Ofsted has denied “jumping the gun” on an impending funding condition after a report appeared to criticise a college that fell from a ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’ judgement for failing to meet it.
From August, any learner aged 16 to 19 on a study programme with a grade D in GCSE English or maths has to be enrolled on a GCSE or approved iGCSE in those subjects until they reach at least grade C.
But 7,400-learner Bolton College was reprimanded by Ofsted in its latest inspection report because tutors “do not ensure that learners with a GCSE grade D successfully improve their qualification to a GCSE A* to C grade”.
FE consultant Phil Hatton, from the Learning Improvement Service, said: “The requirement to study GCSE for existing students with a D does not become a funding obligation until 2015/16, so in that sense if they are taking other qualifications a college is acting within agreed funding guidelines.
“The way it is worded in the report there is therefore an element of ‘jumping the gun’, however, inspectors could have made a judgement around a college having low expectations for raising the development of English and maths skills of their students.”
But an Ofsted spokesperson insisted the upcoming changes had “no bearing” on the report.
She said: “As per current Skills Funding Agency conditions, Ofsted assesses whether FE providers are supporting students who do not have a good pass in English and/or maths GCSE to work towards achieving these qualifications or an approved interim qualification as a ‘stepping stone’ towards GCSE.
“Where inspectors find students are not effectively supported in doing so this will be reflected in our inspection reports and judgements.”
The inspection result comes less than a month after FE Week research highlighted how the proportion of colleges and independent learning providers (ILPs) ordered to improve by Ofsted was on the rise. Of all the 57 general FE colleges, sixth form colleges and ILPs inspected and reported on between January 1 and May 5, 33 per cent were given a new grading at level three (requires improvement). For the same period last year that figure stood at 17 per cent of 64 inspections.
Nevertheless, in Bolton’s inspection report, Ofsted said the college had too few learners who were successful in achieving their main learning goal, and that the proportion of apprentices achieving their qualification within the planned time was inadequate.
It also said not enough learners studied GCSE English and maths qualifications and criticised verbal and written feedback to learners, as well as quality assurance interventions and the performance of tutors.
College principal Marie Gilluley (pictured) said the current Ofsted inspection framework was “very vigorous”, and said the college’s results were considered to “require improvement” despite being “around the national average last year”.
She said: “Our apprenticeship provision last year, where it was delivered by sub-contractors, was not good enough. We have been working for some time on a plan to improve our results in this area and have terminated all partnerships with poor success rates.
“Success in English and maths is hugely important for learners future prospects in the labour market, and we are delighted that teaching, learning and assessment for foundation English has been graded as ‘good’, with the majority of learners progressing to ‘higher level English courses or employment’.
“We are obviously disappointed that Ofsted judged us overall as requiring improvement but we are already working on our plans to improve and we are confident that
very soon we will return to being overall good.”
As a former Ofsted inspector, FE consultant Phil Hatton has probably seen some of the best and worst practices that teaching can offer.
He’s very keen to talk about his experiences — whether that’s the freedom of having left an organisation you’ve been part of for years, or the glee of being able to give others a glimpse of what goes on behind the curtain, it’s hard to tell.
“You get a feel for what a college is like very quickly,” he says.
“Sometimes you walk in somewhere and you just get this feel that there’s something very wrong.
Back from left: Hatton’s brother Steve, Hatton. Front, from left: Hatton’s brother Matt and mum Bridget, in Ireland, 1995
“You can’t put a finger on it, but to give you an example, there’s one college I was at recently, and it had a brand new building. It was absolutely gorgeous.
“But the classrooms had glass windows into the corridors and as we walked along this whole corridor, I’d never seen so many bored faces on the students.”
Hatton’s exposure to poor teaching started long before his Ofsted days — his secondary school, Bishop Thomas Grant School in Dulwich was, he says, “probably the worst in the country” at the time.
“Of course you didn’t realise how bad it was then,” says Hatton, aged 59.
“When it came to GCSEs, they didn’t let you do more than five, and me and my friend did ten each — but that was only because our parents went to see the head and threatened to pay for the extra exams.”
Hatton and the friend in question then became the first students in the 16 years since the school had opened to go to university.
Hatton’s parents, Sean and Bridget, emigrated from Waterford, Ireland, in 1950 and both found work at the Victoria and Albert Museum, helping to set up exhibitions.
It was an incident while he was growing up on a council estate in leafy Dulwich that first sparked an interest in inequality, he tells me, when he and his brothers applied to join the local Scout group and were asked which school they went to.
“And when we told them, they said ‘Oh, are you’re Catholic? Well you can’t join, we’re Church of England [CofE] only’,” says the Bromley dad-of-two.
“And it must have been just this local Scout troupe, because the Scout movement generally is very anti that sort of thing.
Hatton on holiday in Italy, aged 32
“But all the other boys on the estate were in it and we weren’t allowed and it was the first time I ever realised there was a difference between being Catholic and CofE.”
His next brush with inequality changed the direction of his life dramatically, when he tried to get a place at university to become a vet, after visiting the family farm in Ireland.
“I applied to the Royal Veterinary College in London,” he says.
“And at interview they said ‘We’ve looked at your application, who in your family is a vet? You don’t mention your mother or father being a vet’.
“And I said ‘well they’re not’, and they said ‘what about your uncle? Aunt? No? Then why do you want to be a vet?’”
Without family connections to explain his interest, Hatton’s application was dismissed.
“In the end I went through clearing and managed to do a medical physiology degree but I was at the time pretty devastated,” he says.
At university Hatton found a novel way to earn extra cash — writing the poems in Hallmark greeting cards.
“I’ve seen some of them are still around — they were awful,” he says (but sadly tells me he can’t remember any of them off the top of his head).
Following his degree, inspired by his university lecturers, he decided to go into teaching and found a job at the London College of Fashion, teaching applied science in the form of trichology (the study and science of hair), where he was told he was also expected to teach hairdressing.
Hatton writing an inspection report in 1997, with help from son Patrick
The experience would serve him well as an inspector, because he says, “it’s given me an insight into what makes good teaching”.
He became involved in supporting educationally disadvantaged learners, at the college, before moving on to become a senior science lecturer at North West Kent College — where he met his now-wife Carol — and then becoming deputy head of the department of food, hairdressing and community studies at Barking College.
It was during his time at Barking that he moved into part-time inspection for the newly-created Further Education Funding Council (FEFC), which he says, was prompted by “seeing how variable different colleges were”.
“And I think my own experience of having a really rubbish schooling without realising and thinking I could have done a hell of a lot better if I’d had decent teachers was slightly behind it,” he says.
“I was also intrigued as a staff development thing — if I could get into other colleges and see what they did I might learn what we should be doing.”
Anyone who’s worked with the ALI would say it was easily the best inspectorate
In 1998, Hatton became a full time inspector with the Training Standard Council and in 2001 moved with the changing inspection regime into the Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI), an organisation he clearly has a lingering affection for.
“Anyone who’s worked with the ALI would say it was easily the best inspectorate,” he says.
“David Sherlock, who set it up, would say ‘if you’re inspecting it for us, tell the people how to put it right’ — so he had a very different attitude to Ofsted.
“They had a very negative attitude about people feeding back how to put things right — that’s changed with the requires improvement grading and putting inspectors in afterwards to make sure it changes, but that’s taken a very, very long time.”
The ALI was absorbed into Ofsted in 2007, with many of the inspectors making the
jump too, a move Hatton says was not popular with everyone.
“When I went along to the first meeting the inspectors were saying how disappointed they were that us ALI types had been allowed in because they didn’t think we were very bright,” he says.
Hatton as a child in the late 1950s
“I pointed out that running or working in a college with tens of thousands of learners was very different to being head of a primary school with a few hundred pupils.”
And it’s these differences which seem to give Hatton pause for thought over the new unified common inspection framework.
“There’ve been six different inspection frameworks I’ve worked to over the years and every single one of them has got 80 to 90 per cent the same — it’s not that big a change,” he says.
“But I don’t honestly see why you have to have some of the behavioural type stuff which is very school specific — it’s important in schools because you do get schools with a reputation for bad behaviour, but it’s inappropriate for the FE sector, where we’ve got all the different ages.”
He adds: “But it helps keep one inspectorate, and I can’t help feeling that’s behind it — I was asked by a couple of Labour figures if I thought Ofsted was too big, so I think things might have been different if Labour had won the election.”
In 2013, Hatton left life as an inspector behind, and started his Learning Improvement Service consultancy.
“My work now is a lot more rewarding in that people can be totally and utterly honest with me because it’s confidential and so rather than coming across something in inspection, you can find what’s wrong and then hopefully you’ve got a year to sort it out.
“Some things are so easy to get right — if you’re teaching there might be three things you’re doing that could be corrected the next lesson, but that will have a big impact.
“You don’t do that for Ofsted, you might spot some good practice and look at that but you don’t look at little things people could put right very easily.”
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It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
Ulysses by James Joyce, which to me is one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century. It captures Dublin in the early 1900s. Reading it for the first time when I was 16 opened up a different style of writing and imagination to me
Hatton’s parents Sean and Bridget on their wedding day in 1949
What do you do to switch off from work?
I travel to completely switch off, leaving the internet alone so that I can’t be distracted. Some of my best moments have been seeing whales and swimming with dolphins. I am a season ticket holder at Crystal Palace and attend every home match along with my best friend from school days. To chill for a weekend evening I love eating a well-cooked meal, followed by the theatre or a concert in London
What’s your pet hate?
There’s a few. Inequality including the aspects in FE that have been missed by the current inspection regime, such as too few women in engineering or men in childcare, low expectations and people who interfere with things that are working (particularly politicians who want to make their mark rather than to change things for the benefit of young people)
If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would it be?
I would like Michael Collins, one of the architects of the Irish Republic and a larger than life character, John F Kennedy and Nelson Mandela, because he showed such forgiveness against those who made his life absolute hell. I would want to know if they would have led different lives if they could have given advice to their 11-year-old selves.
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I wanted to be a vet, working with large animals in a rural setting
Eight University Technical Colleges (UTCs) have been listed among England’s worst providers for overall absence.
The Department for Education statistics, for last autumn, show how Elutec, in Essex, is the worst of the UTCs with a figure that put it at eighth in the list of shame among providers which recruit pupils aged five to 15.
Its 14.5 per cent is based on the total number of days missed as a proportion of the total number of days it was possible for pupils to attend during the term.
The figures come just days after the doomed Black Country UTC was hit with an Ofsted inadequate result with a report that outlined poor attendance and behaviour, as reported on feweek.co.uk.
A spokesperson for the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, the organisation behind the UTCs model, said all UTCs monitored absence “very closely”, adding: “Where it is persistent they work with external agencies, as well as meeting with students, parents and carers, to try to improve poor attendance which is often linked to wider issues.”
However, Professor John Howson (pictured above left), managing director of DataforEducation.info and a fellow of the University of Oxford, said the figures raised questions about the UTC intake.
Professor Howson told FE Week: “It’s difficult without going and looking at them but one has to raise the question in some cases, some comprehensive schools may be steering certain 13-year-olds towards making a change at 14, and they may not be the ones they identify as pupils they want to stay until 18.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Equipping young people with the skills they need to secure great jobs is a key part of our plan for education and studio schools and university technical colleges are instrumental in this.”
He added: “They are new schools and are particularly effective in helping pupils who may not be suited to more traditional education to succeed. We expect all UTCs and studio schools, as with all schools, to promote good attendance and take action to tackle persistent absence.”
It is not the first problem revealed to have been affecting UTCs specifically, and comes after FE Week revealed in April that six of the existing 30 UTCs were operating at up to just 33.3 per cent of their capacities.
Two UTCs — Hackney and Black Country — are due to close at the end of this year, but this did not stop the Conservatives launching their manifesto at Swindon UTC in April.
Nor did it stop Prime Minster David Cameron singing their praises in front of a packed House of Commons on Wednesday (May 27).
During a Parliamentary debate following the Queen’s Speech, Mr Cameron was pushed by Aldershot MP Sir Gerald Howarth (pictured above right) to praise Lord Baker, the former education secretary who is a key proponent of UTCs.
Sir Gerald said: “Will my right honourable friend also pay tribute to our noble friend Lord Baker, the former secretary of state for education, who has launched a fantastic campaign to promote UTCs?
“They offer a fantastic opportunity to young people who are not necessarily the most academic but who have technical skills, tapping into that resource, which this nation has, and providing skills.”
Mr Cameron replied: “My honourable friend is absolutely right. I pay tribute to Lord Baker of Dorking. He was a huge enthusiast for education reform when he was secretary of state, and he has kept that going all his life.
“UTCs are a great success — indeed, we launched our election campaign in one in Swindon. They help to complete our education system by providing what was missing: a high-quality technical education for children who would benefit from it.”
My last column was all about the politics of FE. I got a few encouraging responses publicly on Twitter and some, let’s say, agitated responses from people concerned about what the general election results will mean for our sector.
To be clear, I am done talking about the latter and want to focus now on encouraging the sector to maximise the influencing opportunities now open to us.
For a few years now, prior to major events like the annual Budget and Autumn Statement, Her Majesty’s Treasury invite organisations, the public and Members of Parliament to make written representations for consideration as part of the policy development process. The Treasury says this is part of “open and transparent policy-making” to attract “original and innovative ideas”.
I want to convince you that sending in a response on behalf of your organisation/provider is a valuable few hours of your time this week.
Talk about how you are helping your local employers create jobs and how you’re helping unemployed people gain the skills and experience to access to the labour market
FE and skills is under-represented
Countless inches in this very newspaper have decried the lack of knowledge and representation resulting in bad policy. There seems to me to be two ways around this. A more diverse Parliament and Civil Service would be excellent but is probably a longer term ambition. Second, we take every opportunity possible to, as educators, inform and inspire interest, passion and understanding with decision makers.
Information released under a Freedom of Information request that lists the names of organisations and Members of Parliament who have submitted representations ahead of two years worth of Budgets and Autumn Statements show that, surprisingly, the education sector as a whole doesn’t currently engage in this process.
Businesses, energy companies, retail associations, finance organisations and professional associations feature on the list. I think the permanent addition of colleges and providers on that list would be a great start to raising our collective presence and influence in policy.
Devolution
The Conservative Party has made clear its ambitions to devolve more powers to cities. Core and Key Cities are setting out what areas of public policy they want more control over. Education and skills features to varying degrees, ranging from full planning and funding to co-commissioning models through Local Enterprise Partnerships. The Treasury, as the government department with a key role in this agenda, will want to see how providers are already interacting with local employers and the impacts those relationships are having on employment, progression, social inclusion and productivity. As national organisations, we can only ‘fly the flag’ to an extent so responses from local employers will be a powerful addition.
Keep it short and namedrop
Ahead of the Budget in 2014, the Treasury received 171 written representations. For the Autumn Statement later that year, 194 were sent in by organisations and Members of Parliament. This means we face tough competition for attention. Written representations should be short, at two pages maximum, and should, as far as possible, offer solutions to problems that will interest Treasury officials. We know the Conservatives want to strengthen our economy and achieve full employment, so talk about how you are helping your local employers create jobs and how you’re helping unemployed people gain the skills and experience to access to the labour market. ‘Full employment’, ‘productivity’, ‘helping small businesses’ and the like are things to talk about.
CC your MP
Whether or not you have a relationship with your Member of Parliament, it is a good idea to send your Treasury representation to them. It’ll be a good tool to form a relationship with a new MP should you have one in your constituency and will be the kind of ammunition/evidence that MPs like to have to hand when in discussions with Ministers.
I hope I’ve convinced you to make a submission. They have to be submitted by Friday (June 5) and details on how to submit can be found on the Treasury website.
Bill Lucas was a keynote speaker at an international conference in Sweden on vocational education and training recently. Here he shares his arguments and reflects on some broader themes for FE globally.
Before we can even begin to think about pedagogy in FE and the wider skills sectors we need to stop and think much more deeply about the wider goals of vocational education. What are these? How are they impacted by the nature of the particular subject or vocational pathway or shaped by the particular needs of learners?
Delegates liked a model we have developed which looks at different kinds of vocational education by emphasising the medium through which the work is expressed. For example, three categories distinguish vocational education that focuses on working with. Firstly, physical materials — bricklaying, plumbing, hairdressing, professional make-up. Secondly, people — financial advice, nursing, hospitality, retail, and care industries. And thirdly, symbols (words, numbers and images) — accountancy, journalism, software development, graphic design.
Names of subjects and occupations vary across the world, but I hope that the principle is clear.
Such groupings are, inevitably, somewhat arbitrary and in most vocational learning there will be a blend of all three. But FE teachers tell us that the model helps them to make sense of the kinds of pedagogies that can be appropriate in different vocational domains — their signature pedagogies.
Thinking like this is just the beginning of a longer process of pedagogical exploration. With my colleagues at the Centre for Real-World Learning I have argued that there are six important outcomes of vocational education which have to be considered before we can start to think about the methods of learning and teaching which we choose to select for students.
Firstly, routine expertise. This is at the core of working competence. It involves skilled routines and the ability to carry out skilful activities to a satisfactory standard.
It’s about time that we focused on learning as we seek to dramatically to expand apprenticeships
Secondly, resourcefulness. Beyond the familiar and routine, expert practitioners are able to bring to mind knowledge that is applicable to new and unfamiliar contexts.
Thirdly, is craftsmanship, which is about the pleasure, pride and patience involved in doing a ’good job’.
Functional literacies, fourthly, make up a slightly broader category than the functional skills of literacy, numeracy and ICT. There are live debates today about how best to teach these kinds of functional literacies.
Fifthly, business-like attitude. This might manifest itself in behaviours such as punctuality, orderliness, willingness to put in necessary time and effort, and displays of customer service that exceed client expectation.
Finally, wider skills. The sorts of ‘wider skills’ deemed important are many and varied, and are described variously as ‘broader skills’, ‘competencies’, ‘dispositions’, ‘capabilities’, and ‘habits of mind’. Employers regularly call for employees with wider skills such as problem-solving, team-working, resilience, entrepreneurialism etc in addition to high-level basic skills.
Once this broader set of desired outcomes is agreed it becomes much easier to think about the range of learning and teaching methods required. It’s a long list which includes, among others, these methods: by watching, through deliberate practice and seamlessly by blending virtual with face-to-face. Doubtless FE Week readers will be add their own, too.
When it comes to apprenticeships, there is something else to bear in mind. For with such explicitly work-based learning pathways there are always going to be three key features: the fact that they require both on and off-the-job learning; their social context — that they require learning from and with others within a community of practice; and the requirement for visibility of learning processes — as an integral aspect of the first two and as an increasingly acknowledged feature of effective learning wherever it takes place.
As I started by saying, it’s about time that we focused on learning as we seek to dramatically to expand apprenticeships across the world. Meetings like the one in Stockholm reaffirm the importance of researchers, practitioners and policy-makers spending time thinking hard about pedagogy for all aspects of vocational education, especially the one on which I am explicitly focusing here — apprenticeship.
Providers who deliver adult education and skills training in England’s prisons are expecting their contracts to end next year, but the PLA wants these extended for a year. It is one of a number of proposals put forward by the organisation, as Alexandra Marks explains.
This June, as we prepare to mark the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education Adult Learners’ Week, the PLA, which comprises 23 organisations with expertise in offender learning, hope its vision for the future of prison education will be realised.
Our vision is simple: we want education in prison to deliver the outcomes we all want to see, less crime and better, more productive lives for prisoners and ex-prisoners.
We invite the new government to achieve this by making some key changes to the current Offender Learning and Skills Service (Olass) contracts this summer. Overhauling the system completely would be expensive and disruptive for staff and learners.
So we recommend that the current contracts are extended for a further year. But we want Ministers to make some important improvements, as set out in our briefing The Future of Prison Education Contracts.
Our eight recommendations offer ways to enrich the curriculum by increasing partnership working with the voluntary sector; to support prisoners to realise their potential and progress with further and higher education; to innovate through technology; and to improve the quality of teaching.
We welcome the increased numbers of learners achieving basic English and maths qualifications.
FE leaders, managers and teachers working in prisons do an extremely important but difficult job with limited resources
However, more flexibility in the Olass contracts would encourage prisoners to progress to higher levels and would lend a greater focus on provision that leads to longer-term rehabilitation outcomes. For example, many prisoners have negative associations with learning; approximately half of prisoners have no qualifications and 42 per cent were excluded from school.
To reach out to such prisoners, many of whom who don’t currently engage in education, non-accredited courses in the arts, social development and informal learning not only ‘hook’ people in, but develop attitudes and thinking skills that can help them manage behaviour, desist from crime and gain employment.
Our solutions are geared towards making prisoners less likely to reoffend. They are based on our members’ collective experiences of the current system and consultation with prison staff and the four providers delivering Olass education in prisons (Weston College, The Manchester College, Milton Keynes College and A4e). We have also listened to education managers, teachers and, most importantly, learners themselves.
FE leaders, managers and teachers working in prisons do an extremely important but difficult job with limited resources.
With improved access to digital technologies, teaching resources and continuing professional development, prison education departments could more closely resemble colleges in the community.
PLA is also focused on ways we can help develop education staff and enable them to network with each other. Our member, The Education and Training Foundation, works to support the sector by offering resources on its Excellence Gateway online hub (http://offender-learning.excellencegateway.org.uk/).
How far is education currently supporting prisoners’ rehabilitation? We know it has the potential to do so. People with qualifications are 15 per cent less likely to commit crime after leaving prison.
However the current system is not doing enough: 58 per cent of prisons inspected in 2013/14 were judged by Ofsted as ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ for learning and skills provision.
None was ‘outstanding’. However, there are positive signs of change on the horizon. In December 2014 education provision at women’s prison HMP Askham Grange, run by The Manchester College, received an ‘outstanding’ grade.
It was soon followed in January 2015 by the education at HMP Hollesley Bay, run by A4e. The inspections reveal that what sets these prisons apart is strong leadership, a positive learning culture across the prison, and an ambition for prisoners to succeed in turning their lives around through education.
We believe other prisons can follow their lead with greater flexibility from the contracts. We urge Ministers to take on board our eight solutions to achieve this aim, and we invite our colleagues in the sector to work with us to keep striving for excellence.
Former international football referee and Rotherham College alumni Howard Webb has been recognised by the Association of Colleges (AoC) for the role that FE played in his career.
He was presented with a Gold Award at a ceremony held by his former college.
“I’m absolutely thrilled and delighted to have won, it’s not something I expected,” he said.
Mr Webb studied French at Rotherham from 2005 to 2007 to be able to speak with more international players.
“For me, just having a better chance of communicating with overseas players gave me an advantage in my career,” he said.
Mr Webb, who officiated 500 Premier League and Football League matches, the 2010 World Cup Final and 2010 Champions League Final, blew the final whistle on his 25-year career in 2014.
He’s now the technical director of the Professional Game Match Officials Board.
Main pic: Ken Barrass (left), chair of the Corporation at Rotherham College, presents Howard Webb with his the gold award. Also pictured is AoC regional director for Yorkshire and the Humber Caroline Rowley
An aspiring Olympian from Richard Huish College has taken a big leap in achieving her dream with selection for the Great Britain Double Mini Trampoline squad.
A-level PE student Sunny Sharp currently trains with Whirlwinds Trampoline and Double Mini Trampoline (DMT) club, based in Taunton.
Over the last two years the 17-year-old has become British Champion, David Ward International Cup Women’s Champion and DMT and Trampolining League Women’s Elite Champion.
She has also represented the Somerset college in regional and national competitions since she joined last year.
Sunny, who also studies biology and dance A-levels, said: “I am really pleased with my achievements this year, particularly being accepted into the GB team and qualifying for the British Championships.
“Getting in to the GB squad was one of my aims for this year and will help me to potentially achieve my main goal for 2017 which is to compete as part of the women’s team in the World Championships.”
Main pic: Richard Huish College Olympian hopeful Sunny Sharp
New College Durham deputy principal Tony Lewin will be taking the top job at Newcastle College next academic year.
He will also take up a position as an executive member of the Newcastle College Group (NCG) executive board from September.
Mr Lewin, appointed deputy principal of New College Durham in 2009, said: “I believe passionately that it is important colleges are able to put the needs of their learners and customers first and to invest in the future of their learners, employers and local community.”
He replaces Carole Kitching who, as previously reported, will become principal of Lewisham Southwark College in July.
Joe Docherty, NCG chief executive, said: “Tony is an experienced leader in the FE sector. He can hit the ground running, working with partners including the North East local enterprise parntership and combined authority, and has an enviable track record in leadership. I am confident he will take Newcastle College to even further success.”
Meanwhile, Abigail Appleton, creative director of BBC Learning, has been appointed principal of Hereford College of Arts (HCA).
Ms Appleton said: “The college is a hugely impressive and creative institution and it is a great privilege to have this chance to become part of its future.”
Dan Howard, governors’ chair, said: “We believe we have found a principal designate who will match our collective ambitions, help us make the most of our manifest opportunities and lead the college into a secure, successful and very different future.”
She replaces retiring Richard Heatly, principal of 12 years, this autumn, as previously reported.
“Abigail is an excellent choice to lead the college as its reputation grows and its importance to Herefordshire and the creative sector develops,” he said.
And former Birmingham Metropolitan College chief operating officer Bob Pattni has taken up post as director of finance and deputy principal at Cambridge Regional College (CRC).
A qualified accountant, he has worked in education for more than 20 years and said: “CRC is a very forward-thinking college. It works closely with employers to enrich the lives of learners to provide an environment that is full of opportunity.”
Principal Anne Constantine said: “Bob comes to us from a very large college and with long experience in FE.”
Finally, Mark Ravenhall is stepping down from his chief executive post at the Further Education Trust for Leadership thinktank. Mr Ravenhall, a former National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) policy director, had been appointed its first chief executive in July last year.
“I am proud to have been part of the beginnings of Fetl and think that we have achieved a great deal in its first year,” he said.
“Indeed, what began as a part-time two-day per week post has expanded and reached the point where it is taking much more of my time than I originally expected.
“Therefore I have made the decision to step down so that I have sufficient time to fulfil my other commitments and interests.”
Jill Westerman, principal of the Northern College and chair of Fetl, said it was a “mark of his success that the level of interest has been so high, which has meant that the work of Fetl needs more time and attention than we originally envisaged for this part-time role”.
She added: “The board plans to make interim management arrangements to take forward the work of Fetl until a permanent appointment can be made. Mark will be working alongside us to ensure a smooth handover so that the growing work of Fetl to support the leadership of thinking in our sector is sustained and developed even further.”
