Education Secretary Nicky Morgan and Skills Minister Nick Boles will be witnesses in the final evidence session of the House of Lords Select Committee on Social Mobility this week.
The Conservative duo are expected to field questions on topics such as funding for FE on Wednesday, December 9.
Their appearances will close the process of evidence-gathering from witnesses as part of the select committee’s inquiry into social mobility in the transition from school to work.
The committee, which was formally appointed on June 11, is required to report on its findings by March 23.
The key question of funding for FE will be addressed during the session, as will employability skills, work experience and careers education.
Other topics will be the policy focus on young people who do not do A-levels or attend university, pathways through the education system to employment, and incentives for employers, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to offer guidance.
The evidence session will start at 10.35am in Committee Room 4A of the House of Lords.
It comes a week after Alan Milburn, chair of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, spoke to the committee about the experience of disadvantaged students in the education system.
Mr Milburn described the pathway into employment via vocational education as “an absolute jungle” and discussed changes in the expectations of employers for young people.
Follow @FEWeek for live coverage of the hearing using the #HLSMC hashtag.
Invitations to tender for almost £15m of long-awaited European Social Fund (ESF) cash were published today.
Details of the first five areas involved in the first round were unveiled by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and ESF (and are available here) — more than four months after the previous 2007 to 2013 ESF contracts closed on July 31.
But today’s tender document shows that while invitations to tender close in 42 calendar days on January 18, that means just 27 working days excluding weekends and public holidays.
And then, after tenders totalling £14.86m have been awarded on March 30, winning bidders will have only 11 working days before delivery commences from April 14.
Task
Deadline
Publication of invitations to tender (ITT)
December 7, 2015
ITTs close
January 18, 2016
Notification of tender results
March 30, 2016
Day 1 mandatory standstill period
March 31, 16
Day 10 mandatory standstill period
April 11, 2016
Contracts issued from…
April 12, 2016
Delivery commences from…
April 14, 2016
However, the document indicated that the application process could still be subject to change when it said that the SFA “reserves the right to modify, amend or provide further clarification regarding the on-line tender documents at any time prior to the deadline for completion”.
“The SFA will notify you [providers] either by direct communication or as a broadcast message on the online message board,” it added. “Where such modifications constitute a significant change, the SFA may, at its discretion, extend the deadline for completion of the documents.”
Click on document to open
It was exclusively revealed by FE Week on Friday (December 4) that the local enterprise partnership (Lep) areas that the invitations to tender would go to included Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, and Solent (covering the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton).
The other Leps involved, as confirmed today, were Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership, Northamptonshire Enterprise Partnership, and Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership.
Today’s SFA document revealed that the biggest single contract is for Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, at £6.5m.
There would, it stated, be six contracts for Leeds City Region sharing £4m funding, while two separate contracts for Leicester and Leicestershire will be worth £2.45m and £909k respectively.
The contract for Solent will also be worth £693k and for Northamptonshire £300,000.
It comes after an SFA spokesperson told FE Week on Thursday (December 3) that “the second set of invitations to tender are scheduled to be launched on [Monday] December 14”.
“The procurement programme is flexible and when we are in receipt of agreed specifications from local enterprise partnerships (Leps), we will process and launch them in appropriate sets, at regular time frames,” she added.
It follows another FE Week exclusively on November 10, which revealed how the SFA was planning to run a “sequence of procurement” for handing out £650m of delayed ESF cash, which must be finished by the end of September next year at the very latest to allow a minimum delivery period of 18 months.
The delivery period, up to March 2018, was determined with ministers unable to say that the SFA would oversee anything other than apprenticeships beyond then.
The government has laid out its timeline for implementing apprenticeship reforms over the next five years as it chases its target of 3m starts.
The 24-page English Apprenticeships: Our 2020 vision document, previewed by FE Week yesterday, was published this morning with key milestones for employers, providers and the government itself.
The document says a “consultation on public sector duty” due to be launched this month, and potentially in place from Autumn 2017, on forcing the employment of apprentices and public reporting of progress against apprenticeship targets.
Outcome-based success measures will also come into play from 2016/17, and from January 2018 performance tables will feature 16 to 18 apprenticeship results.
It also outlines how the new Digital Apprenticeship Service online portal will be rolled out from October, allowing employers to “select the most appropriate apprenticeships, choose a training provider and pay for apprenticeship training and assessment”.
An “integrated apprenticeships communication campaign” is expected from next month, while from next spring there will be a host of changes including, among others, protection for apprenticeship term from providers whose programmes do not meet statutory definition and the government will “set out plans for reform of technical and professional education”.
It further outlines the apprenticeship grant for employers as being extended to the end of 2016/17 and how expressions of interest, apprenticeships standards and assessment plans will be submitted to the new Institute of Apprenticeships body from April 2017.
And the end of National Insurance contributions for apprentices aged under 25 from April is listed, along with the publication of “top 100 apprenticeship employer lists” from next summer.
Meanwhile, updated guidance on the post-16 education area reviews is expected from February.
Skills Minister Nick Boles was on hand to roll out Pizza Hut’s first ever apprenticeship scheme.
Ranging from level one to degree standard, the programme aims to provide apprentices with a range of skills, from guest service and hospitality leadership, through to more technical requirements focusing on food production and financial analysis.
The apprenticeships will be open to all Pizza Hut employees with each individual supported by a personalised development plan, and will be run with Manchester Metropolitan University.
Mr Boles said: “These apprenticeships at Pizza Hut Restaurants will offer even more people the opportunity to gain skills and knowledge while working.”
Pizza Hut plans to take on 1,500 apprentices over the next five years.
Pic: Skills Minister Nick Boles learns to make a pizza with new apprentices Alexia Seabrook and Jarod Pratt, both aged 18, to launch Pizza Hut Restaurants’ first apprenticeship programme. Credit: Adrian Brooks/Imagewise
The sector might not be about to change quite as drastically, or catastrophically, as had been expected from Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget. But the need for change is nevertheless as urgent as ever, explains Kirstie Donnelly.
So the Comprehensive Spending Review has finally been announced and, after months of speculation about exactly how deep the cuts would run, we are all breathing a collective sigh of relief at the unexpected surprise. It wasn’t so ‘bloody’ after all.
Perhaps the significant contribution that the FE sector makes to the UK economy is finally being recognised in helping to deliver the government’s plan for the future skills growth of the UK workforce.
The focus for the sector must now be the pursuit of quality
However, we’re not out of the woods yet. Back in September, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said that the FE sector was in a ‘fragile state’ and that certainly hasn’t changed. Added to that was the fact that the annual review by Ofsted was far from favourable, with Sir Michael Wilshaw’s inspectorate rating just 35 per cent of colleges as good or outstanding.
So what next? It’s vitally important that colleges and independent learning providers work more effectively with employers and accept they are there to serve their needs, and in turn the needs of the learner. Some colleges are already firmly on the case in this regard — Procat in Essex for example is fully immersed in its local employer landscape.
Closer employer links mean colleges will be able to make choices about their curriculums based on real insight which delivers not only skilled individuals but fills specific local skills shortages.
This is something that we at City & Guilds recognise and have invested considerably in. We work closely with employers on the apprenticeship reforms and are involved with two thirds of the new Trailblazer groups and we formed the Industry Skills Board (ISB) made up of a range of employers responsible for delivering apprenticeships.
The ISB recently published the Making Apprenticeships Work report, which provides a real employer view of apprenticeship reforms, how to implement successful reform and ultimately deliver quality apprenticeships.
The focus for the sector must now be the pursuit of quality; we have to push up standards right across the sector not only to address the concerns raised by Ofsted but also to ensure that we are viewed as being the best possible training option for the employers who will be making a significant financial contribution to training in the form of the levy.
They will now become the ‘customer’ of FE in the realest sense of the word as they will be making the choices of who they work with to achieve their skills needs.
This quality message also needs to get through to the learners themselves, particularly 14 to 19-year-olds who are still biased towards traditional academic learning. Our recent Great Expectations report, which surveyed over 3,000 young people, found that the vast majority of them (70 per cent) wanted to go to university despite economic modellers EMSI telling us that only 30 per cent of jobs were at graduate level.
We know that there are excellent professional and technical pathways that can give a young person a degree level education while they progress in their jobs but we need to do so much more to promote these routes.
It’s a fact that the sector must shed the reliance it has had on the government by looking for alternative routes of funding. This will include working more closely with local enterprise partnerships, tapping into new European Social Fund monies and being open to new commercial delivery models and partnerships. Equally we cannot ignore the success of the university sector in getting students to pay for their own courses and must consider how we turn the extension of 24+ loans into an opportunity by better selling the benefits to learners.
We have reached a moment in time where there has never been as much pressure on us as a sector to deliver. It will be tough, but we have the tools and the potential to make a huge contribution to the success of individuals and the country as a whole — it’s time for us to step up to the plate and show everyone what we’re made of.
The teams behind two proposed National Colleges told their plans were “not mature enough” to proceed have told FE Week of their determination to keep the projects alive.
Business proposals for seven different employer-led National Colleges were handed in to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills by July 17 with an announcement about successful bids pencilled in for last month’s Budget.
But Chancellor George Osborne said just five of the bids had been given the go ahead — with the National College for Wind Energy, in the Humber, and the National College for Advanced Manufacturing, in Sheffield, missing out.
A BIS spokesperson said: “Following a detailed assessment, which included presentations to the assessment panel from each of the colleges, it was concluded, subject to final due diligence, that five of the colleges were ready to proceed.
“The chairs of all the colleges have been informed of the outcome of the assessment process. The due diligence process with the five successful colleges has started.
“Proposals for a National College for Wind Energy and a National College for Advanced Manufacturing were not sufficiently mature to proceed.”
The National College for Advanced Manufacturing was hoping to have bases in Sheffield and Coventry in partnership with the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC) and manufacturers’ organisation the EEF, while the National College for Wind Energy was to be established in the Humber.
At Sheffield University’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) Training Centre, lined up as one of the bases for the National College for Advanced Manufacturing, Kerry Featherstone (pictured above), head of operations, said: “The HVMC and EEF are still in discussion with BIS about the development of the National College for Advanced Manufacturing. We are not yet in a position to confirm plans and timing.”
Maf Smith, deputy chief executive of RenewableUK, the renewable energy trade association that proposed the National College for Wind Energy to government alongside the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership, said: “It’s disappointing that the National College for Wind Energy wasn’t included in the wave of colleges announced as part of the Chancellor’s spending review.
“There’s a great deal of support and enthusiasm for this National College, so we’re currently reviewing the options available to us, to enable us to meet the needs of this important industry.
“We’re working with government and industry to find alternative routes forward so that we can continue to work together to address the skills challenges we face in our sector.”
The five successful projects were the National College for Digital Skills, the National College for High Speed Rail, the National College for Nuclear, the National College for Onshore Oil and Gas, and the National College for Creative and Cultural Industries.
The government previously pledged £80m funding for the colleges, to be matched by employers.
Skills Minister Nick Boles has said the aim is to have a network of industry-led National Colleges by September 2017.
An ex-offender who passed an exam less than 24 hours after giving birth has been honoured for her efforts to turn her life around through FE, writes Billy Camden.
Zoe Marie Roberts feared a traumatic past would continue to lead her to a life of crime — but she decided to change track and enrolled for studies at Coleg Menai Bangor and has not looked back since.
The 19-year-old learner studied a new direction course which consisted of health and social, IT and psychology, followed by a social sciences diploma.
Her determination to better her life was underlined when she sat her social work exam just one day after the birth of her third son, Harvey, and passed.
As recognition, Zoe was named winner of the No Offence Redemption & Justice Young Person Award, an annual award that recognises the achievements of people who have overcome adversity to change their lives.
Zoe being presented with her award. From left: sgt Stephen Williams, the officer who used to regularly arrest Zoe, Zoe Marie Roberts, Carys Jones from Gwynedd Mon Youth Justice Service and Lois Jones, Zoe’s former social worker
“When I heard I had been nominated for the award I was shocked as I didn’t think I was doing anything special,” said Zoe.
“I just wanted to give back to the community and to help others, to show them that there is a chance.
“When I heard I won it was an emotional time as it showed me the changes I had made in 10 years. It has been an amazing experience.”
At the age of 10 Zoe was abused which led to her committing minor offences within the community throughout her teenage years, usually while under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
She refused to attend school and later “became a danger” to herself.
Zoe’s life choices, along with her traumatic experiences, drove an escalation in her offending which led to two periods in custody and another of her being placed within a secure unit for her own safety.
On reaching age 18, Zoe decided she could no longer continue on this path and enrolled for her studies despite a four-year absence from education.
She has since progressed into work roles with a company offering young people the chance to live independently, and has also provided support voluntarily to the Edge of Care Team and helped to interview staff for the Youth Justice Service.
Zoe has also acted as a mentor to another young female with a similar offending history to herself.
Novus, a not-for-profit social enterprise which delivers education, training and employability services to people in custody, sponsored Zoe’s award.
The company’s director of justice services, Barbara McDonough, said: “Zoe clearly demonstrated to the judges her ability to make positive changes in her own life and sustain those improvements over a significant period of time. In addition, Zoe has helped others to change and has had a positive impact on people’s lives with similar issues to her own.”
Zoe added: “I still face difficulties now and my life is far from perfect but I’m far away from life of crime.
“Having my three children — Tylor, Sophea and Harvey — is what inspired me to change.”
Main pic: Zoe Marie Roberts with her No Offence Redemption & Justice Young Person Award
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is investigating a Midland man’s claim his local college is struggling with its legal duties under the Freedom of Information Act.
Julian Saunders complained to the ICO and requested that Sandwell College’s FoI practice be monitored after it issued a number of late responses to his requests.
Principal Graham Pennington (pictured right) has even sent him four apology letters for failing to disclose information that should have been released.
The college claimed that 60 per cent of FoI requests it had fielded so far this academic year had come from Mr Saunders and said that “unfortunately it can take time to collate complex information for so many different requests”.
The ICO has nonetheless agreed to discuss Mr Saunders’s case, which covered FoI requests into issues such as delays in revealing the number of student studying A-levels and publishing the minutes of the college’s governing board meetings.
A spokesperson for the ICO told FE Week it could not comment specifically on the case, adding that its role was to look into the complaint rather than investigate the college. “We cannot investigate other matters that may lie behind the request. We focus on only whether an organisation has complied with the Act,” she said.
She added: “There are circumstances under which we may monitor an organisation to check it is handling its FOI requests in a timely manner.”
Mr Saunders, who writes community news blog The Sandwell Skidder, began engaging with the college after it took over The Public — a public building in West Bromwich, where the college is based, that previously housed an art gallery and was run by his wife.
One of Mr Saunders’s FoI requests, made on June 6 last year, got no response, he claimed.
Mr Saunders followed up with a further email asking for an internal review on July 9, and received a response on August 4 apologising for the delay saying that his FOI request had been “forwarded to an incorrect email within Sandwell College”. His request was answered on August 8.
He said it was one of a number of internal review requests he had made to Sandwell College having seen his FoI requests go unanswered or contain significant redacted information.
He said these had resulted in four letters of apology sent to him from principal Mr Pennington. He wrote: “I consider that the college should have disclosed the information it held.” He added: “Please accept my apologies for the delay in providing this information.”
A Sandwell College spokesperson said: “So far this academic year we have received 10 FoI requests, six of which have been from the same person, requesting detailed information on various and complex subjects, including our A-level provision and arts provision at Central Sixth. In addition to these we have received five requests for internal reviews.
“These requests are all from the same individual, the husband of the former managing director of The Public, which the college has transformed from a loss-making arts facility into Central Sixth, a highly successful sixth form centre in partnership with Sandwell Council.
“These are the only areas of delay we are aware of. The college always endeavours to provide timely information but unfortunately it can take time to collate complex information for so many different requests. The college is constantly reviewing its processes to ensure efficiency.”
A typist course at Warwickshire College at the age of 29 was the moment Sarah Wright knew her “life was going to be different”.
Today she sits in the principal’s chair at Central Sussex College safe in the knowledge of when and where her next paycheque will come from — but such certainty and security was not always present in her life.
Almost from day one I knew that this was the sector for me because I absolutely loved the process of teaching and learning, and it became so fundamental and so important to me
Wright left school in 1975 at the age of 16 with “surprisingly to everybody, some pretty decent O-levels.”
However, with influential dad George not “overly impressed by academic qualifications,” Wright found herself married and settled for family life just two years later and by the age of 23 she had two children — Emma and James.
From left: Wright, aged two, with a monkey, grandmother Kathleen and mum Ann
But with her marriage having failed, and two small mouths to feed, Wright applied for a typing course at her nearby Warwickshire College.
She says: “When they interviewed me they advised me that I should do their mature A-level course — so I did that and I studied history, English and maths.”
It was a move that led to the realisation for Wright that “life was going to be different to how it had been before”.
She says: “I felt that, for the first time really, somebody in an educational environment believed in what I could do.
“So I did well in my A-levels, and then went on to Warwick University to do a history and politics degree.”
Wright, a grandmother-of-two, reflects with great passion on how much she enjoyed her university experience and explains how it made her grow in confidence.
Wright graduating from the University of Warwick with daughter Emma, who has two sons, and son James in 1993
And it was during her time at Warwick University that she met husband Gordon, who studied the same degree but in the year above. Wright, now aged 56, graduated when she was 33.
A move into journalism followed, before Warwickshire College asked Wright to do some cover teaching of GCSE and A-level English.
She says: “Almost from day one I knew that this was the sector for me because I absolutely loved the process of teaching and learning, and it became so fundamental and so important to me.”
Wright took up teaching part-time and also taught at an independent school. A year later she was offered full-time posts at both, but with “no doubt in mind” opted for the Warwickshire College post.
She says: “It just seemed to be such an exciting environment, and one in which I felt I could really make a difference.
Wright, aged seven, on holiday with dad George
“And I think the experience of not having done extremely well at school gave me an insight into the minds of the students there.
“I didn’t have the stereotypical ‘go through education, leave school, go to university and be the top of everything’ background,” adds Wright.
She worked at the college for a decade, working her way up through the ranks to the position of quality manager by 2003.
Her next career move was to take up post as director of quality at the nearby Solihull College, before returning to Warwickshire College in 2007 as vice principal until 2009.
Wright then landed the role principal of Seevic College, in Essex in 2010, before she secured her current role as principal of Central Sussex College in January 2013.
A three-year-old Wright enjoys what would become a lifelong pastime of reading
“When I arrived here and started looking at things, I felt a real thrill about being back in a large FE college,” she recalls.
Central Sussex College has 11,000 students and nearly 400 staff and Wright saw the job opening for the principal of the college as a great opportunity to make an impact on a sizable FE provider.
“However, it quickly became clear that the situation with the finances was not what I had believed — and we ended up that year with a £10m deficit,” explains Wright, who has overseen two Ofsted inspections at the college, both of which resulted in ‘requires improvement’ ratings.
She explains that the college had “a massive financial hole” due to building a new campus and says it took the college to borrowing more than 100 per cent of income — she says the average in the sector is around 40 per cent.
And a month after Wright’s arrival, the college received a notice of improvement for financial concern from the Skills Funding Agency (SFA), which was lifted in August.
Wright says she knew she had to build the college, which has a current SFA allocation of nearly £6m, from the “bottom up” when she arrived and so revamped the board and senior team.
Wright on holiday with husband Gordon in 2010
And while the finances blow soon after her arrival prompted a visit from FE Commissioner Dr David Collins in January, he would later praise the “well balanced” governing board which had “changed significantly over the past two years”.
“The senior management team has been completely revised following the appointment of a new principal in 2013,” reported Dr Collins.
“The incoming principal inherited a number of major problems including a debt representing more than 100 per cent of turnover and unsatisfactory internal auditing arrangements.”
Wright says the college has done all it can to enact the commissioner’s recommendations, but his involvement with the college has not ended there. He chairs the Sussex Coast post-16 education area review in which Central Sussex College is one of eight GFE colleges and three sixth form colleges whose futures could be in jeopardy.
“I am confident that the recommendations of the review will be sensible and sound, because of the people running it,” says Wright.
“So we do welcome it, and really we’re at an early stage, but we’ll work through it, and we’re pleased to be a part of it.”
Wright with grandsons George, aged six, and Sam, two
But back to the daily pressures of the college and Wright says “financial control now is extraordinarily strong” and she has made a “great effort to get their finances under control”.
And what keeps the college’s ethos strong, says Wright, is the effort and passion she and her team put into it.
She says: “I admire my team — I also really greatly admire the legions of staff in colleges across the country in what is a sector which has had successive cuts to funding and now must be considered underfunded, who every day go that extra mile to make that real difference.
“They help students achieve who wouldn’t necessarily have achieved, and they help them to have different lives to the lives they would have had if they hadn’t come to us.”
She adds: “I am very keen to walk around and talk to students to ask them about their experience of the college, and they tend to be very open and frank about things — and actually really mature about what they want and what they don’t want.
“Students do know when they are getting a good experience and when they’re not, so we do listen very carefully to that.
“I think some of the feedback that we’ve had very recently is that they like being taught by people who have been there and done it — and that has come through to me very strongly.”
But a great challenge remains, she says.
“I think the big challenge is the reputation of the sector and the lack of understanding sometimes about the good work that the sector does,” explains Wright.
“FE is about that fundamental change to the life of an individual who can then take their real part in the economic life of the country.”
It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
Hermione Lee’s Life of Virginia Woolf. I just think that’s an amazing read, and it’s non-fiction, which is quite unusual for me
What do you do to switch off from work?
Switching off isn’t something I’m particularly good at, but I see a lot of films and plays with my husband. I talk a lot to my sister, who is totally not in the world of education, but seems to understand it anyway.
But I guess really the only time that I completely switch off from work is when I’m playing with my two grandsons, George, aged six and Samuel, two. They are all-consuming, and I find them completely hilarious — I’m completely besotted
What’s your pet hate?
I really hate any form of smugness or pretention — pomposity. I just wonder who people are trying to fool when they behave like that
If you could invite anyone to a dinner party, living or dead, who would it be?
Both my parents have died in the last couple of years, so I’d definitely have them. I’d have the potter and fabulous writer Edmund de Waal. I’d also have Vanessa Bell, the artist, Nina Simone singing, and my dad playing saxophone. And my son would be cooking — he’s the best cook ever
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I wanted to write, but until I started teaching at an FE college, I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. But I was completely sure, almost from day one, that that’s where I was going to stay
Principal Graham Pennington (pictured right) has even sent him four apology letters for failing to disclose information that should have been released.
