Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has told Labour to “wait and see” what happens in next week’s Budget before accusing the government of failing to protect funding for 16 to 19 education and training.

Labour called an Opposition Day House of Commons debate this week to propose that the 16 to 19 education budget be given the same protection as that of schools.

Opening the debate was Shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell (pictured right) who asked Ms Morgan: “Why does the Government value education for 16 to 19-year-olds less?”

“If education is a public good then it is baffling why 16 to 19 education is not protected and is facing further massive reductions,” she added.

Ms Morgan replied: “The honourable lady tipped off into the word cuts before we have even had the spending review. So I think she ought to wait and see what the spending review is.”

Chancellor George Osborne is due to announce the results of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) on Wednesday (November 25), which is expected to make huge cuts to FE spending aside from apprenticeships.

Ms Morgan then accused Labour of “trying to create a sense of panic in the post-16 sector” and said the opposition “still believe in the existence of the labour party’s magic money tree.”

She said: “When we have had a situation where children leaving primary school are unable to read, write and add up properly that is where in a difficult economic climate the decision was taken to put the education investment particularly.

“Because if you are not literate and numerate by the time you leave primary school you are far less likely to get good GCSEs and far less likely to progress to higher education, an apprenticeship or into the wold of work.”

She added that the Conservatives would deliver a post-16 skills system that would deliver a “clear and high quality route to skills and employment” either directly or through higher education, with apprentices being a “key part” in the world’s most successful skills systems.

Ms Morgan said before the May General Election that the Conservatives would maintain the ring-fence for five to 16-year-olds, but did not commit to protection for early years or FE budgets.

Meanwhile, Labour promised at the time to include 16 to 19 provision within an education budget ring-fence, which currently ends at 16, but had not previously committed to protecting it from being raided for other provision.

Adding to the debate after Ms Morgan, Shadow Skills Minister Gordon Marsden said that “colleges should not lose out to schools but the Government are in danger of allowing that to happen”.

“The Secretary of State did not look at the unsustainable division between school education, which has ring-fenced funding, and FE, which faces growing marginalisation and an ever-greater burden of cuts”, he added.

Skills Minister Nick Boles said the debate had “distilled the essential difference between the government and the opposition”.
“We will invest in the future generation and their capacity to earn money for themselves by investing in apprenticeships, the people who will attend these colleges that the Opposition want to support, by making them better, longer and more rigorous,” he said.

“They [labour] will lay more debt on their backs — and will ask the future generation to be paying for their decisions now due to their failure to get borrowing under control.
“We will not go down that path — we will invest in reform and improvement,” he added.

Trailblazer employers in the early years sector are on a collision course with the government over the GCSE exit requirements for their new standard.

The Early Years Educator (EYE) Trailblazer group resubmitted its apprenticeship standard and assessment plan on November 10, asking the government to accept ‘reasonable equivalents’ to the GCSE English and maths requirements for the level three standard.

But the following day Childcare Minister Sam Gyimah (pictured above) told delegates at the Nursery World Business Summit, held in Cavendish Square, London, that the government had no plans to change the GCSE requirements for the standard.

The Department for Education (DfE), as reported by FE Week in July, had said it would consider other equivalences to maths and English GCSE, prompting hopes that Functional Skills could be accepted.

The DfE statement came after the announcement by Mr Gyimah at the beginning of July that learners on the standard would be expected to reach grade C in maths and English by the end of the course, rather than at the beginning.

Chrissy Meleady, the Trailblazer group chair, said: “We commend the ministers for listening to employers in regard to their making an adjustment to have the GCSEs as an exit requirement rather than as an entry requirement to the level three.

“We urge the ministers and departments concerned to act reasonably, by listening to the employers and their designated representatives and to implement this request accordingly.”

Julie Hyde, executive director of the Council for Awards in Care, Health and Education (Cache), said the GCSE English and maths requirement “will increase the likelihood of a skills shortage”.

“High levels of English and maths are important for those caring for and teaching children,” said Ms Hyde.

“However, the requirement to hold GCSEs and not a suitable alternative is creating a barrier for employment as an Early Years Educator.”

Following the government’s entry requirement U-turn in July, sector leaders called for Functional Skills to be recognised as equivalent to maths and English.

At the time, Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Pre-School Learning Alliance, said that “the majority of early years employers” believe that Functional Skills qualifi cations are “a valid demonstration of competency in English and maths.”

A DfE spokesperson said: “We have no further plans to change the GCSE requirements.”

Skills Minister Nick Boles has told Association of Colleges (AoC) conference delegates to stop letting private providers “nick your lunch”.

He was critical of colleges for failing to secure more government apprenticeships cash and said independent learning providers (ILPs) were much better at securing the funding, during a keynote speech at the ICC Birmingham this morning.

Mr Boles told delegates: “As your friend, I have to ask you this, why on earth are you letting these guys [ILPs] nick your lunch?”

He challenged colleges to go from delivering a third of all apprenticeships to two-thirds.

Skills Minister Nick Boles is calling for colleges to deliver more apprenticeships while speaking at #AoCConf today pic.twitter.com/aFUI2ra66e

— Dept for Business (@bisgovuk) November 17, 2015

It comes after FE Week revealed startlingly low levels of college take-up on apprenticeship delivery at many colleges.

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.

Mr Boles also told delegates this morning that apprenticeships funding was rising while other funding streams available to colleges was being cut.

“Total government spending on apprenticeships grew by £400m, or nearly 30 per cent, between 2009/200 and 2015/16,” he said.

“In 2009/10 the taxpayer was investing every year £1.1m in apprenticeship training but in 2015/16 it will be £1.5bn.”

“We will be spending a great deal more on apprenticeship training in 2019/20,” he added.

“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 apprenticeships 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.

It comes as Mr Boles also told delegates in his speech that he could not give them any insights into the conclusions of the upcoming spending review.

Martin Doel, AoC chief executive, said afterwards that he had “played a remarkably straight bat”, during his conference speech, over FE funding.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. We meet in a sombre context.

After this morning’s session I’ll be returning to London and I hope you will agree on your behalf we will be travelling to the French Embassy to the sign the book of condolence after the terrible attacks on Friday night.

And I am sure it will have struck you as it has stuck me looking at those images in our newspapers that the victims were overwhelmingly young.

Not very different from the young men and women to who you and your colleagues dedicate your lives. And I want to thank you in the FE college system for your positive embrace in at the prevent duty which came into force on the 18 of September.

But larger than that we need to reflect on today on our commodity, moral and professional to do all we can to give those young lives and young hearts who might otherwise fall prey to extremist ideology a sense of hope, a sense of possibility and a sense of belonging and hope that this country can offer them a secure prosperous and happy future.

Possibilities that they can forge a career which fulfils them, rewards them and enables them to support their families and maybe above all a sense that they belong in this society that they, whatever their faith, whatever their race, that they are our brothers, our sisters, our cousins our neighbours and we value them and we respect them equally.

Now terrorism and extremism are not the only difficult challenges that we face. It is seven years since the start of the last recession and unlike others we will never claim that we have abolished the …. And in some day in the future, and none of us can know when, there will be difficult economic times again.

So we wanted to make an argument to the British people in the run up to the general election which was a simple one which said that their security, their economic security, their personal security and our national security depended on us taking some difficult but essential steps to restore the country’s economic strength.

And we won with the argument about the deficit. We secured, according to opinion polls, the support of even of those many who did not vote Conservative so that opposition of the deficit had to be brought down so that the economy was to remain strong.

And we won a clear mandate for further spending cuts to bring the budget into surplus by 2019. Now we do not relish making cuts.

There is absolutely no pleasure in the process of cutting budgets that go to FE colleges or any other part of public service. It would be easier not to do it but we made an argument, we won an argument. We made promises and the British people now expect us to deliver on those promises. Now I can’t give you any advanced insight into what is going to happen in the spending review.

We do not have long to wait and we can talk about it further after the chancellor has announced it. But you know and I know that those of us and those of you that are engaged in FE will not be insulated from further spending cuts.

So while we wait to discover how much those cuts are going to be and in what budgets, it seems to me that the best use of our time and energy is to ask this simple question, ‘what can you do and what can we in the government help you do to get ready for the years to come?’.

And the first thing you can do is to help you become stronger as institutions, more sustainable, more able to manage the impact of those budgets that shrink and capitalise on the potential of those that are going to increase.

And the first thing you can do is to help you become stronger as institutions. More sustainable, more able to manage the impact of those budgets that shrink and capitalise on the potential of those that are going to increase.
That is why we have launched this process of area reviews.

You are independent institutions and ultimately it is on you that both the responsibility and initiative falls for deciding how best to face the future. But I believe that you are better off, stronger together, rather than fragmented and vulnerable.

I believe that the first area review which took place in Norfolk and Suffolk has given us a very good model of how the process should work.

It began sensibly enough with an analysis of that area’s needs — talking to the local economic partnership, to local employers and other groups.

They then drew up different structural options involving sharing the costs, specialisation and curriculum reform.

They have now decided that Great Yarmouth College, Lowestoft College and Lowestoft Sixth Form College will merge to form one group and two other sixth form colleges are currently considering a range of possible thoughts of collaboration.

Now I did not dictate that outcome. I did not say ‘here is the solution that central government wants’ and it would not have been proper for me to do so because colleges are independent.

But equally we were very, very clear in underlining that there is a limit to the ability of government to go on helping out colleges with long-running deficits.

If I’m to persuade the Chancellor to give us some money to support college through difficult years, I need to be able to show him that colleges are taking the initiative, taking some difficult decisions, reorganising themselves to be stronger for the future.

Area reviews are a necessary condition of a strong and resilient FE sector, but by themselves they will not be sufficient.

We also need to help you take advantage of those funding streams that are growing. Advanced learner loans where progress to date for reasons we all understand have been limited and most of all apprenticeships.

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 £1.1bn in apprenticeship training. In 2015/16 it will be £1.5bn.

With that 3m target and just briefly, though I adore Alison Wolf, I do not agree that that target is a distraction. Even if we hit that target, 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 do not think we should shrink from the same level of ambition.

So that target is going to provide further investment and the new apprenticeship levy that the Chancellor will be announcing the level for in the spending review will provide substantial additional resources to support training in the nation’s apprenticeships.

So while I cannot tell you how much, I can promise you we will be spending a great deal more of taxpayers’ money on apprenticeship training in 2019/20 than the £1.5bn that we are spending in 2015/16.

But the truth is that the FE sector only secures about £500m of that— 37 per cent of all funding for apprenticeship training will go to FE colleges in 2015/16, but 60 per cent goes to private training providers.

Now I’m a Conservative. I believe in private enterprise and competition and I salute the work of some of the outstanding private training providers who have raised standards and enabled companies of all shapes and sizes to take advantage of apprenticeships.

But as your friend I have to ask you this ‘why on earth are you letting these guys nick your lunch?’.

Now today I want to ask you to raise your sights and sign up to a shared ambition that by 2020 FE colleges will be responsible for two thirds not one third of all apprenticeship training and will receive two thirds of what will be a much larger pot of funding.

I’m not going to intervene to somehow stop private training providers from winning that business but I want to help you give them a very good run for their money.

I’m absolutely confident that you can do it. At the moment, apprenticeship contracts are awarded by the Skills Funding Agency and the Education Funding Agency, but by 2020 there is going to be a complete shift in the way this market operates. Nobody will be receiving an SFA or EFA contract for apprenticeship training by 2020.

Employers will receive vouchers that they’ve either paid for through the levy or some other means and they will take the decision about what training they want to buy and where do they want to buy it from.

This is your opportunity. You have the profile in your communities, you have relationships with local employers through chambers of commerce and local economic partnerships, you have the facilities and qualified teaching staff.

But you do need, most of you, to change your approach. You need to be more flexible and entrepreneurial and quicker off the mark.

You will need to ask employers what they want and work out how you can provide it, not just offer them what is convenient for you to deliver. I want to help you learn from those colleges that have been remarkably successful in their apprenticeship performance. If they can do it, I absolutely know that you can do it too.

I want to work with Martin and the AoC to ensure that you have all of the tools, all the advice, all the benchmarks, all the leadership to help you make it happen.

I understand that there is much more to the life of a great FE college than apprenticeships and there always will be, but the best way to secure the future of the broader provision that you are responsible for in your communities, the best way to secure the opportunities for the vulnerable people, older people who have been failed, people with special needs and disabilities, in tough times is to ensure that you are really good at apprenticeships, because if you can secure two thirds of the funding that will be available for apprenticeships by 2019/20 you will prosper as institutions and be able to support the broad range of provision that you all believe.

Apprenticeships are the future and I want the FE sector to lead the way, thank you very much.”

Official figures released this morning show the number of apprenticeship starts for 2014/15 was up by 59,500 from the previous year – reversing the decline of the previous two years.

The final (rather than provisional) figures in today’s Statistical First Release show there were 499,900 apprenticeship starts in 2014/15, an increase of 13.5 per cent from 2013/14’s total of 440,400.

The figures largely confirm provisional numbers released last month, and reported by FE Week, showing the first full-year rise since 2011/12, although the numbers were not back up to that year’s high of 520,600.

While figures for all ages last year were up, the biggest growth was in 25+ apprenticeship starts, which rose to 213,900 for the year – an increase of 52,300 or 35 per cent on the previous year’s figure of 161,600.

The number of 25+ apprenticeship starts was almost back up to the 2012/13 high of 230,000, following the scrapping of the unpopular 24+ advanced learning loans for apprentices, which were widely believed to be responsible for a drop in adult apprenticeship starts.

The number of 16 to 18-year-olds starting an apprenticeship in 2014/15 was up by 6,100, or 5.1 per cent, to 125,900. It continued the upward trend from 2013/14, when the 16 to 18 age group was the only one to show an increase, from 114,500 in 2012/13 to 119,800 in 2013/14.

The smallest growth in apprenticeship starts in 2014/15 was among 19 to 24-year-olds. At 160,200, the figures was up just 1,100 or 0.7 per cent from the 2013/14 figure of 159,100.

Today’s figures also show 400 starts for 2014/15 under the new Trailblazer apprenticeship standards.

The release also confirmed that the number of traineeship starts was just short of former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s target of 20,000 starts, with 19,400 starts for 2014/15. This was up 86.5 per cent, or 9,000, from last year’s total of 10,400.

The long wait for FE providers to sign up for Chartered Status ended today with applications for membership finally open.

Colleges and independent learning providers can apply for membership to the Chartered Institution for Further Education (CIFE), set up in 2013, in the latest “significant step” on the route to chartered status for the FE sector.

The body, which was granted the Great Seal of the Realm in October, published its regulations and guidance for applicants today (November 17), which detail the standards  providers need to meet in order to join.

To be considered for membership, 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).

Providers must also show how they can meet the CIFE’s 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 Further Education sector,” said Lord Lingfield, chair of CIFE (pictured above).

“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.”

Click here for more details on applying for Chartered Status.