A new Funding Agencies Shared Service Team (FAS2T) covering finance, IT and data will be launched from April.

It is the latest development with SFA and EFA boss Peter Lauener’s drive to identify areas where they can work together more efficiently.

He spoke with me at length about why the Department for Education is in a hurry to recruit for the FAS2T role, and what further efficiency savings can be made across both agencies.

“We have significantly reduced the number of senior roles [across both agencies] by essentially merging two into one,” said Lauener.

I looked at a number of areas where I thought, actually, there is scope to join up here

“We weren’t able to fill all the roles, as we established the new shared service operation and we have brought in one or two senior colleagues to establish the senior team.

“One senior role that is really critical to the operation is for data [overseeing FAS2T], so that has gone out to advert and I am very interested to get some new ideas and expertise.

“Both the EFA and SFA have got vast quantities of data that we manage and I think we can do a lot better to analyse it, to use it and actually share it.”

He added: “With the EFA, you have the quite significant benefit, we have developed a lot of our data work around 5,500 academies, which as you know has grown enormously over the last four years.

“We are used to handling very large quantities of data and putting it into this matrix, and all that kind of stuff. There are lots of lessons to be learned.”

It comes as the number of permanent staff at the SFA fell from 1,241 in April 2014 to 899 by October 2015.

This was in contrast to the EFA, where permanent staff numbers increased over the same period from 753 to 837.

“When I was appointed chief executive of the SFA back in November 2014 [he already ran the EFA], I looked at a number of areas where I thought, actually, there is scope to join up here,” Lauener said.

“Of the areas that I have chosen to do that, first of all we have established a joint area review delivery unit. It’s the team of people that supports the area review steering group.

“People from the SFA and EFA are working on that to make sure we are working with local partners to deliver the programme of area reviews on time.”

Lauener added the second area falling under Mr Mucklow’s responsibility was the drive “to bring together intervention teams”.

“We obviously had an intervention team on FE colleges in the SFA and an intervention team on sixth form colleges in the EFA,” said Lauener.

“It doesn’t really take a stroke of genius to think that there might be sensible ways of bringing these together, so I brought all of these people together.”

Lauener added an obvious benefit of this would be removing the need for EFA and SFA representatives at the same meetings.

He explained: “If you take FE, it doesn’t really apply to sixth form colleges in the same way, and if you take FE colleges, then EFA has got a massive interest in any decisions about a particular college because maybe the EFA is the major funder of any particular college.”

Reflecting on the joining-up of finance and systems, he said: “Both the EFA and SFA have developed much better systems in recent years.

“In the EFA, we have just introduced a much more secure payment system, and I frankly expect to put the SFA on the same system because it is better and cheaper to operate.”

FE Week readers have been through a huge amount of turmoil with data returns as new SFA systems have been introduced in recent years — notably the Learning Aims Reference System, funding information system, and the Hub.

When pressed on whether his reforms would lead to a fresh round of upheaval, with the bringing together of EFA and SFA systems, Lauener said: “We are not rushing into anything. I don’t think people will suddenly see a change in the systems they use.

“We are doing some quite careful methodical work to say what is the best set of systems for the future — where are the legacy systems that we need to take out because they are just ineffective, and are there on either platform are there systems that are operating better?”

Lauener has also, he said, established a single chief executive’s office overseeing internal communications.

But the drive towards more shared services begged the obvious question of why both agencies don’t just merge completely.

The Government has so far steered clear of this option, even though it could potentially produce huge efficiency savings.

Yet it has no such reservations about forcing through college mergers to cut costs, an irony not lost on many people who care about FE, myself included.

When asked about this, Lauener said he was currently “trying to put to one side the question of whether there should be a merged agency — let’s get on with the sensible things to do to save resource”.

He did not completely write off the idea, adding: “At some point we may come back to question of whether there should be a merged agency, but that is actually a matter for the two parent departments.

“I’m quite happy to operate in the way they ask me to. If it comes to joining up the agencies completely, then that will be absolutely fine, but there are no plans currently to do that.”

At the moment, a college has an EFA and an SFA person they will liaise with.

When asked if this would change, Lauener said: “I would like to get to that. I think that would be a very sensible thing to do.”

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The University and College Union (UCU) general secretary, Sally Hunt (pictured), has accused college managers of “ripping their staff off” and failing to challenge the government on its treatment of the sector.

Ms Hunt spoke out at a rally in London this week, on a day of joint strike action between members of the UCU and Unison over the Association of Colleges’ (AoC) recommendation for a zero per cent pay rise in 2015/16.

The Shadow Skills Minister Gordon Marsden also addressed the audience at Emmanuel Centre in Westminster, and said that the FE sector would be facing “a really difficult time over the next couple of years”.

He added: “If there was ever a better time to be able to say that much overused phase, ‘we’re all in it together’, this should be a time to do that. I regret greatly that your employers are not in it together and I hope that they will get their act together and begin to have some conversations and negotiations with you.”

But Ms Hunt challenged the idea that employers needed to “get their act together”’ to address the issue of pay.

“We need to know that what is taking place here wasn’t by accident,” she said.

“It isn’t just because of government policy. It is a strategy that the employers, through the AoC, actively adopted.”

She added: “I think the employers have got their act together, I think they are all in this boat together and the boat they are in is about ripping their staff off.

“They are using you to hide from their responsibilities to stand up for FE, and today is about us doing the job that our employers should be doing.”

The day of strike action marked the first time in 10 years since the UCU and Unison have joined together in protest and picket lines look place at a number of colleges across the country.

The UCU estimated that 198 colleges had been affected by the strike action, while Unison put the number at 170. The AoC was unable to provide information on numbers affected.

Support for the protest was shared through Twitter with the hashtag #FEstrike24feb, which trended in the UK throughout the day. Alongside events in London, a well-attended rally also took place at the Mechanics Institute in Manchester.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, attended a picket line at City and Islington College in North London and said he felt current treatment of the sector was immoral.

He commented: “It’s very unusual that our members in FE take industrial action. It’s a final resort.

“When you look at what happened over the last five years, the pay of our members has gone down by something like a fifth in that time and when the employers have had the chance of at least giving a cost of living increase they have said no. For our members this is about putting food on the table.”

Marc Whitworth, director of employment policy and services at the Association of Colleges (AoC), responded to the day’s event, saying: “Strikes are very disruptive for colleges and more importantly for students. The pay recommendation of 0 per cent made by the Association of Colleges reflects the specific financial challenges faced by our members.

“Colleges are facing increases to pension and national insurance contributions during 2015/16 and this coupled with reductions in funding mean that we have been unable to recommend an unsustainable increase in costs to our college members.

“No further dialogue has been scheduled with our union colleagues regarding this cycle of negotiations.”

However, a Unison spokesperson told FE Week that the union’s FE committee will meet at the end of next week to gather feedback and discuss next steps.

A UCU spokesperson also confirmed that their FE committee would meet on March 4 to discuss next steps.

Andrew Harden, UCU head of FE, said: “The strong support on the picket lines yesterday shows the depth of anger at this insulting pay freeze after years of real terms cuts to wages. UCU’s FE committee will meet again next week to discuss next steps in the dispute; in the meantime we urge the employers to come back to the table with a sensible offer.”

 

Students join striking staff on picket lines

At colleges across the country teaching staff, support staff and even some students joined picket lines in support of the UCU and Unison joint strike action.

At City and Islington College, students Aby Murray and James Crawley (pictured) were handing out flyers alongside other protestors.

Murray, a student of politics, sociology, economics and philosophy, told FE Week: “I think the strike is important because it shows that they won’t take no for an answer. This isn’t fair on them because they deserve a pay rise so much. They keep our college running, they’re the people who are in the library 24/7, helping us study, providing us with what we need to actually get our grades.

“Colleges are such an important option to people who feel they can’t study at school or university. Here it is a chance for us to actually be ourselves and get the grades we deserve, that’s really important to me.”

 

Crawley, who studies graphics, photography and music technology at the college had had a class cancelled due to the strike.

“I think teachers

should be paid more because the people they work with are all going to be a part of society.

 

“My three hours graphics lesson has been cancelled. It’s not so annoying for me because I live quite close, but many people have to pay a lot of money to be travel here.”

At the rally, one Tower Hamlets College student also spoke out.

She said: “I really support this strike that is going on today. The teachers in Tower Hamlets have changed my life so much and opened doors for me that I didn’t have when I was in secondary school. I left and I just went into work.

“Now, going back into college, I’m worried about the cuts … To me as a mature adult student I see my doors are closing and I see my future not as bright as before. I hope the teachers get the pay rise they deserve.”

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A national training provider has ceased trading four months after being hit with an ‘inadequate’ rating from Ofsted, with the loss of 35 jobs.

Education and Youth Services (EYS), which had a head office in Stevenage as well as 16 training centres around the country, went into administration on February 4 after having its contracts with the Education Funding Agency (EFA) and Skills Funding Agency (SFA) terminated following the Ofsted verdict.

The closure comes after the provider, which had an allocation of £5.2m from the EFA and £2.8m from the SFA for 2015/16, was taken over by the Merseyside-based Progress to Excellence Group (PtoE) in August.

PtoE managing director Sandra Kirkham told FE Week that EYS’s EFA and SFA contracts “amounted to over 80 per cent of the company’s revenue”.

Ms Kirkham said they had worked with the EFA to find alternative providers for all of its EFA-funded learners, and were continuing to work with the SFA to find alternative provision for its SFA-funded learners.

EYS had around 2,000 learners at the time of the Ofsted inspection in October.

It had started to wind down its apprenticeship provision following takeover by PtoE, Ms Kirkham said, and they had stopped recruiting new apprentices before the Ofsted inspection.

Twelve of the EYS training centres had been acquired by other training providers, Ms Kirkham said, which meant they had safeguarded 72 jobs.

In the end 35 members of staff were made redundant, “a number of whom have already found new roles”, said Ms Kirkham.

Ms Kirkham said that they had “recognised that this was a turnaround situation” when they took EYS over, but had hoped for more time before being inspected by Ofsted.

“We thought, with Ofsted, you got at least a six month extension after a new ownership, and we thought that would give us enough time to turn it around. We knew it needed improving,” she said.

“I’m sad for the learners and the staff that we weren’t afforded the time to make an impact on that business. I knew we had the expertise in the group to turn that provision around, and had we been afforded that time with Ofsted, it would have been a totally different picture,” Ms Kirkham added.

A spokesperson for the SFA said: “We can confirm that Education and Youth Services Limited has now ceased to trade.

“We are working to transfer learners to other providers and are consulting with employers and staff to take individual circumstances into account wherever possible.

“This is to ensure continuity of training for both learners and employers and to minimise any disruptions”.

An EFA spokesperson said: “We have been working closely with relevant councils to transfer the students of Education and Youth Services Ltd to alternative provision.

“We are confident that all pupils funded by the EFA have now been given a new place.”

 

Greenwich Community College has been hit with its second consecutive inadequate Ofsted rating, following an inspection carried out two weeks after it federated with another London provider.

The grade four-overall report, published by Ofsted on Tuesday, was highly critical of maths and English provision and wider teaching at Greenwich and said that “the proportion of learners who complete and achieve their qualifications is below that for similar colleges”.

It came after the college received an inadequate Ofsted rating in December 2014, before it was subjected to a structure and prospects assessment by FE commissioner Dr David Collins, which resulted in a recommendation that it merge with Bromley College.

The original plan to merge by January 1 had to be shelved because of issues with consulting banks and reconciling the colleges’ two different pension schemes.

The colleges federated instead at the turn of the year, meaning that grade two Ofsted-rated Bromley’s management team effectively took over Greenwich two weeks before the inspection team’s visit began on January 19.

Sam Parrett (pictured), who was previously Bromley College principal and now heads both institutions, told FE Week: “Greenwich went through quite a dramatic period of change, following the previous Ofsted report [in December 2014] and a visit from the FE commissioner, and it was clear the same result was likely again.

“The slightly frustrating thing for us is that we were due to merge with Greenwich Community College before the inspection took place, which would have meant that Greenwich would have been dissolved as an independent institution, so there would not have been an inspection.

“However, this will ultimately be good for the college because we have basically been given a free consultation on all the issues that need addressing.”

She added the plan was now to merge the colleges from August 1 and “Bromley Corporation will take the decision over this on March 16”.

The latest Ofsted report on Greenwich called on the new management team to “rapidly improve teachers’ skills to check all learners’ understanding and knowledge during lessons to ensure that learners are ready for their next lesson and the next steps in their learning”.

However, it did state that “new management arrangements are already leading to improvements”.

 

The Queen was presented with a plaque by Crossrail apprentices this week to commemorate the new railway being named the Elizabeth line.

The monarch was given a tour of the still under-construction Bond Street station site by the Mayor of London Boris Johnson before meeting with apprentices working on Europe’s largest construction project, due to open in 2018.

Faz Mansuri, 19, a Crossrail apprentice engineer who presented the Queen with the plaque, said: “I never expected to get to meet the Queen and witness such a historic moment for the new rail line at such an early stage of my career.”

There are currently 543 apprentices working on the Crossrail project in a range of trades including construction, accountancy, quantity surveying and business administration.

New apprenticeship frameworks have also been developed for the Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy including tunnel operations, sprayed concrete lining operatives and pre-cast concrete operations.

“It’s a fantastic new station”

One of the apprentices who met the Queen was technician engineer Zoe Conroy (pictured), Crossrail’s 500th apprentice.

Before she started working on the project, Zoe was studying an A-level equivalent in science and technology at a school in Portugal.

The 19-year-old opted for a hands-on job instead of university and found an apprenticeship to be the best route because she could “earn and learn”
at the same time.

“It’s a fantastic role and I get hands-on experience on a real working site and every day I get to see the progress on the building of a fantastic new station,” she said.

Working on Crossrail’s Tottenham Court Road station site, Zoe assists the site engineer with activities including carrying out surveys and completing a daily construction report.

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A cash-strapped Cumbria sixth form college has been given the green light by Skills Minister Nick Boles to merge with its nearby FE college in July.

Barrow Sixth Form College (pictured) was issued with a financial notice to improve last month, as reported in FE Week, having been graded as inadequate for financial health in September.

The 900-learner college, despite being rated by Ofsted in May as good, pointed to falling numbers of Year 11 students in local schools — from 959 in 2009 to 747 this year — among the issues it was facing.

It opened talks with 3,000-learner Furness College, three miles away and rated as good in April, about a possible merger to become “financially strong”.

In a letter published today to Mike Phipps, the chair of governors at Barrow Sixth Form College, Mr Boles said he “fully endorsed” the decision to merge, after he received an assessment report from Sixth-Form College Commissioner, Peter Mucklow, earlier this month.

Mr Boles said: “Both colleges are performing well, as evidenced by recent ‘good’ Ofsted grades and there is a history of successful collaboration as well as a shared commitment to high quality provision for the local community.”

The sixth form college’s implementation plan reviewed by Mr Mucklow was handed over on February 19 to the EFA.

Mr Mucklow’s assessment report said: “The college’s financial recovery plan is realistic and many efficiency savings have already been realised. However, the college runs out of cash in March and again at the end of July 2016 and a structural solution for 2016 to 2017 academic year is therefore essential to help stabilise the college’s cash position and maintain its solvency.

“A merger with Furness College is credible and has many strengths.

“The Sixth Form College Commissioner endorses the proposal of the two colleges to retain a distinctive academic sixth form branded offer based on the high quality and distinctive ethos evident in the college currently.

“The college’s proposal is that it will dissolve in July 2016 and transfer its assets, rights and liabilities to Furness College.”

Dave Batten, principal of Barrow Sixth Form College welcomed the merger and said he thinks it can offer “something even better” than what the two colleges could offer individually for Barrow.

“At the moment the FE college doesn’t offer A-levels at all and we only offer a small selection of vocational courses, so in the future for example, a learner doing a BTec in engineering at the college would be able to do an A-level in maths alongside it to get the TechBacc that they can’t at the moment.”

He added that the colleges are anticipating that the students “won’t notice a difference” when the merger happens.

“We want to keep the sixth form provision on its current site and we want to keep the ethos and distinctiveness of a sixth form offer so apart from aligning timetables in the future to enable this blended learning I think the students will struggle to spot the differences,” he said.

“This one might just be a win-win.”

Furness College principal, Andrew Wren, said he strongly believes that the merger would be an “excellent development” for the wider community in Furness and South Cumbria.

“As a merged college, we would be able to deliver an unparalleled curriculum offer whilst maintaining the high levels of quality which students and employers currently benefit from at both colleges.”

The two colleges are expected to feature among wave three area reviews, taking place from April.

The organisation that oversees the selection process for the British WorldSkills team is dropping its old name.

It is currently called Find a Future, but will be known as WorldSkills UK from Tuesday (March 1).

The rebrand will coincide with the launch of registrations for the new cycle of competitions across the country on the same day.

“The new name for the organisation reflects an evolution,” said Dr Neil Bentley, chief executive of the organisation.

“It reinforces the positioning of our work in support of the government’s agenda for skills and apprenticeships.

“It builds on our existing strengths — competitions and The Skills Show — and adds role modelling and research to the portfolio, to ensure we continue to demonstrate how competitions support business competitiveness, young peoples’ employability and excellence in standards.”

WorldSkills UK will bring together WorldSkills UK Competitions, the Skills Show, and the WorldSkills UK Champions programme, which works with former national and international competitors to create role models for young people across the country.

“Our work places competitions at the heart of all that we do,” said Dr Bentley, “and the reframing of the organisation under the WorldSkills UK name aims to highlight the impact that competitions and The Skills Show have on apprenticeships and technical skills in the UK.”

The 2016 cycle of WorldSkills UK Competitions will open for entries on Tuesday (March 1) — giving talented learners and apprentices the opportunity to put their skills to the test in over 60 skill areas.

The competitions are designed to enable young people to build on their skills and showcase their talents to employers.

More than 3,500 highly skilled young people registered to take part in 2015, with almost 700 qualifying for the national finals in more than 60 different disciplines.

Those who are successful at this year’s finals, held at The Skills Show in November at the NEC Birmingham, will place themselves in contention for selection to Squad UK, which will then begin training towards WorldSkills Kazan in 2019.

The UK team took home three gold, four silver, and two bronze medals from WorldSkills in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which gave TeamUK 46 points in total to place it seventh in the overall medals table — up three places on WorldSkills Leipzig two years ago.

The UK competition finals will continue to be hosted at The Skills Show at the NEC – the 2016 event takes place from November 17 to 19.

Entries for the 2016 WorldSkills UK competitions cycle will remain open until 7 April 7.

Visit http://bit.ly/21qw7aI for more information.