Fourteen training providers with combined allocations of nearly £6.9m in adult skills budget (ASB) and almost £5.8m for 16 to 18 apprenticeships had their contracts with the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) terminated early in 2014/15, it has been revealed.
Of these providers named by the SFA on November 16, six had combined ASB and 16 to 18 apprenticeship allocations totaling more than £1m.
The SFA may terminate a funding agreement for a number of reasons including, an SFA spokesperson SFA, “where there are quality issues, an Ofsted grade four or where we have other evidence of poor quality delivery or serious breach of the contract”.
Building Engineering Services Training Ltd (BEST), which provides training and apprenticeships in the building services engineering sector, had its contract with the SFA terminated following an inadequate rating from Ofsted in June.
Tony Howard, acting head of BEST, which was allocated £531,389 in ASB and £1,440,872 for 16 to 18 apprenticeships, said the organisation had since entered into a “strategic relationship” with another training provider.
“We are also developing a new concept and model for apprenticeships to answer employer engagement and ownership issues for the future,” said Mr Howard.
John Budu-Aggrey, director of Alpha Building Services Engineering (Alpha BSE), said its most recent Ofsted inspection in November 2014, which resulted in an inadequate rating, did not accurately reflect the full range of what they did.
“We have young people who dropped out of school, who don’t have grade C.
We take them through level one.
We give them employability skills, Functional Skills,” said Mr Budu-Aggrey.
Alpha BSE, based in London, was allocated £67,556 in ASB and £718,776 for 16 to 18 apprenticeships in 2014/15.
“We are doing only fee paying courses now,” added Mr Budu-Aggrey.
Four of the 14 providers are no longer operating, with Companies House records showing they were in liquidation.
They were MIC Skills & Employability, Targeted Training Projects, Visage School of Beauty Career Development Center. Business Impact UK was listed as in the process of winding down, while the annual return of Venture Learning was overdue.
FE Week was unable to contact Venture Learning.
All six of these had been rated inadequate overall at their most recent Ofsted inspections.
A further six, with a combined ASB allocation of £4m and a combined 16 to 18 apprenticeship allocation of £1.71m, declined to comment.
These six providers, all of which were rated inadequate by Ofsted at their most recent inspections except for one which did not have an Ofsted report, were Barford Education and Training (North East); Blue Training; Herbert of Liverpool (Training) Ltd; Kats Learning; Four Counties Training, and ABA Training (which had not been rated by Ofsted).
The SFA spokesperson was unable to confirm when each of the funding agreements was terminated.
The final claims for 2014/15, which will show how much each provider was paid, are being calculated and will be published next month, the spokesperson said.
Government adviser Professor Lady Alison Wolf (pictured above) has admitted harbouring serious doubts about David Cameron’s 3m apprenticeship starts target labelling it “a big mistake”.
She told the House of Lords Social Mobility Committee that the target meant Whitehall officials would be “rushing around like a headless chicken” to achieve it.
She appeared before the committee on Tuesday (November 18) to give evidence on social mobility in the transition from school to work and was quizzed on the government’s apprenticeship target, which it aims to hit by 2020.
“I think the target is a big mistake and I am really worried about the target”, said Lady Wolf.
“Everything that I see makes me more worried because you put a target inside a government department and everyone starts rushing around like a headless chicken trying to figure out ways of meeting it.”
She described it as an “enormous target” and added that if there was an apprenticeship programme of that size then “you would actually be ending up in a situation where every young person in the country became an apprentice”.
Lady Wolf said reaching the target was “extremely unlikely” and if the Government “go on and on about it — it will distort everything else and the price will be the quality of what we are getting”.
She also commented on the idea to have even more apprentices than the previous government seems to her as “extraordinary”.
She said: “I also don’t think they [Government] are budgeting for it because they said they will put money in and will fund the SMEs and if you look at what the spend per apprentice was in the last five years it was a level of spending for which you could only afford to do large number of the low quality apprenticeships.”
Lady Wolf said she found it hard to believe in this current fiscal climate that there was the money to meet the target and still have high quality.
She added that colleges should very clearly be the place that apprenticeship training took place and she would stop the “hundreds and thousands” of small providers coming in, saying “it just doesn’t work”.
Skills Minister Nick Boles has been urged to stay out of apprenticeship delivery business after telling college principals that independent learning providers (ILPs) were “nicking” their lunch.
Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Stewart Segal hit back at Mr Boles who told Association of Colleges (AoC) conference delegates that ILPs were better than colleges at securing apprenticeship funding.
Mr Boles, during a keynote speech at the ICC Birmingham on Tuesday (November 17), challenged colleges to go from delivering a third of all apprenticeships to two-thirds and told principals: “As your friend, I have to ask you this, why on earth are you letting these guys [ILPs] nick your lunch?”
Mr Segal was unhappy with the Minister’s comments and told FE Week: “I don’t think it is a question of anybody nicking anybody’s work.
“The market will decide and employers and learners will choose the best provider for them and the one that can deliver their best programme.”
“I don’t think the minister should get involved in which percentage of what figure is delivered by which type of provider,” he added.
Skills Funding Agency figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed that colleges, on average, have 27 per cent of their 2015/16 Adult Skills Budget allocated to apprenticeships, compared with 60 per cent at other providers.
But the college figure varies significantly across the country, with London colleges averaging just 12 per cent, as reported in FE Week on November 13.
Mr Boles also told AoC conference delegates: “Total government spending on apprenticeships grew by £400m, or nearly 30 per cent, between 2009/10 and 2015/16.
“In 2009/10 the taxpayer was investing every year £1.1m in apprenticeship training but in 2015/16 it will be £1.5bn.
“We need to help you take advantage of that funding stream. I want to help you give ILPs a very good run for their money and secure a much larger share of that funding.”
Mr Boles added that even if the government hit its 3m apprenticeship starts target by 2020 “we will still have fewer apprentices per 1,000 of population than almost any of our European competitors and if it works for them and makes them productive I don’t think we should shrink from it”.
“The new apprenticeship levy will provide substantial additional resources to fund training,” he added.
The loss of two key contracts worth £164,000 led directly to the demise of the Network for Black and Asian Professionals (NBAP), according to its chief executive Rajinder Mann (pictured above).
Speaking exclusively to FE Week, Ms Mann (pictured above) said the loss of a contract with the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL), worth £130,000, and another contract with the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) worth £34,000 meant that the NBAP was no longer financially sustainable.
“Because of the squeeze on the public purse, those programmes have not been funded and as a result of the lack of funding we could no longer sustain ourselves, despite having cut back and cut back,” said Ms Mann, who was the subject of an FE Week profile article a year ago.
Membership income, which had been “going down over the last couple of years”, only “formed about 20 per cent of our income” and “would not have covered the remaining NBAP chief executive blames ‘squeeze on the public purse’ for network’s demise overheads”, she said.
“Our organisation had a role to play, and it’s a very, very sad day for the sector,” she added. NBAP members learned of the NBAP’s closure earlier in a heartfelt letter from Ms Mann.
In the letter, Ms Mann said the closure was the “result of the current political environment and the austerity cuts in the public sector”.
Earlier this year, as reported in FE Week, Ms Mann called for colleges to make the promotion of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) a priority, following a drop in the number of BAME principals in the FE sector from 17 in 2012/13 to 12 this year.
That number has now fallen further to 11, said Ms Mann.
“With the area reviews taking place, I think our learners are going to be further disadvantaged, BAME learners in particular, because it will be the black staff who’ll get affected,” she said.
The NCTL contract, which Ms Mann said the NBAP lost in May due to “the agenda for localism”, was “to deliver the Ofsted mentoring, Ofsted shadowing programme and also a variety of other mentoring, career development workshops,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Department for Education (DfE) said that the NBAP had been funded through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) rather than the DfE.
A BIS spokesperson was unable to confirm details of the contract it had with the NBAP.
The NBAP was funded by the ETF in 2013/14 and 2014/15 to deliver a professional development programme for BAME staff, which included career development, mentoring and shadowing, an ETF spokesperson said. Earlier this month, the ETF issued an invitation to tender for a range of CPD work, including supporting BAME leaders and emerging leaders.
“NBAP would have been an obvious candidate to bid for this new work,” the spokesperson said, adding that the ETF was “concerned” to learn of the NBAP’s closure.
“It is imperative for the sector that the aims and objectives which the NBAP has pursued tirelessly over recent years are taken forward and their successes are built on,” the spokesperson said.
Click here for an expert piece on the NBAP by Meredith White, learner experience manager at Westminster Kingsway College.
Campaign call for NBAP
Network for Black and Asian Professionals (NBAP) chief executive Rajinder Mann called on college leaders to launch a campaign to save the organisation.
She spoke out after a number of black and Asian FE leaders told of their concerns about the NBAP’s closure during an Association of Colleges (AoC) conference breakout session hosted by the NBAP on Tuesday (November 17).
Ms Mann said: “We still want to see an organisation that addresses not just the training, but support and guidance for black and Asian people looking to go into leadership roles in FE.
“I’m a firm believer in achieving this through targeted intervention. The NBAP could still deliver that. Go out there, start a campaign.”
Anthony Bravo, principal of Basingstoke College of Technology, had earier said during the session that “something has got to be done — it can’t end like this”.
Ayub Khan, interim chief executive of the Further Education Trust for Leadership, said a replacement organisation was needed because “you have to have black and Asian people in leadership positions in colleges, so they’re representative of the communities they serve”.
Meredith White, learner experience manager at Westminster Kingsway College, said: “We went through a phase when racism went underground, but it’s in the open again increasingly. It’s important that groups like NBAP are around to help counter this.”
Skills Show patron Theo Paphitis had a busy day in the hair salon today under the watchful eye of celebrity hairdresser Nicky Clarke and was also put to work in the kitchen knocking out some delicious pasta — he even tried his hand at an operating table.
The former BBC Dragons’ Den star took part in a masterclass with the hairdresser to the stars and also former WorldSkills UK competitor Eleni Constantinou, whose efforts in Sao Paulo, Brazil, this summer earned her a medallion of excellence.
After 20 minutes with the scissors, Theo was off to learn to learn some tricks of the restaurant trade as he made tagliatelle with renowned London chef Theo Randall at the University College Birmingham demonstration kitchen.
And the challenges didn’t stop there on day two of the Skills Show at Birmingham’s NEC as he visited the Operating Theatre Live stand and later jokingly tweeted: “Would you trust this man with a scalpel??”
But he managed to take a few moments out of his busy crash course schedule of careers guidance to sing the praises of the Skills Show and urged young people and business to get involved.
“Get yourself down here — it’s th most amazing inspirational event where you’ve got hundreds of employers, hundreds of opportunities to try things and hundreds of careers that you probably didn’t even know existed,” he said.
“If you want to be inspired about your future or are wondering ‘what am I going to do with my future’, then get down to the Skills Show. You might just see the beginning of a great career path.”
From left: Eleni Constantinou, hairdresser model, Theo Paphitis and Nicky Clarke
He added: “And businesses should get involved with the Skills Show because this is their opportunity to inspire the next generation into their world; into the skills shortage that we know exists in our businesses and you can actually make a difference and possibly find the next generation that’s going to make your business grow.”
The Association of Colleges (AoC) and the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) have welcomed news that FE providers can finally sign up for Chartered Status.
Providers who wish to become CIFE members must pay a £3,000 non-refundable fee to have their application reviewed.
The annual subscription fee for successful applicants is £5,000.
David Corke, director of education and skills policy at the AoC, said: “The Chartered Institution for Further Education is in its infancy and we’ll be keen to ensure it provides genuine added value to colleges and their current and future students.
“We look forward to discussing this with CIFE’s representatives.”
Stewart Segal, chief executive of the AELP, said: “Any initiative to improve the external perception of the sector is welcome.
“Training providers have to be committed to the quality of their delivery and will consider a number of approaches including the Chartered Institute of FE.”
CIFE regulations and guidance for applicants, available on its website, detail the standards that colleges and training providers need to meet in order to join.
To be considered for membership, colleges and training providers must have an overall rating of good or outstanding at their most recent Ofsted inspection, and be in receipt of public funding from the Skills Funding Agency (SFA).
Colleges and ILPs must also show how they can meet the CIFE quality standards, covering a range of areas including teaching and learning, governance, finance and engagement with the local community and employers.
“This is another significant step along the road to the development of a Royal Chartered body in the FE sector,” said Lord Lingfield, chair of CIFE.
“There is still much to be done but we have reached the point when we should open our doors to organisational members, and bring together those high performing organisations who are key to shaping the sector’s future.”
Plans were originally drawn up, by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, for the Royal seal of approval to be granted to high-achieving FE institutions in July 2012.
It was almost another year before the appointment of Lord Lingfield as chair of the IfE.
In March last year, he told FE Week he expected “negotiations to be completed within months” that would allow for the quality mark to be launched.
But an FE Week survey on the mark, carried out two months later, uncovered concern that the Chartered Status initiative could simply “sink without trace, before further worries earlier this year that it had “stalled” after no sign of movement.
Click here for more details on applying for Chartered Status.
Skills Funding Agency funding and programmes director Keith Smith (pictured above) has warned college leaders they were facing a “huge challenge” when the apprenticeship levy allows subcontractors to receive funding directly from the government.
He said the changes could have a serious impact on college funding, during an update he gave in a breakout session at the Association of Colleges annual conference, in Birmingham on Wednesday (November 18).
“Colleges are spending at the moment just under 20 pence in the pound on apprenticeships,” he said.
“However, in the adult world … over 40 per cent of that you are subcontracting out. “So if you convert that into how much money is going directly to you, in worse cases it is an average of less than 10 pence in the pound.
“You might be benefiting at the moment from subcontracting bringing money in, but from April 2017 those subcontractors will take that capacity and they will get funded directly through the apprenticeship voucher system.” Mr Smith advised colleges leader to think carefully about how to address these issues, adding: “This is a huge challenge for you.”
The government’s large employers’ apprenticeship levy reform changes set to come into action in April 2017 will mean that colleges no longer have a funding allocation for apprenticeships. Instead, employers will be able to approach subcontractors to work directly with them, potentially leaving colleges in the cold.
Mr Smith said he proposed a “two-fold” challenge to colleges — firstly to do more apprenticeships and secondly to rethink their delivery models and structures for securing business.
In response to a question from FE Week, asking how serious the problem is and what colleges could doing, Mr Smith said: “In a model where the provider is the central element of the funding system I think the subcontractor and the college can plan that sort of strategy. I don’t think that strategy works at all in the system we [SFA] are talking about designing. So I think it is a huge problem.”
He said many of the subcontractors colleges used were also prime contractors in their own right and added: “I would have to seriously question the motives for some of that and of course those organisations will need no encouragement at all to say ‘yes’ to employers.”
Mr Smith said colleges should not waste time in addressing the challenges the apprenticeship levy would bring.
He advised conference audience members that it was “hugely important — you don’t think about this in a year’s time when the detail of the new system is finalised. You must be thinking about this now.”
After taking time out from primary and secondary school teaching to have a family around 30 years ago, Gill Clipson had her eye on a career change.
She went against the guidance of a Stratford-Upon-Avon careers adviser who tried to point out that she was really “a people person” and embarked on an evening class in computer programming at Stratford-upon Avon College, excited about the prospect of joining what looked to be a burgeoning new industry.
Clipson, who has held the role of deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges (AoC) since 2013, says this initial experience of FE changed everything.
Previously a pupil at Harold Cartwright Girls Grammar School (now Alderbrook School) and then a Warwick University student of performing arts, English and education, Clipson had never visited an FE college before.
Clipson’s grandson, Barney, who she describes as “a joy”
“What I discovered was this wonderful institution that had so many different things that you could do, from retraining adults to young people transferring from school and going into work or university,” she says. But the appeal of the computing course quickly waned.
“It was meant to last 10 weeks, which it probably did, but I didn’t,” says Leamington resident Clipson, aged 60.
“After week four I’d had enough — I couldn’t understand what on earth was going on.” She dropped out and had her second child — daughter Fiona, who was younger sister to Christopher, born 14 months before. Her children are now 32 and 31, and Fiona has her own child – 18-month-old Barney.
Although she had chosen to leave the computing course, what she had experienced had whetted Clipson’s appetite for the sector.
“I just discovered this world that was entirely different to anything I’d known in the school setting, and because of that I put my name down with the college and said: ‘At some stage I will be ready to come back, and I’ll be interested if you’ve got any part-time teaching posts’,” she says.
Nine months later an opportunity came up and Clipson jumped at the chance. “It was on a Friday afternoon, it was in an annexe, but for me it was a start,” she says. “I never thought about going back into the school setting … I honestly never looked back from that moment — I just felt, ‘This is where I’m meant to be.’”
Before finding her niche in FE, Clipson had trained as a primary school teacher and then went into teaching English and drama in secondary schools, which continued into her FE teaching days.
In her first teaching post, at girls’ comprehensive school Lyng Hall, she taught the full age range of 11 to 18-year-olds, and still has vivid memories of her fi rst tricky year 10 class.
“You kind of had to work for your spurs in those days,” she says.
Clipson during her time as a student at the University of Warwick, where she studied performing arts. She wrote a play called Nice One Will with classmates
Clipson enjoyed teaching Shakespeare and took a cross-curricular approach — which was uncommon at the time. “Within the secondary school system, you are very subject-based … but what I was interested in doing was working across the curriculum, using some of the techniques that you would use in drama to actually bring the history lessons to life, or integrating art and music with performing arts,” explains Clipson.
Appreciating variety was an important part of Clipson’s teaching in FE as well. “The college almost refl ects its local community — people from all walks of life doing a range of different skills, working at different levels. I think that’s really rewarding,” she says.
The serendipity of her move from schools into FE seems to have played out through the rest of Clipson’s career in the sector. “I never planned … I just took each step as it came,” she says.
She moved from being in the classroom to taking on a number of senior management positions, including assistant principal at Hinckley College, a small institution just off the Leicestershire border, in 2008.
After the sustainability of Hinckley College was called into question, Clipson teamed up with her counterpart at the North Warwickshire College, just four miles away, and took a leading role in delivering a merger.
“You have to be very clear in your own mind about what you’re taking on,” she says.
“The real work was actually how do you bring the staff of two very different organisations together, how do you work to ensure that there’s consistency, and the students — regardless of which campus they’re going to — are actually being served effectively.”
She is proud of what the merger ultimately achieved.
“The name North Warwickshire and Hinckley is still there, is recognised, and it’s gone from strength to strength, which is a great thing to see,” she says.
Clipson took up her first principal post at Salisbury College and drew on past experience for a merger with Wiltshire College.
At the start of 2008 she moved to Amersham and Wycombe College, where she served as principal until early 2013. During this period the College was downgraded from good to satisfactory by Ofsted.
But among her successes was a redevelopment of one of the college’s campuses and also setting up one of the first Peter Jones Enterprise Academies.
“I think every job that I’ve done has had its own challenges, but every job has also brought its own rewards,” says Clipson.
However, alongside her time working in colleges, Clipson was also engaged in policy and held a role at the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) for around two years.
While her children were growing up, she had taken two Open University master’s degrees — one of which focused on educational policy and management. She remembers working late into the night to get her assignments done.
Clipson’s children, Christopher and Fiona, at Blenheim Palace
“My kids distinctly remember me working into the small hours. I’d be working until 4am and then hear a little one wake up at 6.30am and think, ‘Oh, no.’ You find a way of doing it if you are committed to something,” she says.
And the courses proved an important grounding for Clipson’s work at the LSC.
“I saw an opportunity to understand something more about the bigger picture in which the sector operates,” she says.
“It was a great time for me in terms of understanding the machinery and how government departments operate.”
Though she moved back into a college setting for a while afterwards, she says this experience sparked her enthusiasm for eventually joining the AoC.
“Somebody at the LSC did say to me at the time: ‘I can see you working at the AoC in the future’ and I remembered that,” she says.
But looking to the future in her current role, Clipson is still taking one step at a time.
“I’m absolutely focusing on the here and now, and so unequivocally the goal with AoC colleagues is supporting our colleges through quite challenging times, with area reviews and the uncertainty that those pose,” she says, adding: “That’s where the focus is, together with the concerns over the future funding of FE.”
She says she agrees with the criticism that more must be done to improve technical and professional education and training routes, but adds that the FE sector has seen many initiatives on this topic over the years.
“If we are going to change then let’s learn from what the past has taught us — the Government must ensure that it consults with a wide range of stakeholders properly, decides what it is going to do and sticks with it,” says Clipson.
It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
Clipson on a family outing to Woolacombe Bay with mum and dad, Philip and Ruby Astle, and dog Whiskey
I go back to the classics a lot actually, and I love Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. It has to be up there.
What do you do to switch off from work?
I live in a small village near some hills so I do go walking, which I love. But I have to say the beach at Alnmouth, which is in Northumberland near Alnwick, is just wonderful. I shouldn’t really say this because everybody else will want to go now, but it’s magical and you can walk for miles, even in the height of the summer, and see very few, if any, people. If I need to click off I just visualise that beach and I’m just back there.
What’s your pet hate?
I travel from London to Leamington, and when you’re going home after a long day at work and you’re desperate to eat when you get through that front door — the most annoying things is someone sitting opposite you with a big bag of crisps but not offering you anything. I find that totally annoying. They should be banned unless you share them with your fellow passengers.
If you could invite anyone to a dinner party, living or dead, who would it be?
I talked about this with the team, it’s a tough one. Controversially, I’m going to invite Mary Berry; I just think she’s extraordinary. When I had the conversation with the team, I said ‘I don’t know whether to go for Nelson Mandela or Mary Berry’ — but their advice was to invite Mary Berry along with the cakes. She’s also a good female role model and she looks fabulous. I’d like to know her secret. We could have a really good conversation over a cup of tea What did you want to be when you were growing up? Honestly? A teacher. That was all I ever wanted to do
The FE Week 2015 annual charity auction and raffle raised a record-breaking £14,000 for the Helena Kennedy Foundation.
Charity auction guests
Leaders from across the world of FE were at Birmingham’s Hyatt Hotel on the first evening (November 17) of the Association of Colleges (AoC) conference for a three-course meal before the auction and raffle took place.
The £14,000 raised overall was a record for the event that FE Week hosts at the conference every year, in aid of the foundation that provides financial support and mentoring to disadvantaged FE learners.
Shane Mann, managing director of FE Week publisher Lsect, said: “It was wonderful to see the great and good from the sector being so generous through the auction in support of a wonderful cause.”
The Voice star Daniel Duke
Items under the hammer included a helicopter flight, champagne afternoon tea at the Ritz, and a supercar driving experience.
Entertainment was provided by singer, guitarist and former FE Week designer Daniel Duke, who reached the latter stages of BBC talent show The Voice this year.
FE Commissioner Dr David Collins, who was the main speaker for the evening, took the opportunity to tell guests his view of how post-16 education area reviews would secure a long-term future for colleges.
From left: Sandra Furby, Ann Limb and Al Coates
“I love this sector and really what I want to do [through leading the area reviews] is to make sure that it doesn’t get damaged by civil servants who have never been in a college in their lives,” he said.
“I actually think this is a real opportunity. We want the areas to come up with their own solutions that work.”
Al Coates and Sandra Furby, business development director and director of learning and development at Tribal, were also presented with the HKF Ambassador’s Award for special service to the sector.
