The UK’s WorldSkills competitors are set to head off for Brazil tonight — and a number of them will be boarding the BA flight from Heathrow with the encouragement of their local MPs still ringing in their ears.

With the much-anticipated start on Tuesday (August 11) growing ever nearer, seven of the UK competitors were given the House of Commons boost.

Lucy Jones, the 21-year-old restaurant services competitor for Team UK who goes to Hampshire’s Brockenhurst College and works at Chewton Glen Hotel and Spa, was treated to tea with New Forest West MP Desmond Swayne (both pictured above).

He said: “Lucy has done incredibly well to make it into Team UK. It’s a great achievement and I’m looking forward to seeing how well she can do in Brazil.

“Her success demonstrates the opportunities WorldSkills UK skills competitions provide for young people. Through competing she has learned a lot and this has helped her career, enabling her to carry out an important role in a thriving local business.”

Chichester College’s cabinet-making competitor Edward Harringman, aged 22, and employed by Harringman Cabinet Making, met up with Hastings and Rye MP Amber Rudd, who said she was keeping her “fingers crossed” that returns with a medal.

“I wish Edward all the very best for WorldSkills Sao Paulo 2015,” she said.

“Edward’s success demonstrates the value of vocational education as a viable first choice for school leavers. Not only has he learned and developed a skill to a high standard thanks to excellent teaching at college, he is now the owner of a successful local business.

“I look forward to seeing more young people in my constituency having a go and following in Edward’s footsteps.”

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Redcar MP Anna Turley tried her hand at plastering when she met 22-year-old Robert Johnson, Team UK’s plastering and dry wall systems competitor, who works at Classic Plaster Moulds.

“I was delighted to meet Rob recently and to hear about his achievements,” she said.

“He is an inspiration to his and future generations and is proof that vocational learning can lead to great opportunities and successful careers. I wish Rob and the other members of Team UK the best of luck for the competition – I am sure you will do our area and our nation proud.”

Joinery competitor Dale Hodgins got the chance to meet Gloucester MP Richard Graham, who was “delighted” to see the 22-year-old represent the constituency and Team UK.

“Let’s all get behind Dale and show the world what Gloucester can make,” said Mr Graham.

Dale is an Oxford & Cherwell Valley College learner and is employed by Oakleigh Joinery.

Mike Watson, representing the UK in CNC Milling, met up with Thornbury and Yate MP Luke Hall.

Mr Hall said: “Mike is an inspiration to future generations of the UK’s workforce.

“His achievements prove that apprenticeships can lead to great opportunities and successful careers for individuals and businesses. The members of Team UK are ambassadors for our nation and I wish each and every one of them the very best of luck.”

Mike, aged 21 and from City of Bristol College and who works for GKN Aerospace, said: “I think WorldSkills will be an amazing experience but it will be an intense week and very hard work. I have been training very hard for it so can’t wait to finally get there and meet everyone.”

Eddisbury MP Antoinette Sandbach met Matt Beesley, a 21-year-old former Reaseheath College who is competing in landscape gardening.

She said: “Matt is an inspiration to future generations of the UK’s workforce. His achievements prove that vocational learning can lead to great opportunities and successful careers for individuals and businesses. The members of Team UK are ambassadors for our nation and I wish each and every one of them the best of luck at WorldSkills São Paulo 2015.”

Matt, who works for Beesley Landscapes, said: “Being selected for WorldSkills São Paulo 2015 is an incredible honour and is something I’ve been working towards personally for over two years. I have spent every spare minute training for the competition and I am determined to give it my all.”

And Henley MP John Howell visited RAF Benson to meet Royal Air Force technician Senior Aircraftman (Technician) Shayne Hadland, 24.

Shayne showed Mr Howell how to repair rotor blades and wiring looms as part of what is needed to keep front-line helicopters in the air.

“These skills are vitally important to the safety of aircraft and it is very good that the Royal Air Force is supporting them,” said Mr Howell.

“This is one of the few places that provide this level of training. They are to be applauded.”

Shayne said: “The goal is to be the best young aircraft engineer in the world. I don’t think there is a bigger prize than that.”

Keep up with all the action before and during the competition with FE Week – on feweek.co.uk or on Twitter with the handle @FEWeek and the #GoWSTeamUK hashtag.

Independent learning provider t2 Business Solutions has been hit with a grade three Ofsted rating after concern was raised about failures to safeguard learners and vulnerable adults.

The report published today on the Cardiff-based provider rated its health and social care apprenticeships provision as ‘good’, and employability training including traineeships as ‘outstanding’.

But t2, which was previously rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted in May 2012, has now slumped to a grade three-overall rating, with the report warning that leadership and management ‘requires improvement’.

It stated that “the organisation failed to carry out disclosure and barring services (DBS) checks for some new staff and too many of them did not have a current DBS check in place prior to inspection”.

Managers had ensured, the report added, that these staff did not have unsupervised access to young people as soon as the issue was identified.

However, concern was also raised that “the designated safeguarding officer and team who would routinely have access to sensitive information have not completed an accredited training programme leading to a qualification or appropriate DBS”.

Rob Marr, managing director of t2 group, which includes Marr Corporation Limited and was allocated £13.8m by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) as of April this year, conceded that “DBS checks on some new members of staff, who were not carrying out regulated activity and who represented just 5 per cent of our workforce, were not carried out in a timely fashion”.

But he said: “We carried out an internal investigation into the source of the problem, which became a disciplinary matter.

“We have since strengthened our internal procedures by implementing all staff recruitment recommendations within three days of the inspection taking place.”

When asked by FE Week if he expected that t2 would be allowed to continue running its ‘outstanding’ traineeships following the grade three overall Ofsted rating, he said: “It is our understanding that we can continue to deliver [them] this year. However we will be unable to grow our provision.”

An SFA spokesperson said: “If a provider [such as Totton College] is currently eligible and delivering traineeships, but receives a grade three Ofsted inspection, they can continue to deliver but only under certain conditions regarding the growth of their programme.

“However, if providers with a grade three fail to receive a grade one or two on their next inspection, they would no longer be eligible to deliver.”

The Ofsted report stated that t2 was running around 4,300 intermediate, 2,900 advanced, 400 higher apprenticeships, and 40 traineeships at the time of the inspection.

A report has also today been published on the first re-inspection monitoring visit to Totton College since it was rated ‘inadequate’ by inspectors in June and plans were announced for it to be taken over by national crime prevention charity Nacro from November.

It said that Totton’s senior leaders had “sensibly refrained” from developing a post-inspection action plan (PIAP) in view of the “transition period” to overall Nacro control, it added.

But the report said that work had started “on identifying the key issues relating to, and the root causes of, the college’s poor performance in 2014/15, and this now needs to proceed quickly”.

Senior leaders, the report added, were forecasting approximately half as many enrolments at the start of 2015/16 as in 2014/15.

It comes after FE Week exclusively revealed on June 26 that the government had paid a “one-off settlement” to write off the pension liabilities of the cash-strapped sixth form college as part of a deal to remove it from the public sector.

The Education Funding Agency (EFA) paid Hampshire County Council the undisclosed figure, believed to run into millions, to prevent pension liabilities from being transferred to Nacro, which improved from an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted rating in March 2013 to ‘good’ last June.

A merger has been on the horizon for the college, that had around 1,700-learners in June, since last December — when former principal Mike Gaston said it was looking at its options after sixth form college commissioner Peter Mucklow warned it could not function alone and it was placed under Financial Notice to Improve by the EFA.

An EFA spokesperson said that Nacro, which had around 3,200 learners in June, was “working closely with Totton College to address the priorities identified in the report”.

No-one from Totton College was available to comment and Nacro declined to comment.

Exam board OCR will not face action over events which almost led to it failing to issue A level results last summer, Ofqual has confirmed.

The qualifications watchdog has released its investigation into a series of issues at OCR last year which put at risk the delivery of the 2014 GCSE and A level results.

A letter sent to OCR’s chief executive Mark Dawe confirms that the company will not face a fine or any other action, despite stating that “catastrophic” consequences almost occurred due to a confluence of events including a company restructure and problems with the exam board’s e-marking system.

The report highlights that OCR faced a “number of significant and known risks”, including an extra 900,000 more papers to mark compared to the previous summer due to the new linear exam structure.

It adds that additional monitoring put in place by OCR last summer resulted in more exam markers being stopped from marking than in previous years.

The document also highlights “certain issues” with the Scoris e-marking system used by OCR, which moved to 100 per cent e-marking for the first time in 2014, and says the firm’s “intensive” restructuring programme over the preceding year had “limited the effect of contingency planning undertaken” for dealing with Scoris.

In a letter sent to Mr Dawe in April, but published for the first time today, chief regulator Glenys Stacey said the events last summer caused Ofqual “the greatest concern”.

She stated: “For a time there seemed to be a real possibility that OCR would fail to issue timely results.

“The consequences had that happened might have been catastrophic; for candidates, for schools and universities and for the wider system.

“The detrimental impact on public confidence in our system might have taken years to overcome.”

But Ms Stacey also confirmed in the letter that Ofqual had decided against fining OCR or taking any other action.

An OCR spokesperson said: “Last summer’s marking did not go as smoothly as OCR would have wanted. We welcome the regulator’s report as it confirms we delivered the results on time, took the right steps to improve our system resilience and that Ofqual did not need to take any regulatory action. OCR met the UCAS deadline – seven days before results day itself – despite having nearly a million extra scripts to mark electronically.

“Although we delivered the results on time, as soon as possible after the actual results day we launched a voluntary ‘warts and all’ investigation.  We then appointed an experienced, senior team whose job was to ensure we learnt the lessons of the summer and took the right action to make our processes more robust.

“Regardless of the timing of this report, students and teachers can feel confident about this summer. All A Level marking has been completed and the quality of marking has been upheld. The Ofqual report does not raise any issues about last year’s marks, so teachers and students can be confident about the marks they received then.”

Malcolm Trobe, deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said he was pleased OCR had responded quickly to ensure that all results did come out in time, adding: “It is also important to emphasise that there have been no issues identified with this year’s exams.”

He continued: “There are clearly lessons to be learned and it is good to see that Ofqual has highlighted in its report the specific issues which caused problems. This will help to inform all the awarding bodies as they move into a period of curriculum reform which will affect exams from 2017 onwards.

“In the new GCSEs and A levels, all exams have to be taken at the end of courses. This will put a great deal of pressure on the system each summer and will mean that many more markers are required.”

Frustration is growing among Trailblazer apprenticeship designers with many of the new standards still awaiting government approval for delivery almost a year after they were published.

Twenty two standards published by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) in November are still waiting to be approved despite months of consultation and design having already gone into them by employers.

There are now 24 standards judged ready for delivery by BIS after it approved their assessment plans, which also include details of how the standard will remain consistent across the sector.

However, there remains 104 standards published but awaiting approval for delivery, with those still waiting since November having been rejected in the initial submission round in February before being resubmitted in June.

But with 2015/16 Trailblazer funding rules published on the BIS website last week, there is mounting frustration at the wait for approval.

Terry Fennell (pictured right), operations director at the Food and Drink Training and Education Council, chairs the butchery Trailblazer — which is still waiting for one standard to be declared ready to use — and said many Trailblazers were getting “a little uneasy” about the delay.

He said: “Employers on the butchery group have committed a lot of time and effort since March 2014 to the development of a new apprenticeship assessment plan that was submitted in June, so its naturally a little frustrating to be kept waiting for a decision.”

Julie Hyett, talent lead at insurance company Aon, chairs the insurance trailblazer and said they were due to hear last week whether their standard for insurance practitioner was ready for use, but had not yet been told of a result.

Ms Hyett said: “It should have all been wrapped up by now — it’s been rumbling on for quite some time and we’re just sitting on our hands waiting for BIS to come back and approve the plans.”

The group’s initial assessment plan was rejected in February, said Ms Hyett, over small linguistic changes which the government had required, and had to be resubmitted in June — a submission date that had to be pushed backwards because of May’s general election.

Ms Hyett said the group was prepared to “default” back to the old apprenticeship framework if the new trailblazer standard was not deemed ready to use in time, but admitted the delay had been “frustrating”.

“Obviously we want to crack on with the trailblazers — that was the purpose of developing them, but we have to work in line with the government and I think there’s a degree of understanding that they don’t operate to the same time scales,” she said.

Last month, when 15 new standards were published, the government announced it would be moving to a monthly deadline for assessment plan submission dates, along with the submission deadlines for standards and expressions of interest in developing a standard.

The guidance note, published on July 22, said the move was “aimed at removing current bottlenecks in the development process and should speed it up considerably”.

A BIS spokesperson said: “It is up to individual employer groups to decide when they are ready to submit their standards for formal approval.

“There are no deadlines for approval as it’s important employers have the time they need to ensure the standards developed meet the requirements of their industry.”

It is understood the latest round of standards declared ready for use, which could also include standards published back in December, March and last month, is due to be published by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, figures exclusively obtained by FE Week under the Freedom of Information Act (see below) show that just eight providers, along with 16 employers, were behind the 300 Trailblazer starts in the first nine months they were available.

The figures, from the Skills Funding Agency (SFA), also show that only four employers started more than five Trailblazer apprenticeships between August last year and April and 60 per cent of all these were accounted for by just Jaguar Land Rover.

The 300 starts came from a pool of nine Trailblazer apprenticeships, and half of these starts were with Warwickshire College, which is among only four providers to start more than 10 apprenticeships on the new standards.

The low figures will make uncomfortable reading for the government, which has stated an “ambition” for all apprenticeship starts from 2017/18 to be Trailblazers.

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) and the Association of Colleges (AoC) both said they were unsurprised by the low take-up figures.

Stewart Segal, AELP chief executive, called for a review of the funding and audit systems for Trailblazers to ensure they were working effectively and to encourage close working between employers and providers.

“It is not surprising that there are very low numbers of starts on the new Trailblazer standards,” he said.

“It has taken a lot longer than planned to put together the standards, the assessment plan and getting the right processes in place to get apprentices started.

“The majority of the 300 starts involve large employers and it will be an even bigger challenge to involve smaller employers.”

Teresa Frith, AoC senior skills policy manager, blamed the low number of starts on confusion over programme assessment plans.

She said: “It’s no surprise that employers and providers have been slow to take up Trailblazer apprenticeships because, at the current stage of development within the Trailblazer programme, there is insufficient detail for providers about the independent end-of-programme assessment that apprentices will have to undertake.”

She added the “vast majority of colleges” and the employers they work with had not been involved in the process.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) declined to comment on the figures.

However, when June’s Statistical First Release data revealed only 300 apprenticeship starts since the beginning of 2014/15, a spokesperson said: “Trailblazers is a new programme and the figures included in the June 2015 SFR are provisional in-year estimates.

“The figures are subject to change when the final full year data is published in November.”

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Table 1: The name of the employers with Trailblazer starts and how many starts they had

Employer	Total
ACTDRIVE TECHNOLOGY LIMITED	–
Allpay	–
Barclays Bank plc	10
Bright Future Software Ltd	40
COMPUTER EYEZ (SOUTH) LTD	–
CROSSLAND AND DUDSON TRAINING LIMITED	–
I-Dash Ltd	–
Jaguar Land Rover	180
JSL Computers	–
Kaonix Solutions Ltd	–
National Grid Plc	20
Supplenta Ltd	–
Sysdoc Ltd	–
Telis Limited	–
Vestey Foods Group Limited	–
Waymark IT	–
Grand Total	300

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Table 2: The name of the providers with Trailblazer starts and how many starts they had

Provider	Total
B-Skill Limited	–
Capita PLC	10
EEF Limited	10
Huntingdonshire Regional College	10
National Grid PLC	20
North West Training Council	20
Total People Limited	40
Warwickshire College	150
Grand total	300

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Table 3: The number of starts against each Trailblazer Standard

Trailblazer standard	Total
Electrical/Electronic technical support engineer	10
Manufacturing engineer	20
Mechatronics maintenance technician	30
Network engineer	10
Power network craftsperson	20
Product design & development engineer	40
Product design & development technician	80
Relationship manager	10
Software developer	50
Grand total	300

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Notes on the data (supplied by BIS):

.      The tables have been produced using provisional in-year estimates for the first nine months of 2014/15 – August to April

.      Volumes are rounded to the nearest ten except for grand totals which are rounded to the nearest hundred. The rounding convention is consistent with SFA/BIS statistical release and has been applied to these counts in order to minimise the risk of disclosure breaching the Data Protection Act 1998

.      ‘-‘ Indicates a base value of less than five

.      Provisional data for 2014/15 are subject to change until final data are published in November 2015

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The Federation of Awarding Bodies (FAB) has welcomed Ofqual’s decision to simplify its original plans for how the size of qualifications will be described after the current Qualifications Credit Framework (QCF) has been scrapped.

The qualifications watchdog launched a three-month 19-question consultation on March 25 requesting views from across the sector on its plans to replace the QCF, as reported by FE Week on the same day.

Jeremy Benson (pictured right), executive director for vocational qualifications, confirmed in a letter to awarding organisations (AOs) published online today that the regulatory arrangements for the QCF will be withdrawn and the QCF Unit Bank closed on September 30.

He added that having taken into account views expressed by the 119 respondents to the consultation, “an important change” had been made to proposals on how the sizes of qualifications will be described.

“In the consultation, we proposed that all qualifications should have a size expressed in terms of total qualification time (TQT), made up of guided learning hours (GLH), dedicated assessment hours and invigilated assessment hours,” he said.

“Based on the responses we received, we have simplified this and decided that all qualifications should have a figure for TQT and, where appropriate, part of this should be expressed in terms of GLH.”

The move was welcomed by FAB’s chief executive Stephen Wright (pictured below left) who said: “We were impressed with the way that Ofqual conducted the consultation providing clear information and opportunity to discuss the issues and respond.

“As a result the initial Ofqual proposal for TQT has been replaced by a more pragmatic and workable model more simply described as GLH plus ‘everything else’.”

He added that the move away from the QCF to the new framework of regulated qualifications (FRQ) “marks a return to a more flexible marketplace”.

Bu he warned that “while FAB welcomes the increased freedom for awarding organisations to design the structure, assessment and content of qualifications, there is also likely to be a perceived increase in the number of qualifications and issues of untangling the intellectual property rights issues as AOs move from the shared units of the QCF to the pre-QCF position of most AOs owning their own units”.

The letter from Mr Benson added that Ofqual will “soon give notice to you [AOs] that the requirements for all new qualifications to have a measure of size will come into effect on October 1”. For existing qualifications, he added, Ofqual has decided that AOs “must have allocated a measure of size, expressed in terms of TQT and GLH by no later than December 31, 2017”.

“We may however elect to bring this date forward for specific types of qualifications and will keep this date under review,” he added. “If we decide to bring the date forward we will give you advance notice and explain our reasons.”

He added that AOs had been granted additional time “before bringing the new requirements into force for all existing qualifications” to “ensure that you properly review your existing qualifications and make evidence-based decisions on TQT and, where appropriate, GLH allocations”.

Mr Benson also stressed in the letter that for existing qualifications, if the term QCF is not removed from the title on the register and in marketing materials by December 31, 2017, it will be seen “as an indication of non-compliance with our titling rules”.

Charlotte Bosworth (pictured right), director of skills and employment at OCR, said: “We are pleased with the outcomes of the Ofqual consultation on the withdrawing the QCF. They show that the consultation was true and that feedback has been taken on board, particularly for elements like TQT, where a pragmatic approach, which we advocated, has been adopted.”

An NOCN spokesperson said: “We are fully aware of these changes and are broadly in support of them.

“Anything which simplifies and improves the system is good news. We are already planning for this transition and our customers will see the new elements appearing over the transition period.

“The removal of the QCF allows for greater flexibility to tailor qualifications to better meet the needs of employers, something which NOCN very much agrees with.”

Ofqual first confirmed that it planned to remove the QCF rules before Christmas.

The decision by the regulator, which was reported on by FE Week on December 9, followed a previous 12-week consultation and earlier review of the rules.

Ofqual chief executive Glenys Stacey has announced that she will be standing down at the end of February.

Ms Stacey (pictured), who is also Ofqual’s chief regulator, said today that she thought “the time is right now for a change in leadership”.

She has led the qualifications watchdog, which was set up in April 2010, since March 2011.

“I have been enormously privileged to have led Ofqual for the last five years, and delighted at the way in which it has developed,” said Ms Stacey.

“It is now an established part of the education world, with a key role in maintaining standards and improving qualifications central to young people and their future life chances.”

She added: “It is time now for a fresh face to lead the organisation. I took this job in order to establish Ofqual as a credible, effective regulator. I have achieved that.

“I am not retiring, and will look to use the skills I have acquired over my long career in public service.”

A spokesperson for Ofqual confirmed Ms Stacey, who was previously chief executive of Standards for England, Animal Health, the Greater Manchester Magistrates’ Courts Committee and the Criminal Cases Review Commission, would leave “when her five-year term concludes at the end of February”.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said: “During a time of significant reform she [Ms Stacey] has brought both great insight and fastidiousness to this crucial role and our education system is much the better for it. I would like to thank her for all she has achieved in her time at Ofqual and for her commitment to public service.”

One of her most noticeable impacts on the FE sector was felt last November, when she said in a letter to Skills Minister Nick Boles that Functional Skills (FS) should remain “as stable as possible”.

She was replying to a letter sent to her by Mr Boles the previous month, in which he said that FS would “continue to be one of the types of qualification that learners have available”.

She welcomed the minister’s “clear statement about the importance you attach to FS”, but warned that “it takes some years for qualification titles to become understood and trusted, particularly by employers and others who are not close to the education system”.

“In general, our view is that we should keep the qualifications system as stable as possible, to allow qualifications time to prove themselves,” she said.

Ms Stacey also marshalled the regulator’s response to the 2012 GCSE fiasco where grade boundaries were changed dramatically by exam boards midway through the academic year.

Ofqual said the boundaries set were too easy, but teachers and parents hit out against the change and took their case to the High Court.

The regulator stood firm despite the mounting criticism and judges dismissed the case – ruling out unlawful behaviour by Ofqual.

Ofqual chair Amanda Spielman said: “Glenys will be a huge loss to Ofqual, but it is typical of her approach that she has given us an extended period of time to find a suitable replacement and opportunity to ensure a smooth transition.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said that it will oversee the recruitment process for Ms Stacey’s successor.

Employers should be consulted on the “scope and rate” of a new apprenticeship levy and have “real control” over the whole apprenticeships system, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has said.

In a briefing note on the levy, which was announced by Chancellor George Osborne in his July budget, the CBI predicted the levy would be “around 0.5 per cent of payroll” and “is likely to include all businesses with 250 employees or more”.

The CBI has also used the briefing to expand on its earlier concerns and raise new ones, including that a consultation currently running on the levy only covers its implementation, with “no formal commitment to consult on the scope or rate of the levy”. 

In the document, the organisation claims there is “no conclusive evidence that levies work”, before going on to explain its primary concern is that although the levy “may deliver quantity and help the government hit its target”, it “does not guarantee quality”.

It goes on to say: “Those who have experience of levy systems have highlighted the negative impact and unintended consequences which can arise from badly designed and poorly implemented levy systems – and many more have expressed concerned about the lack of detail in the Chancellor’s announcement, particularly given the potential scale and scope of the levy.

“Employers will judge the success of the levy based on the quality of apprenticeships delivered and on how well these meet the needs of business and the economy.”

The document calls for a system which incentivises the delivery of higher level skills and encourages growth in key sectors and gives employers “real control”.

It adds: “If employers are to fund all or most of the cost of apprenticeships, then employers must have real control. Not just on funding – but over the whole system.”

The CBI has also demanded that the levy system be “simple to administer and where the fund is easy to access”, and that it is “flexible, supporting collaborative working – and not penalising those businesses and employers who want to take a sectoral approach”.

It goes on to say: “The levy must be fair, proportionate and subject to proper consultation Getting the rate and reach of the levy right will be critical – and the CBI is calling for full consultation on this.

“Once the rate is agreed, it must be subject to regular scrutiny and review. The levy should support the development of vocational skills and apprenticeships in every part of the UK and exemptions from the levy must be made where mandatory sector levy schemes remain in place.

“Small employers should remain exempt from the levy – but levy funding should not be used to cross-subsidise apprenticeships for small business.”

It comes after the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) urged the government to hold off introducing the levy for “three or fours years”, urging it to build capacity first.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which will administer the policy, declined to comment.

Picture: HM Treasury