A new interim principal will take the reins at troubled City College Coventry early next month.

Dr Elaine McMahon (pictured above) will start in the role at the 5,944-learner college on January 4.

She will take over from current principal Steve Logan, who has spent just 18 months in the post.

The change is set to coincide with the publication of an Ofsted report on the college, following an inspection from November 24 to 27, which a statement released yesterday by chair of the board of governors Maggie Galliers suggested did not go well.

She said: “We were disappointed by some of our success rates this year and the inspection highlighted a number of important areas where significant changes and improvements are needed.

“We have therefore moved swiftly to appoint the right person to take the college forward.

“Elaine is an extremely experienced, well-respected and successful former principal, who is enthusiastic about joining us.

“Her priorities will be accelerating the pace of quality improvement, ensuring the continued financial health of the college and preparing for a local area review of FE provision announced for November 2016.”

She added that the inspectors had made “positive comments about the decisiveness of college governance and our strong links with industry”.

“Our finances are stable, despite the deep cuts in funding that have swept the FE sector,” she said.

“Furthermore, we know that some areas of our teaching are delivered to the high standards to which we aspire and which our students deserve.”

Dr McMahon has more the 30 years of experience in further and higher education in the UK and the USA, the college’s statement said.

She led Hull College for eight and a half years until early 2013, during which time it received an outstanding rating by Ofsted.

She has since had a number of stints as interim principal, at Harlow College, Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College and Edinburgh College.

Dr McMahon said: “City College has all the right ingredients to be successful, having passionate staff and superb facilities.

“I look forward to working with colleagues to meet student, employer and community needs, to improve success rates and to help our students progress into meaningful employment.”

Her appointment is the latest twist in an almost three-year long saga at the college.

The college was rated inadequate across-the-board by Ofsted in April 2013, down from its previous grade three (‘satisfactory’) inspection result.

It led to the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) calling for “fundamental changes to leadership and governance” and the departure of  former principal Paul Taylor and chair of governors Warwick Hall.

Ms Galliers, who was the Association of Colleges president for 2011/12, was appointed to oversee improvements as chair at the college in August 2013 and, with interim principal John Hogg, achieved a degree of success.

The college received a grade three rating from Ofsted in July last year, the same month that Mr Logan took over.

Post-16 education area reviews “haven’t been set up in order to save money,” Education Secretary Nicky Morgan (pictured above) claimed in an evidence session with the House of Lords Social Mobility Committee.

Ms Morgan was grilled about the influence of FE funding issues on the post-16 education area review process by former Labour Education Secretary Lady Estelle Morris (pictured left), in the session on Wednesday (December 9).

Thirteen area reviews across two initial waves, covering more than 130 general FE and sixth form colleges, have been launched so far by the government, which has said the “need” to move towards “fewer, often larger, more resilient and efficient providers,” underlies the process.

However, when Lady Morris questioned whether the government intended to make savings through the area reviews, Ms Morgan said: “The area reviews haven’t been set up in order to save money, they have been set up to ensure sustainability of institutions.”

The session was covered live on Twitter by FE Week and reaction to Ms Morgan’s comment was swift. Among those to respond was London Work-Based Learning Alliance governor Rob Brooks, who tweeted: “I don’t believe that for a second.”

And Dr Fiona Summers, technical standards manager at YMCA Awards, tweeted: “This goes against what we are hearing elsewhere re area reviews = efficiencies.”

Both Ms Morgan and Skills Minister Nick Boles were questioned in what was the final evidence session of the committee’s inquiry into social mobility in the transition from school to work.

Moving on to apprenticeships, Lady Morris queried whether the government would meet its 3m starts target with, for example, 80 per cent of learners at level two.

Mr Boles (pictured below right) was quick to highlight the value of level two apprenticeships, saying: “I just do not accept that innately a level two apprenticeship cannot be high quality.”

He added that under the new standards all level two apprenticeships will meet baseline requirements, which means an apprenticeship must be a job that lasts for at least a year, with an employer and a minimum of 20% off the job training.

“If you talk to builders – if you took away the level two in plastering or brick laying or site carpentry it would be devastating, not only for the industry which has a desperate need for skills, but actually for a lot of the young people, he said.

“While of course you’d much prefer every young person to sign up for a level three from the get go; some aren’t ready.”

Mr Boles also said that he was actually concerned about maintaining level two numbers once the levy on large firms was introduced because, he said, employers would be able to spend more of their levy voucher entitlement if they opted for higher level programmes.

“If you’re an big employer and you’re playing a huge levy bill there no way that you’re going to be able to employ enough level two apprenticeships to use up your levy,” he said.

“To some extent this makes us slightly worried about out 3m target … obviously if you ended up with everybody just offering higher and degree apprenticeships we would be hard pressed to be creating 600,000 a year.”

However, he concluded that the government remained confident that the “combination of measures” it is taking will mean targets are met.

Commenting on what was said in the session, Shadow Skills Minister Gordon Marsden said that building level two has traditionally been an important factor for apprenticeships in a number of areas.

“The same is true of parts of the service sector – hospitality, leisure and related qualifications – and that is a view that has been expressed by employers and sector skills representatives in the past,” he said.

“However it is important that qualifications can be progressive, that they are properly monitored and examined, and that they genuinely equip people with broad as well as specific skills.

“Maintaining the essence and progression of the content of current level twos, even if the label is altered, may be another route forward.”

The staggered launch of bidding windows for £650m-worth of European Social Fund (ESF) cash between next month and May could result in providers competing on the basis of “available resources rather than delivery expertise,” the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) has warned.

The first bidding window — for provision for young people considered not in education, employment, or training (Neet) — opened on December 7 and the second is expected to launch today (December 14).

The rest are expected to open “at regular intervals between January and May 2016,” said a Skills Funding Agency (SFA) spokesperson.

“We won’t know how many contracts there will be until after the procurement exercise is completed at the end of May 2016,” she said.

But Paul Warner (pictured), director of employment and skills at the AELP, said providers who were unaware of future tenders could win a contract only to find delivering it might hamper their ability to deliver ESF provision put to market at a later date.

Such a situation might, he suggested, put ESF contract-winning providers off going for further contracts despite having the necessary expertise because, for example, staff were located in a different region.

“With each specification likely to be launched gradually over a number of weeks, providers may find it difficult to allocate resources sensibly, which may lead to some having to choose which specifications to bid for on the basis of available resources, rather than delivery expertise,” said Mr Warner.

“We are in active dialogue with the SFA and have asked a number of questions regarding the procurement and contract mobilisation process, which we hope to have answers to shortly.”

The first bidding window is set to shut on January 18 — giving just 27 working days excluding weekends and public holidays to research, write and submit bids.

And then, after initial tenders totalling £14.86m have been awarded on March 30, winning bidders will have only 11 working days before delivery commences from April 14.

It follows a summer in which ESF-funded providers were forced to lay-off staff amid delays in issuing new ESF contracts, as the government sought to iron out regional devolution issues with local enterprise partnerships (Leps).

“These short timescales compound the delays and problems we’ve seen with ESF funding,” said Mr Warner.

“Providers who laid off staff because of the delays might now struggle to bid for new contracts because they do not have the staff any more or even shut provision.”

The five local enterprise partnership areas to which ESF money would be heading in the first bidding window were exclusively revealed by FE Week on December 4 and confirmed by the SFA and ESF just days later.

The SFA and Lep Network declined to comment on the concerns raised by Mr Warner.

Providers have hit back at claims that establishing new learner ventures in Saudi Arabia as part of the Colleges of Excellence (CoE) scheme might lead to “bankruptcy”.

It was reported last week in Education Investor and by FE Week that bosses of the scheme were struggling to get the number of learners they expected after attracting providers such as Lincoln College, Moulton College and Activate Learning to sign up to multi-million pound deals.

And while UK Trade and Industry (UKTI) Education, which was responsible for bringing together consortia to bid for the contracts, conceded CoE had “encountered challenges,” providers defended their involvement.

Activate Learning, an education group that includes Banbury and Bicester College, City of Oxford College and Reading College, signed up to the CoE programme as part of the Oxford Partnership, a consortium with GEMS Education Solutions and Moulton College.

Sally Dicketts, chief executive of Activate Learning (pictured above), said: “The Oxford Partnership entered into the agreement with CoE recognising that it would be a long-term investment.

“We remain fully committed to our colleges in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which also represent a social investment in empowering women and equipping them with the skills required to access meaningful employment.”

Interserve, an international support services and construction group, acquired the Employment and Skills Group, a UK-based provider of vocational training, skills and employability services that had signed up to CoE, at the end of last year.

An Interserve spokesperson said: “We deliver a range of educational services for our client, CoE. We are pleased with the progress we have made and recently opened a new state-of-the-art technical college for CoE.

“More than 1,500 young Saudi people — the majority of whom are female — attend our colleges where they are prepared for their future careers. We are proud to be part of CoE’s forward looking programme and remain committed to it.”

Although the projects were thought to be providing new revenue streams for an increasingly cash-strapped domestic college sector, such ventures have not been without their critics. Ofsted boss Sir Michael Wilshaw, for instance, once urged colleges to focus on “Deptford not Delhi,” as previously reported by FE Week.

A UKTI spokesperson said: “While the CoE programme has encountered challenges, the UK providers are working with UKTI and CoE to ensure the success of the programme.

“UKTI continues to support the Saudi government’s ambitions to broaden and improve Technical and Vocational Education and Training provision in the country.”

Pearson and North Hertfordshire College have declined to comment. Highbury College, Moulton College, Nescot, Lincoln College, Hertvec and CoE did not respond.

The issue of topslicing with lead providers skimming off around 40 per cent of government funding for delivery before dishing out contracts has been branded an “outrageous leeching of taxpayers’ money” by Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chair Meg Hillier (pictured).

The Labour MP (pictured) told FE Week the National Audit Office (NAO) was going to investigate instances such as the country’s biggest Skills Funding Agency (SFA) contractor, and former publicly-owned provider, Learndirect retaining 36 per cent of total funding (£68.1m) from 75 subcontractors in 2014/15.

“It is an outrageous leeching of taxpayers’ money by contractors that aren’t delivering any public service and are just acting as conduits,” she said.
Ms Hillier added: “I am going to ask the NAO to investigate this and we [members of the PAC] will consider what we will do about it as a committee once we have seen the evidence.”

It follows a long campaign against excessive topslicing by FE Week that was launched in the paper’s pilot edition in June 2011.

Lead contractors who retain government funding, through what they usually call management fees, before finding a subcontractor to do the training for the remaining sum, is also a subject currently being looked at by the SFA.

An SFA spokesperson said it was “undertaking compliance work” to determine whether any providers had ignored a ruling that detailed information about management fees they charge subcontractors be published online by November 23.

It is expected to be finished “by the end of the calendar year”.

The SFA warned in September that funding could be suspended where declarations were missing after the deadline.

It requested that information on management fees was available on websites, and included current supply chain fees and charges policy.

It also wanted the relevant weblinks provided on 2015 to 2016 subcontractor declaration forms.

However, FE Week checks on the websites of a number of leads with numerous subcontractors found that a number had missed the deadline.

And while Learndirect met the deadline, its management fees revealed topslicing of around 40 per cent in a number of instances.

It defended the charges saying suppliers delivered “Learndirect-branded services using our systems and products in line with the delivery standards laid down by Learndirect.”

“We provide marketing, the content, and the quality, audit and contract management framework within which they sit,” added a spokesperson.

The SFA has previously said that management fees should be no higher than 15 per cent of the value of the lead provider’s contract.

And Peter Lauener, Education Funding Agency and SFA chief executive, told FE Week last year that he would find a 40 per cent topslice “hard” to justify “because it’s kind of obvious that what is taken as a management fee is not going to frontline education or training”.

It’s a view of high management fees shared Ms Hillier.

“I am very interested in and worried about this issue,” she said.

“We are very worried as a committee about FE funding in general and this is a waste of a large amount of the precious little money available.”

The NAO declined to comment.

Nearly nine in every 10 FE lecturers and leaders have considered quitting because of their workload, a survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) shared exclusively with FE Week has indicated.

The ATL is quizzing FE staff in the It’s About Time campaign, launched on November 20, and has found that 85 per cent of respondents had given serious thought to walking away from the profession.

A tutor in adult and community learning (who cannot be named due to survey anonymity) said: “We have too much paperwork to complete, therefore simplify and diminish the paperwork.”

An FE college tutor said: “I have to write extensive feedback, but I know that 95 per cent won’t or can’t be read.

“Tests could be standardised to save time in designing them and the marking schedule.”

The aim of the campaign is to raise awareness of the impact of the workload on all education staff — and the FE sector results were given exclusively to FE Week.

It also aims to identify tasks which are most problematic and help find practical solutions so staff can cut their own workloads.

Since its launch, 134 FE professionals, including, lecturers, teachers and leaders, have filled out the campaign survey, which remains open.

It posed 16 questions, revolving around workload issues, including ‘what shouldn’t be done by FE staff?’ and ‘what would help FE staff to reduce their workload?’

The results showed that 77 per cent of FE staff felt their workload was not manageable and nearly 80 per cent said they didn’t have time to update their subject knowledge or skills.

Dr Mary Bousted (pictured right), ATL general secretary, said: “Our survey shows seven in-ten FE staff still think their workload is unmanageable and over eight in ten have considered quitting working in education because of it.

“Heavy workloads and stress are nothing new, but the current situation is affecting the health of staff, making many want to leave the profession.”

Out of the FE staff who took part in the survey 48 per cent said they never took a break of at least 40 minutes during the college day, 5 per cent said they did every day, 12 per cent said they did on most days, 11 per cent said once a week and 23 per cent said less often than once a week.

Ms Bousted said: “The government needs to acknowledge that it is responsible for much of the current workload because staff have to keep re-planning what they are doing to keep up with changes to the curriculum and its funding cuts have led to colleges cutting jobs — particularly among admin and support staff.”

She said the information gathered would be used in talks with the government to try to encourage it to consider the impact of education policies on workloads and try to get it to reduce the burden on education staff.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are working with the profession and education experts to take action on the root causes of teacher workload, including looking in more depth at the three biggest concerns teachers raised — marking, planning and resources, and data management.”

A Department for Business, Innovation and Skills spokesperson said: “As independent institutions it is a matter for colleges to decide how they manage their staffing arrangements.”

A third sector umbrella body has written to Skills Minister Nick Boles calling for charity representation on the new Institute of Apprenticeships board — and for an exemption to the large employers’ levy.

The Charity Finance Group (CFG), which works to improve financial management in the voluntary sector, wrote to highlight challenges the government’s apprenticeship levy could pose for charities.

It also called for the interests of the sector to be represented on the board of the new institute as a solution to concerns over issues such as charities’ levy funding going towards apprenticeships for private firms.

Andrew O’Brien (pictured above), head of policy and public affairs at CFG, said there had been a lack of government guidance on how the apprenticeship programme under the levy system would work in the charity sector.

“There are opportunities to still shape what the structure looks like, rather than just already having to deal with an existing structure and crowbarring charities into that,” he said.

The Institute will, according to the government’s English Apprenticeships: Our 2020 Vision document released on December 7, be “fully operational by April 2017 and … will gradually start to assume functions in 2016”.

It was also revealed that an independent chair would lead a “small board made up primarily of employers, business leaders and their representatives”.

And Mr Boles has said, in response to a written parliamentary question from Labour MP Peter Kyle, that the chair and board members would “be appointed through public appointments”.

“The outcome will be announced as soon as the process allows in 2016,” he wrote.

However, Mr O’Brien claimed the government had not addressed the needs of the charity sector so far in its levy consultation or in the spending review.

“I think it’s fair to say that it’s been missed out. It’s unfortunate that they didn’t consider it,” he said.

The CFG initially raised its queries in a response to the apprenticeship levy consultation, and then followed it with the letter to Mr Boles on December 1.

The letter, written by CFG chief executive Caron Bradshaw (pictured left), points out that “the charity sector employs 821,000 people across the UK, 61 per cent of which are employed on a full-time basis” and estimates that “1,200 charities will be subject to the levy, collectively costing around £70m”.

A BIS spokesperson said it “needed to make sure the levy is right for all employers”.

“This is why we are engaging with as many employers as possible to understand how the levy will work for their business and giving them the opportunity to work with us on the implementation design,” he said.

He added: “Further details of the new institute will be announced in due course.”