Council and business leaders have remained tight-lipped over financial support for college mergers as the FE sector continues to wait for guidance on proposed post-16 area reviews.

Guidance on the reviews, which were announced in July, was due to be published last month, but at the time of going to press had only been seen in draft form in a document leaked to FE Week.

The draft guidance places responsibility for the funding of mergers and other changes recommended following the reviews on colleges, local enterprise partnerships (Leps) and councils, with a threat that skills funding could be withdrawn from providers which do not “take action” as part of the programme.

The document, authored by Skills Minister Nick Boles, says: “We will expect colleges, Leps, local authorities with relevant devolved skills budgets to provide funding and support to implement changes, particularly as we expect change to deliver significant net savings in the longer term. Government finance would need to be provided as a last resort.

“While participating in these reviews and implementing their recommendations is voluntary, recognising the independent status of colleges, I strongly urge every college to take part.

“As confirmed in the policy statement, ultimately we would expect funding agencies and Leps to only fund institutions that are taking action to ensure they can provide a good quality offer to learners and employers, which is financially sustainable for the long term.”

Dr Ann Limb, chair of the South East Midlands Lep, said: “As government guidance on area-based reviews has not yet been published it is premature to speculate on how any changes resulting from the reviews might be funded.

“Leps and FE colleges serve the local communities in which they are located and it is therefore likely different solutions will be found for different areas.

“In the South East Midlands, I am confident that we will work collaboratively with our excellent colleges to implement the findings of the area-based review once it has been completed.”

But Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said it was “totally unrealistic” to expect colleges to foot the bill for the reviews, which she described as being “forced upon the sector by the government”.

She added: “Colleges have absorbed cuts of 35 per cent to their funding since 2009, and from September 2015 are losing an additional 24 per cent of their adult learning budgets, as well as being expected to find nearly 4 per cent of savings within this academic year.

“If surplus funds are available within college budgets, they should be spent on educating and developing the skills of local young people and adults, not responding to the whim of a Government pursuing an ideological agenda.”

University and College Union general secretary Sally Hunt said: “Colleges have already sustained massive funding cuts and now need to prioritise their resources on students rather than jumping through hoops to secure future funding.

Association of School and College Leaders general secretary Brian Lightman said: “The last thing colleges need is a further funding pressure at a time when funding levels are so low that many colleges are struggling to maintain basic levels of provision.”

No one from the Local Government Association was available for comment. See feweek.co.uk for more on the leaked area review guidance.

 

An independent learning provider that faced losing its Skills Funding Agency (SFA) contract after an Ofsted inadequate rating over safeguarding fears four months ago has managed to hold onto its public funding deal following a good Ofsted judgment.

Leicester-based firm Qdos was given three months’ notice that its SFA contract would be torn up after inspectors reported in April how two staff members had regular and unsupervised access to learners under 18 without relevant criminal checks.

However, company boss Elena Ryabusha (pictured) said the concerns related to two unrelated incidents which were a result of oversight, rather than systematic failures.

A positive monitoring inspection in May found Qdos was making progress to address issues — leading to the SFA granting the firm a three-month stay of execution.

Qdos was then re-inspected on July 28 and rated as good, with inspectors praising the firm’s significant improvements.

The SFA has now confirmed it has withdrawn the termination notice.

Ms Ryabusha told FE Week: “My staff have been through a tough and emotional journey to make this happen and I am very grateful to work with such resilient, tough and hardworking people.

“Many times each one of us felt we are buckling under pressure but we kept going. We had a threat of losing our company and our livelihoods and we fought for it.

“This was not a journey for faint-hearted and we have endured it together and have come out on the other side victorious.”

She praised the SFA for its support following the inadequate grading when, as FE Week previously reported, talks took place to secure a delay to the contract termination pending full reinspection.

The SFA did not respond specifically when asked if other ILPs newly-rated as inadequate would also have a chance to retain their public funding contracts.

But a spokesperson said: “Following two subsequent Ofsted visits, reasonable improvements were noted and as a result Qdos had been given a ‘good’ rating by Ofsted for its overall effectiveness.

“In response, on July 31, we notified Qdos Training Limited that we would lift the notice of termination due to take effect in September and its contract would continue.”

Ofsted is required to re-inspect an inadequate provider within 15 months of the last inspection.

A spokesperson for the education watchdog said: “Inspectors found the provider was taking effective actions during the monitoring visit. Therefore, a decision was made to re-inspect it soon after its last inspection in order to see the full impact of the changes made.”

The inadequate report, which came after a good result in 2011, called for disclosure checks on all staff working unsupervised with young learners “as a matter of highest priority”.

It also said Qdos should “systematically train staff” to understand safeguarding and led to the SFA giving the provider a three-month notice to terminate its contract.

Qdos, which had an SFA allocation of £763k last academic year and has around 80 learners, offers apprenticeships and classroom-based programmes in customer service, ICT and administration.

Upon re-inspection the firm was praised for its rapid improvements. It received a ‘good’ grade across the outcomes for learners, quality of teaching, learning and assessment and effectiveness of leadership and management categories.

Ms Ryabusha said improvements were driven by providing training programmes for all staff in safeguarding, health and safety and equality.

The online programmes were also followed up by external and internal workshops.

Ms Ryabusha added: “All we talked about was impact on learners. Our every minute of every day was devoted to improving quality of our provision.”

 

General FE colleges are hoping fears they could be overwhelmed with higher education gripes prove unfounded as they start the new academic year subject for the first time to the same complaints scrutiny procedure as universities.

An FE Week report in February revealed that complaints from students at FE colleges on higher education courses would be scrutinised by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIAHE), because of a law change which coming into effect for 2015/16 through the new Consumer Rights Act.

The OIAHE previously only dealt with complaints from FE higher education learners if they related to something for which the validating university was responsible and concern has been raised that streamlining the system could lead to a rise in complaints.

However, FE providers can get better access to guidance on updating their higher education complaints systems through subscribing to OIAHE at a heavily discounted rate, which was agreed following talks with the Association of Colleges (AoC).

An OIAHE spokesperson told FE Week: “The rate an individual FE college will pay will depend on how many higher education in FE students it has.

“But as an example, a college with 500 HE in FE students would pay £579, while a university with the same number of students would pay £827 — so the college has a discounted rate of 70 per cent.

“As FE colleges only joined on September 1, they will pay for only four months of 2015 membership.”

Joanna Forbes (pictured), legal director at law firm Shakespeare Martineau LLP, said that she had been contacted over the summer “by a number of colleges to look at their complaints procedures in light of the changes”.

She added that a key change to OIAHE procedure, which GFE colleges will have to abide by, was an extension introduced in July to the time limit for lodging a complaint from three to 12 months after the college complaints procedure has been completed.

She thought that this could encourage more complaints and said: “My general view is that colleges are not currently as well set up to deal with HE complaints as universities.

“I think as a rule that is because FE students tend to complain less. One reason for this is that FE students haven’t always had anywhere sensible to go with their complaint, so it hasn’t been clear who they should complain to or how.

“The availability of the OIAHE will now enable them to complain more, which I don’t think is a bad thing necessarily, as colleges can learn from what students complain about.”

Nick Davy, higher education policy manager at the AoC, said: “We would need to monitor the extension of the time limit for reporting complaints to make sure that they are being dealt with as soon as possible.

“We do not envisage a significant increase in the number of complaints because students already had the right to go to the OIAHE, through their awarding university, once the internal complaints system had been exhausted.”

 

Skills Minister Nick Boles has broken his promise to the House of Commons Education Select Committee that there would be “many fewer” new apprenticeship Trailblazer standards than the frameworks they will replace by 2017.

He told committee members in January that he was worried about the “unbelievable proliferation” in the number of frameworks, which currently stands at 334, adding “what I promise you we will achieve, is many fewer standards”.

But Graham Stuart, who was chair of the committee at the time, has hit out at the government’s streamlining effort after it was revealed that more than 350 standards have already either been delivered or are being developed.

The Conservative MP said that Mr Boles “told my then committee earlier this year that there was an ‘unbelievable proliferation’ of different standards and this represents a missed opportunity to address the problem”.

“The government has achieved a great deal with apprenticeships reform, transforming both the quality and quantity of the opportunities available to young people,” added Mr Stuart, who chaired the committee from June 2010 to March this year.

“It is, however, disappointing that ministers have still been unable to simplify the confusing landscape of different standards that are applied to apprenticeships, the sheer complexity of which risks diluting the consistency of the qualification.”

Mr Boles didn’t comment directly on the broken promise, but a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) spokesperson told FE Week: “There will be one new standard for each occupation identified by employers as requiring an apprenticeship, and the standards will replace existing apprenticeship frameworks.”

He added: “Employers are in the driving seat developing apprenticeship standards that will benefit businesses. They are best placed to identify where there are skills shortages.”

A BIS press release published on August 21, which marked the launch of a consultation on the proposed apprenticeship levy for large businesses, stated that “there are now over 140 Trailblazer groups that so far have collectively delivered or are in the process of delivering, over 350 standards”.

It followed Mr Boles’ promise to the committee on January 14, after he was called to answer questions as part of its investigation into apprenticeships and traineeships for 16 to 19-year-olds.

The resulting report published in March warned against over-complicated “system changes which deter employers, and smaller employers in particular, from participating”.

Neil Carmichael, current chair of the committee, told FE Week on Friday: “We do need to tease out what an apprenticeship actually is and to make it as relevant as possible for the workplace.

“We have to bear in mind that we have committed ourselves to creating a further 3m apprenticeships and so be mindful of standards.”

An online FE Week report on August 6 warned of growing frustration among Trailblazer apprenticeship designers over the government’s slow progress with approving standards.

Around 35 have been judged ready for delivery by BIS so far.

More than 180 had been published by the Trailblazer groups on the BIS website at the time of going to press, but are still waiting for final BIS approval.

Meanwhile, BIS declined to say how many standards currently being developed by Trailblazer groups have not yet been published on its website.

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Editor’s comment

Not a standard first

The streamlining of apprenticeship guidance under the new Trailblazer system is a process to which a broken promise is no stranger.

In March, FE Week revealed how Skills Minister Nick Boles had relaxed much-vaunted rules set by his predecessor, Matthew Hancock, that limited the new standards to two sides of A4.
The appearance of six standards running to between three and five A4 pages had signalled, as was confirmed by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills at the time, the death of the two-page standard rule.

So to see the number of standards coming in above the number of frameworks they are replacing, represents another broken promise.

But it follows a number of other FE Week reports that do not paint a wholly rosy picture of the path to the Trailblazer standards system.

Full approval for standards is slow in coming, and even for those that are ‘ready to deliver’ the uptake is slow.

It therefore seems entirely possible that the next broken promise heading our way (unless, of course, there are others first) is an extension of the lifespan of frameworks beyond their 2017 cut- off.

Chris Henwood
chris.henwood@feweek.co.uk

 

Two general FE colleges have had their free school plans thrown out by the Department for Education (DfE), FE Week can reveal.

Croydon College’s application was rejected, it said, because there wasn’t considered to be a sufficient shortfall of school places in the local area. It was the college’s second attempt.

Meanwhile, London-based Tower Hamlets College principal Gerry McDonald (pictured), said that his had been rejected “on technical grounds”.

The college had been advised to make the “educational case stronger” before it planned to resubmit the application next month, he added.

It comes after DfE confirmed to FE Week that none of the 18 new free schools announced this month by Prime Minister David Cameron had any links to general FE colleges.

An FE Week report in April revealed that Croydon College would re-submit its free school application over the summer, after its initial submission was turned down in March because the DfE thought its plans “required more detail”.

Croydon College principal Frances Wadsworth said at the time that the planned secondary school and sixth form, with capacity for 180 students in each year, could address a local need for more pupil places and give parents an extra option over where to send their children.

The proposal was also for the school, which would have been called New Croydon Academy, to have an increased focus on science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (Steam) subjects.

However, after the latest rejection, a college spokesperson said the “DfE, in consultation with Croydon Council, determined that on reflection there wasn’t a sufficient shortfall of schools places in our proposed location to warrant a new school”.

She added that DfE and the council also felt that “any shortfall that existed could be met by the free school provision in the pipeline and expansion of existing provision”.

“We are naturally disappointed, but would not wish to progress in opening a school for which there is not deemed to be sufficient demand,” she said.

A DfE spokesperson declined to comment on the Croydon and Tower Hamlets applications, or confirm if any more FE-related free school plans had been thrown out.

It comes after the DfE announced that a further six general FE colleges intended to take on learners from the age of 14 from this month.

The new 14 to 16 providers for 2015/16 were Cambridge Regional College (CRC), Central Bedfordshire College, East Durham College, East Kent College, John Ruskin College, in Croydon, and South Tyneside College, according to an EFA list published on Tuesday (September 1).

 

TeamUK finished in seventh place at this year’s WorldSkills competition, held in Brazil.

The team took home three gold medals, three silver, two bronze and 21 medallions for excellence – winning 46 medal points in total.

Beauty therapist Rianne Chester, 21, who runs Beauty By Rianne, was handed the award for best overall WorldSkills competitor at the closing ceremony on August 16.

TeamUK plumbing and heating competitor Gary Doyle, from Northern Ireland’s Southern Regional College and Kieran Trainor Plumbing and Heating were the other gold medal winners.

The Brazilian team came out on top, with 11 golds and 105 points.

The table has only today been released due to technical issues in judgement in finalising the medallions of excellence.

At the last WorldSkills’ competition in 2013, held in Leipzig, the UK came in at 10th place in the medals table.

This year Team UK managed to beat its nearest rivals France, Germany and Austria.

Skills Minister Nick Boles said: “Congratulations to Team UK on its impressive medal tally and achievement at WorldSkills São Paulo.

“Their hard work shows how far apprenticeships and professional and technical training can take young people, and the skills they are learning will help drive them towards an exciting and rewarding career.”

We have put together a free souvenir supplement from the event, with all the details of this year’s event. You can download it here.

A further six general FE colleges have been listed by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) as intending to take on learners from the age of 14.

The EFA yesterday published an updated list of FE colleges intending to start ‘direct recruitment’ of full-time younger learners for 2015/16.

The six new providers are Cambridge Regional College (CRC), Central Bedfordshire College, East Durham College, East Kent College, John Ruskin College, in Croydon, and South Tyneside College, according to the EFA.

It brings the total number of colleges “intending to deliver the programme” over the coming academic year to 20, the EFA confirmed.

Anne Constantine (pictured above), CRC principal, said the programme was a “new and exciting development” for education in the Cambridge area.

“We have created the Academy@CRC to offer a high quality learning experience, with more practical and vocational content, to young people aged 14 to 16 residing in Cambridge City, East Cambridgeshire and South Cambridgeshire,” she added.

“Its aim is to nurture a mature and independent approach to learning and to develop the skills students will need to be successful in securing and sustaining employment and a career.
“Practical and applied learning suits some 14-year-olds more than the traditional academic curriculum.

“We will offer core GCSEs and a substantial vocational programme and we expect this to enable the young people who choose to come here to progress more quickly.”

CRC will launch the programme as a pilot scheme for 15 pupils from nearby secondary school Chesterton Community College in September, and, subject to its success in the first term, offer open access to 14-year-olds from September 2016, Ms Constantine added.

East Kent College principial, Graham Razey, said his college has seen a “significant reduction in the opportunities for local young people to access high quality technical education at 14”, which is the reason why they are choosing to deliver the programme.

“East Kent College is committed to meeting the needs of the locality and is offering the Technical School to those who have the aspiration of a career in catering and hospitality or early years education,” added Mr Razey.

“The college has developed a technical school within the Broadstairs Campus which offers a discrete base for the school students and staff whilst giving easy access to the technical facilities. This includes the college’s nursery and hotel where the students will put their knowledge into commercial practice.”

Alison Maynard (pictured right), principal of South Tyneside College’s professional and vocational College, said: “Our primary motivation in establishing Career College North East was to provide outstanding instruction to young people who want more than purely academic study.

“It gives those who are clear about their future educational path the opportunity to learn the important skills they need to pursue the career they want, and to be ahead of the field by at least two years.

“We know from our close links with regional employers that there is demand for intelligent and motivated young people – employment opportunities are being created, but there remains a significant skills gap in the areas that will be covered by Career College North East.

“It is vitally important that the training given to people coming through our schools and colleges reflects genuine employment need in the areas in which they will live and work, and that is what the career college aims to do.

“For example, the ongoing creation of an International Advanced Manufacturing Park on the border of South Tyneside and Sunderland will create great opportunity for young people, and it is essential that they have the skills to capitalise.

“Career College North East will benefit greatly from being a partnership between South Tyneside College, which has outstanding bespoke facilities and highly skilled staff, and St Wilfrid’s, which is rated outstanding by Ofsted.

“It is a combination that we firmly believe will benefit young people in the North East for many years to come.”

The four original colleges that took on 14 to 16 provision in 2013/14 were Hull College, Leeds City College, Middlesbrough College and NCG (formerly Newcastle College Group), according to the EFA, while a further 10 FE colleges delivered the programme last academic year.

The additional colleges that were listed as “intending to deliver” the programme in 2014/15 included Bromley College of Further and Higher Education, Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education, Hugh Baird College, in Merseyside, and Newbury College.

The others were South Devon College, West Thames College, St Helens College, Leicestershire-based Stephenson College, Oldham College, and Tower Hamlets College.

The EFA and the other four new colleges are yet to comment.