Pearson has stopped registering higher national certificate (HNC) distance learning students at a second general FE college delivering the provision with support from private firm Acquire Learning (AL), FE Week can reveal.

The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) was critical of the HNC in business course, launched at South and City College Birmingham last October, in a report following a visit in January.

A QAA spokesperson said it was prompted to investigate the course after the Higher Education Funding Council for England raised concerns about its “rapid growth and rolling monthly recruitment (more than 50 per cent of the Birmingham college’s first year higher education students had been recruited to this course), and its 1 to 100 staff to student ratio”.

The report said awarding organisation Pearson “informed the college in December 2014 that it would be unable to continue to register distance learning students with it until it had reviewed the college, due to the number of registrations”.

“However, students began the programme in January 2015 in the belief that their programme was validated by Pearson,” it said in the QAA report.

Tim Demetriou, director of AL, denied any wrongdoing and said his company collected extensive information on all potential applicants.

“It is then sent to the college to decide how many of them it wants to take on,” he said.

The Birmingham report said the college had an agreement with AL allowing the private firm to oversee recruitment for the HNC using “targeted telephone marketing to advertise the programme to prospective students”.

However, it said that the college “did not provide information to the team regarding any monitoring procedures in place to ensure that prospective students… were making an informed decision about enrolling”.

It recommended the college should clarify its admissions policy for the course and communicate it clearly to staff and prospective students, ensure all prospective and current students were kept fully informed about their enrolment status. It should also gather and respond better to feedback from students about the HNC.

A Birmingham spokesperson said: “We acknowledge the recommendations made by the review team and have already taken action to address these.”

It comes a fortnight after FE Week reported how Pearson had “blocked” a HNC business (management) distance learning course at 6,000-learner grade two Ofsted-rated Sussex Coast College Hastings that was also delivered with support from AL.

A QAA report published earlier this month on the Sussex Coast provision, following inspection in February, also stated that students without standard-entry qualifications were only required to complete a 100-word statement to be enrolled on the HNC and “in the view of the [inspection] team this is not a sufficiently robust assessment tool”.

Nobody from Pearson was available to comment on the Birmingham or Sussex Coast courses before FE Week went to press.

However, a spokesperson for Pearson told FE Week two weeks ago that Sussex Coast was not registering students on the HNC “while they work to address the issues identified”.

Dan Shelley, vice principal of Sussex Coast, said: “The college has fully addressed the range of issues identified by Pearson.

“This included a revised process which requires a more detailed submission of written work prior to enrolment.

“The college looks forward to a [return] visit from the QAA in early July, where we fully expect all recommendations to be addressed and the pause in enrolments to be lifted.”

An AL spokesperson said: “There were some teething issues with this course but the college has made considerable steps to address these. The admissions process is quite robust.”

Ofsted’s decision to scrap graded lesson observations for FE inspections has been described as the “right way to go” by Principals’ Professional Council (PPC) chair Sue Rimmer.

A spokesperson for the education watchdog said on Friday (May 22) that it had consulted with FE providers and “conducted numerous pilot inspections to test the changes” before deciding to go ahead with the change from September.

Ms Rimmer, principal of South Thames College and PPC chair since January, told FE Week she previously used graded lesson observations for internal reviews, but she had “conducted a number of forums with some of our grade one teachers to gain their views of the usefulness of scheme and, having reflected on their feedback and other information, I decided to suspend graded lesson observations [from the start of 2014/15]”.

Ms Rimmer said graded lesson observations were not “a reliable measure of the daily learning experience of our students”.

“I believe that stopping graded lessons observations is the right way to go as they have lost their credibility,” she said.

But she added that she would still “want to be re-assured that there was transparency and validity around judgements made and a robust evidence base otherwise there is a danger that it will become a guessing game”.

The Ofsted decision, also backed by the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, comes after a University and College Union report published last June, called Developing a National Framework for the Effective Use of Lesson Observation in FE, raised “serious questions about the fitness for purpose of prevailing observation assessment systems in FE”.

A report in FE Week in the same month revealed that the education watchdog would be piloting inspections with no grading of teaching in individual FE sessions during 2014/15.

It followed the announcement on Twitter by Ofsted’s FE and skills director Lorna Fitzjohn that graded lesson observations could be ending.

It sparked a debate across the sector and Gill Clipson, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, told FE Week on Tuesday (May 26) that views still “differ around the value of grading observed lessons separately”.

She added: “There is a need for Ofsted inspectors to give clear feedback to individual teachers about the strengths demonstrated during the lesson as well as areas where improvements can be made.”

The Ofsted spokesperson said: “This change will be reflected in Ofsted’s new handbook for the inspection of FE and skills, which we will publish before the end of the summer term.”

The FE Commissioner has praised progress being made at two colleges following revisits.

Dr David Collins checked up on the 6,800-learner East Kent College, which had taken over the Dover and Folkestone campuses from K College.

His revisit, in November, came after grade four Ofsted-rated K College was broken up last summer after falling at least £15m in debt, being graded inadequate by Ofsted and then being put into administered status following Dr Collins’ first inspection in December 2013.

Dr Collins’ report on developments at East Kent, which had a 2014/15 Skills Funding Agency (SFA) allocation of £9.6m as of April, was not published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), but the college said he described its takeover as “transformational” for Folkestone and Dover.

A spokesperson for BIS confirmed Dr Collins’ report also said that East Kent College’s senior leadership team had brought “drive and professionalism to campuses that in the past have felt neglected”.

Graham Razey (pictured above left), principal of the college rated ‘good’ by Ofsted in April 2013, said: “I’m delighted to hear the FE Commissioner believes we are succeeding. While we recognise there is still more to do, it is very encouraging to know that we are on the right path.”

Meanwhile, Dr Collins revisited 3,669-learner Weymouth College on Friday (May 22), which was rated as ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted in February, as part of a structure and prospects appraisal (SPA) he launched in March last year.

The commissioner decided that the review of the college’s long-term prospects was needed after he raised concern about its finances and leadership in his initial inspection report, following a visit in March last year.

His inspection was triggered by the college, which had a 2014/15 SFA allocation of £2.9m as of April, being assessed as inadequate for financial health by the SFA.

However, following the revisit which he will not formally report on, Dr Collins said he was “delighted with the progress that Weymouth College has made under its new leadership and management, its successful delivery for students is now being underpinned by a much improved financial performance”.

The college’s former principal Liz Myles was suspended, pending an internal review of the college’s finances, in November last year and then retired in February.

The college cannot advertise for a successor until the SPA is concluded and acting Principal Nigel Evans (pictured above right) told FE Week: “The FE Commissioner was delighted that we expect to break even financially next financial year and even post a small surplus.”

He added: “We anticipate that the next meeting in October, when Dr Collins will check that our enrolments meet our funding allocations, will mark the end of the SPA and confirm the college’s independent future.”

An SFA spokesperson said it was “satisfied with progress to date” at Weymouth College.

She added the SFA agreed that East Kent College had “successfully integrated the provision at Dover and Folkestone” and “no further monitoring or support is required”.

BIS declined to comment.

Main pic: from left Dr David Collins, Graham Razey and Nigel Evans

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) has launched a review of the data it publishes on FE and skills every quarter that allows government to be held to account for its policies.

A consultation on the Statistical First Release (SFR) —information on 19-plus government-funded FE programmes in England — is underway until the end of the month.

The six-page questionnaire, available online, asks providers which data from the SFR they use and what they use it for, whether there is anything not reported in the SFR or supplementary tables they would like to see and what other improvements they think could be made.

A BIS spokesperson said the aim of the survey was to ensure the SFR, which FE Week regularly uses to track the number of apprenticeship and traineeship starts, was as useful as possible for the sector. The review comes with a new ministerial duty to report on apprenticeship numbers having been listed in the Queen’s Speech.

Sector bodies have shared their thoughts on the SFR with FE Week, and key among the changes they wanted to see was a more detailed breakdown of some of the key statistics.

A spokesperson for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers told FE Week: “It would be good to see more detail in the Employer Ownership Pilot section such as the number of apprenticeship starts within it and an age breakdown. The loans section could benefit from a sector breakdown and similarly the traineeships data could do with some more detail.”

The aim of publishing the SFR, according to the BIS website, is to present the performance of the FE system, as well as allowing users to assess the impact of government-funded provision and to hold the government to account over delivery of policy.

A spokesperson for the University and College Union (UCU) said: “SFRs provide a useful insight into the number of people learning at different ages and stages.

“We would like to see the data for age, participation and achievement linked more closely, particularly for apprenticeships.

“Currently starts and achievements are usually presented separately, making it difficult to determine success rates for different types of qualifications. Also, the data could usefully be broken down by sector so that we can clearly see where different areas are in growth or decline.

“Ideally, the SFR data would be linked with the Labour Force Survey or the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings so that we are better able to track learners post-qualification and quantify the impact of FE on their income and job security.”

SFR information is collated by colleges and submitted to the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) through monthly data returns — and UCU warned this process should not get any more complicated. Problems with the development of the SFA’s data reporting software, Funding Information System, during the reporting period for the 2013/14 statistics, where providers were unable to submit data through the new system has led to the SFR for 2013/14 being seen as potentially unreliable.

“It’s crucial that any changes to the data being collected do not place additional administrative strain on colleges which are already under significant pressure due to funding cuts,” the UCU spokesperson said.

A BIS spokesperson said: “The survey is being conducted as part of the commitment to ensure that the SFR is providing useful information. It’s due to run until the end of June.”

Nobody from the Association of Colleges was available for comment.

Click here for the survey (then scroll down for grey box on right containing survey link).

New target needs new statistics

With the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills reviewing what is contained within the key quarterly document for FE and skills in the statistical first release, Chris Henwood outlines what changes he thinks are required.

The statistical first release (SFR) is an eagerly-awaited document for FE Week.

It gives us the information to assess the outlook for apprenticeships, looking at whether the number of starts is heading in the right or wrong direction.

And given the significance of apprenticeships for the new government, with its 3m starts target by the end of this Parliament, the importance of the SFR as a means of checking on this performance can only increase.

But there is room for improvement in this scrutiny, and so the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) consultation on the SFR is very much welcomed and something I hope will result in a number of changes.

Currently, the Skills Funding Agency and BIS are not actively monitoring how many people start an apprenticeship. We know this because our requests for just such data under the Freedom of Information Act were rejected. What is recorded and reported is the number of starts — so one person could start a number of apprenticeships by either dropping out of one and moving to another, or even moving up a level.

It seems ridiculous that we don’t know how many people are applying and that we don’t know how many people are starting apprenticeships for the first time

We are left with a number far higher than how many people are starting apprenticeships and it is this higher number that has been bandied about as a measure of how the Coalition topped the 2m apprenticeships mark in the last Parliament. But of course the number of people would have been lower, as former Business Secretary Dr Vince Cable once conceded to FE Week.

If we are to really monitor how many new apprenticeships are being created and how many people are being attracted to the programme, then a figure for the number of learners starting apprenticeships for the first time might provide the basis for more meaningful assessment.

It’s a figure that the higher education sector has in ‘initial entrants’, with the caveat that to be counted, a student must have been on a course for a minimum of six months and after this, if they change course they are not then counted again. Such a change would therefore also allow for FE and higher education comparison.

A further SFR area for improvement would be with regard the number of applications, because again there is room for confusion surrounding how many people we are talking about. Put simply, one person could make any number of applications for apprenticeships. So one person, many applications.

It seems ridiculous that we don’t know how many people are applying and that we don’t know how many people are starting apprenticeships for the first time, but if we are to witness a change in this situation then it would also be useful to know whether people starting apprenticeships or applying for them were existing employees and further whether they were still in the job a few months down the line.

Hull College has given up its sponsorship of a formerly failing local school having guided it to top marks from Ofsted.

Hull College stepped into take over Pickering High School Sports College in 2008, when just 18 per cent of learners were gaining the benchmark five GCSEs at A* to C grades and government officials decided it was in need of external support.

The move worked and last year the 1,469-pupil school, now renamed Sirius Academy, gained an Ofsted outstanding grade.

And college leaders have decided their work is done and so will be stepping back from supporting the school.

Gary Warke, chief executive of outstanding-rated Hull College, told the Hull Daily Mail it would continue to work with the school “as a friend and critical partner”.

“Strong support from ourselves and strong leadership on the ground from the principal and her team has been pivotal,” he said.

The college implemented new systems and helped the school to secure funding for its £48m new campus building with state of the art sports, performing arts and technology facilities.

Mr Warke said: “When it reached the point Sirius Academy was outstanding, it became clear it no longer needed the support of a sponsor.”

One senior member of Hull College staff is expected to sit on the new Sirius board of governors.

Hull College cited its experience in working with the Sirius Academy as an example of its ability to work with a younger cohort when it successfully bid to be allowed to directly recruit 14 to 16-year-olds to the college from September 2013.

Following the college’s intervention, the school was rated outstanding across the board in an inspection in March last year.

The inspectors said: “Hull College works closely with the school, providing expertise from its own staff and commissioning external support where it is needed.

“This has had a positive impact in the sixth form, where the sponsor has helped the school to improve teaching and to refine the range of courses on offer.”

They also praised leaders and managers at the college, saying they had “been successful in improving achievement, teaching and behaviour.”

“[Students] make outstanding progress in most subjects so that, by the end of Year 11, the proportion gaining five A* to C grades including mathematics and English are in line with those seen nationally,” the report said.

Cathy Taylor, principal at Sirius Academy, said: “We would not be where we are today without the support of Hull College. It has been instrumental in us moving forward in the time frame we have.

“It has been very much a partnership in terms of raising standards. We have a huge responsibility to maintain the standards the college set out for us and we will endeavour to do that.”

The school is now following in Hull’s footsteps, offering support and advice to the nearby Thomas Ferens Academy, which has been in special measures since September.

Main pic: Gary Warke