into a job, with work experience, so they could get full-time employment. There was no upper limit to the number of traineeships we were going to offer. It was our intention to have a traineeship team in each of our 40 offices around the country.

However, when we were inspected by Ofsted we found they didn’t really understood what a quality traineeship is.

The inspectors were looking for classroom teaching, rather than practical job outcomes and work experience. They were more concerned about our numeracy and literacy results rather than whether our trainees found jobs.

The problem was the trainees weren’t on the programme long enough. Once they’d finished the initial assessment and preparation for work, they were with the employer all day. There was no day release programme then, so the actual training would take place with a member of our staff visiting them at the workplace.

Although we got an overall grade 2 rating from Ofsted, we were given a grade 3 for our traineeship provision.

We then took the decision to stop running traineeships completely, which meant having to make 80 members of staff redundant. We managed to relocate half of them within HIT and found jobs for a further quarter, and we know the remainder are all in work.

I can’t see the programme lasting much longer. There is no incentive to young people to sign up for a traineeship. I don’t think their benefits are stopped, but equally there’s no cash advantage to them doing a traineeship.

When the Tories launched their manifesto in April last year at a University Technical College, they promised to create one of them ‘within reach of every city’. Nicky Morgan said: ‘I think we will see an improvement in recruitment. UTCs are a very important part of our overall education offer.’ So what do the September recruitment figures tell us?

Forty per cent of University Technical Colleges (UTCs) opened between 2010 and 2013 saw student numbers fall for this academic year, FE Week can exclusively reveal.

Six of the 15 UTCs, all of which are now going into their third year, saw their learner numbers decrease for 2015/16. Royal Greenwich UTC had the most dramatic drop, with 140 fewer students for 2015/16 – a fall of 35 per cent compared to figures for 2014/15.

Bristol Technology and Engineering Academy, Buckinghamshire UTC, UTC Plymouth, Daventry UTC and UTC Lancashire also saw their numbers fall by between seven and 21 students, according to data obtained by FE Week through Freedom of Information requests.

The remaining nine UTCs increased their number of students from 2014/15 to 2015/16, though figures varied considerably. The smallest increase was at The Elstree UTC, which took three more students this year compared to numbers from last year.

In contrast, Liverpool Life Sciences UTC had the greatest increase with 127 more leaners, a 28 per cent increase that brings its total to 580 students for 2015/16.

Overall, the data for this academic year showed that recruitment remains a problem for UTCs, echoing FE Week’s research from April 2015.

This found that of the 16 UTCs set up between September 2010 and September 2013, six were operating at up to just a third full at the time – with two running at no more than 14 per cent capacity.

In terms of reaching capacity this year, Wigan UTC has the furthest to go at only 14 per cent full. The UTC had just nine more students in 2015/16, bringing it to 70 in total.

UTC Lancashire also struggled, at only 14.1 per cent full, losing seven students from 2014/15 to 2015/16 (See box out for more information on UTC Lancashire).

UTC Sheffield had strong figures in terms of capacity at 84.3 per cent full this year, while the JCB Academy – the first UTC to open in 2010 – was strongest overall, exceeding its capacity of 540 with 582 learners for this academic year.

The overall increase in student numbers at the UTCs that opened between 2010 and 2013 was just 5 per cent for 2015/16. Together, these 15 UTCs have reached just 50.4 per cent of their combined capacity (4,598 students for a total capacity of 9,126).

Since 2010, two UTCs have also been forced to close. Hackney UTC closed in July 2014, after problems attracting learners, and the Black Country UTC closed its doors in August 2015, after a “disappointing” Ofsted inspection and low student numbers.

Commenting on this research, Charles Parker, chief executive officer of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, said: “The Education Secretary has acknowledged that it is hard for UTCs and colleges to get access to students in other schools. This makes it a challenge to raise awareness with young people that UTCs are an option to consider at 14.

“Despite the challenges more than half of the UTCs listed are seeing improvements in recruitment.

“However, it’s important that we find ways to ensure every child who can thrive at a UTC has the opportunity to do so.”

The principals of Greenwich UTC, UTC Plymouth and Daventry UTC had not commented on the research at the time of going to press. The principals of Buckinghamshire UTC and Bristol Technology and Engineering Academy declined to comment.

The story behind the numbers – UTC Lancs

At UTC Lancashire, student numbers fell by seven between 2014/15 and 2015/16 ¬– and they remain almost 500 learners away from reaching capacity.

Speaking to FE Week, acting principal Jacquie Petriaho (pictured) admitted that UTC Lancashire’s learner numbers for year 10 had fallen, saying that the senior leadership team (SLT) was disappointed with the final figures for this year group in 2015/16.

“The governors and leadership team interviewed every young person who applied to the UTC for a September 2015 start, and only offered places to the students who genuinely were interested in studying the specialisms on offer; design, construction and engineering,” Ms Petriaho said.

“Many students, and parents of students who applied, realised during the interview process that the UTC was not an appropriate place for them to study at the age of 14.

“Even though governors and the SLT were disappointed with our final numbers for year 10, it did mean we were certain the students we recruited had applied and would come for all the right reasons,” she added.

Ms Petriaho added that numbers in years 11, 12 and 13 have increased slightly compared to previous years and she is optimistic that the UTC will boost recruitment moving forward.

“The UTC governors and SLT are working extremely hard to ensure numbers increase in all years next academic year, 2016/17, and over the next few years,” she said.

Ms Petriaho has recently taken over the leadership of UTC Lancashire, after the original principal, Martin Callagher, left in late 2015. Mr Callagher had been with the UTC since its inception in 2013.

Ms Petriaho confirmed to FE Week that Mr Callagher has now taken a role at Training 2000, the group training association that was previously the main sponsor of UTC Lancashire.

She added that UTC Lancashire is no longer working in partnership with Training 2000.

Criminal charges could be brought against the founder of a controversial former apprenticeship provider, who has been disqualified from acting as a director for six years.

Manchester-based Elmfield Training was one of the country’s largest providers of apprenticeships, which received more than £100m in public money before it was wound up in 2013 owing 180 companies more than £11m.

The company had previously been subject to extensive investigations by FE Week that revealed alleged malpractices at the firm founded by Gerard Syddall, who was subsequently declared bankrupt in April 2015.

FE Week reported on January 30 that Mr Syddall, of St Helens, Merseyside, had been disqualified from acting as a director until February 2022 after insolvency investigators found he paid himself nearly £1m while his firm was going into administration.

This newspaper has since learned that further investigations by the Insolvency Service, which has the authority to bring its own criminal cases, could lead to him being charged. FE Week also asked the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) if it was investigating the case on Monday.

A spokesperson said in response that it could neither confirm nor deny interest in the matter.

Mr Syddall was still listed on Thursday by Companies House as a director for the St Helens-based scientific and technical consulting firm Marad Ltd.

FE Week asked the Insolvency Service why this was possible, bearing in mind it announced on January 29 that he had “been disqualified for a period of six years for breaching his fiduciary duty” to Elmfield.

A spokesperson said in response: “As is normal with undertakings, it doesn’t take effect for 21 days after signature, so February 9 is when the disqualification comes into effect.”

In a scathing investigation report, the Insolvency Service said Mr Syddall had told the Elmfield board of directors he would not use company funds for his own benefit in March 2013 because the firm was experiencing cashflow difficulties.

But investigators found Mr Syddall, along with “individuals connected to him, and another company of which he was a director” whom the Insolvency Service declined to identify, went on to receive nearly £954,000 from Elmfield.

By the time it went into administration in October that year, Mr Syddall owed the company £2.6m.

Robert Clarke, group leader of insolvent investigations north at the Insolvency Service, said: “Mr Syddall clearly put his own interests ahead of those of the company.”

The controversial businessman was hauled in front of the Business, Innovation and Skills select committee in 2012 and accused of paying himself “rip off” £3m dividend payments two years previously, all from government funding.

Then, after FE Week revealed the firm’s “appalling” pass rate – just 47.5 per cent of leavers in 2011/12 walked away with an apprenticeship certificate – it was given a grade four Ofsted rating, leading to Mr Syddall’s resignation as chief executive in July 2013.

A BBC Newsnight report, supported by FE Week, alleged three months later that Elmfield had received public money for courses that Morrisons employees had declined to take.

But an SFA investigation cleared the company the following April of falsely claiming for learners although it found “weakness in their controls that were not good practice”.

FE Week was unable to contact Mr Syddall for a comment ahead of publication.