Government plans to create 3m apprenticeship starts by 2020 are “largely unfunded,” post-16 policy adviser Professor Lady Alison Wolf claimed today in a hard-hitting report that warns FE could “vanish into history” to foot the bill.

The King’s College academic, who penned a 2011 government review of vocational education, said the push for apprenticeship numbers risked “major cuts” to the rest of the adult skills budget and branded post-19 funding as “unstable, inefficient, untenable and unjust”.

In her latest report, entitled Heading for the precipice: can further and higher education funding policies be sustained?, Professor Wolf challenged the government on its apprenticeships pledge, saying: “The government has made commitments to apprenticeship which appear to be largely unfunded.

“One obvious source of funds is the rest of the adult budget. This has been falling sharply in recent years, and is currently one of the few sizeable ‘unprotected’ budgets in Whitehall which can be adjusted easily.

“It seems extremely likely that additional, major cuts, will be made, further widening the resource gap demonstrated in this paper.”

It comes just days after Skills Minister Nick Boles told the Association of Employment and Learning Providers conference how a study showing the return on public funding of apprenticeships outweighed that of classroom-based courses would “guide” decisions.

The report, supported by the Gatsby Foundation, also comes as the sector prepares to take its share of £900m of cuts facing the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Department for Education, while providers were told they would have to wait until after the July 8 budget for a decision on in-year apprenticeship funding growth requests.

Martin Doel (pictured below right), chief executive of the Association of Colleges (AoC), said: “Professor Wolf is right to say that unless its funding is protected adult education and training could disappear entirely.

“If post-19 education starts to vanish so do the future prospects of the millions of people who may need to retrain as they continue to work beyond retirement age, as well as unemployed people who need support to train for a new role.

“Adult education and training in England is too important to be lost, to both individuals and the wider economy.

“Colleges are ambitious and work hard to make sure they’re helping to produce a workforce with the right skills for the local job market but they cannot do this alone.

“The Government must look again at its funding of adult education and training and ensure that it is given the support it so rightly deserves.

“In 2011, Professor Wolf issued a landmark report which changed the face of post-16 education. Her latest report is equally as important.”

Professor Wolf’s 87-page report goes on to say that spending per head on the 20 to 60-year-old population has halved since 2010, while cuts in the early years of the Coalition meant the total skills budget fell below 2002 levels a decade later.

Professor Wolf warns that as the gulf between college and university funding continues to expand, student demand will move into the university sector, driving technical education out of the FE colleges — which are best placed and most suited to delivering it.

Her report says the result will be the destruction of the college-based part of the education system, crippling the country’s ability to provide technical, employer-facing education. Further, it will place unsustainable demands on the higher education budget, potentially threatening quality.

“We should all be extremely concerned about our increasingly inefficient and inegalitarian system of funding post-19 education. Our future productivity and prosperity are at risk if we don’t address the ongoing erosion of provision outside the universities,” said Professor Wolf.

Nigel Thomas, director of education & skills at the Gatsby Foundation, said: “Professor Wolf’s report lays bare the failures of the current system of FE and HE funding and how these threaten the provision of technician-level training. Technicians are critical to our economy but our skills system is not producing them in anywhere near sufficient numbers.”

A BIS spokesperson said: “The government is committed to creating 3m apprenticeship starts by 2020 and will continue to work with colleges and business to ensure that happens.

“We will continue to focus investment in areas that have the most impact on increasing the skills of our  workforce and help increase productivity across the country.”

Skills Minister Nick Boles has justified the government’s emphasis on apprenticeships at the cost of adult education by pointing to research showing the programme had a 43 per cent greater return on public investment.

Speaking on day one of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers annual conference [click here for the FE Week supplement] in his first public FE event since the General Election, Mr Boles pointed to data published earlier in the day suggesting apprenticeships delivered a higher return to the economy than other vocational education courses.

The report, entitled Measuring the Net Present Value of Further Education in England, showed there was a £28 return for every £1 invested in level three apprenticeships, but for non-apprenticeship courses at level three the return was 43 per cent lower at £16.

“Apprenticeships at level three, we estimate, generate £28 of value to society for every £1 that government spends,” he said at Hammersmith Novotel on Monday.

“Apprenticeships at level two generate £26 for every pound of government investment. A full time level two non-apprenticeship course, generates £21 for every £1 of investment.”

The level three full time non-apprenticeship course generated even less than level two with £16 per £1 put in. And Mr Boles said the research “was not very different” to that of last year.

“It suggested that there was a dramatic impact on people’s earning power if they completed at level two or level three apprenticeship, a slightly less but nevertheless positive impact if they did a full-time programme,” he said. He said the research would “guide” the government.

“We’re going to be guided very clearly by this data,” said Mr Boles. “We didn’t just pull the figure of 3m apprenticeships out of the air for no reason, we did so because all of the evidence suggests that a programme which combines employment with training where they both feed off each other, both with formal training and informal training in work, that those are the programmes that have the highest impact on individuals’ chances of increasing and improving their income and on the national wellbeing, and it is because of that that we shall be investing in it as an apprenticeship programme.”

He added: “I don’t want to pretend to you that there are not going to be areas where we have to cut back. You know as well as I do that the whole area of post+16 education and 19+ skills is an area that is not protected within the budget.

“And at the same time it doesn’t take a genius the work out that we are going to have to invest more in apprenticeships if we are going to both achieve the 3m number and ensure that the quality which is being shored up by the trailblazer reforms is always assured.”

He continued: “That is going to cost more money for employers and for government if we’re going to hit hat 3m number of high quality apprenticeships.”

In his speech ahead of the July 7 Budget, he further told delegates: “I want to talk to you about the context in which decisions will be made and I want to be very frank with you — there’s a budget next week and a spending review in the autumn and we are working extremely hard in government to work out what are the priorities we should be investing in.

“So there will over the next few months be some difficult choices to make about the less productive elements of our FE system, about those programmes where maybe we can expect more from the individuals taking the programme in terms of their ability to contribute to the funding of them and we also need to look at the range of qualifications available to young people.”

Mr Boles also reaffirmed the government’s commitment to look at the general FE college model, as outlined in the Conservative manifesto.

“We need to look at the range of institutions that exist within FE and technical and professional education and ask ourselves whether the general FE colleges we have had for so long, many of which do a very fine job in lots of areas, whether that general FE model is one we want for the future when resources are strained,” he said.

He concluded: “We need to be helping people make investments in their own future.

“We as a government need to be investing in the future of young people so that they can command higher wages and go on to pay higher taxes and we need to help companies make the investment in the future of their workforce so that they whole economy and the whole sector in which they operate proves that they are more competitive.

“It is by improving the competitive element of companies, by improving the productivity of individuals that we will give everybody the chance to succeed in their chosen career.”

 

The full AELP 2015 annual conference speech of Skills Minister Nick Boles

AELP 2015 annual conference host Laura Kuenssberg:

There are plenty of things Skills Minister Nick Boles has to address — the prioritisation of apprenticeships, and the thing that we keep coming back to already today, that three million headline figure. The point is, if you achieve it just in number, then maybe it’s not really worth it. If you achieve it in quality too, then maybe it is something that’s really worth talking about. So how is he going to deliver that? So, Nick Boles, without further ado.

Mr Boles:

Laura, thank you very much. I’m not sure if I have thanked you for drawing my attention to what is always excellent journalism in FE Week, but otherwise, thank you for the introduction.

And thank you everyone for asking me today, this is my first public event since the election, and I have delayed making any public statements until now for a reason, and it’s that very same set of reasons which are I’m afraid going to be why I am going to talk about it freely and openly, but I won’t be taking questions afterwards.

I’m delighted the Prime Minister appointed me again to take this position at the election, because I felt like I spent the previous 10 months before the election doing my own little apprenticeship about the FE sector and about apprenticeships themselves.

And it’s an extremely complex field which to outsiders can prove pretty baffling, but certainly by May I felt I had a pretty good understanding of the different elements of it, the different institutions, and the different people, and of what is good and what is not so good in our system of technical and professional education.

I spent most of the last 10 months, as you probably would have observed, embarrassing poor apprentices up and down the land by forcing them to take selfies with me, and I feel that the least I can do now is to get back into the trenches to try and make sure that the programme that they are on of apprenticeships is a programme that commands widespread respect throughout the country as a high quality way to a carer as it once did perhaps more recently have not been able to do.

Now, I want to talk to you about the context within which decisions will be made, and I’ll just be very frank with you; there is an upcoming budget, it will not have escaped your attention, and there is a spending review in the autumn, and we are working extremely hard in government to work out what are the priorities that we should be investing in, and what are other areas where efficiencies and savings will need to be made.

And if I am, I’m afraid, being a little bit coy about not taking questions, it’s simply because I don’t want to just irritate you by saying: ‘Wait for the next budget,’ or, ‘Wait for the spending review.’

I promise you I will tell you, in the next few minutes, everything I can tell you at this stage about the direction of our thinking.

And it all starts with this much-used buzzword, which lots of people use but perhaps not everybody understands, which is productivity.

The Chancellor has already announced that there will be a productivity plan that will be produced alongside the budget, and which I can tell you right now is informing all of our conversations, both about the budget and about the spending review, and about associated reforms.

What are the steps, what are the programmes that are most going to assist the process of increasing the productivity of British worker?

And actually, what is productivity? It’s simply this — you go to work, you work for an hour, what is going to ensure that the value of what you produce in that hour is higher this year than it was last year, and is comparable to our competitors?

And we start off, famously, in a position where our productivity is not as high as our competitors’, and I think we need to be honest that there are both good and bad reasons for that. In this country, we have an astonishingly high, now record high, employment rate.

What that means is that many of the least productive people in our society are in full-time employment, and to my mind that’s good news — but of course, its effect on the figures is to tug down the average productivity of the labour force per hour of work.

You go across the channel, you can go into a country where many of the less productive members of society are not in employment; they have much lower employment rates, and much higher average productivity rates. Personally, I know which country I prefer to be living and working in.

But what that does not do is somehow excuse us from any attempt to ensure that productivity is increasing every year, because it’s only through increases in productivity every single year that we can ensure that working people will secure, because they’ve earned a wage increase in real terms every single year. That is our challenge.

I don’t think we should be so obsessed about the rather glib stories about, you know, we have to work until Friday and the French will knock off on Thursday morning, because actually our employment rates are so much higher.

What we should be focused on is what is going to help everybody increase their productivity every year so that they can command higher wages from employers, who are able to compete in the market place because of the abilities of the people they employ.

So it will be the productivity plan that will drive all of the reforms in the areas for which I am responsible. And you may not have noticed, because you have all been travelling to get here today, but we have released this morning some dramatic figures which show how important it is what you do in terms of its effect on national income and productivity.

We have released the figures of estimates of the value, per pound of government investment, of different kinds of technical and professional education programmes.

Apprenticeships at level three generate, we estimate, £28 of value to society for every £1 that government spends. Apprenticeships at level two generate £26 for every £1 of government investment. A full-time level two course generates £21 for every £1 investment — and slightly curious, this, I’m interested to see all of the data issues that can sometimes have underlying things going on, which we need to understand better — full-time level three generates £16 per £1 investment, which implies that level three full-time at college is generating less than a level two, where an apprenticeship at level three is generating more than a level two.

It’s not impossible — of course it’s not impossible — but I think we need to understand the figures.

Now, what that does is sit very comfortably alongside the data that we released last year, which talked about the impact on people’s earning power of different programmes, and it was not very different.

It suggested that there was a dramatic impact on people’s earning power if they completed a level two or level three apprenticeship; a slightly less, but nevertheless positive, impact if they did a full-time programme.

We are going to be guided very clearly by this data. We didn’t just pick out the figure of 3m apprenticeships out of the air for no reason, we did so because all of the evidence suggests that a programme that combines employment with training, whereby both feed off each other, both formal training and informal training in work, that those are the programmes that have the highest impact on individuals’ chances of increasing and improving their income, and on the national wellbeing — and it is because of that that we will be investing in that apprenticeship programme.

We need, however, to have a good career programme, and we all accept what I think of as wholly mistaken and deluded for the Labour Party to suggest, that we should get rid of level two apprenticeships and somehow rebadge them as some other programme — that was a misguided policy.

Where I think it is right is to say we need something that is there for people who are not yet ready to go onto a level two apprenticeship, and I think that many of you have been doing excellent, innovative work in developing the concept of traineeships, and while we started quite small with traineeships in order to get it right, it is now something that we very much want to expand in the future.

And I think we may need to look at the whole definition of what is in a traineeship, and here we need your help and your ideas.

I think it is incredibly important that the programmes the Job Centre Plus has to try and help people gain the skills and the experience and the confidence they need to be able to secure jobs, integrates well with the traineeship programme that somebody might get on to when they arrive at their college without going through JCP, but where people recognise that they need preparation before they can hold down an apprenticeship and complete it successfully.

So there will be an absolute commitment to that pre-apprenticeship stage, there will be a commitment to traineeships, but I hope that we can all think quite creatively about what should go into a traineeship, and whether the terms within which it is currently defined are the best.

I am absolutely certain it needs to involve English and maths; I’m absolutely certain it needs to involve work experience.

What we need to have a debate about is does it need to have anything else in there specifically, do we need to be more prescriptive, and are we right in terms of the length of time that it is expected to last, currently a maximum of six months, and are we right to restrict the provision of it to certain kinds of providers more restrictively than we do with apprenticeships — these are all questions that I am very keen to explore with you over the next few months.

I don’t want to pretend to you, however, that there are not going to be areas where we are going to have to cut back. You know as well as I do that the whole area of post-16 education and of 19+ skills is an area that is unprotected within the budget; it does not have a ring-fence on it like education in early years or like the NHS or some other areas of government spending and we are of course going to have to look for some savings in the overall budget, and at the same time it doesn’t take a genius to work out that we are going to have to invest more in apprenticeships if we are going to be able to both achieve the 3m number, and ensure that the quality, which is being shored up by the Trailblazer reforms, that that quality is always assured, it is a minimum of 12 months, it is providing real value added to a person undertaking the apprenticeship.

That is going to cost more money for employers, cost more money for government, if we are going to hit that 3m number of high quality apprenticeships.

So there will, over the next few months, be some difficult choices to take about the less productive bits of our FE system, about those programmes where maybe we can expect more from the individuals taking the programme in terms of their ability to contribute to the funding of them.

And we also need to look, I believe, at the range of qualifications that are offered to young people. Are they properly defined? We need to look at the range of institutions that exist within FE, technical and professional education, and ask ourselves whether the general FE college that we have had for so long — many of which do a very fine job in lots of areas — whether that general model is a model that we want for the future when resources are constrained.

I am not going to pretend to you that I have final answers to any of those questions, it would be a bit cheeky if I did at this early stage — but those are the questions that we are asking intensively in government and it will always be interesting to hear from you in you have any particular views on that.

The final point though, I do want to make is the connection between this and the rest of the government’s programme.

The Prime Minister today has been setting out in a speech what is the whole point of the reforms to welfare and the reforms to education, and the reforms to businesses in this country, and it’s very, very clear, which is that we want people to be better off because their own efforts command a higher wage from businesses who are competing and succeeding.

That is the only sustainable way for people to be able to improve their lot in life.

We want welfare benefits to be there to help people who can work make the transition into work, but never to be put in a position where actually they would be better off staying on benefits than taking those few extra hours of employment.

And we want the welfare system to be there above all for those whose working days are over, who have worked hard all their lives, and have the right to earn a decent pension that increases every year, and for those who are never going to be able to participate fully in the workforce because their own abilities are so limited, or their own health is so challenged, that it would be unreasonable or unfair to expect it.

We have made quite dramatic strides in that direction over the last five years, but we have had by no means arrived at the final conclusion of that policy.

There is more reform to be done within the welfare system, within the education system, to ensure that that balance of responsibility and support is there for everyone and expects the right amount of contribution from everyone.

Within the area for which I am responsible, therefore, some of the same messages apply. We need to be helping people make investments in their own future.

We as a government need to be investing in the future of young people so that they can command higher wages and go on to pay higher taxes, and we need to help companies make the investment in the future of their workforce so that the whole economy and the whole sector in which they operate become more competitive.

It is by improving the competitiveness of companies, improving the productivity of individuals, that we will deliver an education system that gives everybody the chance to succeed in their chosen career.

That is what we’re working on, you will discover a little bit more next week in the productivity plan and in the budget, and I hope that some of you will be involved in conversations with me through various round tables that I will be holding over the summer which we will then begin to map out the detail of the reforms that will deliver this set of goals. Thank you very much indeed.

The government is making a “dog’s breakfast” of apprenticeships by making providers wait until after next month’s Budget before learning if they’ll get paid for provision already carried out, Shadow Minister for Young People John Woodcock has said.

In an exclusive interview with FE Week, he said the block on the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) telling providers the outcome of their quarter three growth requests was “needlessly creating problems”.

The uncertainty over whether providers will be funded for apprenticeships already started, as revealed by FE Week a fortnight ago, has forced providers to stop taking on learners for the programme.

It is likely the government’s target of 3m apprenticeship starts by the end of this Parliament will be hit, and some providers have even warned of having to lay off staff in the wait for news until after Chancellor George Osborne’s July 8 Budget.

Mr Woodcock said: “It is clear colleges and independent learning providers across the country are reeling from the decision to just out of the blue rearrange their budget — and they’re doing their best to provide the education and opportunities that the young people coming through rely on but they’re at sea at the moment.

“The government does have a real responsibility to put back some stability into the system or it is going create damage beyond even the scale of the cuts it has already committed to make.”

He added that Labour had “a critically important role try to help hold government to account as it is making the decisions like the dog’s breakfast that has been made over the growth requests”.

He said: “It is crazy and it is needlessly creating problems and difficulties for providers to deliver the service that they do and are passionate about.”

The delay in announcing whether providers would receive extra cash for over-delivery of apprenticeships and traineeships — seen as key areas for the government — follows an announcement by Mr Osborne that he wanted to see in-year savings of £450m each from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education, with FE earmarked for cuts.

However, Skills Minister Nick Boles told MPs that the £900m of cuts would not all fall on the sector.

Apprenticeships were protected in this year’s budget allocation, which saw swingeing cuts of up to 24 per cent for all non-apprenticeship funding.

The SFA declined to comment on Mr Woodcock’s remarks, repeating the statement that was made when FE Week first reported the growth funding announcement delay. An SFA spokesperson said it was “to ensure in-year funding is considered in line with government’s wider financial position”.

She added: “So far, in the 2014 to 2015 funding year, we have fully funded credible growth requests at performance points one and two, recycling £50m funds into apprenticeships and traineeships.”

Mr Boles declined to respond to Mr Woodcock’s comments.

Click here for coverage of the FE Week meet the new Shadow Minister event at Parliament and here for the event programme, including list of attendees

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Editor’s comment

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Growth cash today with no further delay

When FE Week exclusively reported the SFA delay to the quarter three growth allocations the consequence was inevitable.

Independent learning providers and colleges posted comments online to say they would be, or indeed had started, scaling back on apprenticeship recruitment.

At the FE Week event in Westminster on Tuesday (June 18), one provider also described how this was damaging its hard-won relationships with employers.

It is clearly ridiculous for the sector to scale back at the same time as the government has set ambitious growth targets. So how have we found ourselves in this position and what should be done about it?

The Treasury blocked the SFA from making allocations ahead of the July budget.

But the government’s 3m apprenticeships target requires a strong partnership between government and the FE sector.

It simply can’t be achieved against a backdrop of mistrust and uncertainty.

So, with the support of the SFA, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers should invite Treasury officials to their annual conference.

Let these policy-makers hear first-hand how damaging the delay is proving and demand the growth funding is allocated without any further delay.

Chris Henwood

chris.henwood@feweek.co.uk

The government should take some of the “buckets of cash” given to higher education and use it to prop up FE, a leading policy adviser has said.

Jonathan Simons (pictured front), head of education at the right-leaning Policy Exchange think-tank, which counts Skills Minister Nick Boles as founder, said the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) should divert cash from universities to help FE, which is “falling over”.

In an exclusive interview with FE Week, and expanding on his above comments from the Northern Rocks pedagogy conference in Leeds this month, he said the government needed to ensure value for money for “all students, regardless of what route they take”.

He said: “In advance of a challenging spending review, we need to think hard about how we best spend all available government funds. When it comes to post-secondary education, the field is currently skewed in favour of higher education.”

The sector, already hit facing a 24 per cent budget cut, is waiting to hear how a £900m in-year cut across BIS and the Department for Education would affect funding.

Indeed, at the time the 24 per cent cut was announced, Association of Colleges chief executive Stewart Segal said: “This is another major cut in budgets for the employment and skills sector while the funding for higher education continues to increase. This is the wrong focus while we are trying to give vocational learning the status it deserves.”

And cashflow concerns after the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) announced it was delaying a decision on growth requests for extra provision already delivered until after the July 8 Budget, have prompted some providers to halt apprenticeship intakes.

Mr Simons said: “When the adult skills budget is being cut by 24 per cent in 2015/16, and at the same time the higher education sector reports discretionary reserves for 2013/14 equivalent to just under half of their entire annual income, I’d expect BIS to think hard and work with colleges, universities, employers and training providers to ensure value for money in education for all students after the age of 18, regardless of what route they take and which qualifications they study.”

A BIS spokesperson said: “Any funding decisions will be made following the spending review.”

But Mr Simon’s call for a review of higher education funding in relation to FE was echoed in the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) submission for next month’s Budget.

“Partners across the sector recognise that to improve both understanding and take-up of skills training, from employers and individuals alike, we need to strive for greater simplification of the structures, funding streams and qualifications levels underpinning both FE and higher education,” it said.

It added: “We propose that government creates a single funding agency for all post 19 funding, merging the functions of the Skills Funding Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council for England.”

Apprenticeship funding could be “more effectively spent” with independent learning providers which can provide evidence of additional demand from employers, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) will say today.

The AELP will renew calls for a review of apprenticeship reforms and a simpler contracting system as it launches its annual conference in London.

The organisation will draw attention to a recent SFA survey of 52,000 employers which found that three-quarters scored providers between eight and 10 out of 10 for the “flexibility of training delivered” and refer to its own proposals on apprenticeship expansion.

The AELP will renew calls to use training providers to link schools and employers, expand the Ucas Progress site, refocus the National Careers Service budget so that more than 30 per cent is spent on under-19s and ensure Ofsted focuses on independent careers advice in schools.

It comes over an additional £900m funding cut from Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Department for Education budgets, along with a Skills Funding Agency (SFA) decision to delay a decision on in-year growth payments until after the July 8 budget, sparked concerns about capacity to deliver 3m apprenticeship starts the government wants to achieve by 2020.

Chief executive Stewart Segal said: “The SFA survey, following previous similar findings published by CBI and BIS, offers significant evidence that training companies working with employers can provide the drive for growing the apprenticeship programme.

“It is clearly a myth that providers are not flexible when it comes to delivery and it is providers who will engage more employers in this very successful programme.

“Reforms of the skills system should take this evidence into account. If we can increase the investment in apprenticeships, make longer term commitments to employers and providers in terms of budgets and improve the funding and contracting system by building on what works, then we can grow the programme and maintain the quality of delivery.”

The AELP will also use the conference as a platform to raise concerns that the expansion of traineeships is “being held back” by a requirement that providers must have at least a “good” Ofsted rating to offer the frameworks, having previously argued that although there should be a quality requirement, it should not be the only thing taken into account.

The AELP National Conference 2015 is taking place today and tomorrow at Novotel London West. Speakers include Skills Minister Nick Boles and shadow Education Minister John Woodcock.

Follow FE Week on twitter for live updates, and keep an eye out for a 16-page supplement on the conference, out with edition 143.

The Conservatives have been accused of making an “apparent U-turn” over enforced apprentice recruitment.

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) plans to make public bodies such as schools, hospitals and prisons take on apprentices were announced on Sunday, June 14.

But it comes after Conservative MPs opposed previous Labour proposals for enforced targets on apprenticeship recruitment.

Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne (pictured above) said: “Labour has long led calls for public procurement to be better used to boost apprenticeship opportunities. Sadly, ministers have blocked and opposed our plans at every turn. To see the government make an apparent U-turn is certainly welcome.”

Nevertheless, the policy will help ministers meet the target of 3m apprentice starts over the course of this Parliament, which was a central plank of the Conservative Party manifesto before they were elected on May 7.

A BIS spokesperson told FE Week “the level of the targets is still to be set.”

He said: “These will be stretching and will be based on analysis of the number of staff in the public bodies and the scope for further growth in apprenticeships.”

They came with plans for apprenticeships to be given equal legal protection as degrees to allowing a clampdown on firms misusing the term. The plans are all set to be introduced to Parliament in the autumn as part of the government’s new enterprise bill.

But in March 2013 Conservatives voted down Labour proposals to require companies receiving a government contract worth more than £1m to provide “apprenticeship opportunities”.

When asked, during a separate debate that month in the House of Commons, if he backed the idea, former Skills Minster Matthew Hancock (pictured below right) said “opportunities for the provision of apprenticeships” were only considered “on an individual basis”.

Mr Hancock also dismissed former Labour leader Ed Miliband’s plan, announced in September 2013, to force companies to train a “local” apprentice for every foreign worker they took on — branding them “illegal” under European Union law.

However, the BIS spokesperson said that the government’s recruitment plan was “on public bodies being set targets to take on more apprentices, not on public procurement contracts, which is a separate issue”.

Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: “We understand why the government sets targets, but they must ensure that the quality of apprenticeships does not suffer.”

Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said: “Although we are not convinced about having hard targets because employers should be recruiting apprentices for positive reasons, AELP has always maintained that the public sector should be doing more in offering apprenticeships.”

Mr Hancock and the Conservative Party declined to comment.

Click here for an expert piece by Edge Foundation acting chief executive David Harbourne on government plans for legal protection of the term ‘apprenticeship’

Newly-elected Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Select Committee chair Iain Wright has outlined his plans for greater collaboration with education’s fellow newly-elected committee chair Neil Carmichael.

Labour MP Mr Wright (pictured above left), who beat former BIS committee chair Adrian Bailey in the MPs’ vote on Wednesday (June 17), said he was “determined to hit the ground running”.

He said greater working with Conservative MP Mr Carmichael (pictured above right), who beat Tim Loughton, was one of his priorities.

“I am determined to hit the ground running and make the BIS select committee a real driving force in scrutinising government policies, championing business and skills and making sure FE has a really big voice,” Mr Wright told FE Week.

He added: “I’m particularly pleased about Neil’s election because one of the pitches I made, and we worked together on this, is that I’m very conscious that actually, despite the best efforts of business and education, often it is really difficult to make sure skills policy is closely aligned and co-ordinated between education and business as it should be.

“We have pledged to work very closely together on joint enquiries about the skills system, about how education works together with business, and also, the big thing economically with this parliament will be productivity. So we are going to be doing an awful lot together.”

Mr Carmichael said: “One thing I am going to be doing very soon is discuss with Iain our proposal of doing a joint report on dealing with productivity gap. We have already discussed this on the assumption that we both would win, we actually talked about it a week or so ago.”

Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges (AoC), congratulated the duo, saying they would “make excellent chairs and hold government to account very effectively”.

“We have worked with them both in the past and, through their close relationships with their local colleges, they have an excellent understanding of the challenges and opportunities further education and sixth form colleges will have in the next few years,” said Mr Doel.

“We strongly support the notion — as set out by Iain and Neil — about the importance of joint working between their committees especially as the work of colleges crosses both. We look forward to meeting them in their new capacities to discuss how colleges can help.”

A spokesperson for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers said: “It’s encouraging the BIS committee will be chaired by a former minister with direct responsibility for apprenticeships and we look forward to working with Mr Wright.

“As a member of the Education committee in the last Parliament, Mr Carmichael is already aware of the importance of issues such as improving careers advice in schools and we hope he maintains vigilance on these.”

An “area-based assessment” is being carried out by FE Commissioner Dr David Collins (pictured) into provision in South London’s Lewisham, Southwark and neighbouring boroughs.

Skills Funding Agency (SFA) chief executive Peter Lauener revealed details of the review in a letter to corporation chair of Lewisham Southwark College Christopher Bilsland, sent in April but made public Wednesday (June 17).

It comes after FE Week reported last moth that Dr Collins had been sent into both colleges after they got grade four Ofsted results — the second in a row for Lewisham Southwark — with BIS confirming they had entered “discussions” on a possible merger.

Mr Lauener wrote: “I can confirm the review will take the form of two linked structure and prospects appraisals of Lewisham Southwark and Greenwich Community Colleges, as well as a broader examination of the best arrangements to deliver strong outcomes for learners and employers across the area.”

He also confirmed Lewisham Southwark had been placed into administered status. A spokesperson for the college said Dr Collins had “welcomed the detailed recovery plans that have been put forward by the new board and recently-appointed principal Carole Kitching”.

Greenwich interim principal Lindsey Noble said the college was “participating fully in the structure and prospects appraisal”.

Mr Lauener’s letter was made public the same day commissioner reports for City College Brighton and Hove, Warrington Borough Council, and Norfolk County Council were released.

The report on Brighton, based on a visit in February triggered by the SFA declaring it inadequate for financial health, warned that “having an executive team comprising almost entirely of interims has a destabilising effect on the college”.

Its former principal and chief executive Lynn Thackway and deputy principal and finance director Colin Henderson left in February this year and September 2014, respectively.

The college, rated as ‘good’ by Ofsted in June 2011, currently employs deputy chief executive Paul Lonsdale and principal Monica Box on an interim basis. Ms Box said considerable progress had been made to “move the college swiftly towards a sustainable financial position”.

A college spokesperson added: “The principal appointment process is underway and we expect this to be concluded by the end of the month.”

A letter from Skills Minister Nick Boles accompanying Dr Collins’ report on Warrington’s community employment learning and skills service, following a February inspection triggered by an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted rating in October, said he agreed with the commissioner’s view that “delivery of this provision would be better provided by the colleges and other providers in the area”.

A council spokesperson said: “We fully accept the recommendations from the commissioner.”

The report on Norfolk’s adult education service, following a late March inspection triggered by an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted rating in January, called for “significant investment in the IT infrastructure and management information systems and new posts to lead and develop the service”.

A council spokesperson said in line with the commissioner recommendations it had appointed Helen Wetherall as interim head of adult education services. She added the council’s “data and ICT” systems had also improved.

The reports came the day after a 38-page FE Commissioner guide on college mergers was published by BIS.

New regional scrutiny committees will consider complaints about Ofsted from September as the education watchdog acts to address transparency criticisms.

The eight bodies, each made up of an Ofsted official not involved in inspections along with an “external” provider leader put forward by “appropriate national representative bodies”, will rule on internal reviews of complaints about inspection.

The news comes almost 18 months after the watchdog’s complaints system was branded “utterly pointless” by Dame Jackie Fisher, who famously threw inspectors out of Newcastle College in 2012 when she was its chief executive.

It also comes after FE Week revealed last year that of 35 formal complaints from September 2012 to mid-November 2013, 13 were upheld and at least one produced a significant uplift of grades from ‘requires improvement’.

The committees will form part of a new common inspection framework (Cif) spanning FE, schools and early years from September.

And the handbooks for the new Cif, which comes just under three years after the current Cif was introduced, were launched at an event in Westminster on Monday (June 15).

Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw, speaking at the event, said: “I intend to set up a high-level scrutiny committee in each of Ofsted’s regions, made up of HMI and senior education practitioners not involved in carrying out inspections for Ofsted. They will assess and rule on the internal reviews of complaints about inspection. Their decision will be binding on Ofsted.”

It was exclusively revealed in FE Week in August last year that the education watchdog planned for inspections to be “harmonised” under one CIF.

Ofsted’s resulting eight-week consultation on the unified Cif plans, entitled Better inspection for all, closed before Christmas and its subsequent report on almost 5,000 responses indicated broad support.

Gill Clipson, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges (AoC), said she was “pleased” to hear about the assumption during short inspections that good colleges remained good.

She added: “Too often we hear from colleges that inspection teams begin from a negative hypothesis which is dispiriting to say the least.

“We are also pleased to see the Ofsted complaints procedure is to be made transparent as this is something AoC has long been calling for.”

Stewart Segal, Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive, said: “While we are generally content with the direction of travel Ofsted has taken over the new Cif, we have expressed concern at the short timetable for its introduction, especially as the current framework has only been in place for two years.

“Providers’ preparation has not been helped by the fact the Ofsted handbook has only just appeared so we need to understand how some of the new elements in the framework such as the application of the Prevent strategy and the delivery of English and maths will be judged.

“We need to ensure Ofsted recognise the differences as to how those policies apply to learners that are employed, such as apprentices.”

He added: “The establishment of regional scrutiny committees is a very welcome step.

“For independent providers, for whom a grade four can automatically mean a loss of contract and hence the possible closure of the business, having this new avenue of appeal is a very sensible reform.

“We are pleased we will be involved in ensuring those panels are fair, open and transparent.”

The new Cif handbook further sets out a plan to give the assessment of learners’ welfare, behaviour and personal development more sway over the outcome of inspections of providers from September.

During the new inspections, judgements will be made on each major type of provision, including study programmes, apprenticeships, traineeships, adult learning programmes, high needs provision and full-time 14 to 16 provision.

But inspectors will no longer make judgements on specific subject areas. Ofsted will also launch new short inspections — as short as two days — for providers previously rated good, conducted on the assumption the institution under scrutiny remains good.

Click here for an expert piece on the new Cif by former FE and skills Ofsted inspector Phil Hatton