FE colleges that recruit learners from the age of 14 will be covered by tough new strike rules, the government has finally confirmed.

Its ballot threshold consultation response, published today, lists teaching and leadership of “pupils aged 5 to 16 in state-funded schools” as “important public services” which would be subject to the new 40 per cent support threshold for strike action, as part of the new trade union bill.

And a spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) confirmed that “any teacher teaching a child under 17 will be covered by the 40 per cent threshold, whether in an FE college or a school”.

Under new rules in the trade union bill, which was introduced by the Business Secretary Sajid Javid (pictured above), a 50 per cent turnout requirement will be set for all strike action, with a separate requirement that strikes in “important” areas such as education and health have the support of 40 per cent of those eligible to vote.

According to the wording of the bill, the 40 per cent support threshold would apply to staff working with provision covering statutory school age pupils, meaning those aged five to 16.

At the moment, strike action can be called if a simple majority is in favour. That means that no matter how many eligible voters cast ballots, any vote share over 50 per cent in favour will count as support.

Greenhead Sixth Form College has come out on top again in this year’s league tables for schools and colleges, according to government figures released on Thursday (January 21).

It boasted the highest average point score among sixth form colleges (SFCs) both per full time vocational student and full time A-level student, in the latest Department for Education (DfE) figures.

Greenhead’s success was emphasised by the fact that the SFC also topped the tables for average point scores in 2013/14.

Principal Anton McGrath said: “We are once again delighted to be at the top of the table for both our academic and vocational work. It is testament to the hard work of the staff and the students.”

Providers were assessed on a range of measures — including average point score per student, where each grade is given a numerical value and an average taken across the cohort.

Among general FE colleges (GFEs) and tertiary colleges, Riverside College gained the highest average point score per vocational student, while Colchester Institute achieved the best score per A-level student.

A spokesperson at Riverside College said: “We are absolutely delighted to have been ranked as the number one FE college in the country for the achievements of our vocational students.”

In contrast, Derwentside College and Doncaster College both found themselves at the bottom of the tables for the second year running.

Derwentside had the lowest average point score per vocational student, while Doncaster was lowest for average point score per A-level student. Both colleges results had dropped lower than their scores last year. The two colleges were also bottom of the tables for value-added score, with Derwentside lowest for vocational and Doncaster for A-levels. Derwentside was lowest for vocational value-added score last year and its score has not changed.

Karen Redhead, principal and chief executive, Derwentside College, said: “Derwentside College is not a typical GFE college as we focus extensively on apprenticeships and getting young people into jobs.

“Frustratingly, of the 270 or so young people who studied with us at Level 3 last year, these league tables only count 24 of them.

“We run qualifications that our employers tell us they really value. Sadly these qualifications do not always count in the league tables which still tend to favour academic programmes.”

Among SFCs, Gateway Sixth Form College and John Ruskin College held the lowest average point scores for vocational students and A-level students, respectively.

Naz Leivas-Mistry, vice principal for quality at Gateway College, said: “Gateway Sixth Form College offers a broad curriculum of vocational and academic qualifications from entry level one to advanced level three for a range of learners. The vocational elements represent a relatively small fraction of the overall offer and when viewed as a whole, the college success rates exceed national rates.”

A spokesperson for John Ruskin College said: “The information about the point score is based on a very small cohort of learners. John Ruskin College is a mainly vocational college with high success rates and excellent value added data.

“We introduced A-levels as a pilot in 2013/14 with a very small cohort of four learners who completed the full A-level in 2014/15 and all passed.”

In terms of value-added scores, Runshaw College came top for vocational students for the second year in a row and Harlow College was highest for A-level students.

Michelle Brabner, deputy principal for vocational courses at Runshaw, said: “These results are a testament to the hard work and dedication of all our staff and students.”

Karen Spencer, principal of Harlow College, said: “Outcomes like this are only achieved by the hard work of our students, the high expectations of our staff, and the support of parents and carers.”

Among the SFCs, the successful stories were Stockton Sixth Form College with the best value added score for vocational learners, and Rochdale Sixth Form College for A-levels.

Julian Appleyard, principal at Rochdale SFC, said: “This is the third year in a row the college has topped the performance tables, we are delighted.”

Stockton SFC principal Joanna Bailey said: “Over recent years we have refined our curriculum and increased the number of vocational courses … so it is particularly gratifying to have achieved such outstanding results.”

At the lower end were The Sixth Form College Farnborough for vocational, and St Francis Xavier Sixth Form College, which saw its second year as the provider with the lowest value-added score for A-levels.

James Kewin, deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges’ Association, said: “Parents and students should look beyond the headlines of today’s performance tables to understand how their local school or college has fared this year.

“These headline results mask the performance of institutions in the non-selective state sector – where the vast majority of young people are actually educated.”

Colchester Institute, Doncaster College, The Sixth Form College Farnborough and St Francis Xavier Sixth Form College were yet to comment. The Association of Colleges declined to comment.

Further education trade unions have met twice in the last week to discuss an ongoing pay row with the Association of Colleges (AoC), FE Week can reveal.

Unions in attendance were Unison, the University and College Union (UCU), The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), the Association of Managers in Education (AMiE), Unite and the GMB.

They met on Friday, January 15, to discuss the AoC’s decision to offer no pay rise for 2015/16 and to consider possible industrial action strategies.

They met again on Monday, January 18, this time with the AoC present, a spokesperson for Unison confirmed.

Unite national officer for education Mike McCartney said: “Unite strongly deplores any proposals for a pay freeze for the year 2015/16.

“Because we have a small membership in FE, we have not balloted our members for industrial action. However, our members will strongly support the other FE unions, if they decide to take industrial action.”

The meetings follow Unison’s announcement that its latest ballot of FE workers in England will close at the end of January. The ballot opened on January 6, asking college workers to vote on industrial action in response to the AoC offering no pay rise for 2015/16.

Unison has already carried out a consultative ballot of members on the pay freeze, the results of which were announced in October, with 95 per cent of those voting rejecting the offer. Unison wrote to individual colleges asking them to make a better local offer, but only 12 providers made improvements and more than half did not reply.

A UCU spokesperson told FE Week that the unions have now agreed to wait until the results of the Unison ballot, before deciding further steps.

Andrew Harden, head of FE at the UCU, said: “Our invitation to sit down with the AoC to discuss the current pay dispute remains open, despite their recent refusal to talk.

“Our colleagues in Unison are being balloted for strike action and we will have more to say about the next steps in the pay campaign after that closes.”

The UCU held strike action in November last year in response to the proposed pay freeze, with 207 colleges affected.

The strike was announced in October after no agreement was reached in talks with the AoC. A prior UCU ballot on the pay freeze had resulted in 74 per cent of the members who voted (4,184) backing industrial action. Meanwhile, ATL previously held a ballot on the issue, but said members were reluctant to pursue industrial action. A spokesperson confirmed the union’s position remains unchanged.

The AoC said there was “no update” at present and the GMB was contacted but gave no response.

The National Union of Teachers has also put out a consultative ballot to 93 sixth-form colleges (SFCs) across England, over the issue of real-terms cuts to funding.

If members vote in favour of strike action, a formal ballot will be held in February over whether to hold a national one-day strike.

David Igoe, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said the call for strike action was “unfortunate and misplaced”.

“It is damaging what is generally a constructive industrial relations climate in our sector, at precisely the time we were making some headway with Government,” he added.

The government could be on track to meet its target of 3m new apprenticeship starts by 2020, according to provisional Skills Funding Agency (SFA) statistics for the first quarter of 2015/16.

To hit the 3m target in the next five years there needs to be an average of 600,000 apprenticeship starts per year, or 150,000 per quarter — and the latest Statistical First Release provisionally shows 153,100 new starts for the first quarter of 2015/16, from August to October.

This is a 4 per cent increase on last year’s provisional figures, with 5,600 more starts. The greatest increase was in intermediate level apprenticeships among the under 19s, with 3,000 more starts recorded.

In contrast, the greatest decrease was in intermediate level apprenticeships for the 19-24 age group, with the number of starts decreasing by 2,300, or 5 per cent, compared to provisional statistics for the first quarter of 2014/15.

However, though the statistics look on track for the government’s 3m target, the final figures could call this success into question. Last year’s final figures showed the first quarter to carry the most new starts at 163,600 – subsequent quarters brought lower figures, resulting in total new starts of 499,900 for the year.

The figures for apprenticeship framework starts are in contrast to those for the new apprenticeship standards, which saw just 700 starts.

Skills Minister Nick Boles said: “Young people today have more doors open to them than ever before. Today’s figures show that savvy young people see apprenticeships as a fast-track to a successful career. Apprenticeships are real jobs that combine studying with hands on experience in the workplace.

“Apprenticeships and traineeships are creating the highly skilled and productive workforce that is supporting our country’s economic growth. We are on the right track to delivering 3m apprenticeships by 2020.”

The provisional figures also showed an increase in the number of new traineeship starts, with 7,600 starts recorded in the first quarter of 2015/16, compared to only 5,000 for the previous year. And the growth could well continue with news, reported yesterday by FE Week, that restrictions limiting who can deliver traineeships were to be lifted next month rather than from August.

A Liverpool-based independent learning provider (ILP) has launched an appeal after it slumped from its previous ‘good’ Ofsted rating to ‘inadequate’.

The report on Oakmere Community College, which recruits around 300 learners each year on 16–19 study programmes, rated the ILP as inadequate across the board. The rating was down from its previous ‘good’ Ofsted rating in March 2012.

Bosses at the ILP, which has been allocated around £5m by the Education Funding Agency for this academic year, said they were appealing against the result of the report, which was highly critical of learner attendance, among other issues.

It said: “Too many learners do not attend lessons regularly or on time. As a result, they learn little and do not achieve their potential.

“The poor pattern of attendance and punctuality interrupts the learning of those who do attend regularly and slows their progress.”

The proportion of learners on study programmes who successfully achieved their qualifications, the report warned, was also “low”.

It added that this proportion was “significantly lower than other providers, with less than half of learners achieving their qualification in the last year”.

Managers were also criticised for failing to “manage successfully the transition to study programmes from foundation learning programmes which they offered at the last inspection”.

“They do not ensure that the full requirements of study programmes are met for all learners; for example, not all learners benefit from good work experience,” the report, published on January 18, added.

It said: “Managers have not developed effective arrangements to monitor learners’ attendance and punctuality, which have been low for the last two years.”

“Oakmere’s strategy to ensure a high standard of teaching in English and mathematics lacks detail and too few learners achieve their qualifications,” it said.

It added that “too many learners do not benefit from a well-planned individual study programme” and too few gained from “well-structured, well-planned and suitable work experience which meets their individual needs and aspirations”.

However, the report said that staff worked well with external agencies “to safeguard the welfare of all learners”.

“The majority of staff have recently completed training on how to identify extremism and radicalisation and how to protect learners. However, they are yet to use this information in their work with learners,” it added.

It also pointed out that “leaders and managers place a strong focus on engaging and recruiting learners who are hardest to reach”.

A spokesperson from the ILP said: “We are of course extremely disappointed with the Ofsted report and are robustly defending the outcome through the appeals process and therefore cannot say more at this time.”

Ofsted has said it will not comment on individual cases.

Skills Minister Nick Boles will face a grilling from MPs on the Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy on Monday (January 25).

A spokesperson for the committee, created from sub-committees of the Education and the Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) select committees, said Mr Boles would be questioned on a number of FE-related issues including apprenticeships, careers advice, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects.

“The committee will [also] quiz Mr Boles about his role as a joint Minister in the Departments for Education and Business, Innovation and Skills, and about how effectively two departments work together on education and skills matters,” the spokesperson added.

It comes after the committee launched an inquiry into careers advice, information and guidance before Christmas, as reported in FE Week.

It is looking at issues such as the quality of current careers advice and its effectiveness in supporting people into apprenticeships, focusing in particular on developments since publication of the Education Committee report Careers guidance for young people: The impact of the new duty on schools, in 2013.

The committee held its first meeting on December 7 and is jointly chaired by Iain Wright (pictured above left), MP for Hartlepool and chair of the BIS Select Committee and Neil Carmichael (pictured above right), MP for Stroud and chair of the Education Select Committee.

Monday’s hearing is due to start at 4.30pm.

The date when the restriction requiring providers to have grade one or two Ofsted ratings to run traineeships will be lifted has been moved forward from August to the start of next month.

The announcement was made in the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) Update bulletin published on its website this afternoon.

Currently, only outstanding and good providers can deliver the programme, introduced in 2013, although they can subcontract to grade three (‘requires improvement’) and non-inspected providers.

But the government announced on December 7 that its grade one and two (outstanding and good, respectively) restriction was being removed from August, which had been repeatedly called for by the Association of Employment and Learning Providers.

Today’s notice, however, stated that the SFA “will bring this rule change forward to February 1, as detailed in the Funding Rules 2015 to 2016 Version 2 Addendum 3.

“All other 2015 to 2016 funding rules continue to apply. If you have an existing funding allocation and the appropriate contractual arrangements, you will be able to deliver traineeships ahead of the 2016 to 2017 funding year,” it added.

It is hoped the move will help to produce an improvement on last academic year’s 19,400 starts.

The lifting of the restriction was revealed in two documents, published before Christmas — English Apprenticeships: Our 2020 Vision, and an attachment to Skills Minister Nick Boles’s letter to college governors this month, entitled Implementing the FE and skills reform programme BIS/DfE brief on progress for FE governors and leaders.

They both stated: “When we introduced traineeships we required that providers are graded ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted in order to ensure quality from the outset, but said we would keep this under review as the programme develops.

“Now that traineeships are fully established and getting excellent results for young people, from 2016/17 we will place them on a par with other provision by removing this requirement.”

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