As a marketing expert, Ruth Sparkes found the job of helping her offspring find the right FE institution an eye-opening experience. 

It’s that time of year when colleges are flinging open their doors and inviting prospective students in, to ‘taste’ their wares.

The summer and ‘mop-up’ campaigns are but a distant and expensive memory, and the new student recruitment cycle has started, all over again.

Schools have distributed their Year 11s predicted GCSE grades.

Recruiting students needs a joined-up approach, now more than ever

Most colleges will already have published their glossy new prospectuses for the 2016/17 in-take.

Some colleges will already have a few open events under their belts, applications will hopefully be rolling or dribbling in, and some colleges will have started interviewing potential students, and have made conditional offers.

This is what happens every year and it ought to be a well-oiled machine — but, in my experience as a parent this year, for the first time on other side of the institution’s doors — I can see why parents choose school sixth forms over standalone sixth forms or FE colleges.

Team Sparkes doesn’t have the ‘luxury’ of a school sixth form to fall back on, so we’ve had to persevere, even though we’ve hit quite a few obstacles.

Team objective — find a good college within an hour’s travelling that can offer A-levels in maths, further maths, economics, French and law.

We live in a county with 18 standalone mainstream colleges (either FE or sixth form) so it shouldn’t be too difficult — you would think.

College A — we enjoyed a fabulous welcome at the open event, staff on hand to answer questions, the principal was lively, engaging and accessible, but can’t offer economics and would love to offer French — but needs more applicants.

Unfortunately, French was not an option on the college’s online application form. So, it didn’t matter how many prospective students were urged to apply — they couldn’t. It took two phone calls and an email to the principal to rectify this.

The application has still not been made because — “It’s a ridiculous form, the worst of the lot I’ve had to fill in — I might go back to it.”

If this was your college, how many of your prospective students would persevere?

College B — an over-subscribed sixth form, which can offer all the subjects, but unfortunately offers its open evenings in the same week, and requires applications before Christmas. (Team Sparkes couldn’t attend open evening week due to the key member being on a GCSE-controlled assessment in Shropshire).

College B has booked us on a ‘tour’, but says: “This is just a tour, without any opportunity to speak to teaching staff or explore course choices.” Hmmm…

College C — This time last month, College C wasn’t even on the radar, but has since been fully investigated and is currently top of the list.

All subjects are offered, travel is doable and the application form was the least onerous of the three — it even had a clever and warm automated response that sent out a thank you, and an interview time and date.

This is just a selection of what we’ve encountered — we’ve discounted a grammar school in a neighbouring county, which had poor and incoherent careers advice, and inaccurate course information.

As college marketing staffing levels and budgets are squeezed to a shadow of their former selves, recruiting students needs a joined-up approach, now more than ever.

This is only one part of marketing your college, but, put yourselves in the shoes of prospective students, and ensure that barriers to interview are removed.

Is your course information up to date? Is your online application form seamless and relevant? Are you offering courses in your prospectus and on your website that haven’t run in years? Are the people answering your telephone under the impression that student recruitment is someone else’s job?

It really doesn’t matter how beautiful your prospectus is, or how good your website looks on a smartphone, if you can’t deliver simple assistance to teenagers to help them to apply to your college — they will find an alternative.

When high street jeweller Gerald Ratner famously rubbished one of his products a few years ago, his ill-judged comments resulted in Britain’s biggest jewellery group plunging £122.3m into the red with 330 shops in Britain and the United States closing.

I’m sure Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw, when rubbishing ‘cleaning’ and ‘coffee-making’ apprenticeships, did not intend the apprenticeship brand to suffer a similar fate.

A glance at the cleaning standards would have shown the complexity of 21st Century cleaning.

Too often a junior minister uses their newly-acquired powers to make changes solely to promote their own ambitions with no regard to the consequences

Cleaning the windows of The Shard or a hospital operating theatre demonstrates the skills modern cleaners require.

Again, it is us, the provider who has to clear up the mess after Ofsted’s five minutes of PR fame.

Learners, parents and employers have to be reassured of the value of the apprenticeship they are undertaking.

While cleaning apprentices may not have the academic abilities needed to become an engineering technician, it is arrogance to suggest their skills are not as important to society as a whole today, especially in respect of public health, safety and hygiene.

There should be parity of esteem across all apprenticeship programmes, regardless of technical complexity and academic requirements. Where would we be without sanitized and clean hospitals, care homes, toilets and public buildings?

Before disparaging ‘coffee-making’ apprenticeships, if the chief inspector had taken the trouble to look at the standards, he might have realised no such apprenticeship exists, but coffee-making is just one unit in the Serving Food and Drink Apprenticeship.

I’m sure Sir Michael’s continental colleagues, whose apprenticeships he so approves of, would not share his views about the skills sets required to become a sommelier, maître d’, barista or cocktail mixologist.

After reading Ofsted’s report I returned to City & Guilds’ Sense and Instability report (yes, the one that reminds us we’ve had 61 ministers of state, 10 different departments and 13 major parliamentary acts in the last three decades to establish a skills policy). Our democratic system has destabilised the vocational skills policies this country needs.

Too often a junior minister uses their newly-acquired powers to make changes solely to promote their own ambitions with no regard to the consequences.

Similarly, civil servants with little knowledge of vocation education and training (Vet) or apprenticeships make decisions based on their own academic journey centred around school, sixth form and university with very rarely any apprenticeship or commercial work experience.

While there is a sprinkling of ex-teachers, lecturers, head teachers and FE principals scattered across Whitehall, I can think of no ex-work-based learning member of staff working in government.

A plethora of research organisations have recently been announced to look into the sector. It would benefit us if they could expand the City & Guilds report to historically detail all the initiatives and ‘reforms’ to Vet and apprenticeships over the last three decades, to analyse, where the data is available, the benefits, results, costs, advantages and disadvantages of each of these initiatives, together with the minister responsible. Then the sector could score the results, which worked, which were disastrous, which benefited the economy, which wasted taxpayers’ money.

The result would be a document detailing the success and failures or mostly those that just dropped away with a change of minister or government (remember Guilds under John Hayes?). This might introduce a level of ministerial accountability into the sector and become a bible for incoming ministers and new civil servants.

There would be no excuse for introducing something that had previously been proved a failure or changing something that had proved to be a success.

Ironically, the direct face-to-face training, assessment, mentoring and guiding my trainer-assessors undertake on a daily basis with their apprentices and employers has changed very little over the years, just different paperwork, different programme titles and different funding regimes.

A three-year funding cycle was one of the key proposals in the AoC’s submission on the Spending Review, explains David Corke.

Colleges may just be the most important element of the government’s plan to improve productivity in the UK.

With industry-standard facilities and expert teachers, students receive the very best technical and professional education, which equips them with the skills to go to work. Colleges should, therefore, be respected and valued.

However, there is a risk that, under its Spending Review, the government will cut funding to the FE sector yet again. As funding for colleges is not protected in the ring-fenced budget that covers funding for schools, whenever savings need to be made, FE is in the firing line. It has to stop.

Funding cuts with little or no notice make it extremely difficult for colleges to predict and plan organisational finances and make sure they have enough money to pay for the services they offer

In a submission to the Spending Review, the AoC has called on the Government to make some changes to the way colleges are funded.

Our message is simple — education funding must be fair. When a student moves from school to college, the funding for their education drops by about 22 per cent. This is not acceptable.

If colleges are to provide the kind of quality A-levels and technical and professional education required to produce a skilled workforce, the funding must be there to pay for it.

Colleges are more than capable of creating the education and skills training that employers need, but they need the financial backing of the government.

Colleges also need to know in advance when and how much funding they will receive to allow them to adequately prepare their own budgets.

It is impossible to decide how to spend money when you don’t know when the next payment is coming and how much it will be. Funding cuts with little or no notice make it extremely difficult for colleges to predict and plan organisational finances and make sure they have enough money to pay for the services they offer.

A three-year funding cycle, as in our submission to the Spending Review, would mean that budgets would be set three years in advance, allowing colleges the chance to better manage their finances.

The government’s aim is to ensure that the UK’s workforce is highly and appropriately skilled so as to increase productivity. One of its ideas for achieving that goal is to create 3m apprenticeship starts by 2020, which will be challenging.

Colleges act as an important conduit in the apprenticeship system, playing the role not only of training provider, but also helping to source the employer to provide a job for the apprentice.

At present, the government has said it will introduce a levy to encourage — though some would say force — large employers to invest in apprenticeships.

Of course, creating more opportunities for work-plus-training for young people is laudable, but it is important that while straining for quantity, the quality of the apprenticeships does not decline.

An apprenticeship is only of value while it is preparing the apprentice for a good career within a sector, rather than just training them to work for a specific employer.

If the levy was set at 0.5 per cent of payroll costs, as AoC suggests, paid by all public and private organisations with more than 250 employees, this would support good quality training.

Securing a levy from businesses is one thing, but great consideration must be given to how it is spent.

Colleges work with employers to identify the needs of the local economy but it is important that this is a coordinated effort by the whole community. Local councils and other education providers need to be involved to ensure the right priorities are set to train young people for the jobs that are available.

Funding helps colleges to provide quality education and training to their local community and it must stay that way. Government must support them if it is to get the highly skilled workforce that the UK economy needs.

The FE Commissioner was sent in to Stratford-Upon-Avon College after the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) rated its financial health as inadequate. Nicola Mannock outlines the actions taken on the commissioner’s advice.

Following a year of exceptionally hard work by my dedicated and committed team, Stratford-upon-Avon College is now, as reported by FE Week, officially out of intervention after a final assessment by the FE Commissioner.

The college has also focused on financial controls to allow us to become more efficient, with all expenditure being kept under tight scrutiny

Intervention measures were implemented after an initial assessment by the commissioner, Dr David Collins, in May last year identified certain weaknesses in the college’s governance and financial sustainability and made recommendations to rectify these.

However, I am delighted that, following a further visit in June this year to assess the progress we have made, we received a letter last month from Skills Minister Nick Boles which officially informed us that, since the latest assessment “concludes that the college has fully addressed all the areas of concern that were identified in the initial visit”, Dr Collins’ input is no longer necessary and “the formal FE Commissioner intervention is therefore now at an end”.

I am particularly pleased that the measures we put in place to address the issues raised have been recognised. As recommended by Dr Collins, we made significant changes to our board of governors and, in keeping with our commitment to securing job opportunities for all students, it now has a very impressive breadth of industry and educational expertise.

Our business and educational strengths were further enhanced in October by the high-profile appointment to the board of distinguished business entrepreneur Lord Digby Jones, whose wide-ranging business expertise and support for vocational education will be a tremendous asset.

Moreover, the final assessment report acknowledges that a full training programme has been put in place, ensuring a strong induction programme for new governors.

We have taken steps to improve teaching and learning and established a comprehensive staff development programme. This, together with the recent launch in September of our Apprenticeship Academy, which will provide practical assistance to the county’s students who are interested in apprenticeships with local firms, will enable all our students to set out on the road to a successful career.

In his letter, Mr Boles wrote that he was “encouraged by the actions taken by the college to implement the necessary improvements”. These improvements were recognised in the most recent Ofsted report from March, which acknowledges the fact that the college has acted upon earlier recommendations to improve certain areas.

Ofsted gave us an overall rating of ‘good’ [up from ‘requires improvement’ in November 2013] including in the key areas of leadership and management and teaching, learning and assessment.

We are, of course, committed to even further progress.

The college has also focused on financial controls to allow us to become more efficient, with all expenditure being kept under tight scrutiny. The Final Assessment Report recognises that the college has improved its financial status and concludes that financial performance is under control and following our implemented Financial Plan.

I am immensely proud of what the college has achieved. It is gratifying to note that applications for 2015/2016 are higher than last year and we are seeing a greater recruitment in apprenticeships. However, our aim is to improve further. We have restructured significant aspects of our organisation which will provide not only consistency of approach but also financial benefit. By ending intervention measures, the FE Commissioner has shown that he sees clear evidence of the progress we have made; we are fully committed to building on these developments and demonstrate even greater improvement.