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Sir Michael Wilshaw “didn’t really mean” what he said about the FE sector at last week’s Education Select Committee, Skills Minister Nick Boles has said.

Mr Boles opened his speech at the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) Leadership Summit, held at Westminster Kingsway College on March 9 by disagreeing with Sir Michael’s comment, which provoked widespread anger in the FE sector, that all 16 to 19-year-olds should be educated in schools.

“You will all be aware that Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of Ofsted, made some comments last week that I’m sure he didn’t really mean. I certainly hope he didn’t really mean them,” Mr Boles said.

“And I just wanted to say, not only do I disagree with him, not only does David Cameron disagree with him, I actually think Michael disagrees with himself,” he continued.

The Ofsted chief inspector attacked the FE sector during an evidence session for the Education Select Committee on March 2, describing it as “in a mess — that’s why the government is reviewing it”.

“My view is that 16 to 19 should be done in school,” he told the committee, chaired by Neil Carmichael MP.

Mr Boles said that Sir Michael had complained “over the last few months and years” about the small number of 16 to 18-year-olds doing apprenticeships.

“It is simply inconceivable to have every 16 to 18-year-old in a school sixth form, and also have more of them doing apprenticeships, because there aren’t very many school sixth forms that I’m aware of who are going to start engaging with employers and providing training that supports apprenticeships,” Mr Boles said.

The Skills Minister told ETF delegates that Sir Michael believed that provision for 16 to 18-year-olds who “are not going to pursue the standard academic route” had “historically been inadequate, not high quality, not a source of pride and focus, not an investment in the same way as the A-level and the full-time university course route has been”.

“So I can only assume that he was perhaps — as we all do, as I’ve often done — slightly misrepresenting his own considered views,” Mr Boles added.

FE Week’s news story about the chief inspector’s comments provoked an unprecedented and unanimous backlash, with more than 40 comments posted on the FE Week website in just 24 hours many of which criticised him for airing his personal opinions in a public capacity.

Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, wrote to Sir Michael, challenging him to justify his opinions about the sector.

He called on Sir Michael to provide “as a matter of urgency a clear rationale for your conclusions”.

“It would be all the better if those conclusions corresponded with the judgment of the inspectors in your organisation; I fail to see how this could be so given that 82 per cent of colleges who provide 16 to 18 education have been judged good or outstanding in recent Ofsted inspections,” he continued.

FE Week contacted Ofsted to ask for Sir Michael’s response to Mr Boles’s comments, but a spokesperson said they had nothing more to add.

A spokesperson for the education watchdog had previously said that Sir Michael’s comments were clearly his personal opinion.

The government “can’t make any guarantees” it will be able to fund all apprenticeship growth requests, Skills Minister Nick Boles (pictured above) has said.

His remarks, at the Education and Training Foundation Leadership Summit on at Westminster Kingsway College on March 9, came a month after many training providers were left short-changed following the Skills Funding Agency’s (SFA) overdue announcement in February of extra cash for delivering 16 to 18 apprenticeships.

“You will understand that we’ve had the position where we’ve been agreeing every growth bid, more or less, every quarter, and there is a limit to how much we can carry on doing that given that we do have a fixed budget,” Mr Boles said.

He continued: “We will do our absolute level best to meet any growth bid that we possibly can, but I can’t make any guarantees, because the budget does have to be limited.”

On February 5 the SFA announced £25m of additional funding to deliver 16 to 18 apprenticeships.

The extra cash, which should have been announced on January 8, was in response to growth requests submitted by colleges and training providers to help fund apprenticeships and traineeships in 2015/16.

However, many providers received much less than they had asked for, and no requests for traineeship growth had been funded — a situation that led to fury from providers.

As exclusively revealed by FE Week on January 29, the delay in announcing the funding was due to the Department for Education (DfE) over-allocating its discretionary fund for 2015/16.

Mr Boles acknowledged the pressure on 16 to 18 apprenticeships in his remarks to ETF delegates.

“And in 16 to 18 the budget was more constrained than the adult budget,” he said.

“And I was a bit puzzled as to why also, it seemed to me, we were getting more growth bids at 16 to 18 than we were for adults in the last 12 months in a way that hadn’t been the case in the previous 12 months, which I don’t quite understand,” he continued.

“I understand the frustration because you want to be able to recruit people, and indeed some of you go ahead and recruit them anyway, and find your budget bid isn’t approved and in effect you’ve had to subsidise them,” Mr Boles said.

The introduction of the apprenticeship levy would mean that “by the end of the parliament it’s going to be completely different”, the Skills Minister said.

“All of the money, all £2.5bn, will be in digital accounts, either by companies who pay the levy or by other companies who don’t pay the levy but who want to have apprenticeships,” he said.

“So by the end of the parliament, everybody – every employer of an apprentice – will be controlling the money and then deciding which training provider they want to work with.”

University Technical Colleges (UTCs) have been told they will get a new source of financial support, as another of their number is forced to close due to recruitment problems.

Skills Minister Nick Boles wrote to the chairs and principals of UTCs on March 3, to inform them of the “new centrally funded package of educational and financial support”, which will be accessible to UTCs in their early years.

It will be available to those that have not yet been judged good or better by Ofsted, but not to those that are subject to intervention. The letter was delivered only a week before Central Bedfordshire UTC announced that it would have to close in August this year — just four years after it first opened its doors.

Leaders at the struggling 14 to 19 vocational institution admitted it has not been able to attract sufficient pupils to provide a “financially viable experience” after this year.

It is the third UTC to close since the programme began, with Black Country and Hackney UTCs shutting last summer following problems with recruitment and viability.

The Skills Minister’s intervention in the UTC programme comes after FE Week found that 40 per cent of UTCs opened between 2010 and 2013 saw student numbers fall for the current academic year.

Exclusive research by FE Week through Freedom of Information requests found that six of the 15 UTCs opened between 2010 and 2013 saw their learner numbers decrease for 2015/16.

Central Bedfordshire UTC had only 101 students for 2015/16. This was an increase of nine on the previous year, but still meant that the UTC was only 16.8 per cent full.

Meanwhile, the new funding stream and educational support for UTCs will be delivered through a range of different channels, to help them to bed in during their preliminary years.

These include sources of advice such as an experienced mentor for the principal; support for UTCs’ trust boards through a National Leader of Governance (or equivalent); and enhanced education advisor visits in term two for all new UTCs.

The letter also describes “increasing educational and financial capability with up to two years intensive support from a Teaching School, organised via the National College of School Leadership, under similar terms as the current school to school support fund”.

The Department for Education was unable to confirm to FE Week how much this new funding would be worth per UTC or per year in total.

The Government’s focus on offering support for UTCs has been manifold. Alongside further financial provision, Mr Boles told the House of Commons last week that UTCs should function as part of multi-academy trusts (MATs) to make them stronger.

This point is also addressed in his letter, which says that “all future UTCs should be established as part of a strong MAT or within a partnership of similar depth, strength and permanence”.

It refers to “crucial educational, financial and pupil recruitment benefits” from these partnerships, and says this will be helpful in overcoming the “current hostility which some UTCs face from other local education institutions” which “makes working as a single stand-alone institution more difficult”.

For UTCs already approved for pre-opening and planning to open from 2017 onwards, the letter says “the Secretary of State will not agree to enter into a funding agreement” unless the UTC is part of a MAT or has arranged other partnership arrangements.

In response to this recommendation, Alice Barnard, chief executive of the Edge Foundation, a charity dedicated to technical, practical and vocational learning, commented: “There’s no evidence that being in a multi-academy trust guarantees better performance, but it does provide the opportunity to share resources and expertise.

“However, a lot of stand-alone academies perform very well and there are many ways to collaborate less formally with other schools, colleges and academies.”

Charles Parker, chief executive officer of the Baker Dearing Trust, which supports and promotes UTCs, said: “UTCs exist because they are needed locally and they are controlled by the employers and the university that have backed them from the very beginning.

“UTCs are always looking for robust local partnerships with supportive educational providers. These come in many forms and depend on local circumstances. One size does not fit all.”

He added: “The key factors which lead to successful UTCs are profound employer engagement and really good leadership.”

The first appointment to the new Institute for Apprenticeships (IfA) has been made in the same week that the fate of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) was revealed.

Rachel Sandby-Thomas, currently director general for skills, deregulation and local growth at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), was named as the shadow chief executive of the IfA on March 8.

Sir Charlie Mayfield, UKCES chair, wrote to stakeholders on March 7 to outline what would happen to several of its key functions, including the Employer Skills Survey and national occupational standards (NOS).

Ms Sandby-Thomas, who will take up her new role at the IfA on April 4, said: “I’m very excited to be appointed. Over the next year we’ll be working to ensure the organisation is ready to launch in April 2017.”

BIS Permanent Secretary Martin Donnelly said: “Building on her in-depth knowledge of the apprenticeship programme as DG for skills, Rachel will play a major role in establishing the IfA, which is due to launch in April 2017 and be an essential part of ensuring the quality of apprenticeships in support of the Government’s target of delivering 3m apprentices by 2020.”

The creation of the IfA, which will help police employers as apprenticeship reforms take effect, was announced as part of the government’s spending review and autumn statement, at the same time as it was revealed that the UKCES would have its funding cut.

At the time, a spokesperson for the Treasury told FE Week the UKCES would be “ceasing” from 2016/17, due to the creation of the new Institute for Apprenticeships.

In his letter, Sir Charlie said the UKCES was working with BIS and others in government “to review our functions to see how they can be brought to a close, or continued via other routes”.

He confirmed that the Employer Skills Survey (ESS) would continue, but managed by BIS.

There had been question marks over the future of the ESS, with comments from Skills Minister Nick Boles suggesting that responsibility for gathering labour market information could fall to local enterprise partnerships (LEPs).

The future of the NOS is “still under discussion”, Sir Charlie wrote, adding that he was “hopeful it will be continued via the devolved administrations”.

“BIS have concluded that they do not consider NOS as a mandatory requirement in England although employers may wish to use them if they so choose,” Sir Charlie wrote.

According to the UKCES, NOS are developed “for employers by employers through the relevant Sector Skills Council or Standards Setting Organisation” and are “statements of the standards of performance individuals must achieve when carrying out functions in the workplace, together with specifications of the underpinning knowledge and understanding”.

As reported in FE Week in December, Nigel Whitehead, a UKCES commissioner, warned that the government was in danger of bypassing NOS in the development of Trailblazer apprenticeship standards.

“Employers are free to refer to national occupational standards to support the development of their Trailblazer apprenticeships — most have chosen to do something different,” said a BIS spokesperson.