Mark Dawe explains warns against hasty decisions being made over subcontracting because of a new Skills Funding Agency (SFA) review on brokering.

The SFA review of the use of brokers in relation to subcontracted skills provision should not be a reason in itself to add further weight to calls for an outright ban in subcontracting.

At AELP, we are under no illusions that the future of subcontracting as a whole is under the spotlight.

It is an indictment of the current system that the opportunities to pursue subcontracted business are now so numerous

The SFA has decided to ban subcontracting for all loans funded provision from 2017-18, while at the same time the total loans facility being offered to colleges and providers is being increased by 29 per cent.

It will be interesting to see if the larger facility can be exhausted without subcontractors in the market, even with the agency actively approaching current subcontractors to see if they want direct access to it.

The other shift in policy is that under the levy system for apprenticeships, subcontractors will be able to redeem their employers’ digital vouchers directly with the SFA, if they are on the Register of Training Organisations (ROTO).

Given the implications of a large number of providers possibly taking advantage, this has necessitated an agency review of the capacity and capability tests that need to be satisfied before a provider is admitted.

We have always said that a key tenet of the apprenticeship reforms should be the upholding of employer choice, which actually exists under the current system.

But the reform process needs to be managed, so as not to cause unreasonable disruption to customer relationships that have worked well and delivered successful results.

It is arguably the scale of subcontracting and the associated payment of management fees that have prompted this policy response.

Yet the AELP case is that this could have been avoided if the current funding system worked better.

Growth of good performing independent training providers through a direct contract has often been restricted, even though new employer demand has been clearly evidenced.

So it is hardly a surprise that as entrepreneurial businesses, they have gone looking for it from other sources, particularly from institutions that either don’t have a work based learning capability or a strong employer engagement strategy.

The biggest frustration of the handling of providers’ growth requests over the last year or so has been that committed employers willing to offer apprenticeships have had to be turned away, because there was no guarantee that funding would be forthcoming.

But it is also an indictment of the current system that the opportunities to pursue subcontracted business are now so numerous that brokers are able to flourish as part of the market.

On the issue of subcontracting best practice and the question of justifiable management fees, AELP alongside the Association of Colleges made a major effort to bring about improvements three years ago in the form of the Common Accord.

And although the accord has a reference within the funding rules, its voluntary status could have arguably been bolstered by more forceful backing from the authorities.

The case for allowing subcontracting to continue to be part of publicly funded employment and skills provision has been persuasively set out elsewhere, such as providing employers access to specialist providers in complex areas such as construction projects.

The largest levy paying employers are likely to want to do deal with only one provider, but it shouldn’t be expected that a single provider can deliver everything the employer needs.

For example, how often will a level two apprenticeship provider in call centre operations be able to also offer a level seven in management?

Therefore, it would seem appropriate to encourage strong partnerships of providers to ensure employers get outstanding provision across all their requirements and not prevent such practice through artificial restrictions.

Before any further policy decisions are made, it would certainly be very helpful for the SFA to publish a clear statement of what the Agency deems as subcontracting.

Laura-Jane Rawlings raises concern about the reliance on employer volunteers to make the government’s careers advice strategy work.

We are gearing up to a very important period for young people as many are about to start sitting exams but also taking their next steps.

In these key transitions, we need to support them to effectively navigate education, employment or training choices ahead of them.

Young people and employers have cited that poor quality careers education and information in schools is contributing to the issues of youth unemployment.

It seems that DfE has replaced a well-funded careers strategy with the idea that the business community can fill the gap

In 2014, I took a number of young people to meet with colleagues from the Department for Education (DfE) to discuss what they felt the barriers were to employment.

They spoke of their desire to have a better understanding of all their career options, time with a qualified adviser and time to develop the skills and experience that employers want.

Some spoke with real passion about the struggles they have faced making the transition without good guidance.

The DfE introduced the Careers & Enterprise Company has to ensure young people are prepared for life beyond education.

With a £20m investment in spring 2015, the company focused on encouraging greater collaboration between schools, colleges and employers.

Many of the principles for the company’s ‘toolkit’ come from the findings of a report from the Gatsby Foundation.

What is lost from the report is the cost to a school of £54,000 to implement the Gatsby strategy — an equivalent of about 1 per cent of a school’s budget.

It seems that DfE has replaced a well-funded careers strategy with the idea that the business community can fill the gap.

Employers are a large part of the equation when it comes to frameworks for good careers work, such as The Careers and Development Institute framework and London Ambitions.

Many employers are engaged with schools; significant numbers of organisations (the Education and Employers Taskforce, Team London etc) benefit from exceptional volunteer support from employers.

Our Young Members tell us that they value this contact with employers.

However, there are other important ingredients including a stable career education programme in schools and the provision of high quality, face to face career guidance provided by a qualified practitioner.

We must acknowledge that not all employers want or have the capacity to engage.

UKCES research highlights that 66 per cent of employer’s value work experience, but only 38 per cent of employer’s offer support.

The Government is looking to employers to volunteer for a new mentoring initiative, as well as the array of initiatives from DWP.

I fear we could exhaust the grace of the business community. Can we really build a sustainable solution that is solely reliant on volunteers who receive minimal training?

From my experience, as a school governor and head of an organisation with many volunteers, I know it is a risky business to rely on volunteers alone.

By the nature of business, employers are busy and with the best will in the world volunteering is dropped when other pressures take hold.

One school told me the enterprise adviser they have been assigned is too busy to do any real work with them, and the school is too busy to engage with a service that is not.

While a member of school staff has the role of ‘careers lead’ tacked on to their day job, and a member of the local business community is volunteering in the adviser capacity, can the big change we need to see in careers education really happen?

Some 853,000 young people aged from 16 to 24 in the UK were not in education, employment or training at the end of 2015.

The issue of careers education, the role of employers, and the commitment from government needs to be ironed out fast before more young people are failed by us.

We know good careers education and employer engagement can do amazing things.

But we must start with mandating and real monitoring from government — what gets measured in our schools gets done.

To see the £20m investment in the company pay-off, to ensure young people get the service they need to secure full employment and for employers to benefit from a skilled, productive workforce, we must see a genuine, properly – funded, commitment to careers education from this government.

Last weekend’s national colleges sports championships, held in Newcastle, Sunderland and Gateshead, were a huge success, judging by feedback from the students, staff and stakeholders who took part.

More than 1,800 students from 137 different colleges representing 11 regional/ national teams descended on Tyne and Wear for a three- day festival of sporting competitions.

These championships are an annual showcase for sporting competition in colleges, but they are only the tip of the iceberg.

Most of the work of the AoC Sport organisation is directed towards developing competitions within and/or between colleges in England and, most importantly, encouraging more college students aged 16 to 23 to take part in regular physical activity.

More than 250 colleges have now joined AoC Sport, which was created in August 2014, by bringing together several different college sports groups.

The reasons for joining vary from college to college, but there is no doubt that sport is an increasingly important part of the offer that colleges are making to their learners.

There are many reasons why colleges are investing time and money in sport and physical activity for students, even a time of financial austerity in the sector.

Firstly, there are important social, moral and educational reasons for offering sport in colleges.

Sport, post-16, does not need to look like a compulsory PE lesson

This country is facing a growing challenge with obesity and poor health, especially among lower socio-economic groups.

Research has shown that the most important points in a person’s life to take up regular physical activity are when they start and finish school, and the biggest drop-off point is at ages 16 to 23.

Colleges are very well placed to introduce young people to regular, enjoyable physical exercise, in part because of the important employability agenda within the sector.

Sport, post-16, does not need to look like a compulsory PE lesson.

More than 140 institutions now have college sportmakers, who were initially funded by SportEngland to lead on this work.

And, of course, all this helps colleges deliver programmes of study to their 16 to 18 year old students.

At last weekend’s championships, we had some student participants who had never left their own cities and regions before, which again illustrated the wider social benefits of the sport offer in colleges.

Secondly, employment in the sport and leisure industry across Europe is forecast to increase significantly by 2025, and most colleges now offer a range of technical and professional courses at levels one to five related to this growing industry sector, as well as an increasing number of apprenticeships with employers.

Thirdly, competitive sport in colleges can be offered on a regional and national basis at a level beyond that of the schools and training organisations which compete with colleges for 16 to 23 year olds.

The range of sports, the regional leagues and cup competitions and the national championships enable individual sporting students to compete at appropriate levels and the numbers of learners in colleges allow for competitive teams in many different sports.

There is little doubt that sport helps with student recruitment.

For many colleges, sport has also enabled them to enhance their community leadership role, developing partnerships and branding with local professional and amateur clubs, sharing facilities and building local networks.

Sports academies exist in many colleges and in many sports, from archery to table tennis, which enhance the offer to potential students and enrich the college.

At AoC Sport we have found that even colleges with few or very restricted facilities can make an interesting and engaging sport offer to students and our regional staff can advise on some of the ways to do this.

Networks of heads of sport and operational staff now exist in all regions and are supported by AoC Sport colleagues.

Having missed out previously, we are beginning to see a greater understanding of how FE can help the government to address its sport and health priorities. I hope that before long all colleges will be engaged in the world of colleges sport.

Check out full FE Week coverage of the weekend here

The latest apprenticeship levy operational guidance is almost totally geared at explaining how it will work for the employers forced to pay it.

This is welcome, although 5,000 words on a single government web page seems a little rushed and half-hearted.

But colleges and independent training providers remain largely in the dark about how it will affect their funding from April next year.

There is promise of ‘provisional’ detail next month, but this is a poor state of affairs when you consider the change kicks in for all new apprenticeship starts four months before the end of the 2016/17 academic year.

Despite the admission there will be a phased implementation it strikes me that everyone, civil servants included, will wonder whether switching to the levy from April 2017 is over ambitious.

Few large scale government IT projects involving multiple departments start with a national roll-out, for good reason.

So let’s hope there is a plan B, which (whisper it) might even include the not so radical idea of undertaking a pilot…

Graham Taylor explains why he was less than impressed with the recent qualification and achievement report.

Let’s move on from my last article on apprenticeships — the consensus feedback   to that was ‘kick the reforms into the long grass’ as we believe we can meet Dave’s target without the unnecessary, complicated and costly wiring of the proposed changes.

I would like to focus now on the fiasco that is the qualification and achievement report (QAR) received after an interminable delay on April 5, and well documented in FE Week.

It’s full of unnecessary terminology changes.

Success rates (SR) no longer exist. They are now achievement rates (AR) and the old achievement rates are now called pass rates (PR).

I encourage all MIS managers to feedback to the powers that be

Search me why they needed to change the system and terminology — can someone explain please?

Another key difference is that we no longer have an overall college AR, only 16-18 and 19+ breakdowns.

While we are able to calculate our overall figure, the QAR doesn’t contain the data that would allow us to work out the national overall AR.

For some reason, they’ve chosen to omit the national cohort figures from the data.

As a key quality measure, we need to assess success rates (old terminology) at course level and build to department/ sector skills area and college, and compare with national averages for what we do. By the way, using weighted averages at SSA level is a concept that some Ofsted inspectors we know and love struggle with.

They are the best objective measures of quality available. We await the national averages file so that it can be imported.

The report as a whole was littered with mistakes and didn’t show you what the old one did — which also had better terminology.

You need national rates at course level upwards to make meaningful quality judgments. We await them with bated breath.

And even after the long delay in publishing the data, the dashboard is slow, unreliable, lacks key information and is set up in a way that will cause further delays in producing information that was previously readily available.

For example, the in-built function to export and produce hard copy is time-consuming and produces poorly-formatted, often unusable PDFs.

We’ll have to resort to screen printing for this.

I encourage all MIS managers to feedback to the powers that be.

We use ProAchieve (other systems are available) and our view of the latest ProAchieve update is that it will become the ‘go to’ source for data.

The interface is much improved on the QAR and will be easily accessible by all staff.

How can informed decisions on quality be made both internally and by Ofsted when the national averages were almost two years out of date?

How could any college in this year’s Oftsed round (61 and counting) be reasonably assessed without 2014/15 benchmarks?

No wonder reports are bland. Here’s one comment: “This college’s performance is in line with the rates for colleges nationally.” That must be referring back to 2013/14 presumably?

Reports used to be informative and give ideas on how to improve. Not now.

But we have the headline success rates for apprenticeships, at 71.7 per cent overall; 79.8 per cent for 16 to 18-year-olds; and 87 per cent for 19+ (adult qualifications too easy Mr Wilshaw?).

In absolute terms, apprenticeships outcomes look low — not helped by stretching course lengths going back to (former Skills Minister) John Hayes’ 12 and 18 month rule, and the concomitant increase in drop-out rates and higher labour turnover in a dynamic jobs market.

Overall GCSE English A* to C success rates for 16-18-year-olds and 19+ learners were 31.1 per cent and 50.2 per cent.

The figure stood at just 27.8 per cent and 52.3 per cent respectively for maths.

It is arguably a minor miracle that about 30 per cent of youngsters get through this in one year, after years of struggling at school.

Well done everyone. Keep fighting the good fight. We’re not finished yet.