Former Learning and Skills Improvement Service chair Dame Ruth Silver (pictured) has now been appointed to chair a Scottish Government commission on widening access to university.
Dame Ruth, who was principal of London’s Lewisham College for 17 year until 2009, is to lead work aimed at ensuring more students from disadvantaged backgrounds in Scotland can succeed at university.
The commission was announced in November as part of the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government, guaranteeing a move towards 20 per cent of university entrants coming from the most disadvantaged 20 per cent of society.
Further Education Trust for Leadership founding president Dame Ruth, who was born in Lanarkshire, said: “I welcome
the opportunity to lead such an important piece of work. The commission begins
and benefits from a great ambition
with its clarity of task, timescale and intended outcome.
“More importantly Scotland has a solid and creative foundation in widening access and knows how can be done. This next phase, supported by the Commission, is to find ways to go deeper and ensure all members of our community have every opportunity to succeed.”
From manicuring to forensic science and robotics to bricklaying, London learners got a taste of the Skills Show with a host of their very own have-a-go activities at college.
The College of North West London (CNWL) threw open its doors on Wednesday (March 18) to more than 1,200 schoolchildren, local residents and businesspeople for its third annual skills show event.
BTec science level two student Faiza Mohamed, aged 17, was helping visitors at a forensic science through fingerprint identification have-a-go — one of more than 20 stands on show.
“People have come in and had a go at the activities and they’ve asked a lot of questions,” she said.
“I think they’ve really enjoyed it — and it’s been helpful for me too, because I’ve gained experience and confidence.”
Andy Cole, CNWL principal, said: “We use these opportunities to build upon some very strong relationships we’ve got with employers.
“It’s a fantastic opportunity to showcase what large local employers like McVities do and for our students to get industry links of even employment — and we build the day around that.”
He added: “It’s also great in terms of helping us reengage with local schools, because they can actually see the financial and practical value for young people of doing vocational and technical skills.”
But as well as have-a-gos, students were able to show off their talents in 20 skills competitions including refrigeration and air conditioning, video and moving image and a ‘Big Rig’ event, run by the Think Up educational trust, where students must compete in teams to build the best low-carbon shower facility.
“These sorts of competitions make a link that gets employers interested and pulls them in,” said Mr Cole.
“We’re a heavily adult college and a lot of our students are trying to reskill or multiskill, so having that link into employers is really important — and importantly competing helps to keep staff up to date, particularly in changing areas such as robotics, where the field changes so fast.”
Councillor Janice Long, who represents the Dudden Hill ward where the college’s Willesden campus is located, joined the six schools who were visiting the college.
“It’s always interesting seeing what people are up to and wide range of courses the college offers,” she said.
“There’s a lot of school children around here, and it’s great for them to be able to see what types of jobs you can actually have and that you don’t have to go to university to do something you’re interested in.”
“Regardless of whether we win things, that engagement is what we want really,” he said.
“If you go into that kind of thing hoping you’re going to get great marketing out of it, forget it.”
Mr Cole said: “Quite rightly we’re moving away from this obsession with qualifications as a proxy for learning — now the focus is one what does it give you? What skillset do you have?
“And competitions and events like this are a great way to demonstrate that.”
Labour’s pledge to axe apprenticeships at level two came under attack once again when Shadow Junior Education Minister Yvonne Fovargue spoke at NCFE’s policy conference in Central London.
Ms Fovargue told delegates at the Delivering on learner outcomes: spotlight on youth employment conference that level two was still “valued” but needed to be “rebranded” to protect the apprenticeship brand — however delegates and fellow panellists questioned whether the plan was “realistic”.
The event on Tuesday (March 17) came just a week after Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary Chukka Umunna faced an audience similarly sceptical towards the policy at the FE Week Annual Apprenticeship Conference.
Ms Fovague told the NCFE conference that all of the 80,000 apprenticeships a-year Labour had promised to create in the next parliament would be level three or above.
Youth Employment UK chief executive Laura-Jane Rawlings
“That does not mean level two is not valued but that level two will not be branded as an apprenticeship,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter what it’s called, it needs to be there as a stepping stone, but an apprenticeship needs to be recognised by an employer at an A level, and they know what it is.”
However, she admitted that neither she nor Mr Umunna and Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne knew what the level two qualification would be called.
Conference chair and BBC broadcaster Kirsty Lang asked if it was “realistic” to abolish level two apprenticeships, given many jobs in care and construction were at level two.
However, Ms Fovargue denied this was the case, and argued that workers would still need level three to allow them to progress.
Ms Fovargue acknowledged there had been a lack of “consistency” in qualifications for young people, and was challenged by fellow panellist Laura-Jane Rawlings, chief executive of charity Youth Employment UK, who said Labour’s plans would add to the inconsistency.
However, Ms Fovargue argued the move would ensure “the brand of apprenticeship is consistent”.
Ms Rawlings, whose charity helps young people into work, said inconsistency over qualifications had led to confusion among employers.
“Who’s educated our employers to be able to translate the qualifications on a young person’s CV?” she said.
Delegates listen to the panel speak
“We’re constantly changing grade boundaries or the names of qualifications, so when they get a CV in from a young person who might have a diploma or a BTec or NVQ or a GCSE or a grade two, what does that mean?
“Because actually you probably need to be an education specialist to understand it.”
Ms Rawlings also revealed youth unemployment could be a bigger problem than official figures suggest, as if young people did not ‘sign-on’ for benefits, but were supported by friends or family, they would not be included in the statistics.
“The Fabian Society earlier this year estimated that alone in London 15,000 young people were unaccounted for,” she said.
“Across England, it could be 50,000 so the national figure of 750,000 doesn’t take in those hidden unemployed people.”
One of the key problems she said, was careers advice — and her comments were backed by findings of an NCFE survey, released at the conference, which found nearly a quarter (24 per cent) of respondents were not fully informed of their options and only 18 per cent would even consider taking on an apprenticeship.
Liberal Democrat Peer Lord Storey with chair BBC broadcaster Kirsty Lang
The survey also revealed 48 per cent thought youth unemployment should be the top priority for the next government.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Storey said that in government, his party would like the National Careers Service to provide “high quality careers advice” which was “available to all when needed”, as he said it had been originally intended to do.
He added the party would reinstate the legal requirement for young people to gain work experience, as well as encouraging school children to visit workplaces, FE colleges and universities “so these are not just words they know nothing about”.
Ms Fovargue said Labour would set up careers “hubs” to offer careers advice, which she said “would be a top priority for the Labour government”.
However, Lord Storey pointed out the content of party manifestos was not the only important factor, but also “what goes actually from those manifestos into government at the end”.
Ms Rawlings agreed, adding: “Whatever government we get needs to make sure that they spend time talking to practitioners.”
Main pic: Shadow Junior Education Minister Yvonne Fovargue
Further Education providers in the north and south of England have been named as key partners in a new national training college for the nuclear industry.
Bridgwater College, in Somerset, and Lakes College, in Cumbria, will form part of the National College for Nuclear — with Bridgwater set to join EDF Energy and the University of Bristol to form the college’s South West hub, and Lakes College partnering with Sellafield Ltd and the University of Cumbria for the northern hub.
The announcement was made today (March 20) by Business, Enterprise and Energy Minister Matthew Hancock as part of the National Colleges project to create specialist technical training opportunities in areas facing skills shortages.
He said: “It’s expected that the nuclear industry will need 30,000 new employees over the next decade and the Nuclear College will equip young people with the skills they need.”
National Colleges for manufacturing, wind energy, creative and cultural industries, HS2 and fracking are also being developed.
The government has committed £80m funding for all of the National Colleges.
Bridgwater College vice principal Andy Berry said: “We are delighted to be part of this incredibly exciting opportunity to develop a National College for Nuclear.
“We have a long history of working with the nuclear industry and in particular, with EDF Energy, with whom we have developed facilities and training opportunities that have had a significant impact on our communities.
“The experience we have of partnering with industry alongside delivering extremely high quality qualifications will enable us to create a higher technical and professional curriculum that addresses skill and capability gaps and maintains and improves educational standards in the nuclear sector.”
Lakes College principal Chris Nattress said the provider’s involvement in the project would “provide excellent national opportunities for our region”.
“The National College has been specifically created to fill a shortfall in national nuclear related skills and design employer-led courses and training for the nuclear industry. This will ensure communities in West Cumbria and beyond can benefit directly from the training employers need,” he said.
Main pic: Business, Enterprise and Energy Minister Matthew Hancock
‘Cushioning’ agreement with BIS limits worst of adult skills cuts to 24 per cent
The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) has struck an eleventh hour deal to ‘cushion’ funding cuts at 24 per cent for the non-apprenticeship part of the adults skills budget (ASB), as opposed to a maximum of 32 per cent in their initial modelling.
Peter Lauener, SFA and Education Funding Agency (EFA) chief executive (pictured), wrote to providers late last month outlining a cut of a quarter for the non-apprenticeship part of the ASB.
However, this did not account for the new allocation protections given to Traineeships and English and maths.
To afford the additional protection, providers delivering no apprenticeships, traineeships nor English and maths would face cuts to their ASB as high as 32 per cent.
It is understood that allocations for 2015/16 had been due out Tuesday (March 17), but with officials at the SFA deep in talks about how to bring the biggest possible cuts down to 24 per cent they were pushed back to today..
It remains unclear how much the cushioning will cost, although FE Week understands the deal has been agreed on the basis it will all be paid for by recycling a predicted underspend from the current year adult skills budget allocations.
Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, told FE Week: “Any form of relief would be welcome even at this late stage, but can’t disguise the fact that this is still a very significant cut that will have serious consequences in terms of reduced participation in the ability of colleges and providers to respond to genuine need.”
The SFA has so far declined to comment on the deal. However, a spokesperson told FE Week yesterday: “We have previously said allocations will be issued this week. We are on track to deliver that.”
Mr Lauener assured providers last month that they would be contacted to discuss their allocations.
“As in previous years, my teams in the SFA and the EFA will be reviewing the combined impact of final allocations once these are issued in March 2015 and will
be reviewing the financial forecasts returned by colleges in July 2015,” he wrote late last month.
“We will also contact those of you most affected by the reductions in the other adult skills budget to discuss the implications of this for your organisation.”
It is understood that a number of colleges have already been contacted.
Editorial: Credit where due
The funding cuts that are being issued to providers in their 2015/16 allocations are devastating. This is unquestionable and a source of shame and short-sightedness by those in government.
So it’s difficult to feel truly happy about anything that isn’t an entirely new and fair settlement that adequately credits the FE and skills sector.
However, the Skills Funding Agency has been dealt the terrible hand it has — that of a massively (and once again) reduced budget with which it must act as the middle man.
So fair play to it for doing what it could and coming up with a deal that, while still resulting in reduced funding all around, could have been a whole lot worse.
Its idea to recycle funding to cushion the impact a bit might just be the difference between survival and shutting up shop for good at colleges and independent learning providers up and down the country.
And let’s not forget this deal was formulated and thrashed out in the short time the agency had to get allocations out due to just how late the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills was in getting its grant letter out.
But to return to the more pressing story, the one that simply cannot be overlooked, it remains a huge short-sighted cut from a government that talks the talk on adult skills, but is failing to deliver on resources.
A North East England college has tumbled from an outstanding Ofsted rating to inadequate, an inspection report published today (March 20) revealed.
Darlington College was slapped with a grade four-across-the-board rating following the inspection that took place from February 9 to 13, with inspectors finding that managers and governors had failed to take action as the quality of its provision “deteriorated considerably” over “several years and failed to take effective actions to reverse the decline”.
It was a dramatic fall from grace from the college’s last inspection in 2009, when it was deemed outstanding-across-the-board and praised for its high success rates.
Inspectors criticised teaching standards at the 5,000-learner college in today’s report, as well as the “poor” success rates for 16 to 18-year-old learners on study programmes, which made up 55 per cent of the college’s provision in February.
The report added: “Teachers’ questioning techniques and assessment in lessons are often ineffective and fail to allow all learners to contribute and develop their skills and knowledge.
“Not enough lessons engage, motivate or challenge learners, including those who are more able; too many teachers plan insufficient variety of learning activities suitable for all learners.”
It also criticised arrangements for work experience as “weak”.
Darlington College principal Kate Roe said the result was “very disappointing”.
“The challenges we face are known to us and we are already tackling the issues highlighted in this report,” she said.
“The whole college is determined to address the findings of Ofsted and return the college to an improved inspection grade at the earliest opportunity.
“Ofsted looked at a number of areas where there are weaknesses but there are other excellent areas of teaching and learning which were not included in the inspection on this particular occasion.”
The report acknowledged that Ms Roe was only appointed to the role last summer and had taken steps to address the college’s problems.
“A new principal and deputy principal were appointed less than a year before the inspection,” the report said.
“They have jointly worked hard to reverse the college’s fortunes by adopting a tougher approach to performance management, strengthening the governing body, recruiting new staff and applying more stringent criteria for assessing teachers’ performance.
“Early indications suggest evidence of improvements in a few aspects of the college’s provision, but it is too early to assess the full impact of all of the measures that the senior team has taken.”
Inspectors also noted the college had brought in new, experienced governors “following concerns about the poor attendance of a minority of governors”, but added the “governors have not had a sufficient impact on the overall quality of the college’s provision”.
To improve the college’s performance, inspectors called for the college to “hold teachers accountable for their learners’ outcomes”.
The report added the college must “ensure that recently introduced performance management measures accurately identify weaker teaching and learning and take swift improvement actions”.
The report’s publication comes weeks after concerns were raised that Ofsted’s system for flagging up falling standards in outstanding providers was “insecure”.
In January two previously outstanding providers, Four Counties Training Limited and Venture Learning Limited (VL) were branded inadequate after not being inspected for a total of 12 years.
Barry Lord-Gambles, contracts director for VL, said: “The current regime of inspections is of no benefit to providers. It provides a very insecure comfort blanket.”
New “digital apprenticeship vouchers” will be introduced in 2017, the government confirmed today as sector bodies raised concerns about the impact further departmental cuts might have on FE.
Documents released to coincide with Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget today revealed a little more detail to the voucher policy, which has essentially brought to an end a two-year apprenticeship funding reform saga in which employers were expected to be handed government money to pay for training.
The Budget
The Budget documents confirmed that the vouchers, announced by Downing Street on Tuesday, would be in place by 2017. The system would give employers “purchasing power,” but actual government cash to pay for training will go straight to providers — just like the current system — and not into employers’ hands first.
The Budget document says: “The government, through the introduction of an apprenticeship voucher, will put employers in control of the government funding for the training apprentices need.
“The new mechanism, which will be developed and tested with employers and providers immediately and fully implemented from 2017, will give employers the purchasing power to have an even greater say in the quality, value for money and relevance of the training that their apprentices receive. As confirmed at autumn statement 2013, the government and employers will make cash contributions towards the cost of training for apprentices.”
Julian Gravatt
It comes as organisations including the Association of Colleges (AoC) and National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) raised concerns about the future of general FE funding after Mr Osborne announced that efforts to reduce the deficit would include £12bn in additional departmental cuts between 2016 and 2019.
Blogging on the AoC’s website, assistant chief executive Julian Gravatt said: “Future spending cuts will come on those already made to post-16 education.
“We learnt last month that the 2015-16 academic year budget for adult further education will be 24 per cent less than this year’s budget. The Skills Funding Agency’s allocations were due on Tuesday and are now due later this week. We have lost one million adult learning places in the last five years – we’ll lose many more from this cut.
“The UK’s excellent employment record has been supported by the publicly funded further education system in recent years. This prop may not be available in future.”
David Hughes
Niace chief executive David Hughes said: “The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) tables set out how severe the Chancellor’s planned cuts are for 2016/17 and 2017/18.
“These are cuts on top of those we have seen already and those planned into this year, so the impact could be devastating. The cuts since 2010 have already led to a loss of one million learning opportunities for adults, with another 400,000 to come next year.
“All of this at the time when all of the respected analysts agree about the benefits of greater investment in skills training for people of working age and when skills gaps and shortages are hampering economic growth. I believe that we are in a skills crisis now, but those looming cuts really are frightening.
“Even by the government’s own ambitions, the cuts look like they will be hitting the job and life chances of millions of hard-working families, which cannot be right, surely?”
Edge Foundation chief executive Jan Hodges OBE today announced her retirement next month after a 35-year career in education.
The former South Essex College of Further and Higher Education principal has run Edge for the last four years and will be succeeded by policy and research director David Harbourne until her permanent replacement is appointed.
“It has been a pleasure and privilege to lead Edge over the last four years, working to raise the status of technical, practical and vocational learning,” she said.
“There have been so many highlights. There’s our annual celebration of success, VQ Day, and our sponsorship of The Skills Show, to name just two.
“Then there’s our role in promoting innovation. I’m proud that Edge has supported new institutions such as University Technical Colleges and the Edge Hotel School. We’re also funding a raft of smaller projects through our Innovation and Development Fund.”
She started in education as a teacher in secondary schools abroad and in the UK and then as a lecturer and manager in FE.
For the nine years immediately before she joined Edge she was principal of South Essex College of Further and Higher Education.
But in a May 2012 FE Week profile (click here to read) she revealed how working at Edge had appealed because its central mission – championing technical, practical and vocational learning — chimed with her own beliefs. “Most of my career has been spent trying to do that…so it seemed the perfect job for me,” she told FE Week.
She has also been chair of the Essex Federation of Colleges and of a large apprenticeship consortium, and has an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex and in the Queen’s birthday honours 2013 was awarded an OBE for services to further and higher education.
An Edge spokesperson said she had been “a champion for vocational education and training”.
“What I shall miss most are the hundreds of people I’ve met – all of them with fantastic stories to tell. They are living proof of what Edge has always said, that there are many paths to success,” said Ms Hodges.
“I’d like to thank Lord Baker, trustees and staff at the Edge Foundation, and all of my friends and colleagues for their support and encouragement. I wish them all well in the years to come.”
Edge Foundation chair Lord Baker said: “I would like to thank Jan for the huge contribution she has made to the Edge Foundation. She has been instrumental in helping to raise the profile of Edge and will be much missed. Part of her legacy will be the increasingly positive light in which technical, practical and vocational education is viewed in the UK as a valid and respected path to success.”
