More than £700,000 will be handed shared among 74 FE colleges to encourage young people to progress into higher education.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) has announced that £714,772 will be allocated to FE colleges with higher education provision between now and 2016 in a bid to improve collaboration with schools and other colleges.
The FE sector share is less than 6.5 per cent of the £11.020m total allocated to individual universities and colleges, and grants range from £2,534 for South Gloucestershire and Stroud College to £53,280 for Blackpool and The Fylde College.
It comes less than four years after Aimhigher, a scheme which had the same goals but had a much larger budget, was scrapped by the government.
The grants are part of Hefce’s new national networks for collaborative outreach (NNCO), set up with initial Department for Business, Innovation and Skills funding of £22m for 2014/15 and 2015/16.
Madeleine Atkins
Thirty five local networks will get £240,000 each over the two years, with further grants for individual providers.
Some networks will be led by existing Aimhigher regional initiatives that survived the scrapping of the national service in 2011 by seeking funding from schools and universities.
Nick Davy, Association of Colleges higher education policy manager, told FE Week: “Hefce is right to invest money to encourage more young people into higher education and the NNCO is a useful scheme. However, it has been led by universities in sub-regions and that has meant that in some regions colleges are not involved in the networks.
“We have been in discussions with Hefce officers to address these gaps to ensure that could ensure the vast majority of colleges are involved in networks.”
As well as the local networks, three more national networks will give advice and support to specific groups of students, including adult learners and care leavers. Hefce has also launched a website for colleges to find their nearest network, and individual networks will run their own sites with information about outreach activity.
Hefce chief executive Madeleine Atkins said: “We set out to establish coverage of state-funded secondary schools and sixth form colleges and, through the support of the sector, this will be achieved.
“As well as providing co-ordinated coverage of outreach activity, we are keen that the NNCO scheme contributes innovative approaches to the interaction between higher education institutions and
schools and colleges.”
Concerns that two official apprenticeship websites could be causing confusion have emerged with identical vacancy searches returning vastly different results.
The Skills Funding Agency is keeping its old vacancy matching website running until April while its replacement, which has already gone live, is being tested and developed.
However, with an example search on the old site uncovering 2,444 apprenticeship vacancies in London compared to just 71 on the new site, Andy Gannon, 157 Group director of policy, public relations and research, warned information needed to be “easy to find, navigate and understand”.
An SFA spokesperson said the differing figures were down to the old apprenticeship vacancies service automatically searching for vacancies within a 10-mile radius of the requested location.
The new site, however, operates a two-mile radius default, unless users change the radius.
The SFA launched the new webpage on the gov.uk central government site, where a link to the old website, on an lsc.gov.uk address, is also available.
Mr Gannon said: “The critical thing about information about any form of education is that it is easy to find, navigate and understand.
“We hope this move of information is underpinned by research that indicates it will definitely achieve a greater level of accessibility, as gov.uk does not seem intuitively to be a place learners might be browsing for such information.
“Of course, wherever the information is, people do need to know what it is about in order to look for it in the first place.”
David Hughes, chief executive of the National Institute of Continuing Education (Niace), said: “Unfortunately there are certain groups who are massively under-represented and if all the vacancies aren’t being posted properly [for the new vacancies search service] then this will reduce fair and equal access to apprenticeships.”
The SFA spokesperson said: “The new ‘Find an apprenticeship’ application system is currently in Beta [development] phase, which includes parallel running of both old and new systems, to allow for testing, user feedback and any necessary adjustments.
“We have user-tested the search capabilities of ‘Find an apprenticeship’ and will be continually improving the search capabilities over the course of the public Beta phase.”
A Midland college has been warned its internet software was sending out the “wrong message” after it blocked learners from accessing lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) websites.
Henley College Coventry students who tried to view websites related to the LGBT community, such as the site for the Birmingham Pride march, have been met with a pop-up stating the sites had been blocked due to being “Gay or Lesbian or Bisexual Interest” sites.
The College’s National Union of Students LGBT officer Aimee Challenor warned of fears it could lead to “homophobic bullying,” while gay rights group Stonewall said young people were potentially being stopped from “accessing vital support and advice”.
The college said the block was caused by automatic settings on the software, and the wording in the pop-up was “definitely not the college’s”.
Aimée Challenor
However, Ms Challenor, a 17-year-old creative digital media production student, said the response “wasn’t good enough”.
“By installing that software, the college has a responsibility to ensure it complies with equality legislation and guidelines,” she said.
“I echo the concerns of other students who have said that by blocking sites for simply having LGBT content it puts the wrong message out to students who are either LGBT or who are questioning their sexuality or gender identity.
“It basically says we should hide it and be ashamed, which we shouldn’t. There are also fears that this could lead to a rise in homophobic bullying within the college.”
Stonewall senior policy and campaigns officer Hannah Kibirige said: “Blocking access to websites with LGBT content not only sends a negative message to students, but could prevent LGBT young people from accessing vital support and advice.
“We know that many colleges are inadvertently blocking sites by using ‘catch-all’ internet filters.
“Every college should check their filters regularly, encourage students to report blocked sites and report any issues to their service provider.”
Ray Goy
Henley College Coventry principal Ray Goy said: “The issue arose after the college changed its content-filtering software which, unfortunately, filtered out LGBT content.
“This then generated an automated message denying access to the site being requested. Henley College Coventry is proud of its record of tolerance and celebration of diversity and would never set out to offend anybody or set itself up as a moral arbiter on issues of sexual orientation; indeed, we proactively challenge all forms of discrimination, and have a longstanding LGBT group, Henley’s Rainbows, at the college.”
He added the LGBT site block was removed “within 20 minutes of being brought to our attention by a student”.
However, Ms Challenor said many sites — such as Birmingham LGBT centre and London Pride — were still being blocked by the filter system for “uncategorised” reasons.
She said she was “pleased that it’s not the college being homophobic”.
“My message to other colleges would be to tell them to make sure their software meets the law as well, to make sure this isn’t repeated,” said Ms Challenor.
Mr Goy said ongoing website blocks of LGBT sites were caused by the software’s interpretation of the website, not necessarily because of the college itself.
“Not all sites — and particularly many of the smaller ones — are ‘categorised’ within the content-filtering software,” he said.
“As a matter of safeguarding, we block such uncategorised sites as we have no idea what material they might contain.”
But, he said: “These sites can be unblocked by request as were the LBGT sites.”
A Basingstoke sixth form college was today expected to present a draft financial recovery plan to the Education Funding Agency (EFA) after being issued with a financial notice to improve.
Queen Mary’s College (QMC) was issued with the notice on December 12, after it was assessed as “inadequate” for financial health by the EFA.
It must now present a draft financial recovery plan by today’s deadline to EFA territorial director for the South Alan Parnum, including student number and monthly cashflow projections, as well as savings, expenditure, income and risk management plans.
According to the notice: “The EFA will determine when the college has made sufficient progress for the notice to be lifted. This will usually be when the college’s financial health grade has improved… to at least satisfactory [by the end of 2015/2016].”
Ali Foss (pictured), principal of the 2,200-learner college, rated as good by Ofsted in May 2010, said the notice was imposed because of recent increases in her college’s borrowing levels compared to its income.
The college has borrowed £5.4m, of which £4.1m still needs to be repaid, since 1997, helping fund £29m of infrastructure projects, with the rest of the cash coming from government funding, sale of land, and the college’s own cash reserves.
Among the new developments the cash went to were an English and modern languages block at £2m in 1997, a sports centre at £1.8m in 2003 and a teaching block for subjects including science and foundation learning at £13m in 2010.
Mrs Foss said that year-on-year funding had “fallen sharply” since 2010 with cuts of 12 per cent across the period. “The investments in infrastructure have allowed the college to focus its spending on teaching and learning rather than on repair and renovation,” she said.
It comes with the 3,370-learner Totton College having this month launched a consultation on merger after Sixth Form College Commissioner Peter Mucklow warned it could not function alone.
In October, he inspected Hampshire college, deemed by Ofsted to require improvement in March, after concerns about a lack of improvement since it was issued with a financial notice to improve in the spring.
Formal expressions of interest should be submitted by 4pm on Friday, January 23. Full proposals must be submitted 4pm the following Friday.
Visit www.totton.ac.uk or email corporation clerk Pam Robertson — probertson@totton.ac.uk — for details.
A Midland council is celebrating after its adult education provision was rated outstanding across the board by Ofsted.
Wolverhampton Adult Education Service (pictured) was given a grade one rating in all headline areas following inspection last month.
And staff at Stockport College also received good news from Ofsted this month with inspectors having found it had made “rapid improvements” in its first full inspection since it was slapped with a grade four in September 2013 — which had been down from outstanding.
Inspectors, who visited the college in December, moved it up a grade to “requires improvement,” thereby taking it out of the administered status FE Commissioner Dr David Collins recommended last year.
Meanwhile, Wolverhampton Adult Education Service, which has around 4,000 learners aged 19-plus, becomes only the third local authority to have achieved the clean sweep of grade ones for adult education provision under Ofsted’s current common inspection framework, following councils in Kirklees and neighbouring Walsall.
Wolverhampton City Council cabinet member for schools, skills and learning Phil Page told FE Week: “This is an incredible achievement for our Adult Education Service and I’d like to pay tribute to the staff and students whose hard work has helped secure this excellent result.
“The Adult Education Service is exceptional in how it both values, and invests in, the individual, whatever walk of life they come from, and it’s great that Ofsted recognises the tremendous learning opportunities that the Adult Education Service provides.”
The Ofsted report, published on Thursday (January 15), said: “Teaching, learning and assessment are outstanding, which is reflected in the very high number of learners who acquire very good personal, social and employability skills.”
It also described the service’s leadership and management as “excellent” with a “clear vision of the needs of the community, which is shared by all staff”, and said the organisation has “very well thought-out and very extensive partnerships with local organisations”.
Coun Page added: “I’d like to pay tribute to the commitment and dedication of our hard working Adult Education Service staff who have achieved this recognition.”
Stockport College went from grade fours across the board to grade threes across the board amid a programme of job cuts that has seen the 690-worker college, which had already shed 235 jobs in the past three years, set to cut another 150 posts after Dr Collins recommended it shave £2.5m off staff costs.
Principal Ian Clinton, who took over the 7,000-learner college in February and was given an OBE in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to FE, said: “I am really proud of the staff at my college and pleased that the good work and attitude by students has been reflected in this Ofsted report.”
“To be out of special measures is something I am especially pleased about, as it is recognition of the hard work everyone has put in while working under constantly scrutinised conditions.”
The report said the “considerable commitment of the new leadership team to bring about rapid improvements” had “improved staff morale and raised learners’ aspirations” and the board of governors had been “strengthened” by new members.
However, it also said that success rates in some areas were “too low” and “progress in some subject areas is too slow”.
“We are not complacent and we realise that while this is a positive step forward, there are still issues to address,” said Mr Clinton.
“We have made many improvements in the last year and will continue to improve the college to provide a quality curriculum.
“The college is totally committed to further improvements and we will continue to work with our education partners to do this.”
British Gas failed to deliver a massive 89 per cent of its £2.5m initial allocation for 16 to 18 apprenticeships last academic year.
Skills Funding Agency (SFA) data shows the energy giant, which started 13 times more apprentices over the age of 18, was ultimately paid £2.2m less than its July 2013 allocation for the programme.
According to FE Week research comparing July 2013 allocations for 704 providers with final funding figures, British Gas received just 11 per cent (£287,606) of its original allocation — the lowest proportion among providers who fell short of their allocation by more than £1m.
A spokesperson for British Gas, which was rated outstanding following its last full Ofsted inspection in July 2007, said: “We received an allocation of £2.5m [16 to 18 apprenticeships] funding from the SFA for 2013/2014. This allocation was based on our previous two-year contract performance data held by the SFA.
“The average age of an apprentice at British Gas has been rising and now stands at 25.
“However, the allocation [for 16 to 18 apprenticeships] was not used as, in addition to recruiting 33 SFA-funded apprentices aged 16 to 18 [and five not funded by the SFA], we recruited a number of apprentices from other age groups [428] including a large number [151] who are not funded by the SFA.
“The money that was not used was clawed back by the SFA and reallocated to other providers throughout 2013/14.”
Initial allocations on the 16 to 18 apprenticeship programme often vary from final allocations (with 10 months of the year having passed) as the SFA makes in-year adjustments as part of its quarterly performance management process.
However, in the same process the typically larger and more predictable adult skills budget allocations tend not to be adjusted to such a great extent.
The British Gas spokesperson added that its non-SFA funded apprentices were paid for entirely by British Gas and worked towards level two qualifications in dual fuel smart metering.
Nevertheless, the two other two worst offenders, among providers who missed their July 2013 16 to 18 apprenticeships allocations by more than £1m, were Sheffield City Council which only received 18 per cent (£604,319) of its £3.4m allocation and Carlisle-based logistics training provider System Group Limited which was paid 36 per cent (£881,355) of its £2.4m allocation.
System Group Limited declined to comment on why it missed is 2013/14 allocation.
But Andrew Hartley, business development director for the provider rated good by Ofsted in October 2012, said: “It is pleasing to report that interest in apprenticeships in the logistics industry has really picked up in the last few months as companies look to bring young people into their organisations in order to develop and grow.
“We are very busy launching a number of programmes with clients at this moment in time and there is a very positive outlook. We will certainly achieve our 2014/15 allocation.”
There was nobody available to comment at Sheffield City Council, which received a good Ofsted rating for its training programmes in February last year.
An SFA spokesperson said: “We do not comment on individual providers. When determining provider allocations we continue to apply, to all our providers, our published performance management processes according to the type of funding agreement.
“We will maximise participation funds by identifying delivery that is below funding allocation or contract value and redistributing funds to providers with a good track record and evidence of demand from employers or learners.”
Almost three quarters of FE providers failed to deliver on their initial 2013/14 16 to 18 apprenticeships allocation by a total of £136m.
The SFA data shows that, of providers for whom comparison can be made, 704 were earmarked a total of £685.6m cash for 16 to 18 apprenticeships in July 2013.
But final funding figures for last academic year showed that while 200 providers (28 per cent) got a total of £32.7m more than they had been allocated, 504 (72 per cent) were paid £136m less than their combined allocation figure.
It means the sector was £103.3m down on the 16 to 18 apprenticeships it had been expected to deliver.
Julian Gravatt, assistant chief executive for the Association of Colleges, said better pre-apprenticeship training and careers advice was needed to help providers hit future allocations on a key priority by the government.
He said: “There are a number of reasons specific to 2013/14 which will have contributed to under-19 apprenticeship recruitment shortfalls, for example the tighter funding rules.
“However, this is not a new problem and illustrates the need both to develop a better pre-apprenticeship offer for young people and also to improve the careers advice given to school pupils in Years 10 and 11.”
The Statistical First Release published in November last year showed that 16 to 18 apprenticeship starts were up on 2012/13, from 114,500 to 119,800 (4.6 per cent).
It was the first annual increase for the age group in two years, with the 2010/11 number of 131,700 having been 12.8 per cent up on the previous year.
The same set of official figures for 2013/14 showed there had been 10,400 traineeship starts during the programme’s first year.
A spokesperson for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers said: “We believe that providers could have done even better if the traineeships programme had begun earlier because this would have placed more young people in a position to progress on to an apprenticeship.
“We need to throw more weight behind traineeships to maintain the increase in the number of apprenticeships starts that we saw for teenagers last year.”
All-age apprenticeship starts at 440,400 last academic year, down 13.7 per cent, having been at 510,200 the previous year, and 520,600 in 2011/12.
Within the fall in the 2013/14 figures, were decreases from 165,400 to 159,100 (-3.8 per cent) for the 19 to 24 age group and 230,300 to 161,600 (-29.8 per cent) among those aged 25+.
Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna (pictured) said: “Recently, we learned that the number of apprenticeships is falling, while there are real concerns that apprenticeship quality has been badly eroded.
“Now it emerges that the number of apprenticeships being delivered for 16 to 18 year olds has fallen far short of the government’s own expectations.
“We badly need more decent apprenticeship opportunities, which is why the next Labour government would act to ensure all apprenticeships are of high quality and would use government procurement to create thousands of new apprenticeships.”
Labour has said that all apprenticeships should start from at least level three and last a minimum of two years and the number of school leavers applying for apprenticeships should match the number starting university by 2025.
It has also pledged that all public procurement contracts would include a requirement to hire one apprentice for each £1m awarded in the contract if it won General Election in June.
A Skills Funding Agency spokesperson said: “In line with government priorities, we have maintained our investment in high quality apprenticeships and traineeships to support people to enter and progress in work.
“Applying our published performance management policy has meant that we have been able to fully fund all high-quality 16-18 apprenticeship delivery.”
No one from the government was available for comment.
College with biggest £1m-plus underdelivery comes fourth overall
The college that saw the greatest £1m-plus underdelivery on its initial 16 to 18 apprenticeship allocation hit just 38 per cent of its July 2013 target.
Northbrook College, in Sussex, fell £2.1m short of the £3.4m it had been earmarked by the SFA.
It recorded the fourth biggest underdelivery percentage among all providers who missed the sum earmarked for them by more than £1m.
A spokesperson for Northbrook College, which was rated as good by Ofsted in November 2013, said: “As part of its risk strategy review, the college took the decision to decrease the number of partner providers [for 16 to 18 apprenticeships] from August 1, 2013.
“This was in full consultation with the SFA as part of the funding reconciliation process. The SFA had automatically increased the 2013/14 allocation, based upon the prior year’s delivery with growth increases.”
He added: “The shortfall between delivery and funding allocation was planned by the college, as it was not prepared to compromise the quality of learning that its students receive.”
The first thing many people entering the FE and skills sector notice is the number of acronyms.
Telling your EFA (Education Funding Agency) from your ETF (Education and Training Foundation) can be daunting, but new Junior Shadow Education Minister Yvonne Fovargue, who has previously served time shadowing defence, isn’t fazed.
“You can’t beat the strange world of defence for acronyms — it’s completely impenetrable,” she tells me as we walk through the maze of buildings to her office in the heart of the houses of Parliament.
Fovargue and husband Paul on their wedding day in 2009
In some ways, she reflects, “it probably more difficult to have a portfolio in opposition because you don’t have civil servants to ask for information — it’s about you and your knowledge and opinions”.
“And when you change jobs it is a quick learning curve, reading up on everything,” she says.
The 58-year-old MP for Makerfield, in Lancashire, took up the job of shadowing Skills Minister Nick Boles on 16 to 18 education and training, among other responsibilities, in October.
Her predecessor, Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, resigned the shadow role after refusing to support her party’s stance on military action against Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq.
But changing jobs is a relatively new experience for Fovargue, who worked for the Citizen’s Advice Bureau (CAB) for 23 years before entering politics.
She was elected to Parliament for the first time in 2010 and has since spent time in the Labour Whip’s office and as a Junior Shadow Transport Minister — yet she doesn’t see herself as a career politician.
“I don’t think I’d been to London more than five times before I was elected,” she says.
“But I suppose the party needs a mix of both — people who have that rigour in the political and policy background and people like myself, with real life experience as well.”
Fovargue graduating from Leeds University in 1978
Initially she had wanted to be a teacher —inspired by mother Irene.
“It was because of my mum that I went to university, really,” says Fovargue.
“Because my dad, Ken, was a lot more traditional and very practically minded — you know, ‘you’re a woman, you’ll probably get married so what’s the point?’
“But my mum insisted it was the right thing to do. And they struggled and they did send me to university.”
After studying English at Leeds University, Fovargue signed herself up to a PGCE but her teacher practice in a comprehensive in a deprived area of Manchester gave her second thoughts.
“I discovered that actually, at the age of 21, having gone straight from school to university I didn’t have a lot I could offer the pupils. Academically, yes, but in terms of experience of life, it just wasn’t there.”
Instead, she went to work for the Manchester housing department, managing a housing estate in Moss Side.
“I loved it,” she said. “I discovered I could relate to a wide range of people and I helped form the first ever tenants’ group in Manchester and that’s where the interest in getting people their rights came from I think.”
I looked around and I thought it wasn’t fair that life chances were so different in different places
Fovargue developed the interest, she says, by joining the Labour Party — a process she took very seriously.
“Working in Moss Side and then going back home to Sale, I looked around and I thought it wasn’t fair that life chances were so different in different places,” she explains.
“So I looked around, I interviewed the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party local councillors, asking: ‘What are your policies, how are you promoting fairness?’”
In 1984, daughter Vicky was born and Fovargue took up voluntary work for the CAB, but she had to find paid work when she and her husband split up just 18 months later.
“I realised I wanted to stay at CAB and I was lucky enough to get the job as manager at Newton-le-Willows CAB, which then four years later merged with St Helens and I took over as chief executive of the borough,” she says.
She certainly learned a thing or two about pushing for funding in her time there, taking the office from two part-time staff and a £9,500 budget, to 29 paid staff, a host of trained volunteers and a budget “£70 short of a million”.
As a single parent with a small child, it was says Fovargue, “a balancing act”.
Fovargue aged 4
“The job was 30 miles away from home and there are still things I remember like the time she [Vicky] cut off the tops of her fingers in the toilet door at school, and I couldn’t get home in time to take her to hospital,” she says.
“Fortunately she doesn’t seem to hold it against me — she’s grown up very balanced.”
But Fovargue still found some time for politics.
“I remember delivering leaflets in the pram — they’re very handy for putting leaflets underneath,” she says.
In the late 1990s Fovargue met husband Paul, who was a councillor on Warrington Council, and in 2004 he persuaded her to also stand for the council. The move to Parliament, she says was “the next logical step”.
“With CAB we did quite a lot of policy work, trying to prevent problems by writing to the government and saying this policy isn’t working,” she says.
“In my career I’ve always dealt with people and their problems — for me the best policy and the best comes from talking to the people on the ground.”
Although she’s still finding her feet in the education role, she says: “I think my experience dealing with young people, training volunteers who’ve come from universities and school is helping me to settle in — I’m enjoying meeting young people again and getting to grips with the sector.
“I think education isn’t just about academic achievement, it’s about giving people the resilience so that they know how to deal with problems they will inevitably face — nobody’s life runs completely smoothly, and it’s giving them the character to deal with those problems, and if they can’t deal with them themselves having the ability to ask without feeling ashamed and knowing where to go.”
From left: Fovargue’s mother Irene, who died last year, Fovargue and her daughter Vicky
And knowing where to go in the form of careers guidance is an issue in which Fovargue, having passed the 11-plus, has depressingly familiar experience.
“It was basically if you’re bright you go to university, slightly less bright teacher training college and if you were even less bright you got a job,” she says.
And she describes the system of today as “failing,” with her view of the Careers Company announced by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan last month being that “the devil will be in the detail”.
“One of the things that concerns me is it’s all very well having upfront funding now, but there are issues about getting employers to fund it in the future,” she says.
Meanwhile, having one of the most unpredictable elections in modern times on the horizon is, as she puts it, “unfortunate for life planning”.
But what role would she like to be waking up to on May 8?
“Hopefully carrying on with the education role in a Labour Government,” she says, without missing a beat.
It’s a personal thing
What is your favourite book, and why?
I read a lot. I like a lot of crime novels, particularly by Jeffery Deaver and Reginald Hill. I think what I like is probably the total relaxation away from work, something completely different
What do you do to switch off from work?
I read and watch DVD box sets — we’ve worked our way through the West Wing and I’m watching Scandal at the moment
What’s your pet hate?
Intolerance. Having worked at CAB for a long time I don’t like people who are very judgemental. I always think there but for circumstances — the grace of God, whatever you’d call it — go I
If you could invite anyone to a dinner party, living or dead, who would it be?
More than 700 colleges and independent learning providers have been warned by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) that they face a shock clawback on 2013/14 funding after it “identified some provision that has been incorrectly claimed,” FE Week can reveal.
Una Bennett (pictured above), deputy director for funding systems for the SFA, wrote to providers with the warning before Christmas — and after the SFA’s own auditors signed off provider accounts last autumn.
Her correspondence, leaked to FE Week, read: “We will contact you in the next few weeks to share the specific details of your learners that are affected… We will then calculate the final value of overpayment and discuss with you the repayment.”
The problem claims included, she said, apprenticeships that did not meet the minimum duration criteria and learners aged 24 and over studying at level two and below where full funding had been claimed but data had not been submitted identifying the learner as eligible — meaning they therefore should have been co-funded. However, the SFA declined to comment on how much it planned to claim back or how many of the providers it audited received the letter.
The problem has seen the SFA come under fire in its online Feconnect forum, where among those to post was Stephen Hewitt, strategic funding, enrolments and examinations manager at Morley College.
Although he hadn’t received one of the letters, he told FE Week: “Coming up with stuff like this after the data was finalised is ridiculous. We are not talking about high level fraud here. If there is inadequate data it is because we were not given the right guidance.”
Among the providers to have received the letter was Newcastle College Group (NCG), which had the greatest final Adult Skills Budget funding figure among colleges last academic year at £31.7m. Its group director of planning and performance, Chris Payne, said: “We put a lot of time and effort into our data collection and are always keen to ensure our returns are as accurate as possible, so we await the more detailed response from the SFA alluded to in the letter.”
It follows a difficult year for SFA data collection with repeated breakdowns of new online systems, although a spokesperson said the letter was not connected to the problems.
Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: “The issues should have been clear from error reports through the year, but we know that there have been some data collection issues over the same period.”
Julian Gravatt, Association of Colleges assistant chief executive, said: “The biggest immediate problem for colleges who received this email is that they don’t know how much the SFA will request as repayment.
“It’s clearly essential that college data is accurate and their funding claims correct, but the software supplied to colleges to manage funding didn’t work properly. If the SFA has now found errors, these weren’t picked up by the auditors who visited a sample of colleges in September.”
Dr Lynne Sedgmore, 157 Group executive director, said: “The timing and vagueness of this important funding communication is undesirable and will have caused concern to colleges over Christmas. We expect the SFA to move swiftly in January to give colleges exact details of their supposed overclaims.”
An SFA spokesperson said: “We will now begin to work with these training organisations and colleges to check that their data is correct.”
Editor’s comment
Not time for blame over reclaim shame
While it’s hard to imagine too many SFA emails and letters leaving FE and skills staff with a warm, fuzzy glow, it’s even harder to imagine they could have been expecting the bombshell that came from Una Bennett before Christmas.
MIS managers up and down the country, who are no strangers to wanting to tear their hair out over SFA systems, will have gone into the festive period dreading the conversation with their principal or managing director in which they reveal their final funding submissions contained errors.
Their bosses could not have known that more than 700 providers — well over 50 per cent of all SFA-contracted colleges and independent learning providers — had also received Ms Bennett’s letter warning that money would have to be given back.
But with so many affected, it seems unlikely the fault lies with provider staff. However, this is not the time for blame.
Now is the time to ask why this problem was discovered so late — even after the SFA’s own auditors had given sign-off.
It is also the time to ask why there is so much uncertainty surrounding what the errors were, not to mention how much money the SFA will be taking back.
Presumably different SFA auditors will be signing off the amounts it will be looking to reclaim.
How do you handle your new principal’s demands? Is the managing director refusing to budge? Dr Sue Pember, the former head of FE and skills investment at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), who was awarded an OBE for services to the sector in 2000, puts her extensive sector knowledge to good use in a new section for FE Week.
On the third Monday of every month she answers your questions, backed by the experience of almost a decade as principal of Canterbury College, in addition to time served in further senior civil service posts at the Department for Education and Employment, Department for Education and Skills, and Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.
In Dr Sue’s first section, she answers some of the questions she gets asked most often. Email DrSue@feweek.co.uk to ask her your question.
The simple answer is that this is one of the few statutory requirements around board membership and it is there because the last two governments have thought it really important that the student voice is heard. But why wouldn’t you have one anyway?
Student governors have a special and unique role which needs to be nurtured and developed by the college. Learner perspectives can be the most insightful form of information the board will receive. Students often know about issues which, if left to escalate, can have dreadful consequences for the college. Students are the defining stakeholders in decisions made by governors and, as such, should be supported to maximise the impact they can have as student governors.
There is much good practice where the board and college have a strategy to bring on new student governors. The students are supported and given training on public speaking and making an impact.
Furthermore, student governor impact has improved where colleges have actively reviewed and adapted their practice and procedures to ensure greater accessibility for student governors.
These colleges are proud of their students’ ability to be active board members and they see this as part of the employability skills their students require in the future job market.
This question divides governors. We have a long history in the UK of the voluntary principle with governance of public services and charities being provided through an unpaid route and, in most instances, it has worked well.
Everyone agrees that good people should be supported to attend meetings through claiming for travel and other expenses (such as child care) but, whether college governance is improved if the chair is paid has yet to be tested.
Under Charity law, trustees should not profit from the office they hold unless authorised by the governing document (Instrument & Articles, statute or Principal Regulator). College governing bodies are subject to Charity law and governors are the equivalent of trustees.
However, there are circumstances when payment is allowed. BIS and the Charity Commission have introduced guidance on how boards can apply.
This guidance has been around since 2013 but no one, as yet, has applied. That should not stop anyone trying, however. The BIS document provides several case studies where the Charities Commission has agreed to pay. The Charity Commission considers requests for permission to make payments on a case-by-case basis. Examples include: agreeing that a chair recruited to set up a large educational trust should be paid; agreeing that to encourage diversity the organisation can advertise the role as paid; and agreeing that the charity can cover loss of earnings. See the BIS document for details.
My answer is quite straightforward — governors should set the strategy, approve an affordable funding plan, determine a set of key performance indicators, monitor performance by scrutinising the information that is presented to them and ensure management action is taken swiftly when targets are not met.
It is vital to focus on the real business of the college — the students. How many applied and enrolled? Are they recruited in line with the forward plan? Are they staying on and enjoying their courses? Did they achieve the qualification(s) they signed up for? And, did they go on to further study, university and/or find a job in an area they trained for? If you do this, then you will not go far wrong.
You must be clear that governance is the act of governing — not managing. Governance provides strategic leadership and direction to a college. The governing body sets and approves policies and the budget, defines expectations, delegate’s powers, and verifies performance towards delivering its strategic aims and objectives.
The most important aspect is to get the relationship and appropriate division of responsibilities between strategic governance led by the governing body and operational management led by the principal and the senior management team right.
This question divides governors. We have a long history in the UK of the voluntary principle with governance of public services and charities being provided through an unpaid route and, in most instances, it has worked well.