It is vitally important that FE shows it is responding to the Government’s reform agenda, says Gemma Gathercole.

As the FE sector gathers for this year’s AoC Conference, I suspect the majority head to Birmingham with a sense of foreboding ahead of the spending review announcements and autumn statement that will follow next week.

Although no pronouncements have been given at the conference, there is a sense of a direction of travel.

But as we gathered in Birmingham last year, there was uncertainty then too.

At that time, we were looking at a hard to predict election, which could have led to any number of different scenarios of majority or coalition government.

In May, we got a decisive outcome, a majority Conservative government. From their manifesto, we could all understand the likely implications for FE.

In his speech to conference, Skills Minster Nick Boles, reiterated that FE will not be insulated from further spending cuts although he didn’t go so far as to pre-announce what is likely to come next week.

We need to demonstrate the sector’s ‘distance travelled’ to stop another review from starting in the future with the same objectives

However, if you look at the key topics he touched on, we may get a clearer picture of what’s ahead.

His key themes were apprenticeships, loans and the area reviews.

He urged more colleges to offer apprenticeships and to structure programmes to support young people to progress into apprenticeships.

The fundamental question about how to encourage more employers to take on young people remains unanswered.

On loans, in what was perhaps a simple mis-speak, or could have been an early indication, he spoke of advanced learning loans and missed the 24+ element of the name.

On area reviews, the focus was squarely on fewer, larger colleges, which would be stronger institutions.

There was very little unchartered ground here for us to understand what the future holds, as the majority of the speech content had been trialled over recent weeks.

Alison Wolf’s themes of English exceptionalism and what we do wrong provided some challenge to the government’s agenda, particularly on how the government will pay for 3m apprenticeship starts.

I hope that Alison uses her views to good effect in the review panel that was announced in recent weeks to look at the technical and professional system.

Furthermore, news from an AoC Conference workshop session run with the Skills Funding Agency that from April 2017 there will be no more allocations for apprenticeships, brings sharply into focus the impact of the ongoing reforms.

The timescale for delivery is incredibly fast and will require a step change in how the sector approaches employer engagement for apprenticeships.

In relation to English and maths, I’ve often talked about the old saying ‘if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got’.

I think there’s a broader lesson here.

Both FE and the awarding body community have been asked to go through a minefield of reforms over the last five years. And more reform is destined ahead.

In a recent article for this paper, OCR director of skills and employment Charlotte Bosworth called for a once in a lifetime review of the whole education and skills system. It’s obviously a view I share.

Rather than focusing on the concerns we all have about the future, we can seize this as an opportunity.

We can review our structures, our programmes, our qualifications in line with the policies and review already announced, but we must seize the opportunity to demonstrate the changes we are and will be making.

We need to demonstrate the sector’s ‘distance travelled’ to stop another review from starting in the future with the same objectives.

We must demonstrate that we’ve changed our provision, so it doesn’t look like we’re doing what we’ve always done.

Now might be the time for us to stop hiding the wiring about what we all do so that employers, civil servants and government as a whole can see the impact that can be made.

There can be little doubt that public funding for FE will fall by a lot. The question is where.

Further education in England is on the brink of the greatest transformation it has seen in a generation.

The die was cast in May when the Conservatives were returned to office after the election on a manifesto setting out, explicitly, an intention to prioritise elimination of the budget deficit through further austerity. Almost immediately the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Department for Education (DfE) made in-year cuts of £900m and when plans for the spending review were published in July, all departments were asked to model two scenarios, to save 25 per cent of their budget and 40 per cent.

Although Chancellor George Osborne will use the lower of these figures, it is scant consolation since FE is squeezed within both funding departments: A combination of rising school rolls and a promise to protect per-pupil spending on school children to Year 11 means the DfE 16 to 19 budget is even more vulnerable while, in BIS, defenders of 19+ skills funding are in competition with advocates for science, research and higher education.

Things are worsened by the paucity of people in the Treasury elite and the increasingly shrunken ranks of BIS mandarins who have direct experience of FE. Neither appreciate nor value its complexity and diversity. Things are compounded by the absence of powerful ministerial champions able to defend the sector. HE matters like part-time and overseas students simply attract more attraction as policy challenges.

With the Comprehensive Spending review moving ever nearer (on November 25), Alastair Thomson considers Chancellor George Osborne’s FE cuts options.

There can be little doubt that public funding for FE will fall by a lot. The question is where.

In the case of DfE 16 to 19 budgets, it is worth watching what happens to policies which sometimes saw efficient use of public money take second place to ideological dogma and political expediency.

A canary in this particular coal mine will be popular but increasingly hard-pressed sixth form colleges are given any kind of relief (on VAT or more widely) or whether they are left to an inexorable decline while small sixth-forms proliferate.

Within BIS budgets the biggest decisions will be around apprenticeships and loans but how the smaller budgets fare may give important signals about broader government priorities.

In 2010, community learning defied expectations and was preserved uncut and ring-fenced. This time it may simply be swept away, although any mention of ESOL or basic literacy/numeracy might be seen as recognition that FE promotes community cohesion and social inclusion as well as skills. Similarly offender learning budgets will give an important clue about whether Justice Secretary Michael Gove has convinced his party of the importance of prison education.

Looking at the bigger picture, a judgement will have been taken about when the expansion of advanced learning loans (whether by dropping the age threshold or including level two provision), becomes more expensive than it is worth. The fact that either would result in a decline in numbers which could destabilise whole institutions may be seen simply as collateral damage.

At the centre of government’s vision though are apprenticeships and colleges are increasingly exhorted to secure a greater share of this funding stream. Here the intention of the spending review to introduce a payroll levy on large employers has been well-signalled. This will generate cash but whether it will stimulate the offer of new apprenticeship places and a culture of business investment in training among smaller enterprises is less apparent.

The spending review looks increasingly likely to precipitate a wholesale re-engineering of the FE sector.

Shrinking the overall funding envelope and focusing it more on apprenticeships risks decimating the volume and range of other college courses. In some cases this will result in whole institutions becoming financially unsustainable

At this point area reviews (described memorably as turkeys being asked to vote for Christmas and pay for their own stuffing too), will provide the mechanism for shrinking the sector and re-orienting it to serve the needs of fewer learners in narrower ways.

With a few months of the new Ofsted Common Inspection Framework (Cif) under the sector’s belt, Paul Joyce outlines some common issues.

While it is true to say that a change in framework places a different emphasis on inspection judgements, it is important to remember that a framework is just that — a framework.

Ofsted inspections have always been focused on the impact the provision has on outcomes for learners. Regardless of the framework, if the quality of provision is not good enough and learners are not making progress or achieving as well as they should, then inspection reports say so and this is reflected in the grades awarded.

Ofsted seeks to raise standards and improve the life chances of all learners through the inspection and improvement work completed.

Providers that concentrate on doing their best for all their learners everyday have nothing to fear from inspection — regardless of the framework.

If a provider is to receive a good or outstanding rating it is crucial that they understand the requirements of the type of provision being offered and the individual learning needs of students on these programmes.

Many providers have been slow to adapt the curriculum offer to enable a study programme approach

The most significant change between the old and new framework is the move away from grading sector subject areas in favour of grading types of provision.

A particular challenge for many providers remains the quality of 16 to 19 study programmes. The intention of this type of provision is to enable learners to progress to a planned goal or destination. While achieving a qualification may well be a part of that journey it is unlikely that will be the intended final outcome.

The key to successful study programmes is therefore to establish clearly learners’ aspirations and their career intentions and to plan a learning and development programme accordingly.

Providers need to establish learners’ starting points based on prior attainment information and thorough initial assessment.

Study programmes must be flexible to enable different learners to develop the necessary skills, knowledge and attributes needed for their intended progression route.

A good study programme will consider what additional learning and development each individual needs in order to achieve their goal.

Many providers have been slow to adapt the curriculum offer to enable a study programme approach.

In too many providers inspectors see a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach where almost all learners follow the same timetable and attend the same learning and development sessions and progress to their next step at the same time.

While this may well be appropriate for the substantive qualification that learners are likely to be studying, for many learners, attending the same English and maths learning sessions, completing the same additional qualifications or non-qualification activity and attending the same work-related learning activity or work experience placement may not be appropriate.

A provider’s curriculum offer is vitally important. Providers need to have a clear rationale for the range of provision they offer. Successful study programmes usually exist where providers have strong links with employers and offer courses that are aligned to local and regional skills priorities.

Productive working relationships between providers and employers ensure that the content of each learning programme is appropriate to meet current business needs. In the best provision, employers get involved in the design and delivery of courses, especially with regard to the work experience or work-related learning element of study programme provision.

High quality careers advice and guidance is crucial. Students need to know the full range of options that are available to them and be able to make informed choices. Advice and guidance should be focused on progression and end goals and not simply on achieving an individual qualification.

While qualification achievement remains one measure of success, the true success measure of a study programme is the learners’ destination. Providers need to know if the learner progressed to their intended destination or achieved their goal as a way of measuring the quality and success of the study programmes offered.

Ensuring that study programmes are of high quality remains a considerable challenge for many providers. However, the key to achieving a good inspection outcome is ensuring that the provision enables all learners to progress and achieve as well as they can and that remains as true under the new Cif as it was under the old.

Small but key changes to Skills Funding Agency (SFA) subcontracting rules could lead to big problems for lead providers if not considered and followed, says Denise Bishop.

In times of great change it is very easy to allow less urgent things to fall down the to-do list with an ‘I’ll-get–to-it-tomorrow’ attitude.

And for FE providers currently dealing with transformation on a massive scale it is understandable that a myriad of decisions would fall into this category on a daily basis.

However, two seemingly incongruous changes made by the SFA in August this year have the potential to trip up leadership teams across the country if they do not take action.

We are talking about changes made to contract service agreements between colleges or independent learning providers (ILPs) and their subcontractors for education and training.

In particular, the relevant issues involve those providers entering into subcontracts that deliver services with an aggregate value of £100,000 or more in any one contract year.

There is now the legal responsibility on leadership teams to ensure businesses carrying out training are not misappropriating government funding

In layman’s terms the main additions are colleges and ILPs that subcontract must ensure that the subcontractor is financially viable and obtain various pieces of evidence to prove due diligence has been undertaken.

The other main addition is that the original contractor is independently audited to ensure they have adequate subcontractor management in place in accordance with the SFA rules.

While both of these elements have always been alluded to, there is now the legal responsibility on leadership teams to ensure those businesses that are carrying out training are not misappropriating government funding.

Primarily, the lead contractor must carry out its own due diligence checks when appointing, or continuing to subcontact with, subcontractors — and not use the Register of Training Organisations as a substitute for carrying out due diligence checks.

This must include obtaining an annual report from external auditors, which provides assurances on the arrangements that the contractor has in place to manage its subcontractors.

The report must comply with the guidance issued from time to time by the SFA and the contractor must supply the SFA with a certificate signed by its external auditors and an authorised signatory confirming it has received a report providing satisfactory assurance.

The SFA sates that it “reserves the right to require the contractor to provide a copy of the full report and can, at any time, assess arrangements for subcontracting”. It can also require a contracting body to commission an independent report on these arrangements from a third party, such as external auditors.

Other issues range from ensuring the subcontractor does not have an above average risk warning from a credit agency and looking at whether its statutory accounts are overdue.

It is also critical to make sure learners and employers supported through subcontracting arrangements are clear about every party’s roles and responsibilities in providing the learning.

In terms of monitoring from the SFA, there will always be an element of trust involved — ie that the providers will implicitly follow the letter of the law.

But the most feared scenarios are that the SFA descends on a provider to carry out an audit and finds anomalies in the due diligence, or that the subcontractor fails to deliver, as the college or ILP will be responsible for making alternative arrangements for the delivery of education and training and/or repaying SFA or loan funding.

And, of course, there is always the fact that under the new common inspection framework these arrangement may also be looked at and leadership teams could find themselves being ‘marked down’ for poor subcontracting management, potentially putting contracts at risk and — ultimately — could create an argument for special measures.

Central to not falling foul of these issues, FE leaders in charge of contracting should review their priorities and ask: ‘Am I spending too much time on what is urgent, instead of what is important?’

This will help assess the future impact of decisions made today — and ensure it’s not the little things that cause big problems down the line.

Colleges have a number of different priorities for which they can be criticised for not focusing on and, says David Hughes, apprenticeships just one example.

Last week’s FE Week front page headline — ‘Colleges that ignore apprenticeships criticised’ — wrongly insinuated, in my view, that the sector’s lack of responsiveness was placing delivery of the apprenticeship programme in doubt. The trouble is, it’s really not that simple.

The article showed the proportion of Adult Skills Budget (ASB) being used by colleges in each region to deliver apprenticeships. The range was from 12 per cent in London to 42 per cent in the North East and readers were encouraged to think that something was ‘wrong’ with the colleges in London.

This is a classic example of a national target leading to simplistic criticism — it may well be that some colleges should do more on apprenticeships, but next week we could see any number of other headlines criticising colleges for not meeting the needs of the unemployed, for people with mental health challenges, for literacy and numeracy, for supporting greater community engagement and cohesion, for helping people stay active in later life. The list could go on, and over the years I am sure that there have been headlines on each.

Whatever the public funding levels, priorities need to be set and more needs to be done to stimulate employer and individual investment

The nub of this is that there is not enough public funding to meet all of the potential priorities of any college in any community.

The cuts, since 2009, have been brutal and heightened the issue, but there never has been enough and never will be. The result is that devil-and-deep-blue-sea decisions have to be made to prioritise the use of public funding. And in recent years those decisions have almost wholly been about what to cut rather than what to fund.

The Spending Review will no doubt bring more public funding cuts to challenge colleges even further. I’m not looking forward to the announcement because more opportunities for people to learn will be lost and for every lost opportunity is an adult who can’t get a job, a promotion, read to their children, learn English as a citizen, stay active in later life. But there is an important ‘decision’ I am looking out for on the apprenticeship levy.

The Chancellor has his own tough choice to make on the levy. He has the opportunity to use the income from the levy to protect the FE budgets. In so doing he could unlock social mobility and productivity gains, as well as the health, well-being, citizenship, community, family, tolerance and cohesion outcomes which other evidence proves. He also has the opportunity of substituting employer levy funds for public money. For the sake of millions of people wanting to get on in life I hope he makes the right choice.

Whatever the public funding levels, priorities need to be set and more needs to be done to stimulate employer and individual investment. The likely devolution of commissioning the ASB will, where it works well, support more joined-up plans for meeting the range of needs in an area through a mixture of providers — colleges, universities, independent providers, employers, third sector, community organisations. College decisions in those places will be easier, allowing them to play to their strengths and support others to do likewise.

The best plans will lead to clarity on the priorities in terms of which people and communities should be offered opportunities and what the outcomes should be — jobs, progression in work, savings on health and care budgets, higher rates of literacy and numeracy and so on. In turn, those plans should lead to more investment by employers and by people in their own learning.

Let’s not point the finger at colleges every time we find something they are not doing. Let’s make devolution work to better co-ordinate what’s needed in an area and make learning, skills and employment support so attractive that more employers and individuals decide to invest their own money. That’s the best way to develop the society and economy we all want.

Government direction on skills policy is clear — take-up the apprenticeships challenge. Colleges that don’t act accordingly put their futures at risk, explains Teresa Frith.

Nobody could blame colleges if they were overwhelmed by government policy. With apprenticeship reforms and targets, new vocational routes from 16, changes to higher education, area reviews, devolution and a continuing need to save money the pressure on colleges is growing.

I have probably missed more of the policy activity, but you get the idea. These all impact on colleges’ delivery of apprenticeships.

With this much change, it can be hard for colleges to work out how and when to plan an effective response. While a lot of detail around apprenticeship reform is still up in the air, the general direction is pretty clear, and that means colleges can’t afford to do nothing in response.

And, let’s face it, right now there’s enough going on to find a lot of reasons to put off responding.

While a lot of detail around apprenticeship reform is still up in the air, the general direction is pretty clear, and that means colleges can’t afford to do nothing in response

Maybe the first question for colleges to ask is a simple one — do they want to continue delivering apprenticeships? In choosing to stay, consideration must be given to transition plans from the current apprenticeship frameworks, to the new standards with their independent, end-point assessments.

There are also a lot of factors to take into consideration, such as which apprenticeship standards to offer, whether to also offer independent assessment services and how to ensure that employers will continue to work with the college within the new approach to funding.

It’s important that the college infrastructure is geared up not only for the delivery and assessment of the apprenticeship standards, but also for the changes that will be needed to adapt to the funding reforms, which will require colleges to take a more commercial approach and will mean the end of funding allocations.

Staff across the college need to be ready, willing and able to make the shift. At least within apprenticeship delivery, colleges remain in control of their own offer; they just need to be confident that ‘their’ employers will want to buy it from them, and not another provider.

Such a funding regime is very different to the world of college allocations.

Whatever stage a college is at in the planning process, there are a number of things that they will need to do; stay informed so they are aware of what’s coming and can adapt, have access to reliable data — not just on their own organisation, but on competitors, the employers they are seeking to work with and the students who will take up the training. They will need to take all staff, customers and stakeholders along with them on the planning and implementation journey.

One thing about the reforms taking place around us in FE is that they are all pointing in a similar direction for the most part — the achievement of significant growth in apprenticeship numbers. Government policy is pulling away from full-time, classroom-based provision and towards apprenticeships.

The alterations to 16 to 18 education within the new proposals around vocational routes are geared towards preparing young people for work and an apprenticeship.

The work within higher education is away from full-time degrees and towards degree apprenticeships and shorter, more flexible delivery.

How can colleges develop plans that focus student recruitment on apprenticeships and routes to apprenticeships, ahead of filling full-time classroom-based provision, as a priority? What changes will colleges need to make to achieve this shift, and what must policy-makers, stakeholders and other intermediaries do and change to allow that to happen?

We are at a point now in FE and apprenticeships reform in England where the path has been set and it is towards work and apprenticeships. This is not going to change in the next few years and colleges need to adapt to this shift, regardless of what they might think or how comfortable they are with it. To do nothing is to fall out of importance in skills education and training.

If colleges do not rise to the challenge of 3m quality apprenticeships, then there’s a real danger government will find other providers who will and then it may well be too late to get back in the game.