A council has voted to carry out its own post-16 education review to ensure school sixth forms and independent learning providers (ILPs) were fully considered in its actual government-commissioned area review.
Brighton and Hove City Council will take the results of its review to the steering group of the Sussex Coast area review, which includes eight general FE colleges and three sixth form colleges.
The motion was passed by councillors having been put before them by Tom Bewick (pictured), managing director at consultancy firm New Work Skills Ltd and chair of the council’s children, young people and skills committee.
He told FE Week the council review would “look at the supply side of post-16 provision, so all training available including schools and ILPs”. “We are also bringing in a group of local businesses to analyse the demand for skills training,” he added.
The council’s report is due out in March, for consideration by the Sussex Coast area review steering group, in which Mr Bewick will represent school sixth forms and the council.
It comes after a number of college principals complained to FE Week that school sixth forms are not involved in the seven area reviews announced so far.
Email paul.offord@feweek.co.uk if your council plans to draw up its own report on local post-16 provision in support of an area review.
The “perfect storm” of challenges facing the sector is, according to Association of Colleges (AoC) chief executive Martin Doel, a “manifestation of a problem that we should have settled a long time ago – that is defining this term ‘further education’”.
“For too often we’ve chased whatever money is available, whatever source of funding might be there, and sought to deliver in an uncritical, undiscerning way which has turned institutions in to survivors — but survivors for what? And for whom?” he said.
The event, at Westminster’s Portcullis House on Wednesday (October 28), was chaired by Fetl president Dame Ruth Silver.
She heard Mr Doel say that a clearer definition of the sector would “give us a greater sense of confidence, identity and determination and make much less likely the prospect of ministers waking up one morning just having an idea and imposing it upon the sector”.
It was a view echoed by Jill Westerman, Fetl chair of trustees and principal of Northern College, in Barnsley.
She said there was little “consensus of opinion” about what the sector is for, “even for those of us who work in the sector”.
From a policy maker’s perspective, the sector is “one of the means by which we create an economically successful and socially cohesive society”, said Ms Westerman.
“Even if you accept that, there’s much less agreement about how we get there,” she added.
“We need to begin with what is the FE and skills sector for, and then move on to what next?”
Ambition
The issue of ambition — both for the sector and for learners — was raised by a number of speakers.
“What are our ambitions for our young people?” asked Sue Rimmer, principal of South Thames College and chair of the Principals’ Professional Council.
“What type of society do we want going forward and how educated do we want our society to be? How educated do we want our young people to be?” she added.
Referring to a comment made earlier in the evening by Anne Marie Morris, MP for Newton Abbott and parliamentary private secretary to Skills Minister Nick Boles, that the UK had far fewer young people entering higher level training than other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, Ms Rimmer said: “Why are we surprised that we only have 10 per cent of people qualified to levels three, four and five? That hasn’t been our ambition like it has been in other countries”.
Ms Rimmer added that she had been “truly inspired” by a recent visit to City of Glasgow College, a “super college” which has 40,000 learners and partnerships with 50 colleges around the world. It also opened a £66m maritime skills centre last month (October).
“I think at times colleges aren’t ambitious enough. I think the leaders often aren’t allowed to be ambitious enough,” the Scottish college’s principal, Paul Little, said.
“Everything is possible with will,” he added.
Meeting the skills need
Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, spoke of the opportunities opening up to the sector by taking a “workforce development approach”.
“We need to move ourselves away from being driven by funding streams — but be driven by the customers,” said Mr Segal.
Citing health and social care, justice and local government — “any of the major services that government wishes to improve” — as areas that the sector should be working in, Mr Segal said: “We need to work in partnership developing and integrating services with people both inside and outside of the skills sector.”
“We won’t just be funded by government, we’ll be funded by individuals and employers who wish to drive the skills of their workforce and we’ll be the sector they’ll look to in order to do that.”
Localisation
A number of speakers spoke about the importance of localisation, and of local providers being able to meet the needs of their local economy.
Mr Doel said that “an FE college is fundamentally about serving a local economic community at levels three, four and five”.
Professor Chris Husbands, director of the Institute of Education at University College London, said the government’s area devolution plans were “really important and really interesting”.
“Local specialisation is important in terms of driving economic growth,” he said.
Ms Westerman said it was interesting that “devolution is taking control back to localities” after strong central control.
However, she followed this with a note of caution. “Do we know what the impact of the different locations of control will be? I don’t think we do,” she said.
Vox pop: Do you feel more comfortable about the future of the FE and skills sector having heard the Fetl event speakers?
Professor Ewart Keep, director of Oxford University’s centre on skills
I was uncomfortable before I came, and I’m leaving just as uncomfortable. I’ve got lots of questions but very few answers.
I’m fascinated by how localism is going to play out in a world with a lot less money to spend
Simon Feneley, director of delivery and operations, Emfec
I think comfortable. Because the sector seems to be taking ownership — that’s the feeling that came through tonight. And it’s about that self-reliance, self-resilience, seizing what we’re good at and building on it and taking it forward
Nick Gash, policy and public affairs adviser, AAT
I think the future of FE and skills is incredibly challenging, and what is encouraging is that the sector itself is seeking to address it and make some partnerships. What we now hope is that the government will listen
Catherine Bush, head of projects, City & Guilds
I’m not sure if I can say if I’m more or less comfortable – I don’t think the purpose was to do that, I think the purpose was to explore the issues. I think Martin Doel summed it up very well at the end. There’s a whole lot of stuff going on, challenges, but I guess as always the sector will rise to it and weather the storm.
Providers that fall foul of new European procurement rules affecting exam fees could face “significant financial penalties” if High Court action is brought against them, FE Week can reveal.
The European Union regulations, adopted in this country in February, mean providers must follow strict procurement rules, which cover exam fee contracts with awarding organisations.
They will apply to contracts worth £625,050 or more “over a reasonable period, generally calculated over four years”, according to a report looking at how the regulations will affect colleges by Crescent Purchasing Consortium (CPC) in June.
It added: “Under the new regulations, an awarding body can challenge if they feel an institution has not complied with the regulations [over new exam fees contracts].
“A formal challenge would be by means of proceedings in the High Court, where significant financial penalties can be applied.”
The Association of Colleges (AoC), Crown Commercial Service (CCS), and CPC has responded to the rule-change by starting work on the development of a new common framework for exam fees contracts, to which it is thought all general FE and sixth form colleges and independent learning providers would be able to sign up.
Sally Collier (pictured), CCS chief executive, said it could lead to “potential savings” of up to £30m for providers, representing around 15 per cent of the total £207m exam fees cost for 2013/14.
Julian Gravatt, assistant AoC chief executive, told FE Week: “The details of how it [the framework] would work still have to be agreed, but the idea would be that efficiency savings could be achieved if CCS oversees procurement for large scale contracts that could apply to all members of the framework.”
A CCS spokesperson said: “This new agreement will make the provision of qualifications much easier and less costly for both colleges and providers, as they will not have to go through a full OJEU tender process and complex contractual requirements for each qualification.”
Analysis by FE Week of 2013/14 accounts showed that 54 colleges spent at least £1m each on exam fees.
Furthermore, about 315 colleges spent £150,000 each or more — which would put them in range of the new regulations over four years.
A spokesperson for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers said: “It’s already a well-supplied and competitive market and like with any service, independent providers are used to shopping around.
“So if the proposed new common framework is competitive, there will do doubt be providers who will at least want to take a look at it.”
David Igoe, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said: “I suspect… sixth form colleges will be looking for better deals [over exam fees] and there may be opportunities for a national or regional arrangement.”
However, a spokesperson for the Federation of Awarding Bodies warned that “centralised purchasing” could “create additional administrative burden, reducing choice and raising costs for colleges and awarding bodies”.
A spokesperson for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers said: “If the proposed new common framework is competitive, there will do doubt be ILPs who will at least want to take a look at it.”
The letter to LAL, which is run by Lancashire County Council and has round 22,000 learners, brings to an end the process which began with Dr Collins’ initial visit in January, following an inadequate rating from Ofsted in November.
The adviser’s report says: “Lancashire Adult and Community Learning is being transformed.”
It continues: “There is clear evidence of a changing culture.”
Amanda Melton, LAL’s interim principal, said she was “delighted” at the news.
“The staff and students have responded extremely positively to the changes, and I applaud them for their hard work and enthusiasm,” added Ms Melton.
One of Dr Collins’ seven recommendations in his initial report, published in March, was that LAL “should restrict its activities to adult and community learning”.
While the minister’s letter to LAL has not yet been published, a spokesperson said that apprenticeship provision was the only programme that had been affected.
At the time of the Ofsted inspection in November there were around 300 apprentices being trained at LAL.
The “vast majority” of these learners completed their programme with LAL, the spokesperson said.
Employers were given support to find alternative training providers for their apprenticeships, the spokesperson added.
Mr Boles’ letter to Stratford Upon Avon College, published on October 27, marks the end of a 17-month long intervention by the FE Commissioner, which was triggered after the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) rated the college’s finances as inadequate.
In his letter, Mr Boles said he was “encouraged by the actions taken by the college to implement the necessary improvements”.
Principal Nicola Mannock would “benefit from being mentored by an experience principal”.
Her appointment, without a competitive recruitment process, had led a number of governors to resign in protest, and was described by Dr Collins as “questionable”.
The college, which has around 4,300 learners, was rated good by Ofsted at its most recent inspection in March.
No one from Stratford Upon Avon College was available for comment.
A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said the commissioner’s involvement had also ended at City of Liverpool College, K College, City of Wolverhampton College, Bicton College, Norton Radstock College and Warrington Borough Council.
Somerset College merger plans approved by Dr Collins
A college has had its merger plans approved by the FE Commissioner after he was sent in over financial concerns.
Somerset College of Arts and Technology, in Taunton, was already in the process of developing plans to merge with another local college when it received an inadequate rating for financial health from the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) in June, triggering Dr Collins’ involvement.
In his report, which was published last week, Dr Collins recommended the college leadership team should “be supported in their merger proposals”. It was a conclusion agreed upon by Skills Minister Nick Boles in his letter to the college.
Somerset College principal Rachel Davies has since opened a consultation on merging with Bridgewater College, also in Somerset, and rated as outstanding in 2007 after last inspection.
Dr Collins said Somerset College, which has around 7,700 learners and was rated good overall at its most recent Ofsted inspection in 2011, had “many strengths” but was “struggling to maintain financial stability in the face of demographic changes and a highly competitive environment”.
A Somerset College spokesperson said it had been “encouraged to continue” in the merger plans by the FE Commissioner.
The FE Commissioner was sent into the college in August after it requested “exceptional financial support” (EFS) from the Skills Funding Agency. However, Dr Collins also welcomed progress made at the college, which was given £4.5m in EFS during the twelve months to July. Read more on this story.
Learning Curve Group has appointed Jac Ingram as its new group operations director.
She joins from awarding organisation NCFE where she spent 11 years as director of business operations.
Ms Ingram said: “I am proud to have helped NCFE achieve so much over the past decade and to grow into an organisation with international ambitions, but there are many new challenges ahead with Learning Curve Group.
“There is nothing as satisfying as helping learners achieve the qualifications that change lives, and I aim to ensure Learning Curve Group’s provision remains far-reaching and exceptional in quality.
“I have watched the company grow and excel, and I’m delighted to be joining it at such an exciting phase in its development.”
A qualified chemist, Ms Ingram started her career working at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria, where in 1992 she became the first female shift manager of the Magnox Nuclear Reprocessing plant.
She switched to education seven years later to work at East Durham College, managing all subcontracted delivery, flexible distance learning, apprenticeships and the then Labour government’s flagship New Deal scheme, moving to NCFE in 2004.
Meanwhile, the Association of Specialist Colleges (Natspec) will be under new leadership come January following with news that Alison Boulton is standing down as chief executive.
She will be replaced by Clare Howard, the current managing director of Association of Colleges Sport.
Ms Boulton said it had been a “privilege to lead Natspec through these changing, and challenging, times”.
“My lifelong passion has been to improve the quality and experience in education for young people with disabilities and working alongside dedicated and expert staff in member colleges to enable young people to achieve their goals has been immensely rewarding,” she added.
Her replacement, Ms Howard, has led sport and health policy at AoC since September 2010 and has more than 25 years’ experience in the public, private and voluntary sectors.
She said: “Although we are operating in times of scarce resources, it is vital that Natspec represents the voices of young people and their families to improve outcomes, quality of life and reduce long term costs to the public purse.”
Elsewhere, the Stafford College principal saga has taken another turn with the temporary appointment of Ian Clinton.
The interim posting follows the resignation of Beverley Smith, who stepped down as principal last month following five votes of no confidence from staff.
Mr Clinton, who oversaw an improvement in Stockport College’s Ofsted rating from ‘inadequate’ to ‘requires improvement’ during a stint in charge from around February last year to April this year, will start at Stafford — also rated as requiring improvement — on November 4.
Chair of governors Mark Winnington said: “We are looking forward to Ian bringing his expertise to the college and supporting the staff and students.”
Mr Clinton, who was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours list for services to FE, previously led Blackburn College from 2004 until the end of 2013. It was given an outstanding Ofsted rating at last inspection, in November 2007.
Judging an apprentice’s skill and knowledge through an end-point assessment is an approach fraught with issues, explains Simon Reddy.
There has been much talk about quality in apprenticeships and the urgent need to improve training and assessment in vocational qualifications.
To address these quality issues, end-tests are being introduced on the back of the Richard Review, which was scathing in its appraisal of the existing ‘tick box’ approaches.
Trailblazer employer groups have been charged with drawing up standards and assessment plans for the end-tests.
The move towards end-testing means an increased likelihood of ‘teaching to test’
However, in my opinion, this move towards end-testing means an increased likelihood of ‘teaching to test,’ which, in addition to the Richard Review’s problematic approach to knowledge transfer, stands to undermine rather than increase quality in the training process.
One major weakness of the Richard Review is that it is not based on empirical evidence. Indeed, the author used the driving test to substantiate the benefits of end-testing.
Doug Richard’s argument was that it does not matter whether a person has taught themselves to drive, whether they have completed an intensive course or whether they have been taking driving lessons for five years — all that matters is that they can drive.
“And it is this which makes passing a driving test a transferable qualification, trusted and recognised. The same is true for apprenticeships,” he said.
While the driving test may present a logical example of a transferable qualification, it is a mistake to think “the same is true for apprenticeships”.
This is particularly true when the bulk of apprenticeship assessments are carried out in simulated college environments.
In his report, Mr Richard used terms like “real world context” and “real world based”, seemingly trying to avoid any mention of assessments taking place in the reality of the workplace. Why? Because end-tests are most likely to be delivered in purpose-made assessment centres.
The empirical findings in my study of full-time courses and apprenticeships in plumbing revealed the complexities associated with knowledge transfer [see feweek.co.uk for link to study and findings].
The study highlighted the problems of low-fidelity assessment simulations, which neither replicated the reality of the workplace nor created the conditions in which students could be adequately supported in their learning and in transferring that knowledge and skill over to the work context.
The research also revealed the nature of the ‘unforeseen’ in the workplace, which incidentally included students having to deal with routine problems that could not be replicated in college simulations.
For example, college simulations consisted of dry systems with new pipes and fittings, while in the workplace, apprentices were having to deal with pressurised plumbing, connected to electrical and fuel systems that were often corroded.
Furthermore, the study found a total lack of synchrony in the plumbing curriculum between college and work, so the full-time students and some of the apprentices did not often have the opportunity to embody their knowledge in practical activities.
It is clear Mr Richard took a simplistic approach to knowledge transfer and did not consider the variations in performance requirements faced by apprentices at work in comparison with their experience of poorly simulated assessments in college.
Perhaps the most telling statement in his report was the assertion that “someone already doing the job for a significant period of time, should, by definition, already be at the standard required to do the job”.
This is a major contradiction to his position on end-tests. The apprentices in my study were taking up to four years to qualify, so it is likely they were up to the required standard without the need to demonstrate their competence through an end-test.
These end-tests therefore only really serve to create a proxy for skill in a qualification for unapprenticed students on full-time college courses, and this does not do justice to the skills or depth and breadth of knowledge learned by apprentices at work. This inequality in training and assessment leads to Trailblazer double standards and serves to undermine quality in the process and outcomes of apprenticeships.
Standing in a courtyard facing the Elizabeth Tower at the north end of the Houses of Parliament, Iain Wright points upwards and insists that Big Ben is “leaning”.
A quick search on Google back at the office later corroborates the Hartlepool MP’s comment, which continued: “It is in need of refurbishment as it is starting to lean ever so slightly”.
Of course leaning in any direction is a luxury denied to the Labour politician as chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee with the overt playing of party politics frowned upon.
“I am going to support a lot of what the government wants to do, but I am going to challenge really hard on the manner and the means by which they do it and whether they will achieve it,” explains 43-year-old Wright.
We have to make the case to government that if they are cutting from a department that is tasked with providing an economic future, then that’s the wrong approach to take
And an early chance to do just that came last month with the committee’s one-off evidence session on the work of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
Seated in front of Wright and his committee members was Business Secretary Sajid Javid.
Wright as a young teenager with his grandmother Joyce and his brother Gary
“I started off the selected session by asking Javid: ‘What is the point of BIS and where do you add value?’,” says Wright.
“That is going to be the hallmark of what I want the select committee to do — to really add value in our reports and in our enquiries.”
He was elected as chair in June, beating previous post holder Adrian Bailey.
“It was an enormous privilege and a huge honour for my colleagues in parliament to choose me to chair,” says Wright.
“So this is really important to me and I want to make sure I can live up to expectations.”
Such expectations — or perhaps hopes — among the FE and skills community may well have been lived up to when Wright, with Javid before him, seized the opportunity to assess the government’s 3m apprenticeship starts target.
Wright holding his year old son Ben in 1995 outside the Houses of Parliament
“This was a figure that was just plucked out of the air,” says Wright.
“The government must have thought that it is more ambitious than 2m and more achievable than 4m — and they must have settled on 3m.”
He explains that it was “very loud and clear” in the evidence session that there was “no rationale behind this number or how Javid would achieve it”.
The session came to a close with Wright of the opinion, shared by many, that the apprenticeships target would be “needing work”.
But, getting back to standing in front of the leaning clock tower home of Big Ben, Wright mentions a memorable photograph [featured above right] from 1995 in which he is holding oldest son Ben (now aged 21) — then just a year old — in front of the Elizabeth Tower.
It was the same year that Wright graduated from University College London with an MA in history. It was also the year, he explains, that he joined the Labour Party.
Wright at his 18th birthday party
He had “wanted to become active in politics” and was then elected as an officer of Cleveland and Richmond Young Labour.
The following year he worked as a chartered accountant and, in 2002, was elected as a councillor for Hartlepool Borough Council.
Two years later Wright became the MP for Hartlepool following a by-election that brought an end to Peter Mandelson’s 12-year reign as the local elected representative.
“My key job and the one that takes up the most time, and the one that I give most priority to, is representing my hometown in parliament,” says Wright.
He adds: “I come from a manufacturing heartland where there was always traditional manufacturing.
“My parents wanted me to get on, and apprenticeships were dying at that time.
“So apprenticeships were never explained to me, never once.”
But FE would play its part in Wright’s career, albeit his political one. In 2009, he became parliamentary under-secretary of state with responsibility for 14 to 19 reform and apprenticeships at the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
A 13-year-old Wright when he attended Manor Comprehensive in Hartlepool
He says: “I was responsible for apprentices’ curriculum and revisions to A-levels.
“Going around the sector and speaking to students was an incredible time and I only wish I had more time to do it now.”
He adds: “It is essentially a sector that is trying to inspire the future. And what I mean by this is that you go into politics because you want to change the world for the better — and you want to give people opportunities that they might not have had before.
“We can do that by giving people skills and choices in education in order to fulfil their potential.
“Nowadays you can go back and retrain when you are 25, 35, or 45, because you have still got a long way ahead of you.”
And it is here that Wright sees the danger faced by FE.
“Some people may not have liked school — I loved school and thought it was fantastic and I got a lot out of it — but some people might have hated that and thought ‘I don’t want to go back into education because it might be the same as that’,” he says.
“So it is a case of trying to ensure that FE is not prohibited in terms of cost for people and also by giving an inspiring and stimulating environment where people can feel rewarded. And I think the FE sector does that.”
Wright adds: “I worry that FE is a non-protected department in terms of funds and the cuts that our required mean the sector will be slashed to the bone.
Wright just before he was elected as Labour MP at the Hartlepool By-Election in 2004 (Photo by Matthew Lewis)
“We have to make the case to government that if they are cutting from a department that is tasked with providing an economic future, then that’s the wrong approach to take.
“I would encourage readers of FE Week to keep in touch with my committee to let us know their concerns and give us the tools and the evidence in order to challenge the government.”
And there’s now a personal appreciation of the college sector with Wright’s second oldest son, 19-year-old Jacob, studying A-levels at Hartlepool Sixth Form College, and contemplating whether he should go to university to study history as his father did in the 1990s.
“I said to him, ‘why don’t you take a different route to me and do an apprenticeship?’” explains Wright, who also has a 13-year-old daughter, Hattie, and 11-year-old son, Billy.
“They can be so rewarding and actually they are just what our country needs.
“They are a great way of sighting young people into a really worthwhile career and I still don’t think we as a country value them as much as we should.”
Stewart Segal hits back at Ofsted’s recent report that was critical of apprenticeships.
After all the damaging headlines that resulted from the Ofsted report, we can now consider how we take forward some of the issues set out in the report. AELP and providers have been committed to raising the quality of apprenticeships well before Ofsted started writing reports on the issues.
In fact, the report confirmed a number of issues which AELP has been raising for some time. These include: schools and colleges are not promoting apprenticeships sufficiently to young people and their parents; career guidance needs to be improved; and too few young people, particularly those who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, become apprentices.
Other issues are that traineeships provide a useful step to apprenticeships, but are not yet meeting their potential; a crucial factor in delivering quality is ‘how well the provider and employer worked together to ensure that this training was well coordinated’; the advantages of being in training while at work were clear to all the apprentices; and, employers, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, benefited from the support of providers while setting up and managing the apprenticeship.
Ofsted chose to ‘blame’ employers, providers and schools but does not mention the government or its own role in driving improvements especially in the careers advice in schools
These are all quotes from the report and show that many of the recommendations we have made to drive the quantity and quality of apprenticeships have been reinforced by the Ofsted report.
However, we do not agree with some of the analysis and conclusions in it. There is certainly some variable quality of provision across the programme.
However, suggesting that the growth of the number of starts in the service sector is anything other than a response to real employer demand and a reflection of the current labour market is a mistake.
Providers have responded to the new labour market and are working with many employers that are new to apprenticeships. It takes time to build the commitment to training especially when the funding levels for these programmes are so low when compared to the traditional sectors.
Clearly, any programmes that are only developing skills and knowledge for the current job should not be funded but all apprenticeship frameworks, including cleaning and sandwich-making, are broad programmes that include a range of tasks as well as personal skills, employment issues and English and maths. No one would defend programmes that do not cover the full range of tasks and the other important employment skills.
Although it is valid to highlight poor provision, the report should have provided evidence from other surveys that employers and apprentices are happy with the apprenticeship programmes.
In fact Ofsted’s own survey in 2012 said that ’89 per cent of the 500 respondents to the online survey agreed that their apprenticeship lived up to their expectations and they would recommend it as a good way of gaining qualifications’.
We do not believe the growth of apprenticeships in the service sectors has damaged the perception of the programme. In fact, the tactics of releasing a press release the week before the full report could be seen to be just as damaging.
Ofsted chose to ‘blame’ employers, providers and schools but does not mention the government or its own role in driving improvements especially in the careers advice in schools.
Just a week after Ofsted said that the apprenticeship programme was not reflecting the skills needs of the economy, the latest figures on the UK economy show that the construction sector reduced by 2.2 per cent and the engineering sector by 0.3 per cent in the third quarter of the year.
The service sector at the same time grew by 0.7 per cent and now accounts for almost 80 per cent of the UK economy.
Of course we would like to have seen growth in all sectors, but where would we be without the service sectors? We have to support manufacturing, but it should not be at the cost of downplaying the important role of the service sector in keeping the economy moving.
What we need to do now is to work together as a sector, including Ofsted, to address the issues in the report.
We have written to Ofsted to take up the challenge to create even more, higher quality apprenticeship opportunities across the whole of the economy.
The Department for Education (DfE) will publish information on subcontracted student numbers for the first time at the end of this calendar year, FE Week can exclusively reveal.
The total number of learners in roles from sub-contractors will be made publically available in December/January, according to a DfE spokesperson.
The DfE revealed its plans in response to a Freedom of Information request, saying that the newly published information would be made available on the gov.uk website.
The information will be split into students who are fully sub-contracted and those who are only sub-contracted for part of their programme. It will be based on the R14 return — the individualised learner record return for the end of the 2014/15 academic year, which contains details on post-16 students, their characteristics and their learning aims for FE institutions.
Student numbers will be listed by main or sub-contractor and will relate to the 2014/15 academic year. A DfE spokesperson told FE Week that the newly available data would not contain any information on funding, because “funding is based on lagged student numbers”.
Members of the public can already access a list of declared sub-contractors from the Skills Funding Agency via the gov.uk website. This provides information on which sub-contractors are linked to which lead providers, and the value of the individual contracts between them.
Commenting on the plans to publish sub-contracted student numbers, Stephen Hewitt (pictured left), strategic funding, enrolments and examinations manager at Morley College, said the release would be good news for transparency around providers that are spending public money, particularly in the context of the government’s post-16 education and training area reviews.
“Imagine a large college in one area trumpeting that it is at the heart of its community and then finding out that they subcontract 20 per cent of their Learner Numbers to someone 100 miles away — that’s not going to be good for business,” he said.
He added that the data would be effective as “another way of keeping providers honest about who they’re really helping”.
A spokesperson from the Association of Colleges also commented on the development, saying: “It would be sensible to have information on subcontracted student numbers available from both the Education Funding Agency and Skills Funding Agency.”
ormation on which sub-contractors are linked to which lead providers, and the value of the individual contracts between them.