Latest news from FE Week | FE Week

FE archive dating back 100 years saved from being dumped in skip

A long-forgotten collection of key documents hidden away in the dimly-lit basement of a Somerset lodge for nearly half a century before their chance discovery led to pride of place at a London institute — it’s certainly not your average FE and skills storyline, writes Paul Offord (pictured above).

New College Telford governor Graham Briscoe

But it’s one that stars New College Telford governor and Association of Colleges Governors’ Council member Graham Briscoe and a huge collection of records at the Institute of Education (IoE) that charts the history of FE dating back to the early 20th Century.

Almost 900 boxes stuffed with document upon document charting the development of FE over the last century would have been lost forever if it wasn’t for Mr Briscoe’s quick-thinking.

The collection of books, official reports and other archives had been part of the library at the former FE Staff College in Coombe Lodge, Somerset, which was a national training centre for sector leaders for more than 40 years from the 1950s.

The documents were stored in the basement and largely forgotten about after Coombe Lodge, which was built in 1932 by the Bristol-based cigarette-manufacturing Wills family, closed as a training centre in 2002 and was turned into a privately-run conference and wedding venue.

Graham Briscoe, who was a governor at that time for Coleg Gwent, in South Wales, and City of Bath College, came across them in 2008, during a lunch break while working there as a Saturday conference porter.

He recalled how his quick thinking, after the building changed hands in 2009, saved what is now known as The Coombe Lodge Collection from being dumped.

“I had been developing a portfolio of housing association non-executive directorships and governorships at colleges after retiring (as operations support leader for insurance company the Royal Sun Alliance Group), but had nothing to do on a Saturday, so took on the conference porter job and was fascinated to find the archive in the basement,” said Mr Briscoe.

Pamphlets published by The Association of Technical Institutions and Association of Colleges for Further and Higher Education

“I used to spend my lunchtimes opening up boxes and reading through the papers, as I’m a bit of a heritage nerd like that.”

But he said: “I heard that the new company that took on Coombe Lodge was going to have a clear-out and throw all the boxes in a skip. I thought ‘No you’re not’ and got to work on a rescue plan.”

Mr Briscoe asked his friend Mick Fletcher, who was head of training at Coombe Lodge from 1989 until 1995, to accompany him to the basement to check through the boxes and make sure they were worth saving.

“The library at Coombe Lodge basically went when it closed as a training centre and I wasn’t aware of how many of the records had been retained,” said Mr Fletcher.

“It was really fortunate that Graham knew they were there. I saw straight away what an important historical record they were for our sector and wanted to help.”

Paul Grainger, co-director of the centre for post-14 research and innovation at IoE

Mr Fletcher, a regular FE Week expert and member of the Policy Consortium, put Mr Briscoe in touch with the IoE, in London, which agreed to take on the archive that includes many FE-related local authority and government documents and reports published by the now defunct Association of Technical Institutions (ATI) and Association of Colleges for Further and Higher Education (ACFHE) dating back to the turn of the 20th Century.

Mr Briscoe also secured around £500 funding from the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) to fund the hire of a white Ford Transit van and petrol to transport the boxes to the IoE.

“After getting the funding, I decided to do the move myself as quickly as possible,” said Mr Briscoe.

“I had to carry each box up a winding turret-style staircase from the basement and across a corridor to a door where the van was parked.”

He added: “There were far too many boxes to fit in the van, which I then drove to London, so I had to do it in two journeys over two weekends. I was really happy to save what’s a very important archive of the history of the sector.”

Staff and students from the FE Staff College pictured around 1963

Paul Grainger, co-director of the centre for post-14 research and innovation at IoE, took charge of the collection after it was dropped-off by Mr Briscoe.

He said: “It took Dr Norman Lucas [IoE senior lecturer in post-compulsory education] and I a month to sift through the material and discard duplicate documents and books that we already had at the IoE.

“It was just the two of us, shirt sleeves rolled-up and late evenings, with books stacked in our offices, on the stairs, along the corridor. The health and safety people had the heeby jeebies.

“When we had whittled it down to a room full, we got it transferred to a small room at the library to await cataloguing.”

The IoE then secured another £12,000 funding from LSIS to pay professional librarian Stephen Pickles to catalogue all the items, before the collection was finally unveiled to the public in March 2013.

Main pic: Reporter Paul Offord in the Institute of Education vaults checking out a book from the Coombe Lodge Collection

Archives show how history repeats itself for the sector

Reporter Paul Offord delved into the Coombe Lodge collection to see what had changed in the sector over the last century and, in many, cases what had not.

They say history repeats itself and I was struck by a sense of déjà vu as I read through FE-related pamphlets and books dating back 100 years.

So many of the documents I discovered in the IoE library vaults, which were mostly published by Association of Colleges predecessor bodies the ACFHE and ATI, dealt with issues that I have become familiar with at FE Week.

A pamphlet documenting an ACFHE summer conference in June 1977, for example, indicated that problems with poor careers advice for school students about FE are nothing new. The historical report said that “there would be advantages in colleges establishing closer ties with schools, so that the content of college courses reflecting employers’ needs could be better understood”.

Sector leaders who think recent FE-related government reform proposals, for example aimed at encourage more employer-involvement with apprenticeships, have come too thick and fast for financially-constrained providers could also take solace from an ACFE booklet published in 1979.

The document, called Education and Training of 16 to 18s, warned that “government must be resistant to temptations to make changes where none are needed. There can be a high price to be paid for disruption of established systems”. It also noted a reluctance on the part of employers to support FE training schemes and concluded that “breakthroughs to achieve a positive employer attitude… may not be achieved without promotion by central government”.

Further Education Trust for Leadership president Dame Ruth Silver, who trained at Coombe Lodge in the 1980s and signed-off around £13,000 of funding for the Coombe Lodge Collection while LSIS chair, said the lesson for policy-makers was to take note of the cyclical nature of FE. “I was delighted that the collection was saved because it charts our sector’s history. People don’t realise how much of what we are talking about now has been done or discussed in the past, “she said.

Another example of a recurring issue faced by the sector is the question of what balance should be struck between teacher-based and technology-enhanced learning. Skills Minister Nick Boles provoked controversy by announcing in January that he would not be enforcing the FE Learning Technology Action Group’s recommendation that 10 per cent of all course content should be delivered online. James B Thomas had an earlier stab at addressing the thorny ‘teacher versus tech’ debate in a 1967 ATI pamphlet called Learning Packages for Technical Education.

A diagram illustrating how the 1967 learning package devised by James B Thomas would have worked

He proposed incorporating film slides, education TV, audio tapes and “teaching machines” into lessons and said it was “not a plan to replace lectures but a scheme to improve their effectiveness”.

And sector staff of today who feel frustrated by breakdowns in the government’s online data collection systems might take solace in how much more labour-intensive the process used to be.

A 1967 ATI booklet, called The Administration of Technical Colleges, said: “At certain times of the year, the 650 colleges have to ask small armies of young women to extract data from the records… count them and then to make marks on pieces of paper either by hand or typewriter. Once sent through, the authority has to use a small army of women to take the marks from the returns and make other marks to process them.”

It added that “if means could be found whereby the data in the college records could be extracted from them automatically, then indeed we should be getting somewhere”.

And a sobering picture of the sector, it staff and learners, emerges from the 1917 ATI yearbook. It said that many people associated with colleges had been “called up to join His Majesty’s Forces” to fight in First World War. “All the institutions in the Association have been affected more or less,” it said.

“The principals and governing bodies have done all that in them lay to answer the call of the country [by] providing the best men and as many of them as possible for the defeat of the common enemy.”

The ATI and Association of Principals of Technical Institutions also produced a pamphlet in 1938, in preparation for the Second World War, entitled Air Raid Precautions in Technical Institutions.

It said: “A blackout may be imposed at certain times. The memorandum is issued without prejudice to the question of whether or not ordinary evening classes should be kept up in the event of the outbreak of war.”

Trevor Gordon, management consultant, Gordon French Associates

Trevor Gordon was the equalities officer at South East London’s Lewisham Council in the early 1990s when he was involved in a heated debate with senior officials.

He was about to make a point when his boss “devastatingly” cut him short, saying ‘Trevor, you can’t speak — because you’re just not qualified to speak’.

It is a memory that clearly still stings the 56-year-old FE management consultant, but it is one that drove Gordon back into education.

“I went to the toilet and cried my eyes out,” he tells me of the incident.

It prompted him to sign up for a degree in social sciences at London South Bank University having left FE in 1976 with a prized A-level.

But for the teenage Gordon, there had been just one ambition. When asked by the careers officer about his future career plans, Gordon said he didn’t care — as long as he could wear a shirt and tie.

“I’d never seen black men in shirts and ties,” he says.

“I’d see them on the buses and the trains. I’d see them in the factories, but I never saw any black men in shirts and ties.”

Gordon was born in Jamaica in 1959, but he and his parents, Linford and Gloria, moved to England in 1961.

“Mum was a qualified nurse, but they wouldn’t let her do that, so she cleaned floors,” he says.

“Mum was from a very wealthy family. My dad was from a very poor family, and they eloped — it’s quite romantic – and then ran away to England together, but it was never going to work. And it didn’t.”

As the marriage ended, Gordon, then aged four, was put into care for four years, before he, brother Michael and sister Maxine went to live with their father.

Their mother left for America, where her qualifications would be recognised, and Gordon didn’t see her again for another 16 years.

She has since died, but Gordon says of their reunion: “I had a fantastic relationship with my mother. At the age of 24, I flew myself to New York and knocked on her door, and she fainted — it was a very emotional moment.

“From that point on it was as if we had never been apart. She was an awesome woman and she sat me down, and explained what happened and I understood. So we had a wonderful relationship.”

But his mother’s experience of prejudice was one he shared at school where, he says, he “suffered serious institutional racism”.

Gordon’s granddaughter Sarai, 10, Gordon with daughter Iman, 25, granddaughter Tianna, 2 and daughter Naeemah — From left: Gordon’s grand-daughter Sarai, aged 10, daughter Iman, 25, grand-daughter Tianna, two, and daughter Naeemah

“I had a very bright brain, but I was told, ‘Gordon, your people don’t do maths – they’re only good with their hands’” he explains.

“At that time racism was unreal, just unreal — it wasn’t education, it was containment, and we were radicalised.

“So school for me was just a laugh and a joke, just playing to the stereotype — ‘Well okay if that’s what you think I am that’s what I’ll be.’

“We were the sons and daughters of the immigrants who came after the war to clean up the mess — they weren’t about to educate us.”

At 15, he was thrown out of school but was allowed to come back to sit his exams.

He says it was one of the things that spurred him on to go into education.

“I wanted to make a difference to that whole experience,” he says.

After leaving school, Gordon started college at Kingsway Princeton (now a part of Westminster Kingsway).

“FE turned me around,” he says. proudly.

“I had a brain and college engaged it — so in one year I got six O-levels and an A-level.”

At 18, with first daughter Sharlene, now 36, on the way, he got a job as an agent for printing companies and alongside this took on voluntary youth work with at-risk children.

“I thought I had grown up poor, but these kids were dirt poor,” he says.

“And it was an eye-opener as well, because two of the children I worked with, and I really fell in love with — Michael and Natasha — died.

I had a very bright brain, but I was told, ‘Gordon, your people don’t do maths – they’re only good with their hands’

“Their mother went out raving and the pilot flame on the old immersion heater went out and they were gassed. I will never forget that.”

Following the tragedy, Gordon decided to pursue a career in youth work and local government and got a job managing a community education centre in Clapham, then as the manager of three centres in Kensington and Chelsea.

By the time he’d got the council job in Lambeth, he had met wife Paulette, and the couple had two young daughters, Iman and Naeemah.

“Paulette was lovely, a wonderful person,” Gordon says of his wife, who supported his decision to return to education, despite the financial difficulty it caused the family. Sadly, she died from cancer in 2011.

After seven years part time at South Bank, which included an MSc in sociology, law and social policy, Gordon re-entered the world of FE in 1994, this time as a head of equal opportunity services at Lambeth College, “and never looked back”.

“I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. I loved education,” he says.

After seven years there, he moved to Croydon College as a vice principal.

However, after a year there he began to be feel “disillusioned” with senior management. And he doesn’t mince his words about the bits he wasn’t so keen on.

Gordon speaking at the Newbubbles Learning Revolution Conference in March

“It took me a bit of time to realise that it’s a small world, and there’s a lot of nepotism, and a lot of institutional sexism at that time as well — and that hasn’t changed, looking at the sector, as much as it could have done — and it’s still suffering from the same old racism in parts.

“So yes, I have watched it change, but I have also seen some not so good stuff as well — I have worked with worked with some really wonderful people who have inspired me on my journey, but equally I have met some really God-awful principals.”

His particular bugbear, he tells me, is the “small cohort of principals who have never taught, and they have come up through the finance route”.

“I think if you did some research you would find a correlation between those colleges that are not getting outstanding, and the fact their chief executives have come up as finance directors,” he says.

“We went through a panic in the sector where all of a sudden money became the priority.”

After leaving Croydon, he set up Gordon French Associates, offering teacher training and equality and management consultancy, a role which has taken him, he says, into around 300 colleges nationally, and given him a brief stint as dean — principal — of a newly-set up college in Saudi Arabia.

Now, back in the UK, Gordon says he’s “going to continue to do what I do, which is teach teachers, drive them to outstanding”.

“I am going to continue to do my quality and diversity work, which I love with a passion,” he says.

“And I am going to continue to agitate and let people know that FE is an awesome sector.”

But he also admits, “deep down, I’ve always wanted to be a principal”.

“But the sector kind of shut me out, because I speak my mind, and because I have been a consultant,” he says.

“And also I think in FE there’s a glass age ceiling and I think once you hit 50, if you haven’t made principal by then, there’s a good chance you won’t.”

But that isn’t going to stop him trying he tells me, in a burst of confidence that shows how far he’s come since that rebuke at Lewisham Council.

“You give me a college, any college in this country, and in three years I will make it outstanding,” he says.

“I am not blowing my own trumpet — I am quite shy, I am quite reserved, but being able to make statements like this comes from my faith, and it comes from knowing that what I am saying is true.

“So I will also occasionally apply for the odd principalship — I still have a good few years left, and I still love FE with a passion, I really do.”

————————————————————————————————————————————–

It’s a personal thing

What’s your favourite book?

The Bible — I absolutely love it. It’s my inspiration manual. It’s important to me because it’s allowed me to deal with a lot of the situations I’ve been through in a way that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise

Gordon with Baroness Doreen Lawrence, receiving the 2002 Stephen Lawrence Award for Education

What do you do to switch off from work?

I listen to music, that’s my real kind of coming down. I try to avoid the TV as much as I can these days, and my music ranges from classical piano to jazz, reggae, hip-hop, a bit of rock. That’s essentially how I chill, with a glass of wine. And I love travelling. I think as an educationalist, there are three kinds of education. There’s your book education, your academic and vocational stuff, there’s travelling, and the third is just growing up working class, in a working class community, which is the kind I call ‘street’ education

What’s your pet hate?

Racism and nepotism, particularly phenotypic [skin colour] racism. I have fought it all my life, and I hate it with a passion. And I have seen a lot of nepotism in my career as well, I have seen a lot in FE, and I think it’s one of the reasons why we have in some instances the quality of managers that we have — because they haven’t been recruited to posts based on experience and ability. Unfortunately, education is high in nepotism

If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would it be?

I would like Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. And the reason is that I can’t think of three other men of colour who have had so much influence on the world, and I would just like to sit down at a table with them and just talk about the world — it would be awesome

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

I won a child scholarship at the age of eight to Guild Hall to act. I was in a play at school and then they put it into the local civic centre, and I was seen by some people by Guild Hall who said they would give me a scholarship. The play was called The Reluctant Dragon — and I was the dragon who didn’t want to set fire to people. It was interesting, because nobody saw me because I had a mask on, so nobody saw a black kid under there. But my dad wouldn’t let me go. He said the ‘only black person on TV is Sidney Poitier — and I’m not sending my son to train to be an actor because he won’t have a career’

Cape Town youngsters’ warm football welcome

A group of Merseyside college learners had their eyes opened to the world of poverty as they left their first class facilities behind and headed to Cape Town to coach football to disadvantaged children, writes Billy Camden.

Being met with school settings of wooden huts and dusty waste grounds covered in rubble and rubbish was a stark contrast to life at home for a team of Hugh Baird College sport students and lecturers.

The Hugh Baird team get swamped by primary school children upon arriving in Cape Town

But despite the “worse than expected” facilities, the group — who visited the South African city of Cape Town to coach football to pupils — were greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm and smiles.

“We were treated like celebrities,” said sports lecturer Lyndsey Jamieson.

“It is very unusual for them to see people from our background and girls with long blonde hair which was a big fascination for them.”

The team of four BTec sport and fitness students included Leo Hanley, aged 27, Greg Page, 19, Anthony Jones, 16, and Stephanie Bond, 18, who all coached structured football sessions aimed at developing the youngsters’ skills while also developing their English language skills.

Some of the most deprived schools had classes of 40 students, with not enough tables and chairs to seat the children. Students had no PE kits and many participated in bare feet against the vicious terrain, which came as a shock to the Hugh Baird students.

“The kids there have got so little but they are so happy with it. It really puts in perspective what we take for granted here,” said Leo.

Greg gives expert advice to a South African pupil.

“But I did love it out there. It was a once in a lifetime experience of going and seeing different kids, seeing how they live and the different cities in a different part of the world was a real eye opening experience.”

And the trip had a career defining influence on Greg, who wants to be a sports coach.

“It has had a massive impact on me since we got back. Looking at how they live out there put into perspective how we live here and how appreciative they are compared to us,” he said.

“Seeing how the children benefited from us and the joy they got from it, I would definitely say that the trip has cemented my goal of wanting to be a coach.”

It wasn’t just all work as the group had plenty of opportunity to experience Cape Town as tourists — they surfed, went diving with sharks, sunbathed with penguins and took in the views of the Cape from Table Mountain.

But the experiences with the African children are the main memories to be taken back.

Lyndsey said: “I am extremely proud of the perseverance of the students despite the long days, heat, language barriers, facilities and sometimes lack of rest.

“They have learned a lot about the world they live in, the problems that some people face just to survive and how well-off we are in our educational setting and facilities.”

The trip was made possible through HQ Coaching’s, ‘Engage for South Africa’ project, where UK volunteers are arranged to teach or coach sport in poverty-stricken schools.

Main pic from left: Steph Bond, sport lecturer Lyndsey Jamieson, Anthony Jones, Greg Page, Leo Hanley and trip organiser Mike Carney.

Sporty learners help recovery

Sport students at Stoke on Trent College are using their knowledge to aid the rehabilitation process for people who have survived strokes.

Each week, members of the Stroke Association have been attending the college’s sports academy to benefit from the learners who provide one-to-one support aimed at improving mobility and fitness.

Sallie Tranter, aged 17, who studies a BTec level three extended diploma in sport and exercise science, said: “I have never worked with people who have had strokes before but it is really nice to see them develop more confidence as the weeks go on.”

Services have included devising individual exercise programmes as well as health checks, such as blood pressure, height, weight and BMI.

Anthony Brannen, assistant director for sport and public services at the college, said: “It has been a huge learning curve, but one that will remain with them [the students] in their chosen careers.”

Main pic: Stoke on Trent College sport student Sallie Tranter supports stroke survivor Gavin Yorke

Student chemists find solutions

Five Hartpury College students found the formula for success as they clinched gold, silver and bronze medals at a chemistry olympiad.

The learners — who all study A-level chemistry — had to complete a challenging written test of chemical knowledge in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s annual competition.

Rachel Johnson, aged 18, was the Gloucestershire college’s star performer as she clinched a gold medal.

First year students Nick Gallagher, 17, and Ly Xuan Bach, 18, achieved silver medals.

Ka Hin Ng, 17, also achieved silver, while Oliver Brown, 17, won bronze.

Hartpury chemistry A-level lecturer Sion Wall said: “For five students to win medals for their academic performance up against the brightest young chemistry talent in the country is an incredible achievement, especially when two of the students are only first years.”

Main pic: Hartpury’s chemistry A-level students who achieved medals in the chemistry olympiad. From left: Ly Xuan Bach, Oliver Brown, Rachel Johnson, Ka Hin Ng and Nick Gallagher

Behind the scenes of the 2015 FE & Skills Survey

The hard work in designing, analysing and interpreting on the FE & Skills Survey that featured in the last edition of FE Week was carried out by the Policy Consortium. Nick Warren outlines the process.

The FE & Skills Survey 2015 revealed a higher level of concern than we anticipated about government priorities, mentioned in a remarkable 16 per cent of responses as of greater concern than funding. This has surprised us. It may not surprise you.

Research is worth little if it does not sometimes come up with surprising findings. And those in the annual survey conducted by the Policy consortium in partnership with FE Week demand attention, particularly in the light of the General Election results.

Recent history and the election campaign have shown us that aside from apprenticeships no one in Whitehall has much conception of what FE does or what impact the shifting funding and policy imperatives have on the day-to-day work of the sector.

Yet, across the nation, FE continues to deal with (according to the latest figures from the Association of Colleges) a simply astonishing 3.1 million students each year. Furthermore, FE is in a constant state of reinventing itself to respond to rapidly changing funding and policy priorities. We have a lot to be proud of. We adapt.

We needed to identify a range of things that concerned the entire sector, including governors, principals, teaching staff and admin staff alike

We decided to find out last year what those at the chalk face thought and how the sector looked and felt from the inside. It turned out to be a bigger job than we expected. It seems simple, but we had to agree what to ask and how much free response to offer.

Anyone who has tried to devise a survey will know how hard it is. We set out to discover what kept people awake at night, but to do so we had to take an educated guess at what kept people awake at night.

We needed to identify a range of things that concerned the entire sector, including governors, principals, teaching staff and admin staff alike. See the sequence? I started from the “top” there out of habit, I realise. We should start from delivery, because that is the “top”. We also wanted to give scope to people to express their views on things we had not thought of.

We thought it important to make the questions as neutral as possible across the topics we eventually settled on and to enable people to enlarge on or explain their answers.

A survey team of around a dozen Policy Consortium members, each with specialist expertise, sifted the results and made sense of the figures and comments in their narrative commentary. The open responses in the “anything you want to add” question 33 were grouped thematically. A copy editor kept us in line. A lot of people are involved and no one gets paid.

We might have expected a good deal of moaning and special pleading, but in fact the majority were measured in their responses.

The sector did not let us down. If anything, concerns were even more sharply focussed and were strikingly consistent.

Our colleague Mick Fletcher, commenting on the broad sweep of the survey, acutely noted that funding cuts, which we might have expected to be at the top of the list took second place to a range of other concerns clustered around “systemic failure”: the status of the sector, competition, institutional viability and the impact on learners.

After the first survey was published we were invited to address the Labour Business, Innovation and Skills front bench team in the Lords. The Government team expressed no such interest.

By the time you read this the election will be over and we might even have a new Government. The publication date this year was carefully chosen. If and when we know the names of the BIS, Government and Opposition teams (and whether FE even remains in BIS) the report will go to them. We hope they take the chance to read and reflect.

The full report will be available early next week.

Indy Scene edition 137

I am writing this on the eve of the General Election knowing that by the time you read this all the votes will have been cast and the scramble to form a government will most likely be under way.

Politicians who have been rubbishing their competitors’ policies and promises throughout the campaign will be making loving overtures to each other and if the polls are to be believed the future of our county will be decided in the ubiquitous ‘smoked-filled rooms’ of the parties’ managers and not by the ballot box.

Eventually we will welcome the 62nd Skills Minister to pick up the apprenticeship mantle which all the parties have been professing to support and he or she will find out the sad truth of the current state of the programmes.

Apprenticeship numbers are falling, apprenticeship completion rates are falling and apprenticeship funding has been falling throughout the last administration’s tenure.

Is there a correlation between reductions in funding and reductions in apprenticeship starts and completions compounded with the continual changes?

As reported in FE Week, apprenticeship completion rates have fallen by 5 percentage points over the past three years.

The principal reason for this was the introduction of Functional Skills to replace Key Skills.

At the time of their introduction, both the department and then minister publically stated they were prepared for a 10 percentage point drop in completion rates with the introduction Functional Skills.

Eventually we will welcome the 62nd Skills Minister to pick up the apprenticeship mantle which all the parties have been professing to support and he or she will find out the sad truth of the current state of the programmes

It is of some credit to the apprenticeship providers, despite the shortage of specialist maths and English teachers, that completions have only fallen by half than the minister and officials expected.

The introduction of Technical Certificates by David Blunkett many years ago was a sensible way of ensuring apprentices had sufficient theoretical knowledge to support the vocational skills they practiced at their workplace.

However, with the recent Govian wave of tests and tests and more tests, driving out assessment of these theory skills by assignments and projects, many practically-minded apprentices who are both competent and knowledgeable are failing their online tests.

Again, ministerial bias for exams adds nothing to the skill set of the apprentices and reduces completion rates for no apparent advantage, rather to the disadvantage of those who have difficulty taking examinations.

Much is made of individual learners’ learning styles, but styles of assessing, quantifying and marking their achievements does not reflect this.

So, new Skills Minister, when you unravel your brief you won’t find a simple apprenticeship scheme for you to expand.

Your predecessor left a half open can of worms that ignored progression to provide an apprenticeship framework that met the needs of the employer, the learner, the community and the national economy, not just the narrow needs of the employer.

Compulsory employer contributions became blurred as did the funding route.

The employer pilot scheme failed badly and where employers delivered apprenticeship themselves without a provider or college, they achieved disastrously low completion rates averaging 40 per cent. But then empirical evidence was always behind political expediency.

So what’s the betting on how many ministers we will have if the new administration goes the full five-year term — will we reach the 70 mark?

Will skills, FE and higher education remain with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills or return to the Department for Education and can Peter Lauener still straddle both the Education Funding Agency and the Skills Funding Agency?

Edition 137: Geoff Hall, Nick Lewis, Mike Hopkins & Melanie Hunt

Former Education and Training Foundation (ETF) interim chief executive Sir Geoff Hall has been appointed general secretary of the Principals’ Professional Council (PPC).

He took over from Nick Lewis, who served as PPC General Secretary for the past four years, from today (May 11).

Sir Geoff, a former principal and chief executive of New College Nottingham and chair of the Information Authority, who was knighted for services to FE in the New Year Honours 2012, said: “My aim is to continue Nick’s work in providing support to colleagues in the FE sector.

“There are a number of major issues for the FE sector at this time. One of these is coping with the incredibly challenging financial circumstances facing colleges and how this will be approached by government and the sector over the next five years.

“In addition, PPC has an important role to play in helping to ensure the success of colleges. We have many excellent and experienced principals who can support newer principals.”

Mr Lewis said: “To have as my successor Sir Geoff can only lead PPC from strength to strength.”

The appointment of Sir Geoff completes a revamp at the top of the PPC with South Thames College principal Sue Rimmer having been elected chair in January.

She said: “Sir Geoff brings a wealth of skills and experience and will build on the good work that Nick has done over the past four years, helping PPC to make sure that the voice of principals is both heard and respected.”

Meanwhile, Ms Rimmer’s predecessor in the PPC chair, Mike Hopkins, will become principal at Sussex Downs College from September, it has been announced.

He was previously chief executive of the federation between Middlesbrough College and Gateshead College, but was left without a role after the organisation was disbanded late last year after just 12 months.

He takes over at Sussex Downs from retiring Melanie Hunt, who started as principal at the college five years ago. The pair will be working together, along with governors and college staff, in the interim to ensure a smooth changeover.

Mr Hopkins said: “I am thrilled and honoured to have been asked to become the next principal of Sussex Downs College. The college is full of committed and able staff. I look forward to leading them into the next stage of the college’s development.

“I want the college to be a high quality driver of sustainable economic growth and an engine of social mobility.”

Henry Ball, chair of the governing body, said: “Mike brings a wealth of knowledge and experience together with a vision for the future which will place the college at the centre of education and training in the wide range of communities we serve.”

Mrs Hunt said: “I absolutely love Sussex Downs College, and have been incredibly proud and privileged to lead a college where I have been — at various points in my life — a student, a parent and a member of staff. I shall miss it.”

Edition 136: Andrew Gower, Ela Piotrowska & Shobha Tynan

Former East Kent College vice principal Dr Andrew Gower has taken over the top job at South London’s Morley College.

His appointment follows the announcement last year of former principal Ela Piotrowska’s retirement.

Dr Gower began his career leading and teaching courses in music technology at Canterbury College and Kingston University. In 2002 he was appointed as a senior lecturer in music at Canterbury Christ Church, specialising in electroacoustic composition and studio production. Between 2007 and 2011 he was director of Canterbury Christ Church University’s Broadstairs Campus.

“I am delighted to join Morley College and to become part of this exciting learning community. During this 125thanniversary year since Morley was founded we continue to celebrate the many successes of the past while now creating our future,” he said.

“I very much look forward to working with students, staff and governors, with partners in Lambeth and Southwark, and our many stakeholders, to consolidate and develop the college’s inspirational opportunities for adult learning that are transformative, both for the individual and the communities within which they live and work.”

Morley College governors’ chair Peter Davies told FE Week: “The governors are delighted to welcome Andrew as their new principal. His varied FE and higher education background will bring a different and fresh perspective to the college and help shape its future direction.

“Equally, he is clearly passionate about learning, has a personal interest in music and the arts and will, I am sure, be another powerful advocate and champion for the importance and value of adult education in the round.

“These remain challenges times for adult education, but governors are looking forward to working with Andrew as we develop Morley’s strategic plan for the next few years and ensure that Morley remains at the forefront of adult learning in all its guises.”

Mr Davies also paid tribute to the work carried out by Ms Piotrowska, a former inspector for Ofsted, the Adult Learning Inspectorate and also the Further Education Funding Council.

“I first met Ela in 2008 when she took over as principal at Morley and I was principal at City Lit,” he said. “I guess coming from Ofsted, she was also gamekeeper-turned-poacher, but her inspection background certainly helped her identify very quickly where Morley had to change.

“Indeed, with her professionalism, hard work and true dedication, Morley has come a long way and she can be rightly proud of everything she has achieved, while ensuring the college retained its traditional commitment to adult education, the community and of course the arts.”

Meanwhile, former mechanical engineer Shobha Tynan, ex-assistant head at Ashbourne’s Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, has been appointed vice principal designate at Derby Manufacturing University Technical College, which is due to open in September 2015.

She said: “I am passionate about retaining and expanding the manufacturing industry in Derby and the East Midlands and it is vital that we produce skilled engineers in order for the region to build its manufacturing capability.”

Principal Philip Morris said: “Shobha’s engineering background and more than 20 years’ experience in education makes her the perfect person for the vice principal role at the UTC.”

Construction work is progressing on the £8m new purpose-built UTC campus on Pride Park, due to be completed by August.