New Business Secretary Sajid Javid has refused to rule out college closures as a result of adult skills budget cuts.

Mr Javid chose to criticise Labour’s economic record instead of guaranteeing the future of FE college when he was grilled by Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna during business questions in the House of Commons this afternoon.

Mr Umunna, right, said: “Britain has the worst productivity in the G7 bar Japan.

“Proper adult skills provision plays a vital role in addressing this, not just apprenticeships, but the adult skills budget has been cut by 35 per cent in last five years, and now the chancellor tells us a further £450m is to be taken out of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) budget. This could lead to the end of FE as we know it.

“In light of these very real concerns, what assessment has the Business Secretary undertaken on the risks posed to the sector, and can he now guarantee that no college will close as a result of what he and the Chancellor are going to do.”

Although Mr Javid did not directly rule out college closures as a result of the cuts, he did say the government would not put college resources “at risk” when implementing further cuts after he was the possibility of job cuts at his former college – South Gloucestershire and Stroud – was raised.

Mr Umunna said: “When you’re consolidating, you have to make appropriate choices, and you don’t want to cut off your nose to spite your face. If we want increased revenue we need to increase productivity.

“Just look at South Gloucestershire and Stroud College, which he attended. This month, it confirmed 70 staff posts are in danger due to the reduction in their adult learning funding.

“The principal of that college said ‘we need to reduce our costs in line with reduction in funding to maintain our solvency’. Should the alarm bells not be ringing when his own college already cites issues of solvency before we have seen the full scale of what he is going to do to the productive capacity of this economy?”

Mr Javid said: “It was an excellent college and it still is. I still know many people who attend that college and speak of it very highly.

“The important thing is not just that college but all colleges have the resources they need to do their jobs and we will not put that at risk, and especially as they continue to invest in apprenticeships because that is one of the surest ways to give people the training they want.”

The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) today launched a series of how-to guides for its online professional standards resources for FE practitioners.

The professional standards for FE teachers, trainers and lecturers were released in May last year, ending a seven-year wait for upgraded guidance.

The 20 standards, divided into three headings of values and attributes, knowledge and understanding, and skills, were accompanied by a 22-page guidance document offering practical examples of how the standards could be applied.

Now the ETF has published the first in a series of ‘how to’ guides on its website, covering a range of topics and intended to help professionals “embed the standards in their working practice”.

David Russell (pictured right), ETF chief executive, said he was “delighted” with how well professional standards had been received since they were launched.

He said: “I hope that the standards continue to help teaching staff develop and grow as professionals throughout their career and are shared further with colleagues and networks.”

The standards are used both in training new teachers and in continuing professional development.

According to the ETF, the standards are the most popular download on the ETF website and have been accessed more than 43,000 times.

Visit www.etfoundation.co.uk/professionalstandards for more information and to view the standards and guides.

Sector leaders backed “radical change” and stressed that they do not want to “defend the status quo” in a joint letter to Business Secretary Sajid Javid (pictured below right).

The letter, seen by FE Week, was sent by Kirstie Donnelly (pictured below left), UK managing director of City & Guilds, on behalf of a host of organisations including the Association of Colleges, the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, 157 Group, and the Association of Employment and Learning Providers.

The other organisations signed-up to it were Creative Skillset, Energy and Utility Skills, the Trades Union Congress, the Edge Foundation, and the Lep (local enterprise partnership) Network.

The letter said they could “collectively” help the government with, for example, delivering 3m apprenticeships by 2020, developing higher and degree level apprenticeships, improving careers advice, boosting traineeships, and providing “specialist higher-level vocational training in sectors critical to economic growth”.

“Our aim is not to defend the status quo,” it said. “Radical change is needed to the funding and regulation of the FE system, the way we engage with people and employers, the way we offer and manage learning and skills, and create skills pathways which are easy to navigate, from first steps to high level professional qualifications.”

The letter warned that employers and individuals were “confused” by multiple funding streams, qualification levels, “unhelpful” distinctions between FE and higher education, and “differences between apprenticeships and other forms of work-based training”.

“The answer is, of course, simplification —something we all want to achieve,” it added.

It said the organisations that signed-up to the letter “have extensive experience of policy implementation, knowledge of what works in the UK and around the world, and an ability to find ways round potential pitfalls”.

Warning of the potential pitfalls of “too much change” and “mistakes” that “were often repeated” in the past, it added that “we can draw on lessons from the past 30 years of skills policy”.

It said that they would “like to meet you as soon as possible and take this forward together”, adding that “while this offer is to work collectively with you on common aims, we recognise that there will be times when you want to talk to our organisations individually and we to you”.

Dr Ann Limb, chair of South East Midlands Lep, who signed up to the letter on behalf of the Lep Network, said the idea behind sending a collective letter to Mr Javid (pictured above left), who was appointed to run the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on May 11, was to send him a “positive message”.

She thought it showed all of the organisations were prepared to take a “grown up” approach to managing funding cuts and implementing the government’s skills agenda.

A BIS spokesperson said: “We will respond in due course”.

 

New Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee chair Iain Wright (pictured) has called for “real controls and mitigating actions” on success rates cheating amid claims it was widespread within the FE sector.

In an exclusive interview with FE Week, the MP for Hartlepool, who ousted former committee chair and fellow Labour politician Adrian Bailey in an MPs’ vote this month, said the problem of data manipulation “undermines confidence” in FE.

He addressed the issue with North Hertfordshire College principal Matt Hamnett having revealed how he discovered it had been taking place in the college before he took over three months ago.

Mr Hamnett said details of failing learners were omitted from ILR returns as far back as 2008, with the effect of inflating classroom-based success rates by around 4 percentage points to 90.5 per cent last academic year.

His predecessor as principal Signe Sutherland has not commented publicly on the issue, while her predecessor Fintan Donohue, chief executive of Gazelle, denied any knowledge of such cheating during his time at the college.

And while Mr Wright said it was too early to name specific issues his committee would investigate, neither did he rule out a hearing into the issue.

“It’s not in anybody’s interests not to have proper, correct means of success,” he said.

“If you’re inflating your success rates, it undermines confidence in the entire system, so there has got to be real controls and mitigating actions in place to avoid that, so that everyone has confidence.

“So if a college is saying they have a success rate of whatever, everyone can believe that.”

It comes with FE Week readers having taken to the comments section of the newspaper website with claims cheating went on elsewhere.

Reader Kim Hayter wrote: “Not sure what the fuss is about really…this practice of cutting off non-achieving candidates from the ILR has been happening for years in the sector.”

Another reader, named Chris, wrote: “This used to happen at the college I worked for. Every year the data would be amended as it was ‘not good enough’.

“The principal was well aware of what went on, but because they did it every year, they found they could not stop.

“I suspect there are a few principals who have felt rather uneasy reading this headline. I hope they have a couple of sleepless nights over this.”

Another reader, Julie, wrote: “It’s the same at our college. The principal’s view is that if the rest of the sector are doing this then we need to as well.

“I just can’t understand why the Education Funding Agency and Skills Funding Agency [SFA] don’t do something to stop this.”

An SFA spokesperson said data manipulation to inflate success rates was “not acceptable”, adding that it expected “every provider” to submit delivery and performance data that “gives a true reflection of its position”.

She added: “As part of our standard processes we carry out funding audits on colleges and training organisations which help us to make sure provision has been delivered in accordance with our published Funding Rules. We will conduct our own investigations where necessary.

“Should we find any delivery and performance data issues that have not been addressed, either reported by a college or provider or picked up through our systems, we will take action. We also alert Ofsted and the Education Funding Agency of any issues.”

Exclusive FE Week Q&A with Iain Wright MP

What’s the first skills-related issue you’d like to look at? 

What I’m looking at is where do we want to be in 2020 when it comes to a more entrepreneurial society, larger businesses employing highly skilled, well-paid people, and what’s the role of the education and the skills system to fit into that.

So in terms of talking to you in 2020 about what the committee will have achieved, I want to see us very much as scrutinising and pressuring the government to make sure there is a responsive and high-quality skills system. Now, that will involve a number of things. One is, is there sufficient recognition of the role that skills play; is there sufficient money going into the system; and how are the outputs and outcomes being evaluated?

I don’t want to just pick a particular thing – this is going to be a major strand of what the committee does all the way through this parliament.

What I have also said though, is I don’t think the BIS Select Committee can just do this on its own. In many respects, some of the roles I have done already in parliament, whether it’s apprenticeships minister at the Department for Children, Schools and Families, whether it’s Shadow Minister for Industry, I have just wanted to see much greater join-up between the education and the skills systems, between schools and businesses – and one of the real priorities is how can I use the committee to help achieve that.

We’re going to be very open and accommodating, to make sure that we speak to as wide a view of people as possible – and in that regard, if anyone has ay concerns about the sector, what’s happening, I hope that they can come to me and I will certainly make a point of responding. 

Have you met with the new House of Commons Education Select Committee chair Neil Carmichael yet? 

Yes. And we’re going to meet again very soon with our clerks to talk about how we actually do this in a practical manner – because I think again this will be a major theme about this parliament. This is not just something that’s going to be a one-off.

One of the things I pitched to MPs in seeking election to the role is productivity. Neil is very keen on that as well, so how do we use the education and skills system in order to raise productivity? I do think skills is incredibly important for us to become more competitive, more entrepreneurial, and that doesn’t just start at the age of 16.

It’s a case of how does the skills system and the education system lend itself to a more enterprising, entrepreneurial workforce that can really allow us to compete. Neil has got a key role to play in that, and us working together I think will be a great new agenda in order to make sure that policies on skills are joined up and coordinated as much as possible. 

Obviously funding is a huge concern, and there have been a lot of cuts. Is that something you will want to look at fairly quickly?

Yes, as part of a broader point which is, far too often there is a risk that FE gets neglected and ignored. I don’t want to do that. I want to be a real champion of the sector, because I see, and I saw as a minister, and I see it as a local MP, the great work that FE colleges can do just to drive forward economic growth and social mobility.

I worry that BIS is not a protected department. There are other areas that will sap an awful lot of resource. FE can’t bear the brunt of the cuts, and it’s a very worrying precedent that one of the first acts that the new Business Secretary does is put in place, could be extraordinarily high levels of cuts for the FE sector to absorb. That’s my first point.

My second point is that it’s difficult for any organisation to plan when expected income is cut mid-year, and this apprenticeship growth funding is an example of a chaotic system that doesn’t allow itself for good, planned management of resources – and this is certainly something that I’ll want to look at.

Have you had a chance to look at what the new Ofsted framework will mean for FE? 

It’s something that I’m looking at. I can’t pretend to be a master of this, but it’s certainly something that we will look at – but I can’t comment upon that yet, given I’m still getting as briefed as possible. 

What’s your take on traineeships? Do you think they’re something we should be looking to expand? 

I am a big fan of traineeships. I am a big fan of making sure that pre-apprenticeships are considered both by learners and by business. I think it’s a great example of making sure that you can get into the habit of what is required at work.

I do worry that careers advice has been decimated over recent years, and it’s a case of how people learn about what’s on offer there. I worry that work experience as a whole is diminishing, so people at a relatively early age are not getting that experience about dipping their toe in the water about what’s going on, but in terms of what Nick [Boles, Skills Minister] is trying to do as a minister with regards to traineeships, I think that’s probably the right attitude, and it’s the right stance, and making sure that it works is something that the committee will want to look at. 

Reform of how apprenticeships are funded continues to be a focus for the government. What are your thoughts on this issue?

We’ve got to tread very carefully when it comes to this. We want to be encouraging as many businesses as possible to take on an apprentice, and it’s not because of an altruistic role; the businesses will grow and thrive if apprenticeships are taken on, because their workforce will become more highly skilled, and thinking about a longer term vision for their company.

We’ve got to encourage that as much as possible. There are very strong, hard, business reasons to take on apprenticeships, but the role of government is to make that as easy as possible to facilitate, and that can often mean making sure that the contribution is given when it comes to finance. And so I think that will need to be looked at incredibly carefully, because I don’t want to see businesses frightened off because thinking we have to make a contribution.

You talked about reaching out to the sector – what’s your experience as an MP of FE colleges and independent learning providers? 

I was a minister for the last year of the previous Labour government, for 14 to 19 reform and apprenticeships. I used to go around FE colleges a lot. I always remember, particularly one time, getting my hair cut in Derby College by hairdressing apprentices. The other thing I am very keen to do is to get out of Westminster and go around the country, and have select committee meetings out and about in the various nations and regions of the United Kingdom, and often a great place to do that is the local FE college. 

I’m really keen to do this, because when I have been out and about I think about my local FE college. There are some great facilities that would allow the select committee to operate, to make sure that they could meet various stakeholders, both business and education, who are involved in the sector and in business, so I often think that getting out with the select committee, a great means of doing that is by going to see FE colleges.

The government paid a “one-off settlement” to write off the pension liabilities of a cash-strapped sixth form college as part of a deal to secure new owners and remove it from the public sector, FE Week can exclusively reveal.

The Education Funding Agency (EFA) paid Hampshire County Council the undisclosed figure, believed to run into millions, to prevent pension liabilities from being transferred to national crime prevention charity Nacro when it takes on Totton College from November.

The deal was announced on Monday (June 22) and came after talks failed with other nearby colleges to merge or take over provision — but writing off pension liabilities was apparently not part of the deals tabled to them by the EFA.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “As Nacro is not a member of the Local Government Pension Scheme, it would not have been able to assume the associated liability.”

He added the EFA therefore paid a “one-off settlement” to the local authority but declined to comment on the sum involved.

A merger had been on the horizon for the 1,700-learner Southampton college since December when former principal Mike Gaston said it was looking at options. Sixth Form College Commissioner Peter Mucklow had warned it could not function alone having been placed under Financial Notice to Improve by the EFA.

But attempts to merge with nearby Eastleigh College were abandoned in March after the proposals were rejected by Eastleigh’s board and the following month learners were told A-levels were being scrapped to focus on vocational qualifications. It is understood that Brockenhurst College also rejected a deal.

However, FE Week has learned that London-based Nacro, which uses skills and training to try to reduce crime and re-offending, was approached by EFA about taking over Totton, rated inadequate across the headline fields by Ofsted this month, with the proposition that pension liabilities would be written off.

A source from Totton, who correctly revealed that five Totton governors resigned ahead of a board meeting on June 18 when the decision to join Nacro was taken, said: “I am aware of the pensions deal. For me this is a key aspect that should be brought into the open — is it really the best use of public funds? It was not offered to other colleges.”

Josh Coleman, director of education for Nacro which currently has around 3,200 learners and improved from an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted rating in March 2013 to ‘good’ last June, declined to comment on the pension agreement.

However, he said: “There are no skeletons in the cupboard. We were approached by the college and EFA [over joining with Totton].

“It hasn’t always worked when one college takes over another, so why shouldn’t they turn to an organisation with a different perspective?”

He added that the deal involved Nacro taking on a £2m commercial loan.

A spokesperson for Totton declined to comment on the pension deal, but said: “Governors took into consideration the recommendations and advice from the EFA [at the June 18 meeting].”

Both Eastleigh and Brockenhurst declined to comment whether they had been extended the pension liabilities write-off deal for Totton by the EFA.

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Editor’s comment

EFA right off public sector

It’s been a strange few weeks for FE and skills.

It’s a sector that has been given its moment to shine with apprenticeships and that 3m target one of the government’s key focuses.

And yet of course more recently providers have been kept waiting to find out if there’s any cash for their recent extra apprenticeship starters.

Finding money is a problem for all government departments. This is something everybody can agree on, or so we thought.

Because we learn that the Education Funding Agency managed to pull out millions from somewhere to allow Totton College to be taken over by the private sector (albeit a charity).

The government might argue this money remained in the public sector because it went to Hampshire County Council to write off Totton’s pension liabilities, but it nevertheless represents public money used to sanction privatisation.

And if the pensions deal wasn’t or couldn’t have been offered to other colleges to take on Totton, why could the deal not have been incentivised in other ways by the EFA? — After all the money would have stayed in public sector hands with another college.

As, crucially, Totton would have too.

Chris Henwood

chris.henwood@feweek.co.uk

 

Former FE funding boss Sir David Melville (pictured above) has become the latest high-profile voice to express serious concerns about the government’s handling of the sector.

The current chair of Pearson Education Ltd and governor of Manchester Metropolitan University, who was chief executive of the FE Funding Council from 1997 to 2001, told FE Week of his fears for FE with comments that backed the findings of government adviser Professor Lady Alison Wolf.

She said FE could “vanish into history” as government funding for the sector, which will see provider budgets slashed by 24 per cent next academic year, was swallowed up by apprenticeships.

Professor Wolf, who wrote the influential 2011 review of vocational education, warned the government’s “largely unfunded” pledge to deliver 3m apprenticeship starts by the end of the current Parliament could come at the cost of the rest of the sector.

Writing for FE Week (see below) with an outline of her report, entitled Heading for the precipice: can further and higher education funding policies be sustained?, she said government “must rebalance funding from higher education to other high-quality 19+ provision”.

And Sir David said he shared her concerns. He said: “What Alison Wolf’s report highlights is the need for what I would call an integrated approach to post-19 funding and in particular that if cuts have to be made then they should be made in higher education as opposed to FE, because the balance is all wrong.”

National Institute of Adult Continuing Education chief executive David Hughes said Professor Wolf’s was a “high-profile voice” joining a “chorus of concern” about how the lack of skills training opportunities for adults “threatens this country’s future social and economic well-being”.

He added: “The government’s focus on apprenticeships is welcome but they are not the only answer. The FE sector should be viewed as a vital part of the solution rather than being hit again and again with funding cuts.”

Stewart Segal, AELP chief executive, said: “It was right the professor tilted the debate towards comparing FE and higher education spends, rather than one that just looks at apprenticeships against other FE provision.”

He added: “As Professor Wolf says, the focus should be on whether the whole of the post-16 education and skills budget, including HE, is meeting the priorities of the government.”

Professor Wolf’s report came just days after Skills Minister Nick Boles revealed at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) annual conference how official research indicating a better return on public cash from apprenticeships over other forms of adult education would “guide” future policy.

Mr Boles used his appearance at the AELP conference on Monday (June 22) to point to a government report published earlier in the day, entitled Measuring the Net Present Value of Further Education in England, which 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.

He also reaffirmed the government’s commitment to look at the general FE college model, as outlined in the Conservative manifesto [click here for Mr Boles’s speech in full].

Sir David said: “Despite what many people think, the majority of 16 and 17-year-olds taking what you might call conventional qualifications are in colleges not schools. What it means is colleges are shifting to become more like school sixth forms, especially with the requirement that they continue to educate people in English and maths.

“The issue with that is that the vocational skills, right up to pre-degree level, are disappearing. FE as we know it is in danger of disappearing, and of course this will then lead the government to re-assess the whole of what you might call sixth form provision and take the view that we don’t need an FE sector.

“Action is needed now because we know that cuts are likely, and if they fall predominantly on FE, which it rather looks like they will, we will see the sector decline even more rapidly.”

Association of Colleges (AoC) assistant chief executive Julian Gravatt said the AoC agreed the government faced “difficult public spending choices”, but said he also had “confidence that the college model works”.

He said: “They are ambitious and resilient institutions at the heart of the community, with excellent relationships with local businesses. They will play a vital role in the delivery of the 3m new apprenticeships the government plans to create.

“Colleges have the scale to cross-subsidise important specialist provision and have ensured they stayed in business despite six years of public spending cuts.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills 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.”

Addressing the FE funding imbalance

Policy Exchange head of education Jonathan Simons last week called for higher education funding to be diverted to FE. Professor Lady Alison Wolf’s latest report makes largely the same case and she explains her argument.

English governments have, for decades, been obsessed with education’s role as a supposed engine of growth. But you wouldn’t guess it from the way they allocate spending, and consistently ignore what the labour market is telling them.

Since 2010 — as most FE Week readers will know — the government’s Adult Skills budget has declined sharply. Funding per full-time equivalent college-based student in 2012 was about £2,150 per year: spending per apprentice was even less.

Universities, meanwhile, were moving to universal £9,000 a-year fees. Even allowing for bursaries and fee waivers, they currently are receiving around £8,400 a-year for ‘home’ university undergraduates. The last few years have been a golden age, financially, for higher education.

The imbalance is even greater when you include participation rates. University participation rates for young people in England are now close to 50 per cent: conversely, there is a population of around 28.3m 20 to 60-year-olds who are not and never have been in higher education. The adult skills budget is the main source of government support for education and training of this group. Yet in 2009-10, the allocation was £142 per head of population; today it is below £70 in 2000 prices.

This makes no sense. We are at this point in large part because policy-makers note that graduates have historically earned a lot, and therefore assume that more expenditure on higher education will be highly ‘productive’.

Removing the cap on undergraduate numbers will clearly exacerbate this situation. Young people will increasingly head for the better funded, undergraduate route. And yet concrete pay-offs to many degrees are plateauing; and UK productivity has been stagnating despite huge year-on-year growth in graduate numbers.

Meanwhile, we neglect skills which will make a major contribution to the country’s productivity. Successive government interventions have incentivised high-volume, low-cost provision.

Qualifications across the adult skills sector are concentrated at low levels. Apprenticeship numbers are also overwhelmingly in areas that are cheap to deliver. For example, at level three or above (technician level) less than 5 per cent of apprenticeships are in the science, IT and engineering sectors that are critical to economic growth.

The government’s target of 3m apprentices threatens to push the system towards yet more of the cheap, low-level same.

Meanwhile, ‘level four’ technician qualifications are virtually non-existent. In a typical year, only about 20,000 people have obtained a level four qualification — while well over a quarter of a million young English people graduate with a bachelor’s degree.

Our system is not producing sufficient technicians even though there is strong labour market demand.

What should be done? Government must rebalance funding from higher education to other high-quality 19+ provision.

More generally, we must start to consider post-19 education as a whole, not as two separate bunkers. Otherwise we will perpetuate a system which is both unjust and inefficient, and divorced from the labour market. Our future prosperity is at risk.

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Click here fore an expert piece on Professor Wolf’s findings by Cambridge Regional College principal Anne Constantine, and here for an expert piece on Mr Boles’s AELP speech by 157 Group executive director Dr Lynne Sedgmore