More than 70 MPs have written to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan calling for sixth form colleges to be exempted from paying VAT.
The government’s controversial policy of continuing to charge sixth form colleges VAT while schools and academies are entitled to a refund of the 20 per cent tax has sparked a campaign by the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA), backed by sector leaders, MPs and celebrities.
Now 76 MPs from across the political divide, led by Commons education committee chair and Tory MP Graham Stuart (pictured), have put that support on paper. Other notable names on the letter include former Education Secretaries Alan Johnson and David Blunkett, public accounts committee chair Margaret Hodge and the influential sole Green MP Caroline Lucas.
In the letter, welcomed by the SFCA, the MPs warned that “the VAT anomaly threatens the success of a high performing sector”.
Mr Stuart said: “MPs across the House feel strongly that it is wrong that sixth form colleges still have to pay VAT, when schools and academies can reclaim those costs. Young people should receive the same level of investment in their education, irrespective of where they choose to study.
“It would cost around £30m per year to ensure students in sixth form colleges are treated fairly, a comparatively modest sum for central government that would make an enormous difference to the education of these young people. I would urge all political parties to commit to addressing this anomaly.”
The SFCA is running a campaign to push for the 93 sixth form colleges in England to have the same rights over VAT as schools and claims the average sixth form college has to redirect £335,000 of its annual funding away from the front line education of students to pay the tax.
James Kewin
SFCA deputy chief executive James Kewin said: “We are delighted that so many MPs from across the political divide are supporting our campaign to drop the learning tax.
“The money sixth form colleges pay in VAT would be better spent on the front line education of young people. Students in sixth form colleges deserve the same investment in their education as their peers in school or academy sixth forms.”
It comes after Skills Minister Nick Boles said he was willing to begin discussions with the “fierce” Treasury over whether sixth form colleges might be allowed to change their status if they link up with schools, but the SFCA has called for clarity over the policy.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Our plan for education means thousands of students are staying in education or training after the age of 16, giving them the skills and experience they need for life in modern Britain.
“This is a long-standing issue – and we are looking at how we can help sixth form colleges. We have already ended the historic and unfair funding difference between post-16 schools and colleges by funding them per student, rather than discriminating between qualifications.
“We have also increased funding for those that successfully study four or more A levels and large TechBacc programmes, giving schools and colleges the green light to further help their most able students.”
Volunteer work has paid off for West Cheshire College 19-year-old Lois Muir with two awards and a newfound confidence despite a difficult school background, writes Billy Camden.
Just over 12 months ago Lois Muir thought a troubled school life would be repeated at college — but she was pointed towards the Prince’s Trust and volunteering and has not looked back since.
The 19-year-old West Cheshire College learner did 400 hours’ volunteering as part of the programme and is now team leader for youth volunteer organisation vInspired and a youth worker with a local club.
Lois Muir in her role as a volunteer officer at West Cheshire College
She is also a volunteer officer at the college, where she is doing a level two BTec certificate in business.
The result has been double award joy with a Volunteer of the Month honour from vInspired and Volunteer of the Term from the college.
“If someone told me a year ago I would be volunteering I would have laughed at them because I didn’t even believe in it,” she said.
“For the first time in my life it feels like I’ve achieved something and I’m proud to help others as well because I know what it is like because I was in similar situations. I can now, for the first time ever, see a future for myself.”
And it was a future that appeared bleak until a West Cheshire College adviser helped.
“Ever since I was younger I’ve always been that misbehaving and attention seeking child. I just wouldn’t respect anyone,” said Lois.
“I’ve always struggled with undiagnosed depression and my behaviour problems have always been bad. I mainly put my past down to me as an individual.”
She added: “A year ago I went on the Prince’s Trust team programme after it was suggested to me by an adviser from the college, Lorraine Murray.
“Once I finished the course I turned my life around after tallying up nearly 400 hours of volunteering work.”
Lois Muir (left) with college adviser Lorraine Murray
The Prince’s Trust, a programme supporting 13 to 30-year-olds who are unemployed, struggling at school and/or at risk of exclusion, was completed by Lois as a 12-week course ending mid-April last year.
“I wasn’t that keen on it, and once I started, after getting through a few ups and downs, by the end of it I realised how much it had helped me,” said Lois.
“It not only changed my life but it saved my life.”
Since completing the programme, Lois has continued helping others and now works mainly with young people.
In her role at the college she goes around campus promoting volunteering as well as being involved in community meetings.
Lorraine Murray, team leader for the careers, finance and welfare team at West Cheshire College, said: “I have seen an amazing change in Lois over the past year. Following her time with the Prince’s Trust Programme she has turned into an inspirational young lady.
“I am immensely proud of her, she has a new-found confidence and self-belief that drives her to help others while achieving her own goals.
“I am delighted that her hard work and commitment has been recognised and I wish her all the success and luck for her future adventures.”
Main pic: From left: Lois Muir being awarded her volunteering awards by Caroline Fidmont, Vice Principal of Quality and Purpose at West Cheshire College
College catchment areas can owe as much to constituency borders as they can to the routes of local buses clad with enrolment day advertising.
But it was far simpler for Professor Ed Sallis when he was principal of Highlands College — his catchment area limits were the Jersey seashore.
“There wasn’t the level of competition because we were the only college, and we had potentially a finite number of learners,” he says.
“We had to think of ways of being relevant for the whole community.”
Sallis put on honours degrees with Plymouth University because “what people wanted was not just to foundation degrees but to do honours degrees because even if they couldn’t get off the island they wanted the whole thing”.
He adds: “We developed one or two of our own quals that were specific to the finance industry in Jersey, particularly around the issue of trust companies which don’t really exist anywhere else in the UK. So it was a lot of that type of thing.”
Sallis’s wife Kate, Sallis and his niece Helen at the palace to receive Sallis’s OBE in 2010
Sallis, aged 66, came to the attention of England’s FE and skills sector in December when it was announced that he was to head the Education and Training Foundation ETF taskforce looking at the teaching and accreditation of maths and English —including Functional Skills but not GCSEs— for learners unable to reach D grade GCSE.
“At the moment we don’t have an answer to what employers really think of Functional Skills because it hasn’t been researched,” he says.
But what is clear, he says, is the importance of basic English and maths skills, in whatever form they’re taught.
“There are an awful lot of people in FE who do have a life-changing experience, but they can’t have it unless they’ve got the basics,” he says.
“To some extent getting a qualification, in level one Functional Skills or whatever, is a real achievement in a way that going from an E to a D at GCSE isn’t.
“Having said all that, I do very much agree with Professor Alison Wolf that GCSE is a gold standard, so you should give as many people as possible the opportunities to do it — but on the other hand, you need some stepping stones.
The difference in Jersey was that we weren’t funding for specific groups of learners — we just got a lump of money really
“What we need to do is to make certain that the stepping stones are as good as they possibly can be.”
Sallis’s own career stepping stones started at 16 having left school to train in chartered accountancy. But it lasted less than a month before he went back to school to differing reactions from mum Winifred and dad Leslie.
“My mother was a very interesting person who was a secretary in Churchill’s war room during the war,” he explains.
“She was passionately interested in education. She was one of these people who didn’t have the chance herself really, but later on in life she did a lot of Workers’ Education Alliance classes and began organising them.”
His father, a salesman from East London who became vice-president of an American multinational in London, was less sure.
“My father was a typical East End chap who made good. He was remarkable,” says Sallis.
“He thought I ought to do something much more business-orientated — qualifications that didn’t necessarily go somewhere wasn’t a world he understood.”
Sallis cooking on safari in South Africa
After sixth form and a degree in politics and economics at the University of London, Sallis found himself back in accountancy, and realising he didn’t really want a future as a tax inspector, he again took inspiration from a friend who worked at Peterborough College.
“He seemed to be having a far more interesting time of things than I was, so when I saw an advert in the paper for a lecturer in general studies, and I hadn’t a clue what it was about, I applied. I was interviewed, and I got a job in FE,” he says.
The job was at Acton Technical College (now part of Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College) where general studies was a newly-introduced subject at a college that hitherto only taught science and engineering.
“Today, you wouldn’t have a college that just did engineering and science — it’s interesting to see how FE has developed and matured over the years. And it was terribly small, but one of the good things about it was they did a lot of broadening studies, which included literacy and numeracy work and economics, with apprentices,” he says.
“And the great thing in terms of my career was that I did get to teach a whole range of people a feel of what was out there.”
The college had another long term benefit for Sallis’s career.
Sallis and wife Kate
“The principal at the time was a chap who gave me quite a lot of time and encouraged me to think about FE as a career,” he says.
“And although I thoroughly enjoyed working there, he said: ‘There comes a point where I’m not going to promote you, you’ve got to go somewhere else as it’s going to be better for your career’.”
And Sallis, a former director of the Centre for Excellence in Leadership who was awarded an OBE for services for education in 2010, says he “took that on board”, moving to Hackney in East London, to Slough, to Somerset, to Guildford and to Bristol before making the move to Jersey, where his experience was one that would likely turn principals in England green with envy.
“The difference in Jersey was that we weren’t funding for specific groups of learners — we just got a lump of money really,” he says.
He adds: “But we had to make sure that we offered qualifications sometimes where there were very, very few learners and the programmes weren’t particularly economic to run.
“There wasn’t a college down the road so you had to make certain that if there were three or four learners for something that employers wanted you could still offer a programme. You couldn’t say ‘sorry, it’s not viable’ — you had to do it.”
It was the uniqueness of the situation in Jersey that attracted Sallis to the role, although he says he’d always been “ambitious”.
“We don’t have an answer to what employers really think of Functional Skills because it hasn’t been researched”
“I’d always thought I could be a principal,” he says. “It was just waiting for the opportunity.”
Throughout though, he says he’s always been keen on “keeping a foothold in the classroom”.
“Because actually I think it’s important,” says Sallis.
“It’s difficult, and it becomes, I suppose, in the end, an almost impossible thing to do, but I’ve always tried to be as close to the classroom and to be in it as much as I can.”
In all that moving around, in the early 90s Sallis also found time to do a PhD in quality management in education, something which at the time “was a strange new concept”.
But even today, he says, pedagogy in FE is “under-researched”.
“There’s a lot more going on than there used to be, but when you compare it with the amount of research into schools and higher education, really there is an awful lot of stuff we don’t know.”
Sallis’s ETF review is due to conclude next month.
It’s a personal thing
What is your favourite book, and why?
At the moment I’m reading Juliet Barker’s England, Arise. It’s a history of the peasants’ revolt of 1381. Medieval history is one of my passions
What do you do to switch off from work?
I walk on the beach — I’m fortunate enough to live in Jersey and the beach is just down the road. And I play a very bad game of golf. Basically, I like being out in the fresh air
Sallis playing guitar
What’s your pet hate?
People who are not genuine. Hypocrisy
If you could invite anyone to a dinner party, living or dead, who would it be?
I’d probably ask Sebastian Coe, because I’m very interested in athletics and sports, and I admire the work he did with the Olympics. I’d probably ask Winston Churchill as well. That would make a nice dinner party
With growing rumours that around 50 FE colleges are in financial difficulty, Lynne Sedgmore considers why the sector has been is so badly troubled while schools appear to be unaffected
Politicians of all parties regularly commit themselves to closing the academic-vocational divide or to raising the status of technical education to the level enjoyed by academic programmes.
They are no doubt sincere, but discrimination against the vocational route is so deeply ingrained that, without intending to they constantly act to reinforce it.
Two items of recent news illustrate the indirect discrimination that so often undermines our leaders’ fine aspirations.
The first piece of evidence is a rumour circulating in the sector that around 50 FE colleges are in serious financial difficulty.
If it were five colleges the responsibility would, in all probability, lie at the door of local management — for 50 colleges to experience serious problems at the same time, however, suggests a systemic problem.
College management has not suddenly deteriorated in dozens of colleges; something has gone wrong with the strategic leadership of the sector; leadership beyond colleges.
It is not difficult to find the major cause. Many colleges were encouraged by the Skills Funding Agency’s predecessor body, the Learning and Skills Council, to take on ambitious capital redevelopment programmes.
The very competitive environment set for the sector has been another spur to invest in improved buildings in order to maintain recruitment.
Since colleges have to finance a major part of their capital development themselves many have high borrowings and now face a ‘perfect storm’ as funding rates have been repeatedly cut for 16 to 19-year-olds in recent years and funding numbers slashed for adult provision.
It is the very students following the technical and vocational programmes that politicians say they want to promote who will bear the toughest consequences.
The second piece of evidence is that academy schools have been stashing away billions of pounds building up their financial reserves — £2.5bn that could have been spent on education according to the Guardian (Guardian online January 18).
School budgets are protected by a ring-fence which does not apply to those aged 16 and over and of course schools don’t have to contribute to capital development in the same way colleges do
Once again this is not a criticism of individual schools, but a system failure. For a local authority to hold a reserve in case one of its schools faces a catastrophe is prudent policy. For every single school to hold a reserve in case it is the one where the catastrophe happens is a gross waste of resources.
Such waste is of course only possible because of the more generous funding received for pupils under the age of 16 — some £5,600 for 15-year-olds compared to only £4,600 for 16 and 17-year-olds and £3,800 for those aged 18 according to the Association of Colleges.
School budgets are protected by a ring-fence which does not apply to those aged 16 and over and of course schools don’t have to contribute to capital development in the same way colleges do.
They also receive favourable VAT treatment denied to sixth form colleges for teaching exactly the same age group.
A common refrain from the political class is that the British public (though not they themselves of course) has a long standing cultural prejudice against the vocational route.
It could of course be that the public takes its cue from the politicians noting where they put their investment and which institutions they starve of resources as an indication of their true values.
Or it could be as simple as a canny preference for sending your children to a school that has cash in the bank rather than a college where the bailiffs are just around the corner.
If politicians and leaders of the skills and education system are genuinely serious about the importance of vocational education, we in FE want to see real evidence of sensible investment, within limited resources, for colleges.
Nothing can justify, other than ideology, billions of pounds effectively being stashed away from the students most in need.
Warrington Collegiate came under the principalship of Nichola Newton this month.
She took over from Paul Hafren, who retired at Christmas after 12 years as principal.
She joined from Leeds City College where she was deputy principal, having previously served in senior roles at Runshaw College, Nelson and Colne College and Ashton Sixth Form College.
“I believe in the transformative power of education and consider it a privilege to have been chosen to serve the community of Warrington and the wider region,” said Ms Newton.
“I am committed to working with the senior team and staff at the college to improve life chances for all who choose to study with us.”
She will also play a leading role in the Warrington Collegiate Education Trust which currently comprises Beamont Collegiate Academy and the recently opened Future Tech Studio School.
Colin Daniels, governors’ chair of the grade three-rated collegeiate, said: “Nichola is a confident and inspirational leader with an impressive track record of success within the sector. Her passion for teaching and learning and the success of all learners linked to the needs of the local community will make her an excellent principal.”
Meanwhile, Penny Wycherley’s retirement has come to an end after less than six months.
She left Great Yarmouth College around the start of the academic year having served as its principal for three years, but has taken on the role at London’s Waltham Forest College, which was deemed by Ofsted to require improvement in November.
“I was delighted to be approached just before Christmas to lead the team at Waltham Forest College,” said Ms Wycherley, whose predecessor, Robin Jones, stepped down late last year.
“This is a vibrant community in an area of planned growth in which the college’s contribution to skills development will be essential.
“In its recent inspection there were many indicators of success on its journey to an Ofsted good grade and I am looking forward to continuing that journey. It was that challenge that persuaded me to leave the extreme walking in New Zealand and the greater tranquillity of my Sussex garden to lead and support the team here.”
And the National College for Onshore Oil and Gas has appointed Colette Cohen, head of Centrica’s UK oil and gas production business, as its first chair.
Her first role will be to lead the development board and guide the National College, where training of engineers for the fracking industry will be led by Blackpool and The Fylde College, through its business planning phase.
“To build a successful shale gas industry it’s vital we attract young people to train for the exciting roles which will be on offer,” she said.
“The National College will be providing a wide range of first class courses in the years to come and I’m looking forward to steering the college through this critical development stage and beyond.”
Bev Robinson, principal of Blackpool and The Fylde College, said: “Colette brings extensive industry knowledge and experience to the role of chair. This will be invaluable in shaping the direction and strategy of the National College and is much welcomed.”
Less than one-in-four qualifications listed as in danger of the public funding axe last year have survived the latest cull by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) after appeal.
Awarding organisations were told in November that 1,612 qualifications were at risk, prompting 195 appeals.
Only 45 qualifications were granted a reprieve as the SFA confirmed 1,567 would not be funded in 2015/16.
Of those being cut, 700 had no take-up in 2014/15, and 867 had low take-up — fewer than 100 enrolments. All 45 appeals related to low take-up.
Chris Kirk, director of product and services at City & Guilds, which had 88 qualifications axed due to no demand and around 200 for low demand, said: “This doesn’t necessarily mean that these courses will stop running as awarding bodies may continue to offer courses if there is demand, for example in specialist or niche trades. The SFA may also continue to fund vocational qualifications which fall into this category.”
A spokesperson for Pearson, which saw 85 quals cut due to no demand and around 150 due to no demand, said: “Where qualifications have had low enrolments and do not appear on the SFA’s list, we will work closely with our schools and training providers to find alternative, appropriate qualifications for their students to take the next step towards their chosen career.”
The announcement came on Thursday (February 5) — the same day as the 2015/16 qualification funding catalogue was published, but with the Skills Funding Statement yet to be released by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, it contained no rates.
Skills Minister Nick Boles said the removal of 1,600 qualifications from public funding, made a total reduction of 6,900 qualifications since 2013.
“The qualifications we are removing had few or no users, and are simply cluttering up the system,” he said.
An SFA spokesperson told FE Week: “The agency received submissions for 195 qualifications. These were assessed against the criteria, details of which were published in our annual review guidance. The number of submissions were shared and discussed with the Qualifications Advisory Group as part of the approvals process.”
It comes with a significant number of qualifications having been culled over the last 18 months following a review by BAE Systems group managing director Nigel Whitehead in which he suggested 95 per cent of the adult vocational market’s 19,000-plus qualifications could be axed in a bid to “de-clutter the system”.
By the time you read this, it will be just 90 or so days until we know the general election result, although it could be several days or even weeks before we know who will be governing us.
Indeed the 2015 general election may be the catalyst for a radical change in British politics possibly leading to proportional representation and even federal government.
This must be better than the appeasement political decisions that have led to the current bizarre devolution situation we find ourselves in today. It’s one that could cause a constitutional crisis as England realises the inequality of taxation in services, especially in education and health, between the four countries.
So what has this to do with skills training and apprenticeships?
We engage with national and international companies who are bemused that a geographically small country like Britain does not have a national skills policy and apprenticeship provision. They find it bizarre that eligibility, content and access is totally different in each of the four nations.
We try to facilitate, where possible, a single apprenticeship programme for national companies to meet their needs, rather than submit to the processes of the individual devolved countries.
So why does this matter now? Well in coalition, Scottish MPs from the SNP may wish to impose the Scottish apprenticeship and skills agenda onto England, however inappropriate, or the Welsh MPs may recommend cost savings by slashing the FE and skills budget as they have done in Wales.
More seriously are the consequences of the ‘localism’ agenda, which seems to have got entrapped into the devolution debate. Local enterprise partnerships (Leps), which initially started as a sop to Heseltine’s second regeneration report, are not only becoming more influential but are increasingly gaining more spending power which is only likely to increase as all parties appear committed to more localism.
With three months of politicking to go we will hear more and more inflated promises on increasing apprenticeships at a time when they are in flux and employers are confused
The haphazard way they were allowed to develop, creating their own boundaries outside of local or regional government boundaries with some covering extremely large geographical areas while others just covering a single town creates problems for a national provider to liaise with all of them.
Whatever the election results, we are sure the spending power and influence of the Leps will increase and we are planning how we will liaise face to face with each of them.
With three months of politicking to go we will hear more and more inflated promises on increasing apprenticeships at a time when they are in flux and employers are confused.
Do we really believe a different in-coming government would implement planned reforms of an out-going administration?
The track record of the 61 ministers who have had control of apprenticeships over the last three decades would not support this. Each minister has wanted to put their, or their party’s, agenda into place.
With at least 700 Trailblazer apprenticeship standards still needed to be developed, there will be a vacuum in provision.
Nobody seems to be concerned that nearly all the current Trailblazers are coming in at the highest funding rates.
Even with employer contributions, which may or may not actually be implemented, government will be paying double what they are currently paying for basically the same qualifications.
I trust somebody at the funding agencies is doing the sums or we will end up in the same mess as the colleges’ capital building debacle.
If the current rates for the approved Trailblazers are implemented, the budget will have to double just to keep apprenticeship numbers at their current level without any additional funding for growth.
Hard analytical research into the assumed benefits of the trailblazer apprenticeships over the existing SASE ones needs to guarantee that at a time of cutbacks in all government expenditure, they are twice as good if they are going to cost government twice as much.
This is the unintended consequence of putting no financial controls into the design of the Trailblazers.
Whichever party or minister takes up the apprenticeship reigns in May, they will be handed a poison chalice.
A culinary team from City of Liverpool College dished up three years of success in a row as they put in a winning performance at a Masterchef-style hospitality competition.
The eight-strong team from the college’s Academy Restaurant was crowned Best Visiting Team at the Salon Culinaire competition at North Warwickshire and Hinckley College from January 28.
Daniel Liu enjoyed a personal success, being named the Best Visiting Student Chef.
He said: “I was so proud to have won Best Visiting Chef — but I couldn’t have done it without the team and the team manager’s support and guidance.”
Ian Jaundoo, executive chef and culinary team manager, said: “This is the first competition most of the team has entered and to pick up the award for Best Visiting Team, for the third year running, is a superb achievement.
“This is definitely a sign of things to come for all of these aspiring chefs.”
Main pic: City of Liverpool College Academy RestaurantÕs winning students from left: Calum Johnston, Daniel Liu, both aged 18, Harry Entwistle, 20, Carlyle De Salis, 46, Andrew Green, 19, Leon Tam and Livia Alarcon, both 18. Not pictured is team member Gurshesham Singh, 18
Celebrations marking Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) history month got underway at Boston College with a presentation from Uniformed Public Services (UPS) learners about the importance of acceptance.
A variety of workshops have also been set up around the campus to continue raising awareness of LGBT issues throughout February.
Events such as a Question Time a panel will be staged and guests from Lincolnshire’s LGBT community have been invited to speak. And the college library features a wall display to promote understanding of gender identity issues.
Frank Hanson, equality and diversity manager for the college, said: “Many of our students will progress onto careers where excellent customer service skills are essential requiring an understanding of LGBT in today’s global and diverse community.”
Main pic: Students and staff at Boston college mark LGBT history month
