Safeguarding and wilful neglect — a colleges brief

Geraldine Swanton explains how Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to extend the law of wilful neglect to education might affect colleges, and how existing legislation in the area is currently being enacted within the sector.

On March 3, 2015, David Cameron announced a commitment to tackle child sexual exploitation and the government’s intention to impose criminal liability on those who fail to protect children.

This will be done by an extension of the law of “wilful neglect” to education.

The press has reported that teachers who fail to protect children could face up to five years in jail under the proposals.

Following the Francis Enquiry into the causes of the failings in care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust between 2005 and 2009, the government enacted in February this year a new offence of ill-treatment or willful neglect of patients in formal health and social care settings. It is not yet in force.

The offence applies to individual providers of health and social care who ill-treat or wilfully neglect an individual to whom they provide care, as well as to organisations which provide or organise such care. “Wilful neglect” is not defined. The proposal is to extend this offence to education.

The offence also applies to organisations in the same way as the offence of corporate manslaughter ie if the way in which the care provider’s activities are managed amount to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care to the person who is ill-treated or neglected and in the absence of the breach, the ill-treatment or neglect would not have occurred or would have been less likely to have occurred.

Colleges have applied their safeguarding policies to vulnerable adults as a matter of good practice

Organisations found guilty of the offence will be subject to a fine, a remedial order and/or a publicity order.

Colleges already have a statutory duty to promote and safeguard the welfare of children who receive education.

The guidance issued by the Department for Education is called Keeping Children Safe in Education. It gives substance to the duty and states that colleges have a responsibility to identify children who are suffering or are likely to suffer, significant harm.

Once identified, colleges should “take appropriate action”, which means reporting the fact to the relevant agencies and working with them to support the child.

That may include supporting social workers to take decisions about individual children. Colleges are also required by the guidance to provide a safe environment in which children can learn.

This is consistent with local authorities’ duty to make arrangements with relevant agencies, including colleges, to co-operate to improve the welfare of children.

Ofsted inspects colleges’ safeguarding performance and failure to discharge the duty could result in intervention by the Secretary of State.

Colleges have no comparable statutory safeguarding duty in respect of vulnerable adults, though they have duties in respect of health & safety legislation and disability discrimination, particularly the duty to make reasonable adjustments and to provide auxiliary aids to prevent disabled learners from suffering substantial disadvantage as a result of their disability.

Colleges have nevertheless applied their safeguarding policies to vulnerable adults as a matter of good practice, relying to some extent on guidance provided by the Department of Health for those providing adult care.

Colleges have, since at least 2002 when the safeguarding children duty came into force, been sensitive to the signs of abuse and have engaged with the relevant statutory agencies to protect the victim.

The current safeguarding duty is however a different order from the government’s proposal to impose a positive duty to prevent harm, with the spectre of criminal liability for a failure to do so.

While no one would challenge the need for society to protect its most vulnerable from harm, the propensity of governments to extend the reach of the criminal law beyond the actual perpetrators of heinous crimes is a source of concern.

It is too early to speculate on the extent of the proposed offence and its implications for colleges. No doubt colleges and their representative bodies will press for further information and participate at the earliest stages of the consultation process.

 

Providers escape ‘£2m’ bill as fee plan dropped

Apprenticeship providers have escaped a potential sector bill of more than £2m after the body which issues completion certificates for all frameworks scrapped plans to introduce a charge for resubmitted forms.

The Federation for Industry Sector Skills and Standards (FISSS) wants to simplify its process for applying for the certificate in a bid to bring down a rejection rate that two years ago stood at 29 per cent of the 354,487 forms handed in.

It is understood the rate has since fallen with new guidelines and the introduction of the ACE-it online database of example applications.

FISSS, which took over responsibility for issuing completion certificates from the individual sector skills councils in January 2012, is also scrapping the physical Apprenticeship Certificate England (ACE) declaration form and moving to a simpler, online process with which it hopes to help get the rejection rate down to 10 per cent.

It had also considered applying the £22 submission fee to resubmissions — and based on the 2013 numbers such a move would have cost providers, who submit the forms, a total of more than £2m.

But Mark Froud, FISSS managing director, told FE Week: “We spoke to providers and not surprisingly they weren’t overly keen on that as a route — but they were very helpful and came up with lots of different suggestions about how to handle the process going forward.”

The plans to simplify the application process were unveiled by FISSS chair Brian Wisdom at the FE Week Annual Apprenticeship Conference in central London last week.

The new online system is due to launch next month.

“We’ve made the system a lot simpler and easier for training providers to use,” said Mr Froud.

“The ACE declaration form accounts for about 50 per cent of all rejections — so what we’ve done is embed it in our IT system so most of the information we require is drawn down through our IT system.

“Now, all the training provider has to do is go through a very simple electronic procedure, check all the required information is there, and tick the box confirming it.”

He added: “We hope the changes will take the rejection rate down below 10 per cent, which is probably still too high.

“We will review the new system on a weekly basis — if it’s not working, we’ll withdraw it, go back to the old systems and try again.

“But we’re fairly confident this will simplify things still further.”

And in addition, said Mr Froud, FISSS would also remove the requirement for apprentices to submit a consent form to FISSS, via the provider, giving the provider permission to apply for the completion certificate.

Instead, providers will confirm they have a copy of the consent form on record and FISSS will carry out random spot checks.

The move has been welcomed by the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, whose chief executive, Steward Segal, said: “We are pleased the process for applying for a certificate is being simplified.”

 

Edition 131: Nanda Ratnavel, Dr Sean Moley & Matthew Grant

Richmond upon Thames College has appointed Nanda Ratnavel as deputy principal for finance and resources.

Formerly the director of finance at Lewisham Southwark College, he has spent 18 years working in the health service culminating as deputy director of finance at Ealing Hospital before taking up the position of director of resources at the Crafts Council.

He was director of finance and resources at the Fashion Retail Academy between 2008 and 2010 before joining Lewisham Southwark College.

“I am delighted to be appointed deputy principal for finance and resources at Richmond upon Thames College,” he said.

“I’m excited to be joining the senior team and to contributing to the excellent work the college does for its students, for local employers and for its stakeholders.”

And Basingstoke College of Technology (BCot) has a new face among its ranks in Dr Sean Moley.

He has taken on the newly-created role of higher education manager and will lead on both university-level provision and international work within the college.

He has worked in education for the past 24 years, bringing experience from the secondary, sixth form, further and higher education sectors, and joins BCot from the University of Southampton.

“For all of my working life, teaching and learning has been central to what I do,” he said.

“Six years teaching in an East London secondary school proved a very valuable learning experience for me and, after completing my PhD, I was fortunate to be able work on projects to improve young people’s key skills, adults’ workplace basic skills and the quality of teaching and learning offered by work based learning providers.”

He added: “I am very excited to be coming to work at BCot and am especially looking forward to working closely with colleagues to meet the needs of our higher education students, providing them the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in the world of work. BCot has ambitions plans to meet the needs of an increasing number of international students and I am looking forward to contributing to the success of this new venture.”

Jackie Grubb, BCot’s deputy principal for curriculum performance and innovation, said: “We have offered university level professional and academic courses for many years and we are keen to expand on these further.

“There seems to be the misconception that this level of qualification is not available in Basingstoke — that you have to travel to access them — so Sean has been targeted with addressing that.”

Meanwhile, Priestley College’s new principal, Matthew Grant, who used to be its deputy principal, will count on George Contos as his newly-appointed vice principal.

“As a dad of two and a grandfather of two, you see how important education is from my own children’s perspective as well as the future generations like my grandchildren,” said Mr Grant.

“Education faces many challenges going forward, but we will make sure we stick to what we believe in, which is making a difference to the lives of young people and ensuring they are able to progress into work or university. If we can do this then I will be really pleased.”

 

StarBistro lives up to its name with restaurant prize

A college bistro run by students with learning and physical disabilities has won a national restaurant award.

Based at the National Star College’s Ullenwood campus in Gloucestershire, StarBistro, was named the ‘people’s favourite’ in the sustainable restaurant awards beating more than 800 entries after a public vote.

Open to the public, the bistro is a partnership between National Star and health charity, Wiggly Worm. It serves dishes made with fresh locally-sourced produce at value for money prices.

Kathryn Rudd, principal of National Star College, said: “StarBistro serves fantastic food, is a great vehicle for young people with disabilities to learn valuable skills but critically, it also challenges perceptions and stereotyping.”

Main pic: Abbey Joe Clarke, aged 20, who studies a one-year Skills for Work course at National Star College with Abby Guilding, director of operations for Wiggly Worm

 

Charting an upward trajectory for apprenticeship success

David Hughes outlines his hopes for a new Apprentice Charter

There are many uncertainties surrounding the general election, but one thing we can be sure of is that the next Government will support more apprenticeships.

That support will almost certainly survive any permutation of parties entering into coalition (or minority Government) negotiations, probably unlike some other manifesto commitments.

I spoke at the FE Week apprenticeship conference this month about the dangerous place the apprenticeship programme is in at the moment and the need for us to focus on three things — defining what an apprenticeship is and what it contributes for the apprentice themselves, for the employer and for the Government; the quality of the experience and how we measure success; and, really getting to grips with inequalities in access and achievement to apprenticeships.

These issues contribute to the other big issue we have to face up to — how to get more employers, parents, teachers and careers advisers to value apprenticeships. We are still a long way from convincing enough people that an apprenticeship will be a good investment for them as they enter the labour market.

This is not the same for degrees where the presumption seems to be prevalent from many that any degree will be a good investment.

Convincing people to change their views is not easy of course, and there is no silver bullet. Improvements in defining the experience, quality and access will help, but they will not be sufficient on their own.

At Niace we are convinced that we have a concept which will help and we’re keen to engage with the sector, employers, apprentices and others to develop our idea into a workable proposition. We call it the Apprentice Charter and it is a simple idea which is already capturing people’s imaginations.

The Apprentice Charter is a new quality mark which would be awarded to employers that demonstrate a commitment to give their apprentices a high quality learning experience which will set them up for a career.

The quality of the apprenticeship experience will become more and more consistent and positive, without the need for centralized, top-down Government intervention

The employers we have spoken to are attracted to an independent quality mark which can help them show that they are doing the right thing, that they take seriously the investment they are making in their apprentices.

As well as differentiating employers offering apprenticeships, we believe that an Apprentice Charter can help achieve a number of other things. It will codify and set a new standard for what the best employers do in addition to the formal training and the employment contract.

This includes the informal learning, the soft skills, the mentoring, the support, the advice about future careers and the opportunities to understand the business and not just the job. For prospective apprentices and their families and advisers, it will be a simple guarantee that the experience is worth their investment, enabling them to make informed choices about how to make the transition into work.

It will stimulate demand from people who want the chance to enter the labour market and progress into a career, giving a strong alternative to the well-trodden higher education path, particularly for young people.

The Apprentice Charter will help the Government to be confident in the quality of the programme and allow them to target support to those employers who want to aspire to achieving the quality mark. In this way, the quality of the apprenticeship experience will become more and more consistent and positive, without the need for centralized, top-down Government intervention.

We are now keen to engage with stakeholders in developing the concept. We want employers, providers, colleges, apprentices and others to work with us to scope out how this will work. The next Government will want to improve quality at the same time as increasing numbers, our Apprentice Charter will help ensure that the experience for apprentices and the return on investment for employers matches up to the strong political support which apprenticeships now have.

Please get involved and help us develop the concept into reality.

Stamps and envelopes in Hub meltdown plan

The emergency plan that the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) would set in motion if its online data collection system went into meltdown could require a large box of stamps and plenty of envelopes, FE Week can reveal.

The SFA said in January that it had a ‘contingency plan’ to help providers meet deadlines for individual learning record (ILR) submissions in the event of widespread and prolonged system failure.

And that contingency plan — released to FE Week under the Freedom of Information Act and following repeated breakdowns with the SFA’s online systems — involves a return to more traditional methods of transferring data.

It stated: “In the event of sustained problems with our data collection system, we will assess the impact and consider whether there is a need to introduce a manual method of collecting data from providers.”

An SFA spokesperson said the “manual method” could involve asking providers to send files saved onto discs or memory sticks in the post, through Royal Mail or a private courier.

Another possibility would be sending encrypted messages by email.

An SFA spokesperson said on Wednesday (March 11) that she hoped it would provide users with “future reassurances” after users complained on the FE Connect online forum about repeated problems with the Hub, which fully replaced the old online data collection (OLDC) system in October.

But it failed on January 5, less than 48 hours before the Individualised Learner Record (ILR) R05 (fifth return of the academic year) deadline, following previous breakdowns in August for R12, September for R13 and December for R14.

The contingency plan says “We have service level agreements (SLAs) that underpin our contractual agreements. Where an issue is deemed to be a priority one or two, and those SLAs are breached, a major incident will be declared.”

An SFA spokesperson said priority one situations could include when the “majority of application transactions are failing” or follow “widespread data corruption of critical data”.

Priority two situations scenarios could include where “processing of data failed for a critical deadline due within [the] next two days”.

Stephen Hewitt, funding manager at London’s Morley College, said he was pleased to hear the SFA was planning for worst-case scenarios.

He told FE Week: “There have obviously been problems with data collection recently and it’s hard to believe that there won’t be more again, so it is good to know that the SFA is thinking in terms of a contingency plan.”

An SFA spokesperson said: “Recognising that the data collections processes in the 2013 to 2014 funding year did not run smoothly, we have listened to user feedback to improve our systems and have contingency plans in place as part of our overall business continuity planning.

“We hope this provides our colleges and training organisations with future reassurances for this key system.”

 Click here to read the contingency plans.

NCG in the running to take on a4e after sale put forward

Newcastle College Group (NCG) could be in line to take over troubled welfare-to-work provider A4e, FE Week can reveal.

A spokesperson for the Ofsted grade two-rated college said it was committed “to delivering welfare and employability training” and would consider “any opportunity”.

NCG, which already runs Newcastle College, West Lancashire College and Kidderminster College along with Sheffield-based Intraining and Rathbone youth charity among other educational institutions, did not deny it was considering adding A4e, which in January saw several employees found guilty of fraud, to its portfolio.

Company founder Emma Harrison, who is a former adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron and is believed to have an 87 per cent stake in the company, has appointed auditors Deloitte to advise on the sale or break-up of A4e, according to the Financial Times.

An NCG spokesperson said: “NCG has a clear strategy, which includes commitment to delivering welfare and employability training, and we continue to monitor our portfolio of activities against that strategy.

“We would consider any opportunity as it arises however it would not be appropriate to make any further comment at this time.”

A4e is believed to be one of the biggest providers for the government’s £5bn welfare to work scheme and was paid £6,699,758 in the latest Department for Work and Pensions accounts.

NCG has been offering welfare to work provision in the North East through Intraining since 2011 through two contracts with the DWP.

However, one of those contracts was terminated by the government last year following concerns over quality.

A spokesman for NCG, said: “Our initial performance on the North East Yorkshire and the Humber Work Programme contract did not achieve our expected standards when it started almost four years ago.

“But last summer we vastly improved our performance and ranked eighth nationally — in the top quarter of performers. We are now exceeding DWP’s latest performance standard benchmarks.

“Intraining is committed to improving performance because we believe in value for money for the taxpayer and providing the best possible chance to the unemployed to find work. Our improving performance over the past year demonstrates this.”

A4e, which employs more than 3,000 staff, reported a pre-tax loss of £11.5m in 2013-2014, but had climbed to a pre-tax profit of £2.2m last year as sales rose from £167 to £189m.

In January, 10 former A4e employees were found guilty or admitted ripping off a DWP Inspire to Aspire scheme, submitting fake learner records to claim extra funding and bonuses.

A4e chief executive Andrew Dutton said it would pay back all the fraudulently claimed money, adding DWP and Skills Funding Agency audits found no evidence of fraud in current A4e contracts.

Both A4e and Deloitte declined to comment on the sale of the company.

Funding pulled from construction apprenticeships

London-based construction training charity Building Lives claims 180 people currently on pre-employment training schemes face missing out on starting apprenticeships after the industry training board pulled £2m of future funding.

Sian Workman, interim managing director of the registered charity, said the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) told it on February 27 that it would no longer be providing any cash for its apprenticeship training.

“We were expecting to receive around £2m from the CITB up to August 2016, which would have accounted for around a third of our basic income,” she said.

Ms Workman added the CITB’s decision meant that 180 “hard-to-reach” recruits currently undertaking level one pre-employment construction training with the charity were now at risk of not getting onto level two apprenticeships as had been planned.

But, she claimed, the CITB had committed to continue funding 55 apprentices already training with Building Lives and a number of different employers until they completed their training.

Steve Rawlings, who founded Building Lives four years ago, said the charity could be forced to close without alternative funding.

“We have reacted quickly to redesign our model to attract additional funding, but it’s an extremely worrying time for staff and learners,” he said.

The CITB funds construction apprenticeships through training levy payments paid by construction firms.

Carl Rhymer, delivery and customer engagement director for the CITB, said his organisation had never directly funded Building Lives, but funded its apprentices through payments to the charity’s partner employers.

He added: “We provide funds to in scope employers and in this case, a standard verification process revealed that an in scope employer had not complied with the grant scheme rules” — which was why the CITB pulled the funding, he said.

“The CITB is fully supportive of what Building Lives is doing to help unemployed and disadvantaged people, but we are unable to change these rules at will,” he added.

A spokesperson for the CITB declined to comment on which employer had broken the rules, or which regulations had been breached.

Mr Rhymer added: “We have committed to support all apprentices currently training with Building Lives who were enrolled with the CITB by January 2015.”

Two colleges win school approvals from dfe as third prepares new plan

Two colleges have been granted permission to open their own free schools in the latest wave of 49 free schools given the go-ahead by the government.

New College Swindon’s bid to open a school and sixth form in Swindon and New College Pontefract’s plans to open a 1,200 learner sixth form centre in Doncaster were successful.

The latest Department for Education (DfE) approvals bring the number of college-sponsored free schools up to 11, with six already up and running and five still in development.

New College Swindon principal Graham Taylor (pictured front) said getting permission to set up its business and enterprise-focussed Great Western Academy was “simply great news for Swindon”.

Free schools are state-funded schools which are not required to follow the national curriculum, operate outside of local authority control, and answer directly to the Secretary of State for Education.

“As the third fastest growing town in the country there’s a desperate need for new schools and I’m pleased the government acknowledged this,” said Mr Taylor.

He said the local community had been very supportive of the bid, including local MP Justin Tomlinson, who initially suggested the grade two-rated college put in the bid.

Mr Taylor said the college would be seeking advice and guidance from the Department for Education (DfE) and successful schools.

“We are really excited to be starting up a new school from scratch for the digital age and we will do our very best to create a great learning environment that our local community deserves,” he said.

No one from New College Pontefract, which has an Ofsted grade one rating, was available to comment, but when the bid was submitted in September, principal Pauline Hagen (pictured above) told FE Week she thought the college “had a lot to bring to Doncaster, where most existing providers are grade three or four”.

Both free schools are expected to open in September next year.

A third FE institution, Croydon College, was also vying to get a school off the ground in this wave of approvals, but was not named among the successful bids.

However, a statement on the prospective New Croydon Academy website said the proposal had “received positive feedback from the DfE”, but that it “required more detail and further expansion on the proposal before we could proceed”.

A proposal is expected to be resubmitted in May, with the school, if successful, due to open in 2017.