Twenty one general FE colleges and 13 sixth form colleges (SFCs) will be involved in three extra post-16 education and training area reviews announced by the government this morning.

They will be for the Tees Valley, Sussex Coast and Solent regions, launching on October 1 and 22, and November 5 respectively — with the government warning that more area reviews will be announced “shortly”.

It comes after FE Week reported on September 8 that 22 general FE colleges and 16 SFCs were to be involved in the first round of three post-16 education and training area reviews announced by the government.

The reviews for the Birmingham and Solihull and Greater Manchester areas launched on September 18 and 21 respectively, while a further one for Sheffield city region is set to begin on Monday (September 28).

And, just like the first round of reviews, those announced today do not list any schools sixth forms or independent learning providers.

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Department for Education said this morning: “We are announcing three further area reviews that are part of the first wave.

“These will be Tees Valley, Sussex Coast and Solent. This statement sets out the scope of six of the first wave reviews. Further area reviews will be announced shortly.”

The reviews will be led by steering groups consisting of college chairs of governors, local enterprise partnerships, local authorities, regional schools commissioners, SFC Commissioner Peter Mucklow (pictured right) and FE Commissioner Dr David Collins (pictured below left).

Dr Collins will chair the steering groups for the Tees Valley, Sussex Coast and Solent area reviews.

He is also chairing the Birmingham and Solihull, and Sheffield City Region steering groups, but the Greater Manchester group’s chair is chief executive of Trafford City Council Theresa Grant.

Each review will start with an assessment of the economic and educational needs of the area, and the implications for post-16 education and training provision, also including school sixth forms and independent learning providers.

The reviews will then focus on the current structure of FE and SFCs, although the BIS spokesperson said “there will be opportunities for other institutions (including schools and independent providers) to opt in to this stage of the analysis”.

Regional School Commissioners will consider the implications of the first stage of the analysis for school sixth form provision.

The process has come in for criticism from sector leaders for not directly including school and academy post-16 providers.

They included James Kewin, deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, who told FE Week: “A genuine process of area based reviews would be extremely welcome, as it would scrutinise the performance and viability of all 16 to 19 providers – including school and academy sixth forms.”

The results of an exclusive FE Week survey published on September 11 also showed that almost 90 per cent of principals affected by the first three area reviews announced on September 8 were unhappy with the government’s guidance.

It comes after five FE colleges and SFCs facing “significant financial challenges” announced on July 21 that they are “actively considering” collaboration plans, following a review of post-16 provision in North East Norfolk and North Suffolk.

It was overseen by Dr Collins and Mr Mucklow during the first five months of this year.

It came a day after BIS announced plans, in its report Reviewing post-16 education and training institutions, for a “programme of area-based reviews to review 16+ provision in every area” of the country.

The North East Norfolk and North Suffolk review and another for Nottingham, which FE Week revealed had been launched on May 1, were pilots for this.

The colleges involved in the latest three reviews are yet to comment.

 

 

Here are the colleges involved in the latest three area reviews announced by the government:

Tees Valley 

FE colleges:

Cleveland College of Art & Design

Darlington College

Hartlepool College of Further Education

Middlesbrough College

Redcar and Cleveland College

Stockton Riverside College

Sixth form colleges:

Hartlepool Sixth Form College

Prior Pursglove College

Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, Darlington

Stockton Sixth Form College

 

Sussex Coast

FE colleges:

Central Sussex College, Crawley

Chichester College

City College, Brighton and Hove

Northbrook College, Sussex

Plumpton College

Sussex Coast College, Hastings

Sussex Downs College

Worthing College

Sixth form colleges:

Bexhill College

Brighton Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College

Varndean College

 

Solent

FE colleges:

Brockenhurst College

Eastleigh College

Fareham College

Highbury College, Portsmouth

Isle of Wight College

Southampton City College

South Downs College, Waterlooville

Sixth form colleges:

Barton Peveril College

Havant College

Itchen College

Portsmouth College

Richard Taunton’s Sixth Form College

St Vincent College

The purpose of a new government inquiry that will look into how the FE sector contributes to the development of digital skills has come in for questioning from a leading learning tech figure.

Toshiba education adviser Bob Harrison (pictured below right), who contributed to the FE Learning Technology Action Group (Feltag) report, published in March last year, said “positive action” was needed “not another report,” after the House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee announced its new probe.

The committee, chaired by Hartlepool’s Labour MP Iain Wright (pictured below left), announced its inquiry into the digital economy on Monday, September 21.

But Mr Harrison said: “How many investigations, select committees and reports do we need before we stop talking about the need for digital skills in the workforce and something actually happens?

“The reforms to the ICT national curriculum and its emphasis on computer science knowledge rather than IT and digital skills falls far short of what the UK economy needs from the workforce.

“Furthermore the FE sector is being devastated by deep cuts at a time when it is struggling to keep up with the demands of a digital future.

“The government response to the House of Lords report on digital skills was spot on when it said: ‘Training and education must keep pace with the ever-changing technological landscape, with the right skills and infrastructure to underpin digital transformation’ — but we need positive action not another report.”

The new inquiry will follow six strands of investigation, including the development of digital skills.

It will also ask, among other things what the major barriers to UK business success in the digital economy are and what steps the government could take to help businesses to overcome these barriers.

And Mr Wright told FE Week that he was sensitive to the need for action identified by Mr Harrison.

“I really want to push the fact that something needs doing in this sector and make sure that this inquiry will tackle the key issues with the digital skills sector,” said Mr Wright.

“I want to ask the government what they will be doing and ask if they believe the tech sector is doing enough.

“I want people involved in FE to get involved with this inquiry and send submissions to help new businesses adapt.”

Evidence sessions are yet to be announced, as are witnesses, but Mr Wright said he also wanted to look at the role of the government and its record in helping to produce a skilled workforce for the digital sector.

“I want to really push the government to find out what they will do to make sure apprentices and FE students have the skills to support businesses in the digital economy,” he said.

He added: “I have a broad ambition to look at the FE and skills sector in detail in the upcoming evidence sessions.

“Apprenticeships are of key importance in the digital skills sector of FE and we want to know how traditional businesses are continuing and progressing in this new digital economy.

“Newly qualified plumbers, for instance, should be able to engage with their local FE provider and be able to expand their business on forms of social media in a flexible and fast changing way.”

The closing date for submissions to the BIS digital economy inquiry is Thursday, October 29. Click here to send in submissions to the committee.

 

A much-hyped government clampdown on “misuse” of the apprenticeship term will only affect a “very few” cases, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) has warned.

It was a view echoed by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which urged the government to instead “focus on driving up the quality of apprenticeships”.

New rules contained in the Enterprise Bill will stop providers using the apprenticeship name for courses that do not meet the same criteria laid down for government-funded apprenticeships — such as a 12-month minimum duration.

However, employers running ‘in-house’ apprenticeships will continue to be allowed to ignore the rules, despite the government having been urged to rethink its plans in a three-week consultation that ended on August 19.

And Stewart Segal (pictured), AELP chief executive, told of the limited effect the new rules will have — echoing the government’s own impact assessment of the new rules, which said there was “little evidence to suggest that the existing scale of misuse of the term ‘apprenticeship’ is widespread”.

Mr Segal said: “We support initiatives to improve the quality of the apprenticeship programme but we do not believe that the misuse of the term is a major issue.

“The exemption of employers from the Bill may cause some confusion, so we have recommended that the apprenticeship brand developed by the government is protected rather than the general term which can now be used by employers.”

And the CBI response said: “We have seen little evidence that the terms “apprenticeship” or “apprentice” are being misused — and have received no feedback from businesses that this is a genuine cause for concern.

“Legislation should always be a last resort and, without a solid evidence base, we do not believe that the case for new legislation has been made. Instead, government should focus on driving up the quality of apprenticeships and ensure that the reforms are working.”

The Association of Colleges (AoC) meanwhile, told the government, in its response, that it would “not support” moves to let employers who run in-house, non-statutory, apprenticeships use the proposed large employer levy or any other “government funding to support this training”.

“It would be useful if Government could set out what it will do if non-statutory employer programmes, badged as ‘apprenticeships’, appear to be having a detrimental impact on the brand,” it added.

The government is introducing the new rules as part of its commitment to create 3m new apprenticeships in this Parliament. It is hoping to stop unfunded providers who ignore official apprenticeship rules, such as the minimum duration, benefitting from the increased promotion of the programme. It is also hoping to stop the brand being “diluted” and having a negative impact on growth of statutory apprenticeships.

However, its response to the consultation was published on Monday, September 21, and it revealed how calls to make employers also subject to the new rules — which carry the threat of a Magistrates Court appearance — had been rejected.

“While the government has considered expanding this measure to employers it feels that the potential costs of doing so would outweigh the benefits,” it said in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills response document.

“There are many employers that offer high-quality apprenticeships of their own and we do not want to prohibit this practice, nor do we want to put in place any measures that could be perceived as burdensome or put off employers from offering apprenticeships.”

Targets for Public Sector Apprentices

Government plans to introduce a target for the number of apprentices in public sector bodies, to help it meet its goal to deliver 3m new apprenticeships by 2020.

The target is one of the measures included in the Enterprise Bill, along with proposals to prevent misuse of the term “apprenticeship”.

The bill contains measures to “provide a power for the Secretary of State to set targets for public sector bodies in relation to the number of apprentices they employ in England” and to “require the public to have due regard to any targets set on them and to report annually on progress against meeting those targets”.

These measures are intended to apply to most public sector bodies with more than 250 employees. There is no detail yet of what the targets will be.

To protect the term “apprenticeship” from misuse, the bill includes a measure to “create an offence for a person, in the course of business, to provide or offer a course or training as an apprenticeship if it is not a statutory apprenticeship” and to exclude employers by ensuring they “cannot commit the offence in relation to their employees”.

The maximum intended penalty for committing the offence is a fine.

The Enterprise Bill was introduced by Business Secretary Sajid Javid in May. It is due to have its second reading in the House of Lords on October 12.

The number of colleges in Gazelle has more than halved in the space of just over a year to 10 — with three out of the five founder colleges having also walked away, it was revealed today.

The dwindling numbers were laid bare with the conclusion of the group’s long-running membership review, in which its annual membership fees were slashed from £35k to £15k.

The review was announced by Gazelle chief executive Fintan Donohue (pictured above) in December when four colleges said they were pulling out of the 23-member group just months after FE Week uncovered how it had raked in around £3.5m from colleges in membership and other fees since it was launched around two years earlier.

Further departures hit Gazelle, which claimed to “develop innovative new learning models and new partnerships with business to deliver an improved outcome for students, their communities and the economy”, over the following months including a number of founder colleges, which had, as of last summer, each dished out more than £530,000 to the organisation.

A key criticism was that no return on investment (ROI) analysis had been carried out by Gazelle to justify the spending of public money amid shrinking budgets — and the results of the membership review do not indicate any plans for an ROI assessment.

However, Mr Donohue previously argued it was for college members to decide if his organisation delivered value for money as he unveiled an impact review. by the Policy Consortium, which did not look at how public funds had been spent or whether Ofsted grades were affected by membership.

But Gazelle Colleges Group chair Stella Mbubaegbu (pictured right), principal of continued Gazelle member Highbury College Portsmouth, said today that Gazelle “needed to change in order to better reflect the financial pressures facing colleges and to respond to the independent impact report, published earlier this year”.

“However, the need for innovation and enterprise in colleges has not changed,” she said.

“In fact it is more critical than ever given the challenges facing the sector and, even more importantly, those faced by young people looking to enter the job market.”

She added: “By combining expertise and investing shared resources over the past four years Gazelle Colleges have worked together to support staff training, curriculum reform, enterprise competitions and leadership development in order to improve outcomes for students, employers and the local business community. We could not have done this in isolation.”

A Gazelle spokesperson said: “The new structure gives full ownership to members through the mechanism of a not-for-profit company, providing a single type of membership by removing the distinction between founders and other members.”

Despite this, the two remaining founder members — City College Norwich and Warwickshire College Group — will not have to fork out the £15k membership fee for two year “in recognition of their early endeavours and investment”.

“Gazelle Colleges Group will seek to maximise member benefit and minimise costs through the support of partners and sponsors; ongoing supporters include Pearson,” added the spokesperson.

A spokesperson for the University and College Union said: “In the current financial climate it is unsurprising that colleges are thinking hard about where to spend their money. We hope this will bring about a fresh approach from Gazelle and they will now work hard to deliver real benefits for colleges and the sector.”

A number of organisations had been linked to Gazelle, including Gazelle Global, Gazelle Foundation and Gazelle Transform, but Dick Palmer (pictured left), group chief executive of Transforming Education in Norfolk (Ten) and co-founder of Gazelle, said: “Gazelle will be ceasing all activities and any residual funds will be shared among shareholders. The challenges facing the sector have inevitably reduced colleges’ capacity to engage in the wider activity generated by Gazelle.

“Nevertheless a group of colleges, together with partners and sponsors, remain dedicated to advancing the enterprise and entrepreneurial agenda through the Gazelle Colleges Group. The Gazelle Colleges Group will, from December 2015, be the only Gazelle entity in existence.  

Gazelle’s collateral and intellectual proerty will be owned by the new group.

It comes with Mr Donohue set to retire in December. Ms Mbubaegbu said: “All of the members, past and present pay tribute to the vision and ground breaking thinking that Fintan has brought to the enterprise and entrepreneurship agenda in our sector.”

 

Gazelle members

• Activate Learning
• Amersham & Wycombe College
• Barking & Dagenham College
• Cambridge Regional College
• Cardiff & Vale College
• City College Norwich (founder)
• Glasgow Kelvin College
• Highbury College Portsmouth
• South West College (NI)
• Warwickshire College Group

– Schools, colleges and independent learning providers fail to enrol learners on English and maths

– 35,000 16 to 19-year-olds without pass didn’t go back to studying the subjects, representing loss of up to £150m to FE

– New exemption from ‘condition of funding’ granted to some and others keep the cash

 

Newly-appointed Shadow Skills Minister Gordon Marsden has called for an urgent review after the Department for Education (DfE) watered down a key 16 to 18 English and maths funding rule.

Mr Marsden, who was confirmed in the post on Friday (September 18) and previously served in the role under former Labour leader Ed Miliband for three years, hit out after the DfE said it would not fully apply the condition of funding in relation to last academic year.

The rule states that any 16-18 student that does not have a grade C in English and maths and fails to enrol in the subjects would be removed in full from the 2016/17 funding allocation.

However, the Education Funding Agency (EFA) confirmed this week that the penalty would be halved. And even then it will now only apply to providers where more than 5 per cent of relevant students (by value) did not comply with the funding condition.

The announcement came in light of data showing that 3 per cent of 16 to 19-year-olds without at least a grade C in GCSE English and maths attending an FE institution did not continue their study of the subjects.

The DfE did not specify how many learners this equated to but according to FE Week research, around 35,000 learners did not meet the condition, representing a potential loss of earning to the sector of up to £150m.

“This particular process and set of requirements has clearly caused problems for providers across the sector,” Mr Marsden told FE Week.

“The belated EFA recognition of this by partially relaxing them may have staved off some of the immediate difficulties.

“But Ministers must urgently now ensure there is a process that’s more simple and transparent for providers while delivering the strong strategy for English and maths which learners need.”

The condition of funding emerged from Professor Alison Wolf’s 2011 review of vocational education in which she recommended that 16 to 18-year-olds who do not have at least C grade for English and maths should keep studying the subjects.

The recommendation was brought in as part of her study programmes package for 2013/14, and made a condition of funding the following year.

Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: “Some programmes have to be focused on work readiness and providers need the flexibility to deliver the right programme.

“Providers have responded to this new requirement so we hope those specific circumstances will be taken into account in any funding adjustment.”

David Corke, director of education and skills policy for the Association of Colleges, said: “This funding condition has been a major challenge for colleges as it would mean a financial penalty if 100 per cent of students do not take GCSE English and maths.”

James Kewin, Sixth Form Colleges’ Association deputy chief executive, said: “We welcome this move, but believe our members have stepped up to the plate in terms of condition of funding.”

A DfE spokesperson said 16-19 English and maths learners had gone from 53 per cent in 2012-13 to 97 per cent in June 2015, with the rule having been introduced a year ago.

“Ministers have decided not to impose the full planned funding reductions from the 2014/15 academic year.”

---

 

Editor’s comment

EFA gets a grade D

The English and maths condition of funding was introduced a year after Study Programmes began.

So school sixth forms, colleges and independent learning providers had time to prepare.

Despite this, we estimate in 2014/15 there were 35,000 learners worth £150m that should have been studying English and/or maths, and weren’t.

The EFA’s softening of the condition represents an inevitable consequence of so many providers failing to implement the rule.

And it is a condition which only gets tougher, as providers have to stick with the GCSE option this year if learners have a grade D.

This is a failure on the part of the EFA to enforce its own policy, as well a minority of providers that have let their learners down.

More broadly, the climbdown is a blow to fairness and the principle of providers being treated equally.

It also adds yet more complexity to the funding allocations process.

For these reasons the EFA gets a policy implementation grade D, making a retake inevitable.

Chris Henwood

FE Week editor

chris.henwood@feweek.co.uk

Burton & South Derbyshire College (B&SDC) is set to leave the Association of Colleges (AoC), FE Week can reveal.

A spokesperson for the college, which received a grade two Ofsted rating in December 2011 and was allocated £6m by the Skills Funding Agency as of July, said it would not be renewing membership this academic year, but declined to comment further.

AoC membership fees, which its spokesperson said were based on “total income of a college from the previous year” and ranged from £1,886 to £47,323 last year, coincide with academic years.

The AoC website listed 246 general FE colleges, including B&SDC, 82 sixth form colleges, and 21 specialist colleges as members on Thursday (September 24).

An AoC spokesperson declined to reveal whether any other colleges would also not be renewing membership, but said: “We invite members to renew their subscriptions [which will increase 1 per cent for 2015/16] at the beginning of each academic year and it is for each individual college to decide whether they join us.”

It comes as the results were announced on Thursday (September 24) of the long-awaited Gazelle membership review, in which its annual membership fees had been slashed from £35k to £15k.

But along with the membership fee price cut, it was also revealed that the number of college members had more than halved in just over a year from 23 to just 10 — with three of its five founder college members among those to have left. It comes after FE Week reported last summer how Gazelle had raked in around £3.5m from colleges in membership and other fees since launching around the start of 2012. A key criticism was that no return on investment (ROI) analysis had been carried out by Gazelle to justify the spending of public money amid shrinking budgets — and the results of the membership review do not indicate any plans for an ROI assessment.

Nevertheless, Gazelle chair Stella Mbubaegbu, principal of continued Gazelle member Highbury College Portsmouth, said Gazelle “needed to change in order to better reflect the financial pressures facing colleges”.

Meanwhile, the 157 Group, which formed in 2006, is also undergoing a “strategic review” set to be completed by December.

Chief executive Ian Pretty tweeted on Thursday (September 24) that it was “focusing on productivity and devolution as key drivers”.

Membership of the group, which cost £15,000 for 2013/14 according to Companies House, has fallen from its peak level of 30, to 26. Among those to have left were Lewisham Southwark College and City of Liverpool College.

 

Further education is set to come under the spotlight with the House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Select Committee having announced a new inquiry into “the digital economy”.

Committee chair, and Hartlepool’s Labour MP, Iain Wright told FE Week that he wanted to look at, among other issues, government actions to ensure the availability of a workforce with the skills to support businesses in the digital economy.

Mr Wright said: “I have a broad ambition to look at the FE and skills sector in detail in the upcoming evidence sessions.

“We will be looking into apprenticeships related to digital skills in the session and we will review the current apprenticeships provided, and how they could be improved.”

He added: “Apprenticeships are of key importance in the digital skills sector of FE and we want to know how traditional businesses are continuing and progressing in this new digital economy.

“Newly qualified plumbers, for instance, should be able to engage with their local FE provider and be able to expand their business on forms of social media in a flexible and fast changing way.”

The inquiry was launched on Monday, September 21, and the committee is seeking written submissions addressing digital skills issues, among others.

Evidence sessions are yet to be announced, as are witnesses, but Mr Wright said he also wanted to look at the role of the government and its record in helping to produce a skilled workforce for the digital sector.

“I want to really push the government to find out what they will do to make sure apprentices and FE students have the skills to support businesses in the digital economy,” he said.

The committee will also be covering how businesses can utilise digital infrastructure to improve their performance and address the lack of women studying science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects in FE.

He said: “Women in Stem will be a key part of the discussion as we want to know what we can do to get more women involved in it.”

The committee further intends to pick up on the issues raised in the report on digital skills from the House of Lords select committee chaired by Lady Morgan in February.

It emphasised the importance of training and education to keep pace with the constantly advancing technological field.

Mr Wright said: “The key message I have about the upcoming digital economy inquiry is that I really want to encourage a bold and ambitious investigation and want an array of people who care about digital skills to contribute and share their ambition for the sector.”

The development of digital skills is one of six strands off inquiry for the committee. It will also be looking at the following:

1 – What are the major barriers to UK business success in the digital economy? What steps could the Government take to help businesses to overcome these barriers?
2 – How effective are UK financial markets in supporting the digital economy? What actions could the Government take to improve their effectiveness?
3 – What lessons can be learned from the Government’s support of tech start-ups and other measures targeted at the digital economy? How is this developing around the regions and nations of the United Kingdom?
4 – Does the UK’s Intellectual Property regulatory regime provide effective protection for the digital economy and sufficient scope for innovation and competition?
5 – What actions could the Government take to foster the development of potentially disruptive technologies? Are further safeguards warranted to help existing businesses adapt to the impact of these technologies on their traditional business models?

“Digital technology is rapidly changing the economic landscape in which firms operate. Nothing short of a digital and tech revolution is taking place, with new entrepreneurs and business models emerging and existing businesses having to adapt quickly to keep pace,” said Mr Wright.

“There are huge opportunities for competitive advantage for UK firms, but also real challenges.

“The BIS Committee wants to evaluate existing initiatives by the Government and to consider what other actions the Government might take to enhance the UK digital economy.

“We want to hear from all those interested and involved in this area, whether you are a tech entrepreneur ambitious to start a business or  a company in an established part of the economy hoping to use digital technology to improve your business, so we can help ensure that the UK is at the forefront of the global digital economy.”

The closing date for submissions to the BIS digital economy inquiry is Thursday, October 29. Click here to send in submissions.