Major charity and training provider Age UK has tumbled from a ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’ Ofsted rating.

The report out today rated Age UK as inadequate for effectiveness of leadership and management, quality of teaching, learning and assessment, outcomes for learners, adult learning programmes, apprenticeships, and traineeships.

The inspection team also returned ‘requires improvement’ verdicts on personal development, behaviour and welfare, and 16 to 19 study programmes.

The report said that “trustees do not hold senior managers sufficiently to account for the deterioration of learners’ outcomes and the inadequate quality of provision” and “trainers fail to motivate and challenge learners”.

It added that senior leaders and managers had “systematically failed to address the areas for improvement” highlighted in its previous ‘good’ across the board Oftsed report published in February 2013.

That report had recommended, for example, that Age UK should quickly identify “learners at risk of leaving early and take corrective actions to help them achieve their qualification” and “ensure that staff make better use of initial assessment to plan learning”.

The report out today was damning of apprenticeship training.

“Too many apprentices make slow progress and fail to achieve their qualifications. Learners’ performance has significantly declined since the last inspection,” it said.

The report also pointed out that more than a quarter of all learners fail to attend classes

“Too many learners do not demonstrate the employability skills that they are developing when they attend sessions at Age UK,” it added.

Of the approximately 3,500 learners with the provider, approximately 2,300 are on apprenticeships, 100 are on traineeships, 613 are full-time learners on the 16–19 study programme, and 480 are adult learners, mainly on part-time employability programmes, according to the report.

It warned that “staff do not develop learners’ English and mathematical skills effectively across all programmes of study”.

However, it identified “good pastoral support” as a strength with Age UK’s provision.

“Learners have good access to warm and welcoming learning centres complemented by a good range of training resources,” it said. “Age UK is consistently good at supporting some extremely vulnerable learners who have significant difficulties with learning, for example, care leavers, young parents, and adults with identified mental health difficulties.”

The report added that in order to improve “trainers should improve progress reviews for apprentices, and challenge individual learners to make better progress through the use of specific learning targets, which are reviewed carefully and regularly”.

It also, for example, called for managers to implement “effective strategies” to improve teaching, learning and assessment, by challenging all staff to develop their skills, and “creating a more professional approach to the observation of teaching, learning and assessment”.

Managers should also, the report said, take “decisive action” to improve the teaching of functional skills in English and mathematics to apprentices.

A spokesperson for Age UK said: “We are very disappointed with the results of the Ofsted inspection which took place in November 2015.

“We have immediately taken the decision to review our processes and put an action plan in place to ensure our processes are scrutinised effectively. We are now working extremely hard to make improvements and address the concerns raised by inspectors.

“Our priority is to make sure that our training activities deliver the highest standards. Age UK’s trustees and directors will closely supervise the actions and performance of Age UK Training to ensure that standards improve quickly and that this improvement is sustained.”

A college has turned to its county council for a £700,000 loan to help address a “need for short-term cashflow support”.

A Carlisle College spokesperson told FE Week on Tuesday (January 5) that the loan from Cumbria County Council would be repaid “in May 2016”.

The announcement prompted general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders Brian Lightman to say that he was “not surprised” colleges were having to turn to alternative sources of finance, bearing in mind the precarious financial situation for the sector.

“All FE colleges are under immense financial pressure at the moment,” he added.

When asked by FE Week why Carlisle College did not ask the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) for a loan, which a number of colleges have done to tide over their finances, he said it had “followed Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) guidance published in October 2015.

“It states that ‘exceptional financial support (EFS) will only be considered when it is clear that the college, following full consideration by its Governing body, has exhausted all other options’.

“The college, having identified a need for short-term cashflow support and in line with the guidance approached an alternative lender, in this case the County Council, for consideration of such support on a commercial basis. The college kept the SFA informed of its actions.”

He added that the college’s financial health remained “satisfactory”.

“The loan fulfils a cash flow requirement until May 2016, given that the revenue funding payment profile restricts the cash paid to colleges between January and March then makes it up between April and June,” he said.

It comes after college’s principal, Moira Tattersall, reportedly told the Cumbria-based News and Star: “Normally in a situation like this we’d would just go and get an overdraft, but banks are nervous nationally because there is a lot of uncertainty in the sector at the moment.”

“This is also happening elsewhere in the country and other colleges are being encouraged to go to their local authorities and ask for loans.”

Cumbria County Council declined to comment to FE Week on the loan.

However, draft minutes from its cabinet meeting on December 18 showed the council agreed to provide a “short term secured loan at commercial rates” in response to the college’s request for financial support.

A spokesperson for the Local Government Association said it did not collate data on the number of councils that have given loans to colleges.

A spokesperson for the SFA said it was unable to comment on specifically on the council loan to Carlisle College.

However, she added: “We work with colleges to seek assurance, that as independent institutions they are taking responsibility for their own financial health and developing robust recovery plans.”

The Association of Colleges declined to comment.

The new interim principal of troubled City College Coventry said lessons would be learned from its second inadequate Ofsted rating in less than three years — but insisted it didn’t “feel or look like a failing college”.

Dr Elaine McMahon was drafted in from January 4 as an interim replacement for Steve Logan, who had spent just 18 months as principal. He arrived just as the college was graded as ‘requires improvement’ — having received a disastrous grade four result the previous year that resulted in the departure of the then-principal Paul Taylor.

John Hogg was subsequently appointed interim principal to turn around college fortunes in July 2013, and Dr McMahon (pictured) now faces the same task.

She faces ‘inadequate’ ratings for effectiveness of leadership and management, quality of teaching, learning and assessment, personal development, behaviour and welfare, outcomes for learners, 16 to 19 study programmes, and apprenticeships.

The report on the college, which was allocated £4.8m by the Skills Funding Agency for 2015/16 as of August, said that “much teaching is inadequate, too few learners complete their qualification successfully and too few current learners make good progress in their learning”, although it recognised that the leadership team had “secured successfully college finances”.

But Dr McMahon told FE Week: “When I walked in my first impression was that this doesn’t feel or look like a failing college.”

However, she added: “We acknowledge the findings of the Ofsted report and will most certainly learn from it. To do so, we’ll need to work hard to help ourselves, but there are many reasons to be optimistic.”

Such optimism will come in the face of inspectors’ comments that “performance management of managers and staff is weak and has not raised the quality of provision to good across much of the college’s work.”

They added: “Managers continue to overgrade the quality of teaching, learning and assessment, and do not use a wide enough range of measures to judge fully and reliably the quality of learning”.

Dr McMahon, who introduced herself to students in the college’s main foyer at 8:30am on Wednesday (January 6) and had spent the previous two days meeting with staff, said: “Importantly, our courses match the needs of local business in a city that is seeing high levels of investment and growth.

“Our facilities can support excellent learning and I‘ve already met many staff who are experts in their fields and passionate about student outcomes. These are the people who can lead the changes we need to see and I look forward to working with them in the coming months.”

Dr McMahon led Hull College for nearly nine years until early 2013, during which time it received an ‘outstanding’ rating by Ofsted. She subsequently had stints as interim principal at Harlow College, Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College and Edinburgh College.