A talented graphic designer from Walsall College claimed the top award at a national competition after impressing with a poster design promoting the use of gloves for safety.
HND graphic design student James Breckles beat competition from hundreds of college and university learners from across the country in the contest run by The Worshipful Company of Glovers of London.
The brief was to design a “powerful and hard-hitting” safety poster which highlights the importance of wearing the appropriate protective gloves when performing potentially hazardous tasks.
James, aged 19, said: “I had a lot of fun creating my design and incorporating a super hero theme.
“Winning this competition is great as it is something I can put on my CV which will help me to stand out when applying for jobs.”
James has been invited to a formal prize giving lunch at the City of London Livery Hall next month when he is due to receive his £400 cheque prize.
South Yorkshire college learners and staff raised more than £1,000 for charity by spending a night sleeping rough on campus grounds.
The team of 40 from Dearne Valley College did the ‘sleep out’ last month to raise funds and awareness for Safe@Last, a charity that works with young homeless people.
The sponsored volunteers had just cardboard, clothing and sleeping bags, as well as hot water and soups to keep them warm during the night.
Sports tutor and event organiser John Lund said: “It is important that our
students understand that homelessness is a real problem, and one which some individuals at their age are facing for a variety of reasons.”
The college rough sleepers were visited by staff from the Safe@Last charity who spoke about the work they carry out and the importance of fundraising events.
Main pic: Dearne Valley College staff and students try to get comfy for a night of sleeping rough on campus grounds
At the prestigious city headquarters of the Bank of New York last month we presented the first group of 12 managers from Aramark, the incumbent caterer on the BNY (Bank of New York) Mellon site, with their level four hospitality higher apprenticeship certificates.
Andrew Main, the UK chief executive for Aramark, and Jill Whittaker, HIT managing director, made the presentations.
We have been working with Aramark and People 1st to pilot this first cohort of learners on this new higher apprenticeship programme and partnered with University College Birmingham for some of the theoretic input.
HIT has been at the forefront of hospitality management apprenticeships and Aramark already has two further cohorts undertaking this programme. It has been a sharp learning curve for the HIT trainers and assessors involved as well as our local staff who acted as mentors to the individual management apprentices at their sites throughout the country.
The benefits of the programme have already been seen within the company and one of the apprentices was able to use her level four qualification to gain a work permit to take a promotion to Aramark’s head office in America.
From HIT’s point of view, it has enabled us to develop staff with previous hospitality management experience to deliver these higher apprenticeship programmes.
It is another way of retaining and motivating proficient trainer-assessors to utilise their expertise outside of our core level two and three delivery.
As learner numbers increase, we continually require more trainer-assessors but not necessarily more management posts. Therefore to retain the best trainer-assessors without promotion prospects, we need to make their role more interesting and demanding and also provide the opportunity to increase their salary by undertaking higher apprenticeship or specialised trainer-assessor roles.
The government response to encouraging the growth of higher apprenticeships is certainly the way forward, particularly to fill the vacuum left by the polytechnic technician grade vocational programmes
With nearly 300 learners currently on level four hospitality management higher apprenticeship programmes and a further 145 on the level five care and social care leadership higher apprenticeship there is plenty of scope for our trainer-assessors.
The government response to encouraging the growth of higher apprenticeships is certainly the way forward, particularly to fill the vacuum left by the polytechnic technician grade vocational programmes that had almost disappeared with the inappropriate rush to degrees for all.
The bias between academic and vocational learning becomes irrelevant. In fact, the training of airline pilots and doctors with their combination of theory and practical training is an apprenticeship by any other name.
One of the main learning curves for HIT in delivering level four and five higher apprenticeships is the level of ability of learners put forward by their employers for these programmes. If ever initial assessments are needed, then learners who have left education without A-levels or a degree, really need to be screened for their maths, English and IT skills before commencing a higher apprenticeship.
It seems unreal that learners on these higher apprenticeships have ‘special learning needs’ that have been hidden since leaving school.
We must ensure that effective initial assessment is written into all the Trailblazer higher apprenticeship standards and provision for continuous external assessment, as it is unlikely most employers will have the skill set to undertake competence assessment of their own employees at levels four and above throughout the programme.
Similarly, with the constant changes in professional cookery products and cooking techniques, regular revision of the Trailblazer standards needs to be maintained, or the National Occupational Standards maintained and updated and mandated to be the finite skills index for the trailblazer standards.
Finally, we are likely to hear next week, half way through June and halfway through the final quarter of the academic year, if any growth cases have been approved. We will have just six weeks to spend a whole quarter’s growth.
Ideally these decisions should be released by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) at the end of April to allow providers a full quarter to deliver. Otherwise individual providers will underperform on their growth allocations and be criticised again by the SFA.
This is Prime Minister David Cameron’s new “troubleshooter” taskforce set to track government progress on its 3m apprenticeship starts by next parliament target.
It contains eight MPs including Skills Minister Nick Boles and his predecessor Matthew Hancock, who is the Cabinet Office Minister and also chairs the group.
They will be joined on the “earn or learn” taskforce by, among others, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan and Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith.
In addition to taskforce’s remit to “ support 3m new apprenticeships,” the group is also tasked with “making sure that all young people are either earning or learning” and “helping businesses to create 2m new jobs to achieve full employment”.
It is one of 10 new taskforces, including immigration and childcare, set up to track policy performance.
A Number 10 spokesperson said: “Each group will be looking whether policy is being followed through and tracking the progress of new measure in that space.
“The group will be made up of key persons in the department, making sure the policies are implemented, troubleshooting and fixing teething problems.
“The best way to measure what they will do is to look at the key commitments we’re making in that area — in the case of earn or learn, we’ve promised the 3m apprenticeships and the work programmes with the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure young people on benefits get work experience as soon as possible.
“The meetings will be held within weeks, but they will be treated like an internal delivery meeting, and we will not be releasing details of each individual meeting.”
The make-up of each taskforce was released today by Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Oliver Letwin, who is in overall charge of the Cabinet Office and also sits on the earn or learn taskforce.
“I am publishing an updated Cabinet Committees list. Alongside the committees, the Prime Minister has created 10 implementation taskforces to monitor and drive delivery of the government’s most important cross-cutting priorities,” he said.
See FE Week edition 140, dated Monday, June 8, for more.
The earn or learn task force consists of:
Cabinet Office Minister Matthew Hancock (chair)
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Oliver Letwin
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith
Communities and Local Government Secretary Greg Clark
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Greg Hands
Employment Minister Priti Patel
Skills Minister Nick Boles
Amanda Spielman does not consider herself a pedant, but is a self-confessed hater of unclear or “fuzzy” language.
She doesn’t want to sound like someone who writes to newspapers complaining about the state of modern English and signing off, as she puts it, “Disgusted, from Tunbridge Wells”.
“Of course language has to grow and change,” says Ofqual chair Spielman.
“But in so many areas of real life we have to deal with fuzziness and muddiness of ideas — I have a permanent desire to clean the fuzziness out.”
Talking to Spielman, aged 54, you realise this desire is born of an inquisitive, quick-moving and logic-driven mind that doesn’t have time to be cluttered.
“It’s a really small thing, but I cannot stop myself noticing when they ask me to take my personal belongings from the train — what are my impersonal belongings?” she questions.
And working with education policy, clarity and precision have become a bit of a “personal quest” for the mum-of-two.
Spielman aged eight
“With my responsibilities for education, it’s all about making sure you don’t inadvertently make everything harder for people who have to work in the system,” she says.
“So I am always trying to make sure that things are properly thought through and expressed, so you get the best discussion.
“You can end up not having the right conversations that genuinely get value from people’s knowledge just because you’ve framed a conversation wrongly.”
When she was seven years old, Spielman wanted to be involved in education — as a professor of medieval history.
Mum Olivia, a university professor, and dad Sebastian, a civil servant, had met at Oxford, so “there was always plenty of academic push,” says Spielman.
But dreams of following in her mother’s footsteps faded as she got older.
“I grew out of it, fortunately,” she says.
“I’m not cut out for staying focused on a single issue in quite a solitary way through three or four years of a PhD.
“I like fixing and sorting things, and I like lots of interaction with people, the discussion that breeds human advancement.”
Spielman was born in London but the family moved to Glasgow when she was five before transferring to a Dorset boarding school when she was 10, followed by studying A-levels in London.
Through all the different schools, one thing remained constant — her love of maths.
Spielman on a hilltop above Palmyra, Syria in 1988
“Mathematics is absolutely fascinating,” she says.
“It’s not something that’s simply a matter of instinct and appreciation — it involves developing a very structural understanding of an immense library of concepts and being able to bring them to bear on problems, and suddenly make things that were previously inexpressible, expressible.”
Inspired, Spielman set out to study maths at Cambridge University, but was disappointed by the experience.
“Cambridge wasn’t very interested in teaching undergraduate mathematicians at that point,” she says.
“So they ran the course in a way that gave the first years as little attention as possible and then seeing who stays the course — and between a quarter and a third of people would change at the end of the first year, which was a terrible waste.”
And, “miserable” because of the teaching, Spielman became another one of the drop-out statistics and, as she began to realise she had “quite a practical bent and liked to fix things”, she instead set her sights on a career in business by transferring to a law degree.
After university, and with an eye on the business world, Spielman trained as a chartered accountant with KPMG — a process which in many ways, can be likened to an apprenticeship, she says.
Spielman at Swindon Railway Workshop Ltd, 1990
“In my regulatory work, especially stuff about apprenticeships recently, it has been fascinating for me to realise quite how much I’ve been shaped by having been through an apprenticeship-like experience myself in that context,” she says.
And the experience was, she says, much more demanding than academia.
“At university, unless you have formidable levels of self-discipline, it’s quite easy not to work,” she says.
“Whereas in accountancy training, you are working quite hard and absorbing a lot of new stuff, and you were there in the office, with very clear tasks and expectations for the day or the week.”
And it was an atmosphere that Spielman thrived upon.
“Most of my life, if I’ve felt I’m really learning something, I’m happy,” she says.
“I love being exposed to, and getting the hang of, new things.”
In 1993, she became a director at Bridgewater Business Analysis, and it was here she met her now-husband Adam, in what she describes as “one of the bravest bits of matchmaking ever”.
Adam, a friend of Spielman’s business partner, had come into the office to borrow a computer and printer for a job application, and the two fell into conversation.
“A mutual friend of ours, who also worked there, saw us chatting and saw the body language was good,” explains Spielman.
“I was single, and Adam had a girlfriend, but this mutual friend didn’t like the girlfriend, so a week or so later, he told us separately, and completely untruthfully, that each of us had confided in him about really fancying the other.
“Adam asked me out, and one thing led to another.”
The couple moved to America in 1995, where Spielman took up roles at Mercer Management Consulting in Boston and then at finance group Nomura International in New York.
It has been fascinating for me to realise quite how much I’ve been shaped by having been through an apprenticeship-like experience
It was while living across the pond, “outside the UK and looking back,” that Spielman began to reconsider her career.
“Words have completely different meanings — for example, for me, ‘liberal’ has always been a good word with nice connotations,” she says.
“In America, liberal is a dirty word with completely different overtones and that led me to a whole process of unpacking the cultural assumptions that underlie the system.
“So in the UK there’s a very strong, and very particular concept of egalitarianism that underlies the whole education system, and has done ever since the war, and there’s very much an all-party consensus on it.
“But that’s not the case everywhere, so different education systems result from rather different cultural assumptions.”
Spielman began to realise she had done her time in the city — and worst of all, she was no longer learning anything, so she sat down to work out what else she was interested in.
“And I realised ever since I was a child I always read everything I could come across about education — it was a lightbulb moment,” she says.
Spielman in a school photograph from Dorset’s Newton Manor School (now private homes), aged 12
So, on her return to London, Spielman took up an “absolutely gripping” master’s degree in comparative education and spent two years as a freelance education consultant.
In 2004, she met one of the trustees of Ark, an international children’s charity set up by a group of hedge fund investors, which was looking to set up an education wing in the form of sponsored academies.
“During my studies, I’d got interested in the education programmes and curricula that were most effective for the most disadvantaged and lower ability children, and wanted to find somewhere I could pursue that interest — and here was Ark,” she says.
The success of Ark Schools, now a chain of 31 schools with 15,000 pupils, thrust Spielman into public debate about education policy — and sparked an interest in how qualifications could be used to “make true opportunities and progress available to everybody”.
When the Ofqual job came up, Spielman grabbed it and came fact-to-face with the world of FE.
“I think your head sort of explodes from the complexity of it, doesn’t it?” she says.
“There are remarkably few people, I think, that truly understand the system in all its complexity, so it’s about finding the right sort of checks and balances.”
And, she says, she’s determined to ensure Ofqual keeps a focus on FE.
“Of the things Ofqual does, I think some of the most significant things that we do, and especially have done in the last year, have been around vocational education and the QCF and so on,” she says.
“But how much coverage does it get compared with every wrinkle on GCSE and A-level? Almost nothing.”
But one thing that will help FE, she says, is of course, clear, un-fuzzy language.
“In the QCF consultation meetings I could really see where a lot of thinking had gone
in to how we express this in the language of the people who work in this area — the technical language that regulatory conditions often have to be couched in to do the job they need to do, but to make sure the conversation was happening at the right level, and expressed in the terms that have that meaning” she says.
“And I was obviously very pleased by that.”
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It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
It changes every couple of years, but at the moment it would be Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. And my other favourites are Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. I love Hilary Mantel, she’s remarkable. The elegance with which she can turn a thought and a phrase is just sensational
What do you do to switch off from work?
Besides reading? I knit. I knit when I’m walking down the street. I knit on the train. I knit watching television, anywhere. I like complexity. Sometimes it’s in shaping, sometimes patterning, but I don’t turn out big granny sweaters — I like interesting pieces.
I like doing things with my hands. I like cooking, I like baking, and the day job is so much about thinking and so much conceptual stuff as well, and having something that’s practical, constructive and creative provides a lovely balance
What’s your pet hate?
Clumsy language. People not thinking clearly, especially when things need clear thoughts — so allowing things to turn into morasses of fuzzy language
If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would it be?
There was a famous ball on the eve of Waterloo, so instead of a dinner party I’d like to go there, to be looking over the shoulder of the Duke of Wellington, to be eavesdropping on all the conversation there
The future of FE funding looks uncertain after £900m of additional cuts to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Department for Education (DfE) were announced by the Treasury.
The cut is part of a raft of in-year savings amounting to £3bn across most government departments outlined by the Chancellor George Osborne in Parliament today.
Under the planned savings, BIS and the DfE will each have to cut £450m, with FE highlighted by the Treasury in its announcement as a planned source of savings.
The news has sparked concerns and speculation on twitter, with some sector leaders predicting a “destructive” impact on FE funding.
The in-year 2015-16 spending reductions work out at about 3.6% of non-school DFE and 3.5% of BIS DEL https://t.co/IhpXPOoJsB
After more than two decades of freedom from local authority control, general FE colleges are today operating in a different social and economic climate to the days when they were incorporated. Ann Hodgson makes the case for a new post-incorporation college model.
It’s more than 20 years since FE colleges gained their freedom from local education authorities, so high time to reflect on whether the model of incorporation designed for the late 20th century remains fit for purpose.
The recently published book The coming of age for FE? Reflections on the past and future role of further education colleges in England argues that the current social and economic circumstances suggest the need for a new post-incorporation model.
Incorporation has undoubtedly played its part in the considerable achievements made by FE colleges over the last two decades.
Post-16 participation, retention and success rates have risen, college buildings have been transformed, regular national and international skills competitions have showcased the excellent work that colleges support and many now have an international as well as a national and regional reputation.
However, there have also been downsides.
Staff morale remains fragile and conditions of service for staff in FE colleges do not match those in schools or universities.
National funding steers have sometimes led colleges to put financial viability above the needs of students, employers or their relationship with the local community
Notable instances of poor management style and ‘gaming’ behaviour have tarnished the reputation of the sector with clear winners and losers in the competition for survival. There has been a relentless driving down of student course hours and national funding steers have sometimes led colleges to put financial viability above the needs of students, employers or their relationship with the local community.
Of course wider social, economic and political factors have also had a powerful influence on the way that colleges operate. Colleges are key partners in economic growth but also highly susceptible to changes in the economy and labour market.
Austerity is now the name of the game and colleges will only thrive if they contribute to economic prosperity. Given this context, the book suggests colleges can play a unique role as local/ regional economic and vocational hubs with a key focus on lifelong learning, allowing them to return to their traditional roots and to exploit their expertise in and facilities for technical, vocational and adult learning.
In order for colleges to take on this role, however, other providers in the locality have to play their part in local/regional collaborations.
At a time when all young people need to be in some form of education or training until the age of 18, school sixth forms and sixth form colleges have to take on greater responsibility for all levels of general education rather than focusing narrowly on level three provision, leaving colleges as the primary providers of vocational education and training.
When funding is so tight, there simply is no room for wasteful duplication of provision at the local level. This does not suggest a one-size-fits all approach to each locality or region; each area would need to determine the most appropriate configuration of provision based on demographics, employment patterns, transport links and geography.
This model suggests much greater devolution of responsibility for decision-making to the local or regional level. National government needs to move away from top-down policy levers that focus on competition between providers for students and funding; high-profile performance measures that highlight institutional ranking; punitive inspections that encourage conformity rather than innovation and the constant introduction of new types of providers into the system to stimulate the market.
Instead, it should be developing a facilitative national policy framework that sets national standards, priorities and objectives but encourages a climate of longer-term planning, area-wide funding and jointly owned performance measures related to learner progression and destinations.
The future viability and visibility of FE colleges — both currently under threat — arguably lies less in being a discrete national sector and more in their role as hubs for the building of vibrant local and regional high skills ecosystems.
Investment in learning by individuals was meant to go up with FE loans, despite FE budget cuts. But latest figures show the system isn’t working, explains Stephen Evans.
Learning and skills have to be centre stage for the new government — helping people to achieve their ambitions; businesses to grow; and our economy to succeed.
So it is a national problem that the UK ranks 15th and 17th of the 34 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations for literacy and numeracy, 19th for GCSE-equivalent skills, and 24th for intermediate skills (A-level equivalent). We rank somewhat better for degree-level skills, at 11th.
However, it is equally clear there will be much less public money around. Unprotected departments, such as business, innovation and skills (BIS), are likely to have cuts on broadly the scale seen in the last five years, where the FE budget was cut by around one third.
The cuts in the FE budget were accompanied by the introduction of Advanced Learning Loans and, while we await the details, many expect these to be extended below the age of 24 and for learning below level three.
Low take-up of FE loans to date and the lack of wider coverage of this is worrying and disappointing
But Advanced Learning Loans are about more than making cuts. They are intended to help increase investment in learning and skills by individuals — a longstanding public policy aim. And to put more power in the hands of individuals to shape provision to their needs. The intention is that, with some ‘skin in the game’, individuals will make more active choices for provision that will help them earn more and build their careers — getting a return on their investment.
So Advanced Learning Loans really matter.
This makes low take-up to date and the lack of wider coverage of this is worrying and disappointing. We have worked hard to shine a light on this. But latest figures show, despite a recent increase, that take-up remains relatively low.
The result is that in 2014/15 there were just over 60,000 applications for Advanced Learning Loans. For 2015/16, the Skills Funding Agency has £498m allocated for such loans. Given the average loan size is £1,160 this would require up to 430,000 people to take out loans in 2015/16 (although some people who first took out loans last year may be in the second year of a course, so fewer new applicants are likely to be required in practice). This would be a sevenfold increase.
So where do we go from here? We think there are three key reasons the current system isn’t working and that need to be tackled.
Firstly, the link between learning and earning. People are more likely to invest in their learning if they can see how it will lead on to greater earning and link to their life and career goals. Yet information on the career and earnings destination of FE learners is not well developed, particularly compared to higher education.
Flexibility in learning is second. People (and employers) often want shorter, tailored provision, including modules of qualifications. And they want it delivered flexibly, fitting around their life and work. But the loans system funds only full qualifications, many of which are offered on fixed term timetables. Over time, this could build into a wider system of Personal Career Accounts.
And thirdly, devolution. Learning and skills will have greater impact where it is integrated with wider support for social inclusion and economic growth — in other words matched to employer and local needs. We want to see cities and regions given power to provide wraparound career advancement support and tailor provision to local need.
Our skills base has long held us back as a nation. We need to do better to improve our economy and boost social inclusion. Advanced Learning Loans will be important in doing this, but they’re not working as they need to at present. We need action so that people get the opportunities they need to improve their skills and build their careers.
Andrew Harden reflects on FE events at the UCU 2015 congress in Glasgow.
The University and College Union’s (UCU) first annual congress under the new government took place in Glasgow recently.
The two-day event included a special sector conference attended by delegates from across the FE sector and a joint conference with colleagues in higher education.
The FE sector conference covered a range of topics — from pay and conditions to professionalisation, accountability and equalities — reflecting the breadth of interests and concerns among UCU members.
Delegates warmly welcomed news that Ofsted will no longer grade lesson observations from September 2015, hailing the decision as a positive step forward. While concerns remain about internal lesson observations and other elements of performance monitoring, members agreed that the decision not to grade observations was helpful progress.
Unsurprisingly, though, the majority of the discussion at conference was framed by the decision of the last government to cut up to 24 per cent from English FE budgets next year, as well as the even deeper cuts facing colleges in Wales and Northern Ireland.
While acutely aware of the broader financial and political context, members were resolute in their demands for improved pay and working conditions
Delegates expressed major fears about the impact of funding cuts on colleges and learners, and the direction of travel of the current government in prioritising apprenticeships over other provision. They were clear that spending reductions which led to course closures would seriously affect equality of access to learning, particularly for learners from disadvantaged backgrounds. Several of the motions referred to specific concerns about the impact of the cuts on equality groups, with plans made for audits to be carried out looking at the likely effect of cuts on different groups.
More broadly, members expressed concern about the impact that reduced capacity in the sector would have on the student experience.
Delegates linked funding reductions to rising workloads and bigger class sizes, both of which are increasing stress levels in the sector and diminishing lecturers’ ability to deliver high quality learning. Following a report from UCU on the eve of congress that looked at the human cost of casualisation, delegates reinforced their opposition to the use of zero-hours and other forms of casual contracts and vowed to continue campaigning on the issue.
While acutely aware of the broader financial and political context, members were resolute in their demands for improved pay and working conditions. The motions on pay moved at last month’s conference reflected the fact that lecturers have suffered a 17 per cent real terms wage cut in recent years, equivalent to over £6,000 less in their pockets.
Delegates sent a strong message to the Association of Colleges that they are prepared to fight for better pay and conditions as part of a broader campaign for investment in further education.
Those attending the conference agreed that public spending reductions on skills learning represent a conscious political choice rather than a reflection of circumstance. Delegates rejected the politics of austerity and agreed that the focus for the year ahead must be on making the case for all kinds of FE.
The new government’s aims for full employment and better lives for working families will simply not be achievable without greater investment in the skills which enable people to fulfill their potential.
Delegates agreed that there must be no compromise in defending job losses, because every lecturer who loses their job due to funding cuts represents the closure of hundreds of learning opportunities for students.
With many difficult challenges on the horizon for the sector, the overriding message from UCU congress was one of strength in unity.
Delegates highlighted the need for the sector to present a united front, with employers, sector organisations, lecturers and learners working together to demonstrate the economic and social benefits of FE to politicians.
