A levy on large businesses to help fund apprenticeship growth has been announced by Chancellor George Osborne.

Mr Osborne’s budget announcement comes after Professor Lady Alison Wolf called for such a levy, but on all employers, in a report released by the Social Market Foundation last week.

Employer and FE sector bodies are still digesting the announcement, along with others relating to FE in the Budget (listed below), but Professor Wolf’s universal levy proposal was rejected by the Confederation of British Industry, while the Association of Employment and Learning Providers was also sceptical.

Nevertheless, papers released by the Treasury following Mr Osborne’s speech to Parliament this afternoon reveal that revenue from the levy will help fund all post-16 apprenticeships in England.

According to the documents, the levy will “provide funding that each employer can use to meet their individual needs”.

The Treasury goes on to say: “The funding will be directly controlled by employers via the digital apprenticeships voucher, and firms that are committed to training will be able to get back more than they put in.

“There will be formal engagement with business on the implementation of the levy, which will also consider the interaction with existing sector levy boards, and further details will be set out at the spending review.”

Mr Osborne also used his budget speech to announce a new ‘living wage’, to replace the minimum wage for those aged 25 and over, starting at £7.20 next April and rising to £9 by 2020. This is despite the fact the rate currently recommended by the Living Wage Foundation is £7.85 outside London and £9.15 in the capital.

It is not yet known how this will affect the apprentice minimum wage, which is due to rise to £3.30 an hour from October.

The Chancellor also outlined in more detail his plans for a ‘youth obligation’, which will see benefits taken away from 18 to 21-year-olds who don’t ‘earn or learn’.

The Treasury has announced: “From April 2017, young people will participate in an intensive regime of support from day 1 of their benefit claim, and after six months they will be expected to apply for an apprenticeship or traineeship, gain work-based skills, or go on a mandatory work placement to give them the skills they need to move into sustainable employment.”

Other announcements which could potentially impact FE include a further devolution of powers to Greater Manchester, including employment services, and the introduction of employment adviser support for 14 to 17-year-olds in Birmingham through the Jobcentre Plus.

The clock is well and truly ticking with 880 hours to go before the UK’s top apprentices jet off to Brazil to take on the best of the rest at WorldSkills 2015 — and FE Week and City & Guilds want to wish them all the very best in the quest for golden glory.

Yes, in 37 days Team UK will be in São Paulo to find out whether all their hard work and training has paid off and if they’ve got what it takes to be crowned best young person in the world for their skill.

Our 41 young men and women (click here or on image below) will compete in 38 different skills, from hairdressing and stone masonry to confectionery and IT security from August 11 to 16 (that’s just 53,280 minutes away, by the way).

As the pressure mounts, the UK’s official delegate and chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency and the Education Funding Agency, Peter Lauener also wished the competitors good luck in their final preparations.

“Representing your country on the world stage is no easy feat. It takes hard work, determination and a high level of skill,” he said.

“As part of Team UK, you have displayed all of these attributes.

“As you now go on to take part in the WorldSkillsfinals in São Paulo, you will need to draw on every aspect of your training and experience to be the best you can.

“Best of luck to everyone in the UK team — I look forward to seeing a number of UK medal winners.”

Our competitors will be among 1,230 from more than 60 countries, taking part in 50 different vocational skills.

They will be looking to repeat, or even better, the successes of WorldSkills 2013, in Leipzig, Germany, where Team UK finished tenth in the medals table with two gold, one silver and three bronze, along with a whopping 17 medallions for excellence (handed out when competitors reach a set international standard).

And David Cragg, deputy chair of WorldSkills UK organisers Find a Future, also offered his best wishes to our 2015 crop.

He said: “I would like to offer my congratulations to every member of Team UK. They are ambassadors for our nation and I wish them the best of luck as they prepare to compete against the best in the world.”

The event will be staged five kilometres from the centre of Sao Paulo at Anhembi Parque, which at 400,000 square feet is one of the largest event centres in Latin America.

And it won’t just be the competitors and their trainers who are flocking to Anhembi Parque, as 800 volunteers are expected to help keep the show on the road, along with 200,000 visitors — the largest audience in WorldSkills history.

Mr Cragg said it was hoped the competition would inspire more young people to take a vocational route.

“Skills competitions showcase the high levels of performance that can be achieved by individuals and organisations through high quality further education, skills training and apprenticeships,” he said.

“Through skills competitions and the wider work of Find a Future we want to provide every young person with the chance to unlock their potential and get excited about the world of work.”

WorldSkills runs from August 11 to 16, with competitions taking place across four days from August 12. Keep up with all the action before and during the competition with FE Week – on feweek.co.uk or on Twitter with the handle @FEWeek and the #GoWSTeamUK hashtag.

 

 

 

A newly-established House of Lords committee on social mobility launches its first investigation tomorrow — and apprenticeships are set to be route of investigation.

The group of a dozen Lords, chaired by Labour peer and former Bristol East MP Lady Corston (pictured above), will look into the transition from school to work.

It will hear from officials from the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in its first evidence session, starting at 11.05am (follow @feweek for live updates).

The committee, which was appointed on June 11 and includes Innovation Code creator and Lib Dem education spokesperson in the House of Lords Lady Sharp (who was profiled by FE Week two years ago), is expected to look into the government’s 3m apprenticeship target, FE funding, employer engagement, careers advice and recent changes to child poverty measures.

Lady Corston told FE Week: “There’s been a great emphasis on what we call the royal route,  people who take A-levels and then university, and of course there are apprenticeships, although for young people there’s not nearly as many as there should be, and we know there are people who are Neet [not in education, employment or training].

“But there’s this missing middle — a very large cohort about which we know nothing and I’m very interested in finding out what’s happening to them, and what happening in FE, generally.

“There’s some evidence of some considerable downward social mobility and we’ve got to see if that’s the case.”

A committee spokesperson said an estimated 40 to 50 per cent of young people fall into the “missing middle” category referred to by Lady Corston, but that “it would seem that no investigation on any significant scale has been carried out”.

“The committee is looking to unpick the group known as the ‘missing middle’ and to assess if the provisions currently in place are supporting those most in need,” she added.

In the committee’s second evidence session tomorrow, from noon, representatives from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics and the UK Commission for Employment and Skills are expected before the committee.

A committee spokesperson said potential future witnesses included Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, chair of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission and former Labour MP Alan Milburn, Demos, the Centre for Social Justice and the Institute for Public Policy Research.

Joining Lady Corston on the committee in addition to Lady Sharp is Lady Berridge (Conservative), Lady Blood (Labour), Lord Farmer (Conservative), Lord Holmes (Conservative), Lady Howells (Labour), The Earl of Kinnoull (crossbencher), Lady Morris (Labour) Lord Patel (crossbencher), Lady Stedman-Scott (Conservative) and Lady Tyler.

“We’ll be taking evidence from people who can point out to us some of the anomalies in our present system and how we could make much better use of the human capital that we’ve got,” said Lady Corston.

The committee is due to report its findings by March 23.

 

 

Trade Union Congress general secretary Frances O’Grady told delegates at the Unionlearn conference that fighting the “false economy of FE cuts” was “our first priority”.

In her speech to today’s conference at Congress House, in central London, Ms O’Grady (pictured above) warned that the next five years will “test our mettle”.

“Our first priority must be to fight the false economy of cuts to FE,” she said.

“As we all know, the government is intent on shrinking the state back to the same level it was at in the 1930s.

“Nowhere is this more at risk from this ideological drive than FE. Thousands of FE staff face redundancy or more casualisation.

“This is no way to go about tackling Britain’s skills shortages, or provide the parity between vocational and academic education that everyone seems to be talking about.

“These cuts have disastrous implications for learners, for our skills base and for the economy. They will exasperate inequality, damage productivity and slow the economy.”

Her comments reflected widespread sector concern over loss of funding to FE, which has faced adult skills budget cuts of around 35 per cent since 2009 and is now gearing up to deal with the consequences of a further 24 per cent cut in 2015/16.

Ms O’Grady added there was no denying that the country was experiencing an economic recovery, with record numbers of people in work.

But she said: “The fact is that our economy remains far too dependent on too many people in low-paid, low-skilled, insecure jobs.

“We will never meet our productivity potential unless we start remembering who really creates the wealth in this country and the answer is simple, ‘it’s workers’.

“That’s why a case for a national drive to improve the skills of all working people should be common sense.”

The conference also featured talks on the economic benefits for workers and the wider economy of union-led learning, part-time education, and wider FE, by Peter Horrocks, vice chancellor of The Open University, and Ben Nield, assistant director at the Marchmont Observatory, University of Exeter.

Neil Darwin, chief executive of the Greater Cambridge Greater Peterborough Enterprise Partnership, also addressed delegates.

He said: “The challenge for me around skills is enormous. It is one of our top three priorities, the others being housing and infrastructure. It’s vitally important to consider how we train our people into valued work.”

After hearing of Ms O’Grady’s speech to the conference, a spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: “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.”

This week learners from up and down the country are battling to be crowned apprentice team of the year in the fourth annual Brathay Apprenticeship Challenge final.

The eight teams of nine apprentices have been whittled down from more than 800 entrants to earn a place on the finale on Lake Windermere in the Lake District, where they have been taking part in teambuilding activities such as orienteering, high ropes and boat racing, since Monday.

And the eight teams will be hoping to make a splash in the last leg of the grand finale, the whaler boat race, and the prize giving ceremony, which takes place tomorrow.

To get there, the teams — made up of apprentices from the same employer, group of small businesses, industry, supply chain or provider — completed fundraising projects in their community with the top performers making it through.

This year the eight teams to have made it through to the final of the competition organised by youth charity Brathay and the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) are teams from Redrow Homes, Nottingham City Homes, Sellafield power plant, Pera Training, Dale Power Solutions, Plymouth City Council, HSBC and British Airways.

NAS director Sue Husband said: “The challenge gives apprentices a chance to show not just their employers but the wider community the high ambitions and achievements that apprentices have when they are given the chance.

“Enhanced apprenticeships experiences such as the Brathay Apprentice Challenge benefit both employers and apprentices, giving employers a workforce with transferable skills and apprentices the chance to develop skills and experiences that will move them forward in their career.”

In last year’s competition, when a team from PepsiCo emerged victorious, apprentices managed to raise more than £30,000 for charity, conduct more than 360 school visits to talk about the benefits of apprenticeships and recruit 50 new businesses to offer apprenticeships.

Godfrey Owen, chief executive of Brathay Trust said the community projects test learners’ “leadership, communication and team building skills and these skills are not something that are always tested purely in the workplace”.

He added: “While the teams build these skills they are also teaching other young people about apprenticeships and showing both employers and students that an apprenticeship is a valued career path.”

Main pic above, from left: Plymouth City Council apprentices Steven Bryant, aged 20, customer services (facilities management), Jacob Ellis, 20, marketing, team captain Lee Bond, 25, Nick Tomlinson, 27, both project management, Jake Holmes, 19, level three business administration, John Horler, 25, Lewis Walsh, 24, Joseph Gore, 24, all three project management, and (not pictured) Tommy Clift, 19, business administration

The academy trust that was built up by Barnfield College has announced plans to sever its last link with the college by changing its name.

The Barnfield Academy Trust, which formally split from Barnfield College in March, announced today a new name — the Shared Learning Trust.

Trust chief executive Andrew Cooper said: “This is an exciting opportunity for our family of schools to make a very clear and decisive move away from the Barnfield name and begin our next chapter.”

The trust, which also has a new logo (pictured) is made up of five schools — the Vale Academy, Moorlands Free School, West Academy, South Academy and The Studio School, Luton.

Mr Cooper said: “The new name was one of those ‘it does what it says on the tin’ decisions. It’s a name that reflects some of our core values, not least the message that at the heart of all our schools is a strength brought about by working together in partnership and sharing our passion for good practice in teaching and learning.”

Last week the trust was released from an Education Funding Agency notice to improve, issued in February last year.

 

The decision to break away from the Barnfield College-led Barnfield Federation took seven months to enact.

It came more than a year after the Skills Funding Agency and Education Funding Agency both published critical findings of their investigations into the federation following the departure of former principal Sir Peter Birkett, who was knighted in 2012 for his services to FE and the academy movement.

In January this year, the college received a damning Ofsted grade four inspection verdict, which Luton South MP Gavin Shuker said blamed on Sir Peter’s focus on the academy chain, saying it had “starved [the college] of resources”.

The inspection result led to the college being the first to be visited twice by FE Commissioner David Collins, who previously visited in January 2014 following financial concerns and called for at least half the governors to be replaced.

A Barnfield College spokesperson said: “Barnfield College wishes the trust all the luck in its future endeavors.”

The trust is also developing a new website which will be launched at www.thesharedlearningtrust.org.uk from September 1, with individual school websites to follow from October.

The new memberships of the two parliamentary select committees which oversee FE have been provisionally announced.

Iain Wright, the Labour MP for Hartlepool and new chair of the business, innovation and skills select committee, will be joined by Labour colleagues Paul Blomfield, the MP for Sheffield Central, newly-elected Hove MP Peter Kyle and Cardiff Central MP Jo Stevens.

Conservative members of the committee are Richard Fuller, who represents Bedford, new Cannock Chase MP Amanda Milling, Amanda Solloway, who was first elected as MP for Derby North in May, Kelly Tolhurst, who beat Ukip defector Mark Reckless in Rochester and Strood, North Warwickshire MP Craig Tracey and Warwick and Leamington’s Chris White.

Michelle Thompson, the Scottish National Party MP for Edinburgh West, will be her party’s sole representative on the committee.

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Meanwhile, the education select committee, chaired by Stroud’s Conservative MP Neil Carmichael, will be made up of Conservatives Lucy Allan (Telford), Michelle Donelan (Chippenham), Suella Fernandes (Fareham), Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) and Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North).

They will be joined by Labour MPs Ian Austin (Dudley North), Kate Hollern (Blackburn), Ian Mearns (Gateshead) and Kate Osamor (Edmonton), and SNP MP Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw).

The memberships will have to be confirmed by Parliament on Monday.