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Labour BIS and DfE shadows signal joined-up opposition with funding cuts pledge

A more joined-up approach to opposition FE policy was signalled at the Labour Party conference as Angela Eagle and Lucy Powell both pledged to fight cuts to the sector.

The Shadow Business Secretary and Shadow Education Secretary both named FE as a key battleground in their speeches in Brighton as they criticised cuts to post-16 funding.

Their shared concern about the area of policy is another signal that Labour plans to pursue a more joined-up approach to its opposition on the issue, with Gordon Marsden’s re-appointment to a Skills Minister post that now straddles both departments.

Young people deserve more than this ideologicallly-driven recipe of cuts

In her speech, Ms Eagle (pictured above) warned the government was presiding over a “skills emergency”, which she said threatened economic growth.

She said: “Success in the 21st Century means partnering with business to make the most of all of our talent. Yet more than two thirds of businesses now need more high-skilled staff. In construction, manufacturing, science, engineering and technology the skills shortage is at its worst.

“So what is the government’s answer to this challenge? They’ve cut FE budgets. They’re failing young people on vocational qualifications. And they’re dumbing down apprenticeships.

“Conference, our young people deserve more than this ideologically driven recipe of cuts and neglect.”

Turning her criticism to Sajid Javid, Ms Eagle said the business secretary had “recently boasted” that he was looking for 40 per cent cuts to his department ahead of “the Chancellor’s looming, ideologically driven Whitehall cuts”.

She added: “Perhaps he should concentrate more on the day job and less on his ambitions to be the next right wing Prime Minister.

“This Tory ideological obsession with a small state is getting in the way of our national interest and leaving our economy vulnerable.

“And if this failure to support strategic industries was not enough, this Tory government is presiding over a productivity crisis.”

Ms Powell warned delegates about what she described as the “deepest, most severe cuts to post-16 education that we’ll have ever seen”.

She added: “Investment in, and focus on, post-16 education is vital for young people getting decent jobs and for creating a productive economy.

“It’s perverse that under this government we are likely to see up to 40 per cent cuts in post-16 provision, leading to the closure of many good sixth form colleges and colleges.

“I don’t intend to sit on the sidelines. We will make a difference.

“On free schools meals we’ve already won a small victory this week. But let’s be clear this puts further pressures on early years and post-16 education.”

FE sector organisations have welcomed signs of a more joined-up approach and a stronger challenge to funding cuts.

Chris Walden, director of communications and public affairs at the Association of Colleges (AoC), said: “We are pleased that the Labour Party has recognised the seriousness of the cuts and how they are affecting colleges.”

Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said: “We are delighted that Gordon Marsden has returned to his former post, especially as his responsibilities now mirror those of [Skills Minister] Nick Boles.

“We look forward to picking up with Gordon on Labour’s apprenticeship policies and we’re be hoping to discuss how the party’s skills policies might link up with employment programmes.”

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills declined to comment.

Apprenticeship problems ‘germinated’ under New Labour

Some of the “problems” facing apprenticeships policy were “germinated” in the New Labour period, a former adviser to David Blunkett and Gordon Brown has warned.

Nick Pearce, who worked for Mr Blunkett when he was education and employment secretary in the late-1990s and later headed up Mr Brown’s policy unit, told the Association of Colleges Labour conference fringe that Labour had “got some things wrong” as it tried to expand apprenticeships.

Mr Pearce, now director of the left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank, said Labour expanded apprenticeships to coincide with Tony Blair’s 50 per cent in higher education policy and again a decade later under Mr Brown’s premiership.

But he warned that policy problems could not be solved by numerical targets, and admitted expansions of apprenticeships became too numbers-focused.

He said the National Apprenticeship Service was established because the government “thought the problem was that we didn’t have enough of a delivery state” and set targets.

He added: “If you’re then to do that you do set in train processes which allow people to say ‘3m apprenticeships, doesn’t matter what level, doesn’t matter what the quality is like, doesn’t matter if people are already in work’.

“We have to get away from thinking our policy problems are solved by setting a big number and then saying the state will deliver that.”

Mr Pearce also criticised the apprentice minimum wage, branding it “a complete disgrace”.

He said: “The use of apprenticeships to lower wages, to effectively circumvent the national minimum wage is a real problem.

“When the new so-called national living wage comes in, because it’s for over-25s, there will be even greater incentive for companies to employ young people on apprenticeships to keep their wage costs down.”

For more coverage of Labour 2015, see our supplement, free with edition 150 of FE Week.

Another centre to address lack of FE research as UCL’s Institute of Education looks at post-14 education and work

A third FE research centre has launched just a year after Professor Lady Alison Wolf decried how the sector was “woefully short of good, up-to-date research”.

The Centre for Post-14 Education and Work, launched by University College London’s Institute of Education (UCL/IoE) on September 21, will undertake research in a number of areas, including technical and vocational education and training, and adult skills, community and lifelong learning.

Centre manager Paul Grainger (pictured above) said it would “look at the relationship of all education to work, including vocational, academic and baccalaureate qualifications, and adult education, to promote a more inclusive curriculum post-14 and in lifetime learning”.

The work of the new centre, said Mr Grainger, would complement that of other sector organisations involved in research, including the Further Education Trust for Leadership (Fetl) and the Centre for Vocational Education Research (CVER). Meanwhile, a fourth research body remains in the planning stages at the Education and Training Foundation (ETF).

Fetl launched last summer in response to the need for “decent independent research for FE-by-FE thinkers and in order to use the knowledge to make better tomorrows for the sector, its leaders and its task”, according to its founding president, Dame Ruth Silver.

Dame Silver said she was “delighted” by the arrival of “fellow travellers” with the aim of providing good quality, independent FE sector research.

The CVER, based at London School of Economics, “aims to become a world-class research hub” focusing on vocational education, according to founding director Dr Sandra McNally.

ETF’s Vocational Education and Training Centre, proposed in response to recommendations from the Commission for Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning (CAVTL) in March 2013, is still in development with no date yet for its launch.

Sheila Kearney, head of research at ETF, said she was “delighted by the growth in research within the sector”. She added that ETF’s own research strategy “complements and supports the work of other partners who share our agenda around a research and evidence-based culture in our sector”.

Julian Gravatt, Association of Colleges assistant chief executive, said: “It’s good there are new centres and new programmes. The key is to ensure the research is good quality, adds to our understanding of issues and isn’t buried when findings are inconvenient.”

Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) chief executive Stewart Segal said: “Policy changes need to be supported by independent evidence-based research. It will be important that any research is integrated with the research initiated by other organisations in the sector such as ETF.”

Return on investment analysis now ‘priority’, says Gazelle

Gazelle colleges have been told that proving their £15k membership fee is money well spent is now a “priority” for the organisation.

The fee was cut from £35k after the number of college members plummeted from 23 to ten in just over a year — with three out of five founder colleges among those to have quit — following repeated criticism that Gazelle carried out no return on investment (ROI) analysis.

The new membership fee was announced by the organisation, and reported on feweek.co.uk on September 24 with the conclusion of its long-running membership review.

And while the initial announcement contained no mention of ROI analysis, a spokesperson for the organisation has since told FE Week: “We know we need to do more work on ROI analysis of activity going forward and this is a priority for the new grouping.”

It comes after Gazelle chief executive Fintan Donohue (pictured right) told FE Week in January with the launch of an impact review — that did not contain any ROI analysis or consideration of whether membership might affect Ofsted grades — that it was for college members to decide if his organisation delivered value for money.

But Gazelle Colleges Group chair Stella Mbubaegbu, principal of continued Gazelle member Highbury College Portsmouth, said last week that Gazelle “needed to change in order to better reflect the financial pressures facing colleges”.

The Gazelle spokesperson further said the £15k figure had been determined by members as “an appropriate amount to support a more focussed set of objectives and associated activities”.

And it came in response to the January report which, she said, recommended “a more affordable programme of activity”.

She added: “The new structure gives full ownership to members through the mechanism of a not-for-profit company, providing a single type of membership by removing the distinction between founders and other members.”

Despite this, the two remaining Gazelle founder members — City College Norwich and Warwickshire College Group — will not have to fork out the £15k membership fee for two years “in recognition of their early endeavours and investment”.

A number of organisations had been linked to Gazelle, including Gazelle Global, Gazelle Foundation and Gazelle Transform, but Dick Palmer, chief executive of Transforming Education in Norfolk (Ten), which includes Norwich college, said: “Gazelle will be ceasing all activities and any residual funds will be shared among shareholders.”

He added: “A group of colleges, together with partners and sponsors, remain dedicated to advancing the enterprise and entrepreneurial agenda through the Gazelle Colleges Group. The Gazelle Colleges Group will, from December 2015, be the only Gazelle entity in existence.”

Construction skills sector prepared for two levies for the price of … two

Building sector firms have been paying into the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) levy for half a century, so might have a rough idea what to expect from the government’s large employer apprenticeship levy. However, it hasn’t been clear jst how they feel about the possibility of having to fork out for two training levies — until now, as Steve Radley explains.

With the deadline for the government’s consultation on its proposed apprenticeship levy passing today, we will soon hear what businesses think about the plans. Finding this out has not been easy.

Apart from the short timeframe allotted, details remain sketchy about how it will work, who will pay it — with the government not yet clear on how it defines a large employer (usually 250 employees and upwards) — and what rate they will pay.

Despite this, our conversations with construction employers and a survey of the larger ones have told us quite a lot.

Their views have important implications for how to ensure the apprenticeship levy meets the government’s objectives.

In many ways construction is quite different from other industries. In particular, nearly half (46 per cent) of the sector’s apprenticeships are delivered by firms employing nine people or fewer.

But there’s much to learn from construction firms, which have been contributing to the CITB levy for the past 50 years.

Both levies relate to apprenticeships and it’s rare to find anyone who’s happy to pay for the same thing twice

Not surprisingly, only a minority of firms — a quarter of those who felt able to express an opinion — were prepared to pay both the new apprenticeship levy and CITB’s at its full rate.

The two levies are quite different. The government’s will fund the costs of training apprentices in large firms, while CITB’s covers all the other costs of an apprenticeship, supports firms of all sizes and the full range of training that the industry does.

Yet both levies relate to apprenticeships and it’s rare to find anyone who’s happy to pay for the same thing twice. Indeed, we believe that this figure would drop well below 25 per cent once large firms realise that they must meet the full cost of training an apprentice via the new levy, and when the government sets out the rate.

More interestingly, only 17 per cent wanted to pay just the apprenticeship levy and the most popular option favoured by nearly six out of ten (59 per cent), was to pay the new levy plus CITB’s levy at a reduced rate, with a modified level of CITB services.

This might seem an odd result given the potential costs and administration associated with paying two levies. But with the survey also showing that nine out of ten large firms (88 per cent) support CITB’s levy-grant system, the results are not that surprising.

Beyond the exact future of the construction levy, there are some important lessons to learn in implementing the apprenticeship levy.

The first is that employers need to see what they pay going back into training. The body running the new levy should aim to match the 2.1 per cent rate it costs to collect and distribute CITB’s system.

Employers must also be confident that the money raised will be ring-fenced to support training as it is in construction’s.

Second, as with CITB’s levy and grant, industry must feel a sense of ownership.

With the apprenticeship levy, industry should decide on the design of new standards and the price of different frameworks.

As with CITB’s levy, this is industry’s money and it should decide how it is spent.

Finally, support for CITB’s levy reflect employers’ shared interest in developing a skilled workforce for the construction industry. In the same way, the apprenticeship levy must not get in the way of how large firms in a variety of sectors seek to work with their supply chains to train apprenticeships.

The final lesson, and a hard-learned one for CITB, is to keep the apprenticeship levy simple.

Over the past year I have spoken to countless employers who are frustrated by our bureaucracy and we are now working hard to strip it out. But better still to stop it getting there in the first place.

The apprenticeship levy is a new measure that will have to work hard to win friends, just as has CITB’s to keep them. But by making it ring-fenced, industry-owned and simple, the government can give it a fighting chance.

Taking Treasury’s lead

On September 29, Jeremy Corbyn delivered his first speech as the Leader of the Labour Party in Brighton.

Although he’d never admit it himself, many have argued that the speech was the most important of his political life, and the media has treated it as such with forensic examination of everything from the way it was delivered, what he was wearing, the team who helped write it as well as what was and wasn’t included in its content.

With so much attention on Mr Corbyn, the publication of the government’s National Infrastructure Plan for Skills has gone largely unnoticed. But this document is important for two main reasons.

Firstly, we finally have an acknowledgement that that skill shortages and skills gaps in key growth sectors cannot be met by investment in young people entering the labour market alone.

The National Infrastructure Pipeline details how £411bn is going to be invested in transport, energy, communications, flood defences, water and sewerage, waste and science and research.

The government is now beginning to respond to calls from construction and construction engineering bodies that skills deficits in these sectors are the single biggest risk to the 564 project and programmes designed to improve UK infrastructure.

To attach some figures — the report cites evidence from Infrastructure UK which says that this level of infrastructure investment would create demand for 250,000 workers in construction and 150,000 in engineering construction.

In context, this means needing to recruit and train nearly 100,000 additional workers per year by 2020 and up-skill around 250,000 of the existing workforce.

The report also highlights the challenges with retirement and people leaving the industry.

In power, for example, an estimated 50 per cent of current employees are set to leave the sector and 200,000 new recruits will be needed by 2023. In rail, 20 per cent of the workforce is over the age of 55 and 25 to 30 per cent of the traction, rolling-stock and electrification workforce will leave in the next five years.

A further eye-catching stat is drawn from the recent UK Industry Performance Report, which revealed that construction employees on average are receiving only 1.2 days of training in a-year.

It also highlights the compelling regional disparity in construction skills where the skills gap for construction is 12 per cent in the South-west, but over 30 per cent in the Midlands.

Addressing these needs will place a huge responsibility on provider-employer relationships in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) industries and something, no doubt, area reviews are going to concern themselves with when analysing availability of provision against current and future demand from employers.

The second main reason this plan is important is because it cements the government’s shift in direction in skills policy in alignment with what employers are saying they need, but in a less generic way they have done before.

What’s interesting is that this document was not published by the government department with lead responsibility for skill policy — the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). The document’s foreword hasn’t come from Business Secretary Sajid Javid or Skills Minister Nick Boles. Instead, the Treasury has taken the lead via its delivery arm — Infrastructure UK and the document is opened by Lord O’Neill who is the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury.

Is the government now intent on reducing skills investment to its infrastructure priorities only?

If you’re facing cuts in funding on the magnitude that BIS is expecting to, you can kind of see how that argument would play out between BIS and the Treasury — “you can have a skills budget, but only if it delivers on our Infrastructure Plan” for example.

That scenario would indicate a very obvious two-tier system in that the provision of training in subjects like hospitality, childcare, business and health and social care would have to be an apprenticeship through the levy or through learning loans. If that is the case, the future of non-Stem, non-apprenticeships provision looks uncertain indeed.

Principals have say their on the latest area reviews

A further three post-16 education area reviews were announced late last month by the government, taking the number of colleges undergoing the process to 72.

Twenty one general FE colleges and 13 sixth form colleges (SFCs) across the Tees Valley, Sussex Coast and Solent regions, were added to the 22 general FE colleges and 16 SFCs whose futures were already being assessed in reviews in Birmingham and Solihull, Greater Manchester, and Sheffield city.

The government has said the reviews were “designed to achieve a transition towards fewer, larger, more resilient and efficient providers, and more effective collaboration across institution types”.

A number of principals from colleges in the latest three reviews spoke to FE Week.

Solent

Nigel Duncan, principal of Fareham College, said: “We are working in partnership with other colleges and stakeholder organisations in the Solent area to collectively review our collaborative arrangements to reflect the ever-changing FE landscape.”

Dr Jan Edrich, principal of Eastleigh College, said: “We are hopeful that this review will help to secure long term stability for our learners and that what will emerge is the best kind of provision in meeting local area needs.”

Mike Gaston, principal of South Downs College, said: “We wish to ensure we engage as a strategic partner with employers and other providers, responding to the needs of business and continuing to contribute to our economic and cultural community.

“We note that this will rely on considerable additional investment of time, but believe that there could be many synergies between the objectives of the review and our own vision, to ensure we continue as leading provider for professional and technical excellence.”

John Mcdougall, principal at Havant College said: “We are really pleased about the area reviews and it is good to be involved in shaping the agenda.

“However our main concern is the exclusion of provision in the secondary school sector. It means that there is not a level playing field and it should be.”

Declined to comment: Barton Peveril College

Did not respond: Brockenhurst College, Highbury College, Isle of Wight College, Itchen College, Portsmouth College, Richard Taunton’s Sixth Form College, Southampton City College, and St Vincent College

Sussex coast

Sue Dare, chair of FE Sussex and principal of Northbrook College Sussex, said: “We are already involved in delivering shared services and are in discussions about working more closely together.

“The area review will have much to build on and, speaking on behalf of Northbrook College, I look forward to taking part in shaping the future direction of FE.”

Mike Hopkins, principal of Sussex Downs College, said: “We are the largest provider ofpost-16 education and training in East Sussex and will work in partnership with its sister colleges within FE Sussex, local authorities and schools in order to ensure a positive engagement with the area review.

“As a sovereign organisation, the board is determined that Sussex Downs will be guided, first and foremost, by what it sees as being in the best interest of students and employers.”

Nick Juba, chief executive of City College Brighton and Hove, said: “I hope that the area review process will generate sensible and realistic ideas for future ways of working, given the very challenging public funding environment facing the whole of the sector.”

Shelagh Legrave, principal of Chichester College, said: “We are supportive of the area to work closely with the review team, local partner colleges and our membership group FE Sussex alongside our local enterprise partnership and local authority.”

Jill Sawyer, vice principal for students and learning of Varndean College, said: “Any review of post-16 provision needs to include all the providers funded by government including school and academy sixth forms and private providers.

“Although it’s of course important to know what the business needs of a region are, that is not the sole purpose of education post-16 and many of our young people go on to contribute to the national economy.

“Young people and their parents should also be involved in a consultation about changes to their future opportunities for education and training in Brighton and Hove.”

Dan Shelley, vice principal of Sussex Coast College Hastings, said: “We are positively engaging fully with the process and plan to work closely with the review team, local partner colleges and our membership group FE Sussex alongside our local enterprise partnership and local authority.”

Chris Thomson, principal of Brighton Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College, said: “It is regrettable that sixth forms are not fully involved in the area review as this means that it is not a complete review that covers all sixth forms and colleges. On the other hand school data will be looked at and that will be helpful.

“In regards to the upcoming review, I feel that the college is currently well placed, in terms of FE conditions. I am interested to see what happens with the review as our mission is to develop the learning needs of the students and the outcomes should be beneficial.”

Sarah Wright, principal of Central Sussex College, said: “We hope that the outcome of the review of post 16 education enables the FE sector to continue to provide a varied and balanced local education in order to meet the needs of local industry.

“It will be very important that all post-16 education providers are considered simultaneously rather than just colleges.”

Declined to comment: Plumpton College

Did not respond: Bexhill College and Worthing College

Tees Valley

Phil Cook, principal and chief executive Stockton Riverside College, said: “Our focus throughout this review, and beyond it, will be to ensure the continuous provision of high quality education and training for all our students, businesses and partners.”

Darren Hankey, Hartlepool College of FE principal, said: “We’re happy to play a full and pro-active role in the area review, but would echo some of the concerns already made about the process about the providers that are involved.

“I’ve done some analysis of funding agency allocations to the colleges involved in the Tees Valley review and we account for 60 per cent of allocation, but other providers in the area, not involved in the review, account for the remaining 40 per cent.”

Zoe Lewis, principal of Middlesbrough College, said: “This is not unexpected given the scale of government cuts exacerbated locally by a sharp decline in demographics coupled with an increase in the number of providers.

“The college’s governing body and leadership team have been successfully implementing a strategy in anticipation of the many challenges confronting the FE sector; having determined to realign our offer to the needs of our community, the skills requirements of employers and key local economic priorities.”

Martin Raby, principal of Cleveland College of Art & Design, said: “We are happy to play our part in the process, but share the Association of Colleges’ concern that not all post-16 providers are included in the review.”

Declined to comment: Stockton Sixth Form College

Did not respond: Darlington College, Hartlepool Sixth Form College, Prior Pursglove College, Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, and Redcar and Cleveland College

Ayub Khan, interim CEO, Further Education Trust for Leadership

Ayub Khan finds it ironic that he has spent a good portion of his working life developing careers advice given how bad his own experiences have been.

“My careers advice was being asked, aged 15: ‘What do you want to do?’ and I said: ‘I like mucking around with cars’ and the chap turned round, got a booklet on how to be a motor mechanic, dropped it in front of me and bang that was it, over,” says Khan, who was appointed interim chief executive of the Further Education Trust for Leadership (Fetl) in June.

So in 2003, when Khan found himself as interim chief executive of Connexions South London, his aim was “to make sure that didn’t happen, and that if it did it was quickly dealt with because it shouldn’t happen.”

Khan, aged 50, when Connexions South London became into a shared commissioning partnership working across six local authorities led by the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames where he was the Director of the Unit until 2013 and also sat on the government’s Careers Profession Taskforce.

Connexions in itself was a good idea but it was probably trying to solve the ills of the world, without being focussed

And although he admits it wasn’t perfect, he’s a fan of the now largely defunct Connexions service.

“Connexions in itself was a good idea but it was probably trying to solve the ills of the world, without being focussed,” he says.

“Ultimately, it doesn’t matter about structure, it doesn’t matter about organisation. If you’ve got poor leadership at the top the whole thing fails.”

And he says that “some really crazy examples of poor leadership and management” in some branches had led to everyone being “tarred with the same brush.

“In my experience, even when it was running it was being rubbished across the board, not constructively,” he says.

“But if you go back to user satisfaction, there are some really good reports hidden in the depths of the Department for Education’s archives now which have young people saying ‘actually Connexions is making difference for me, and I’m content with the service’.”

Khan with his wife Julie on their wedding day in June 1990

As is often said, a key source of careers advice for young people is their parents, and for Khan, the youngest of five, that meant a heavy push towards university.

“I’m very proud to say I’m the first person in my family not to have gone to university — because I think we put such an emphasis on it, particularly children and young people at such an early age,” he says.

But, he adds: “My dad was very driven to get his children to university.

“He came over from India in the late 50s, early 60s, and as is the case with many parents, he felt university was important for his family — and of course it is, but not going to university doesn’t mean you can’t be successful.”

However, Khan’s father, Noor, did have an impact on his awareness of politics — Noor was a security guard at the Houses of Parliament, and used to take the young Khan into work with him.

“We used to get Christmas cards personally signed by Margaret Thatcher, and I never really understood why they were there,” Khan remembers.

Khan, a true Cockney born within earshot of the Bow Bells, grew up on the Ocean Estate in Mile End — one of the most deprived council estates in East London.

He has never met his mother and, he says, has “no idea who she is or was, whether she’s still alive”.

He adds: “It probably did have an impact on me — being a parent now, you appreciate having a two-unit family so I think it probably has had an impact, but how it’s manifested itself I don’t know.”

Despite this, he describes his early years in East London as “enjoyable” and “secure”.

However, when he was 12, the family moved to North Chingford, which was an entirely different experience.

“At the time it was Norman Tebbit’s constituency, and it was when the National Front were at their height,” he says.

“And at the age of 12 or 13 that was the first time I’d experienced racism, and it was real shock to me because where I’d come from we’d had friends of all different colours.

“I remember walking along station road and a grown man spitting in my face and saying go back home and I looked at him and I thought, quite ridiculously: ‘What, round the corner?’ — but that was the kind of hate that you had to deal with.”

Looking back, Khan says, encounters like that have helped to shape him.

“It built the resilience in me — it allows you to suffer setbacks, but also to challenge things head on,” he says.

“And we haven’t solved this problem yet have we? I still go to meetings where I add colour in more ways than one, and I think to myself, this cannot be right still.”

At the time however, the impact of being one of only two students from the black and minority ethnic community at his school left Khan “turned off” by education.

“School was a really bad experience for me. I hated it and left with little or no qualifications — I was what we would describe as a Neet [not in education, employment or training] today,” he says.

Khan got himself a job in a clothes shop but slowly began to realise that what he wanted was a career, and so moved into recruitment.

It was during his 20s that he re-met his now wife Julie — having first encountered her at a family wedding, aged five.

“My brother is considerably older than me and he married a lovely young woman, my sister-in-law Mary, and Julie was bridesmaid and I was page boy — Julie remembers me chasing her across the stage at the reception,” he says.

“I didn’t see the family again until I was in my late 20s and things just developed from there.”

The couple have two daughters, Alexandra and Megan, and a grand-daughter.

In 1993, Khan landed himself a job at the South Thames Training and Enterprise Council (Tec) as a training adviser, before moving to North West London Tec as head of training and quality, before becoming director of post-16 learning at the Essex Learning and Skills Council.

“I just seem to have been within the post-16 sector wearing a number of different hats — not as a practitioner but in a supportive role,” he says, adding he’s never been tempted to try teaching himself.

“I don’t think I’d be a very good practitioner — I can see how stressful it is and I think my skills and gifts come from supporting people in a different role.”

From there he was seconded to Connexions, and when the funding cuts on local government “began to bite” in 2013 and the shared services he ran was wound up, he became chief executive of the Rochester Diocesan Multi Academy Trust.

And when Mark Ravenhall stepped down as Fetl chief executive in June, Khan, previously a Fetl trustee stepped into the role.

Since its inception in May 2014, he says the FE leadership thinktank has “made a good start”.

But, he adds: “We’ve got a lot of work to do.

“The problem in the sector is if you’re getting government funding then you’re busy doing whatever the government is telling you to do with taxpayers’ money, and you don’t have time for anything else.

“We are saying yes you can do that, of course but what about thinking about what needs to be done? How can we put the time and space in? How can we provide the energy and space for you to do that?”

And although Khan has moved away from direct involvement in careers advice provision, he’s still doing his bit.

“My granddaughter says she wants to be a vet,” he says.

“And I say: ‘Well, what do you know about being a vet?’ so we’re already talking
about it — not at any great depth but children at that age have aspirations and you’ve
got to channel that aspiration in the
right way.

“I’m a great believer that you start to have that conversation, and nurture it, not put it off and have it for the very first time when you’re 16.”

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Uncertainty over deadline for switch from old apprenticeship frameworks to Trailblazer standards

Uncertainty around the deadline of the apprenticeship frameworks is growing after the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) refused to confirm they would cease come 2017/18.

Adam Harper, BIS head of apprenticeship legislation, was non-committal when questioned about the deadline for the end of apprenticeship frameworks and move to Trailblazer standards, at London’s Capita apprenticeships and traineeships conference, on September 23.

With providers keen to find out if BIS was sticking to its planned cut-off for frameworks, FE Week asked BIS if it was now planning to allow them to continue beyond August 2017.

However, a BIS spokesperson declined to comment on the issue directly, saying instead that “there will be one new standard for each occupation identified byemployers as requiring an apprenticeship, and the standards will replace existing apprenticeship frameworks.”

He would not be drawn on a timescale for when this process should be completed by.

The government had confirmed the date for when it wanted old frameworks to be scrapped in an implementation plan for apprenticeship reform back in October 2013.

It stated: “The Trailblazers will provide clear examples of effective practice and approaches which others can build on as we move towards full implementation of the reforms during 2015/16 and 2016/17.

“Our aim is that from 2017/18, all new apprenticeship starts will be based on the new standards.”

But the government was forced to defend progress with implementation of Trailblazer apprenticeships in June, after FE Week reported that official figures indicated there had been just 300 starts on the new programmes in nine months.

Another FE Week report on August 6 revealed that frustration was growing among Trailblazer apprenticeship designers, with many of the new standards still awaiting government approval for delivery almost a year after they were published.

Just 24 standards had been published by BIS at that time as ready for delivery, and that figure still only stood at 54 as of September 24.

Yet the government said in August that more than 350 standards had either been delivered or were being developed.

It led to claims in FE Week on September 4 that Skills Minister Nick Boles had broken a promise made to the House of Commons Education Select Committee in January that there would be “many fewer” new apprenticeship Trailblazer standards than the frameworks, of which there were 334 at the time, they will replace.

The story saw FE Week editor Chris Henwood, in edition 145 of the newspaper, on September 7, raise the prospect of the frameworks deadline being put back.