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Prime Minister lays out apprenticeships as ‘first priority’ but sector awaits policy details

The creation of more apprenticeship starts is the “first priority” out of legislation announced in the Queen’s Speech, the Prime Minister has said.

Speaking in Parliament following the Queen’s address on Wednesday, David Cameron said the new employment and welfare benefits bill, which requires that ministers report annually on apprenticeship growth, would help his government in its plan to create 3m apprenticeships by 2020.

Other proposals included in the bills announced in the speech include a plan to use JobCentre Plus advisers to supplement careers advice in schools and the establishment of a “youth allowance” for 18 to 21-year-olds, which is conditional on them starting an apprenticeship, other training or a work placement.

A devolution bill will allow skills policy decisions to be taken at a local level by cities with directly-elected mayors and a consultation will be carried out on funding apprenticeship schemes for British and EU workers by implementing a new visa levy on businesses that use foreign labour.

Speaking in Parliament, Mr Cameron said: “The first priority of the Queen’s Speech is to help working people, and we are clear about what that means – more jobs, more apprenticeships, more tax cuts, more help with childcare and more opportunity to get a home of their own.

“That is the agenda for this Parliament. The last Parliament saw more than 2.2m new apprenticeships start, and the Queen’s Speech will help to create 3m more.”

The announcements have sparked a mixed reaction across the FE sector, education unions and the business community.

Lynne Sedgmore, executive director of the 157 Group, said she wasn’t surprised apprenticeships and localism were the two main points for FE in the speech, but said there was “little detail” about two “critical areas” – supporting and encouraging employers to offer apprenticeships and preparing young people for the frameworks.

Dr Sedgmore said: “We note with interest plans to use JobCentre Plus advisers to support careers guidance, and to consult on an apprenticeship levy for firms employing non-EU nationals. Both ideas will need careful monitoring.

“We have long believed that a world-class skills system will be the product of genuine local autonomy and real freedom, so we will be working hard with the new ministerial team that legislation in this area does not simply replace national controls with local ones.”

David Hughes (pictured right), the chief executive of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace), said the 3m apprenticeship target was a “challenge”, but could also be a “significant achievement”.

He said: “The Queen announced that the government will legislate to require government ministers to report annually on the number of jobs and apprenticeships created.

“This is a good opportunity to secure apprenticeship growth for all ages and in sectors relevant to local labour market skills shortages, matched with our proposals to ensure every apprenticeship is high quality and leads to a sustainable job after completion, career progression and with it rising wages and productivity.”

On plans to reform welfare to ensure people were either learning or earning, Mr Hughes warned that existing skills and employment systems operated “too independently”, leading to people slipping through the net.

He added: “Increasing apprenticeships, integrating employment and skills services for better outcomes, achieving full employment and, in the words of Her Majesty, realising our ‘productive potential’ needs strong and empowered cities, which is why Niace supports the announcement today of legislation to continue to devolve powers through elected Mayors across England.”

John Allan, the national chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, said the measures in the employment bill would help fill the skills gap, but that the issue was “not only about the number of apprentices”.

Mr Allan added: “The aim must be to make our apprentice system the world’s best, matching in quality to that offered in Germany, and offering a rewarding vocational alternative to academic routes.

“The only way to significantly increase the number of apprentices is to improve take-up among the UK’s 5.2m small businesses. This requires government to make it crystal clear what the benefits are, and what support is available.

“They must be affordable, have standards based on current industry practice, and the quality of training must give confidence to employers that apprenticeships will produce the skills they need for the long term.”

Malcolm Trobe, deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), has raised concerns about the “two immediate issues” facing college leaders, which he claims were missing from the speech.

He said: “There is a looming crisis in both funding and recruitment which must be resolved in order to ensure that colleges have the tools with which to do the job.

“If these critical issues are not addressed, the structural changes planned by the Government may not have the desired effect, and the entire education system will be placed under enormous pressure. The situation is particularly severe in post-16 education which has already been heavily cut over the past five years.

“School and college leaders already do and will step up to the plate on raising standards but they will need the staff and funding to do the job.”

A spokesperson for the Confederation of British Industry welcomed the government’s commitment to growing the number of apprenticeships, but said the focus should be on quality as well as quantity.

He said: “Annual reporting on progress will help focus minds – but if employers are to step up to the challenge, then government must deliver on apprenticeship reform.”

Provider support plea as ‘full employment’ efforts welcomed

Government efforts to achieve “full employment” have been welcomed by the Association of Colleges (AoC) and Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), but both groups have called for more to be done to support providers.

Martin Doel, chief executive of the AoC, said the legislation proposed in the Queen’s Speech clearly demonstrated “the government’s commitment to rebuilding the economy through professional and technical education”.

He added: “The full employment and welfare bill highlights their dedication to the creation of 3m apprenticeships; a challenging target which can be achieved if the Government and others can persuade sufficient numbers of employers to recruit an apprentice.

“We hope that the provision for Jobcentre Plus careers advisers in schools will help young people to find out about all their options, particularly those in college, as well as giving them a full explanation of what an apprenticeship is and the career opportunities they provide.

“The cities and local government devolution bill may provide new opportunities for colleges but only if they are able to tailor even more qualifications to the local job market, helping to create a pipeline of skilled people ready for employment.”

Stewart Segal, chief executive of the AELP, said: “We welcome the statement in the Queen’s Speech that legislation will be brought forward to help achieve full employment and provide more people with the security of a job.

“We believe the aspiration for 3m more apprenticeships can be achieved without risking the quality of the training under the programme.

“We are making a series of recommendations to the government on what changes are required to stimulate more demand from both employers and young people, while agreeing with the skills minister that apprenticeships should remain all age, all level and all sector programme.

“We hope to see more of a drive towards an integrated approach to skills and employment provision, including the promised expansion of the Troubled Families programme, as a proven means of securing more sustainable employment for people in Britain.”

Click here for more on the Queen’s Speech from the AoC and AELP.

ETF sets out stall for new professional body

The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) has launched a new professional membership body for FE practitioners.

The creation of the Society for Education and Training (Set) follows the demise of the Institute for Learning (IfL), which transferred its legacy and assets to the ETF in November after running into financial difficulties.

Set’s £63 annual membership offer will include direct and indirect access to development opportunities and face-to-face and online communities that share best practice and support with research, an ETF spokesperson said.

She added refreshed membership levels and enhancements to Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS) status would also be available — with a plan to push the number of QTLS status lecturers above 20k in the next three years.

Further benefits are expected to be announced in the coming months, although membership will not be compulsory.

Tim Weiss (pictured), ETF director for strategy, quality and research said: “We want the society to bring members clear added value to their practice, so that being a member speaks for itself in terms of a commitment to professionalism, to ongoing development, and to the sector.”

The responsibility for QTLS was transferred to the ETF when the IfL closed, with members automatically joining the ETF’s Professional Membership Service.

David Russell (pictured below, left), ETF chief exective, said it had been “consulting over the past six months to inform the vision and strategy for the new professional membership service.”

And while Set is currently supported and hosted by the ETF, its aim is to be self-sustainable and for membership subscriptions to fully fund the provision of member benefits in the medium to long term.

However, it has already faced criticism over its £63 membership fee — the same as the IfL’s at the time of its transfer to ETF.

Freelance interim FE manager Jayne Stigger (pictured below) said: “For the majority of poorly paid staff in FE the fee probably is too much. And compared to the amount of CPD available free and online, I don’t yet see the value of spending £63 a-year to join an organisation that appears to be moving us back in time rather than supporting the new initiatives that have sprung up during the wilderness years.”

She added: “My status within my field of expertise is my track record, my employment record, the impact I have had on the colleges I have worked for and the staff and learners I have been responsible for — not how many times I have sat through a prescribed series of CPD activities.”

An ETF spokesperson said: “We recognise that affordability is important and will be offering the payment option of monthly direct debits to allow members to spread the cost.”

FE Week understands the Set chair, chief executive and board members, as well as members of the practitioner advisory group, are expected to be appointed in time for full operation by the autumn.

Ofsted denies ‘jumping gun’ with Bolton College GCSE criticism

Ofsted has denied “jumping the gun” on an impending funding condition after a report appeared to criticise a college that fell from a ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’ judgement for failing to meet it.

From August, any learner aged 16 to 19 on a study programme with a grade D in GCSE English or maths has to be enrolled on a GCSE or approved iGCSE in those subjects until they reach at least grade C.

But 7,400-learner Bolton College was reprimanded by Ofsted in its latest inspection report because tutors “do not ensure that learners with a GCSE grade D successfully improve their qualification to a GCSE A* to C grade”.

FE consultant Phil Hatton, from the Learning Improvement Service, said: “The requirement to study GCSE for existing students with a D does not become a funding obligation until 2015/16, so in that sense if they are taking other qualifications a college is acting within agreed funding guidelines.

“The way it is worded in the report there is therefore an element of ‘jumping the gun’, however, inspectors could have made a judgement around a college having low expectations for raising the development of English and maths skills of their students.”

But an Ofsted spokesperson insisted the upcoming changes had “no bearing” on the report.

She said: “As per current Skills Funding Agency conditions, Ofsted assesses whether FE providers are supporting students who do not have a good pass in English and/or maths GCSE to work towards achieving these qualifications or an approved interim qualification as a ‘stepping stone’ towards GCSE.

“Where inspectors find students are not effectively supported in doing so this will be reflected in our inspection reports and judgements.”

The inspection result comes less than a month after FE Week research highlighted how the proportion of colleges and independent learning providers (ILPs) ordered to improve by Ofsted was on the rise. Of all the 57 general FE colleges, sixth form colleges and ILPs inspected and reported on between January 1 and May 5, 33 per cent were given a new grading at level three (requires improvement). For the same period last year that figure stood at 17 per cent of 64 inspections.

Nevertheless, in Bolton’s inspection report, Ofsted said the college had too few learners who were successful in achieving their main learning goal, and that the proportion of apprentices achieving their qualification within the planned time was inadequate.

It also said not enough learners studied GCSE English and maths qualifications and criticised verbal and written feedback to learners, as well as quality assurance interventions and the performance of tutors.

College principal Marie Gilluley (pictured) said the current Ofsted inspection framework was “very vigorous”, and said the college’s results were considered to “require improvement” despite being “around the national average last year”.

She said: “Our apprenticeship provision last year, where it was delivered by sub-contractors, was not good enough. We have been working for some time on a plan to improve our results in this area and have terminated all partnerships with poor success rates.

“Success in English and maths is hugely important for learners future prospects in the labour market, and we are delighted that teaching, learning and assessment for foundation English has been graded as ‘good’, with the majority of learners progressing to ‘higher level English courses or employment’.

“We are obviously disappointed that Ofsted judged us overall as requiring improvement but we are already working on our plans to improve and we are confident that
very soon we will return to being overall good.”

Phil Hatton, former Ofsted inspector and FE consultant

As a former Ofsted inspector, FE consultant Phil Hatton has probably seen some of the best and worst practices that teaching can offer.

He’s very keen to talk about his experiences — whether that’s the freedom of having left an organisation you’ve been part of for years, or the glee of being able to give others a glimpse of what goes on behind the curtain, it’s hard to tell.

“You get a feel for what a college is like very quickly,” he says.

“Sometimes you walk in somewhere and you just get this feel that there’s something very wrong.

Back from left: Hatton’s brother Steve, Hatton. Front, from left: Hatton’s brother Matt and mum Bridget, in Ireland, 1995

“You can’t put a finger on it, but to give you an example, there’s one college I was at recently, and it had a brand new building. It was absolutely gorgeous.

“But the classrooms had glass windows into the corridors and as we walked along this whole corridor, I’d never seen so many bored faces on the students.”

Hatton’s exposure to poor teaching started long before his Ofsted days — his secondary school, Bishop Thomas Grant School in Dulwich was, he says, “probably the worst in the country” at the time.

“Of course you didn’t realise how bad it was then,” says Hatton, aged 59.

“When it came to GCSEs, they didn’t let you do more than five, and me and my friend did ten each — but that was only because our parents went to see the head and threatened to pay for the extra exams.”

Hatton and the friend in question then became the first students in the 16 years since the school had opened to go to university.

Hatton’s parents, Sean and Bridget, emigrated from Waterford, Ireland, in 1950 and both found work at the Victoria and Albert Museum, helping to set up exhibitions.

It was an incident while he was growing up on a council estate in leafy Dulwich that first sparked an interest in inequality, he tells me, when he and his brothers applied to join the local Scout group and were asked which school they went to.

“And when we told them, they said ‘Oh, are you’re Catholic? Well you can’t join, we’re Church of England [CofE] only’,” says the Bromley dad-of-two.

“And it must have been just this local Scout troupe, because the Scout movement generally is very anti that sort of thing.

“But all the other boys on the estate were in it and we weren’t allowed and it was the first time I ever realised there was a difference between being Catholic and CofE.”

His next brush with inequality changed the direction of his life dramatically, when he tried to get a place at university to become a vet, after visiting the family farm in Ireland.

“I applied to the Royal Veterinary College in London,” he says.

“And at interview they said ‘We’ve looked at your application, who in your family is a vet? You don’t mention your mother or father being a vet’.

“And I said ‘well they’re not’, and they said ‘what about your uncle? Aunt? No? Then why do you want to be a vet?’”

Without family connections to explain his interest, Hatton’s application was dismissed.

“In the end I went through clearing and managed to do a medical physiology degree but I was at the time pretty devastated,” he says.

At university Hatton found a novel way to earn extra cash — writing the poems in Hallmark greeting cards.

“I’ve seen some of them are still around — they were awful,” he says (but sadly tells me he can’t remember any of them off the top of his head).

Following his degree, inspired by his university lecturers, he decided to go into teaching and found a job at the London College of Fashion, teaching applied science in the form of trichology (the study and science of hair), where he was told he was also expected to teach hairdressing.

Hatton writing an inspection report in 1997, with help from son Patrick

The experience would serve him well as an inspector, because he says, “it’s given me an insight into what makes good teaching”.

He became involved in supporting educationally disadvantaged learners, at the college, before moving on to become a senior science lecturer at North West Kent College — where he met his now-wife Carol — and then becoming deputy head of the department of food, hairdressing and community studies at Barking College.

It was during his time at Barking that he moved into part-time inspection for the newly-created Further Education Funding Council (FEFC), which he says, was prompted by “seeing how variable different colleges were”.

“And I think my own experience of having a really rubbish schooling without realising and thinking I could have done a hell of a lot better if I’d had decent teachers was slightly behind it,” he says.

“I was also intrigued as a staff development thing — if I could get into other colleges and see what they did I might learn what we should be doing.”

Anyone who’s worked with the ALI would say it was easily the best inspectorate

In 1998, Hatton became a full time inspector with the Training Standard Council and in 2001 moved with the changing inspection regime into the Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI), an organisation he clearly has a lingering affection for.

“Anyone who’s worked with the ALI would say it was easily the best inspectorate,” he says.

“David Sherlock, who set it up, would say ‘if you’re inspecting it for us, tell the people how to put it right’ — so he had a very different attitude to Ofsted.

“They had a very negative attitude about people feeding back how to put things right — that’s changed with the requires improvement grading and putting inspectors in afterwards to make sure it changes, but that’s taken a very, very long time.”

The ALI was absorbed into Ofsted in 2007, with many of the inspectors making the
jump too, a move Hatton says was not popular with everyone.

“When I went along to the first meeting the inspectors were saying how disappointed they were that us ALI types had been allowed in because they didn’t think we were very bright,” he says.

“I pointed out that running or working in a college with tens of thousands of learners was very different to being head of a primary school with a few hundred pupils.”

And it’s these differences which seem to give Hatton pause for thought over the new unified common inspection framework.

“There’ve been six different inspection frameworks I’ve worked to over the years and every single one of them has got 80 to 90 per cent the same — it’s not that big a change,” he says.

“But I don’t honestly see why you have to have some of the behavioural type stuff which is very school specific — it’s important in schools because you do get schools with a reputation for bad behaviour, but it’s inappropriate for the FE sector, where we’ve got all the different ages.”

He adds: “But it helps keep one inspectorate, and I can’t help feeling that’s behind it — I was asked by a couple of Labour figures if I thought Ofsted was too big, so I think things might have been different if Labour had won the election.”

In 2013, Hatton left life as an inspector behind, and started his Learning Improvement Service consultancy.

“My work now is a lot more rewarding in that people can be totally and utterly honest with me because it’s confidential and so rather than coming across something in inspection, you can find what’s wrong and then hopefully you’ve got a year to sort it out.

“Some things are so easy to get right — if you’re teaching there might be three things you’re doing that could be corrected the next lesson, but that will have a big impact.

“You don’t do that for Ofsted, you might spot some good practice and look at that but you don’t look at little things people could put right very easily.”

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It’s a personal thing

What’s your favourite book?

Ulysses by James Joyce, which to me is one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century. It captures Dublin in the early 1900s. Reading it for the first time when I was 16 opened up a different style of writing and imagination to me

Hatton’s parents Sean and Bridget on their wedding day in 1949

What do you do to switch off from work?

I travel to completely switch off, leaving the internet alone so that I can’t be distracted. Some of my best moments have been seeing whales and swimming with dolphins. I am a season ticket holder at Crystal Palace and attend every home match along with my best friend from school days. To chill for a weekend evening I love eating a well-cooked meal, followed by the theatre or a concert in London

What’s your pet hate?

There’s a few. Inequality including the aspects in FE that have been missed by the current inspection regime, such as too few women in engineering or men in childcare, low expectations and people who interfere with things that are working (particularly politicians who want to make their mark rather than to change things for the benefit of young people)

If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would it be?

I would like Michael Collins, one of the architects of the Irish Republic and a larger than life character, John F Kennedy and Nelson Mandela, because he showed such forgiveness against those who made his life absolute hell. I would want to know if they would have led different lives if they could have given advice to their 11-year-old selves.

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

I wanted to be a vet, working with large animals in a rural setting

UTCs take eight spaces in list of 50 worst for absence

Eight University Technical Colleges (UTCs) have been listed among England’s worst providers for overall absence.

The Department for Education statistics, for last autumn, show how Elutec, in Essex, is the worst of the UTCs with a figure that put it at eighth in the list of shame among providers which recruit pupils aged five to 15.

Its 14.5 per cent is based on the total number of days missed as a proportion of the total number of days it was possible for pupils to attend during the term.

The figures come just days after the doomed Black Country UTC was hit with an Ofsted inadequate result with a report that outlined poor attendance and behaviour, as reported on feweek.co.uk.

A spokesperson for the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, the organisation behind the UTCs model, said all UTCs monitored absence “very closely”, adding: “Where it is persistent they work with external agencies, as well as meeting with students, parents and carers, to try to improve poor attendance which is often linked to wider issues.”

However, Professor John Howson (pictured above left), managing director of DataforEducation.info and a fellow of the University of Oxford, said the figures raised questions about the UTC intake.

Source: DfE statistics. Autumn term 2014

Professor Howson told FE Week: “It’s difficult without going and looking at them but one has to raise the question in some cases, some comprehensive schools may be steering certain 13-year-olds towards making a change at 14, and they may not be the ones they identify as pupils they want to stay until 18.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Equipping young people with the skills they need to secure great jobs is a key part of our plan for education and studio schools and university technical colleges are instrumental in this.”

He added: “They are new schools and are particularly effective in helping pupils who may not be suited to more traditional education to succeed. We expect all UTCs and studio schools, as with all schools, to promote good attendance and take action to tackle persistent absence.”

It is not the first problem revealed to have been affecting UTCs specifically, and comes after FE Week revealed in April that six of the existing 30 UTCs were operating at up to just 33.3 per cent of their capacities.

Two UTCs — Hackney and Black Country — are due to close at the end of this year, but this did not stop the Conservatives launching their manifesto at Swindon UTC in April.

Nor did it stop Prime Minster David Cameron singing their praises in front of a packed House of Commons on Wednesday (May 27).

During a Parliamentary debate following the Queen’s Speech, Mr Cameron was pushed by Aldershot MP Sir Gerald Howarth (pictured above right) to praise Lord Baker, the former education secretary who is a key proponent of UTCs.

Sir Gerald said: “Will my right honourable friend also pay tribute to our noble friend Lord Baker, the former secretary of state for education, who has launched a fantastic campaign to promote UTCs?

“They offer a fantastic opportunity to young people who are not necessarily the most academic but who have technical skills, tapping into that resource, which this nation has, and providing skills.”

Mr Cameron replied: “My honourable friend is absolutely right. I pay tribute to Lord Baker of Dorking. He was a huge enthusiast for education reform when he was secretary of state, and he has kept that going all his life.

“UTCs are a great success — indeed, we launched our election campaign in one in Swindon. They help to complete our education system by providing what was missing: a high-quality technical education for children who would benefit from it.”

There’s another Budget soon — be sure your sector voice is heard

My last column was all about the politics of FE. I got a few encouraging responses publicly on Twitter and some, let’s say, agitated responses from people concerned about what the general election results will mean for our sector.

To be clear, I am done talking about the latter and want to focus now on encouraging the sector to maximise the influencing opportunities now open to us.

For a few years now, prior to major events like the annual Budget and Autumn Statement, Her Majesty’s Treasury invite organisations, the public and Members of Parliament to make written representations for consideration as part of the policy development process. The Treasury says this is part of “open and transparent policy-making” to attract “original and innovative ideas”.

I want to convince you that sending in a response on behalf of your organisation/provider is a valuable few hours of your time this week.

Talk about how you are helping your local employers create jobs and how you’re helping unemployed people gain the skills and experience to access to the labour market

FE and skills is under-represented

Countless inches in this very newspaper have decried the lack of knowledge and representation resulting in bad policy. There seems to me to be two ways around this. A more diverse Parliament and Civil Service would be excellent but is probably a longer term ambition. Second, we take every opportunity possible to, as educators, inform and inspire interest, passion and understanding with decision makers.

Information released under a Freedom of Information request that lists the names of organisations and Members of Parliament who have submitted representations ahead of two years worth of Budgets and Autumn Statements show that, surprisingly, the education sector as a whole doesn’t currently engage in this process.

Businesses, energy companies, retail associations, finance organisations and professional associations feature on the list. I think the permanent addition of colleges and providers on that list would be a great start to raising our collective presence and influence in policy.

Devolution

The Conservative Party has made clear its ambitions to devolve more powers to cities. Core and Key Cities are setting out what areas of public policy they want more control over. Education and skills features to varying degrees, ranging from full planning and funding to co-commissioning models through Local Enterprise Partnerships. The Treasury, as the government department with a key role in this agenda, will want to see how providers are already interacting with local employers and the impacts those relationships are having on employment, progression, social inclusion and productivity. As national organisations, we can only ‘fly the flag’ to an extent so responses from local employers will be a powerful addition.

Keep it short and namedrop

Ahead of the Budget in 2014, the Treasury received 171 written representations. For the Autumn Statement later that year, 194 were sent in by organisations and Members of Parliament. This means we face tough competition for attention. Written representations should be short, at two pages maximum, and should, as far as possible, offer solutions to problems that will interest Treasury officials. We know the Conservatives want to strengthen our economy and achieve full employment, so talk about how you are helping your local employers create jobs and how you’re helping unemployed people gain the skills and experience to access to the labour market. ‘Full employment’, ‘productivity’, ‘helping small businesses’ and the like are things to talk about.

CC your MP

Whether or not you have a relationship with your Member of Parliament, it is a good idea to send your Treasury representation to them. It’ll be a good tool to form a relationship with a new MP should you have one in your constituency and will be the kind of ammunition/evidence that MPs like to have to hand when in discussions with Ministers.

I hope I’ve convinced you to make a submission. They have to be submitted by Friday (June 5) and details on how to submit can be found on the Treasury website.

Apprenticeships — it’s about learning and it’s about time

Bill Lucas was a keynote speaker at an international conference in Sweden on vocational education and training recently. Here he shares his arguments and reflects on some broader themes for FE globally.

Before we can even begin to think about pedagogy in FE and the wider skills sectors we need to stop and think much more deeply about the wider goals of vocational education. What are these? How are they impacted by the nature of the particular subject or vocational pathway or shaped by the particular needs of learners?

Delegates liked a model we have developed which looks at different kinds of vocational education by emphasising the medium through which the work is expressed. For example, three categories distinguish vocational education that focuses on working with. Firstly, physical materials — bricklaying, plumbing, hairdressing, professional make-up. Secondly, people — financial advice, nursing, hospitality, retail, and care industries. And thirdly, symbols (words, numbers and images) — accountancy, journalism, software development, graphic design.

Names of subjects and occupations vary across the world, but I hope that the principle is clear.

Such groupings are, inevitably, somewhat arbitrary and in most vocational learning there will be a blend of all three. But FE teachers tell us that the model helps them to make sense of the kinds of pedagogies that can be appropriate in different vocational domains — their signature pedagogies.

Thinking like this is just the beginning of a longer process of pedagogical exploration. With my colleagues at the Centre for Real-World Learning I have argued that there are six important outcomes of vocational education which have to be considered before we can start to think about the methods of learning and teaching which we choose to select for students.

Firstly, routine expertise. This is at the core of working competence. It involves skilled routines and the ability to carry out skilful activities to a satisfactory standard.

It’s about time that we focused on learning as we seek to dramatically to expand apprenticeships

Secondly, resourcefulness. Beyond the familiar and routine, expert practitioners are able to bring to mind knowledge that is applicable to new and unfamiliar contexts.

Thirdly, is craftsmanship, which is about the pleasure, pride and patience involved in doing a ’good job’.

Functional literacies, fourthly, make up a slightly broader category than the functional skills of literacy, numeracy and ICT. There are live debates today about how best to teach these kinds of functional literacies.

Fifthly, business-like attitude. This might manifest itself in behaviours such as punctuality, orderliness, willingness to put in necessary time and effort, and displays of customer service that exceed client expectation.

Finally, wider skills. The sorts of ‘wider skills’ deemed important are many and varied, and are described variously as ‘broader skills’, ‘competencies’, ‘dispositions’, ‘capabilities’, and ‘habits of mind’. Employers regularly call for employees with wider skills such as problem-solving, team-working, resilience, entrepreneurialism etc in addition to high-level basic skills.

Once this broader set of desired outcomes is agreed it becomes much easier to think about the range of learning and teaching methods required. It’s a long list which includes, among others, these methods: by watching, through deliberate practice and seamlessly by blending virtual with face-to-face. Doubtless FE Week readers will be add their own, too.

When it comes to apprenticeships, there is something else to bear in mind. For with such explicitly work-based learning pathways there are always going to be three key features: the fact that they require both on and off-the-job learning; their social context — that they require learning from and with others within a community of practice; and the requirement for visibility of learning processes — as an integral aspect of the first two and as an increasingly acknowledged feature of effective learning wherever it takes place.

As I started by saying, it’s about time that we focused on learning as we seek to dramatically to expand apprenticeships across the world. Meetings like the one in Stockholm reaffirm the importance of researchers, practitioners and policy-makers spending time thinking hard about pedagogy for all aspects of vocational education, especially the one on which I am explicitly focusing here — apprenticeship.

A vision for the future of prison education

Providers who deliver adult education and skills training in England’s prisons are expecting their contracts to end next year, but the PLA wants these extended for a year. It is one of a number of proposals put forward by the organisation, as Alexandra Marks explains.

This June, as we prepare to mark the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education Adult Learners’ Week, the PLA, which comprises 23 organisations with expertise in offender learning, hope its vision for the future of prison education will be realised.

Our vision is simple: we want education in prison to deliver the outcomes we all want to see, less crime and better, more productive lives for prisoners and ex-prisoners.

We invite the new government to achieve this by making some key changes to the current Offender Learning and Skills Service (Olass) contracts this summer. Overhauling the system completely would be expensive and disruptive for staff and learners.

So we recommend that the current contracts are extended for a further year. But we want Ministers to make some important improvements, as set out in our briefing The Future of Prison Education Contracts.

Our eight recommendations offer ways to enrich the curriculum by increasing partnership working with the voluntary sector; to support prisoners to realise their potential and progress with further and higher education; to innovate through technology; and to improve the quality of teaching.

We welcome the increased numbers of learners achieving basic English and maths qualifications.

FE leaders, managers and teachers working in prisons do an extremely important but difficult job with limited resources

However, more flexibility in the Olass contracts would encourage prisoners to progress to higher levels and would lend a greater focus on provision that leads to longer-term rehabilitation outcomes. For example, many prisoners have negative associations with learning; approximately half of prisoners have no qualifications and 42 per cent were excluded from school.

To reach out to such prisoners, many of whom who don’t currently engage in education, non-accredited courses in the arts, social development and informal learning not only ‘hook’ people in, but develop attitudes and thinking skills that can help them manage behaviour, desist from crime and gain employment.

Our solutions are geared towards making prisoners less likely to reoffend. They are based on our members’ collective experiences of the current system and consultation with prison staff and the four providers delivering Olass education in prisons (Weston College, The Manchester College, Milton Keynes College and A4e). We have also listened to education managers, teachers and, most importantly, learners themselves.

FE leaders, managers and teachers working in prisons do an extremely important but difficult job with limited resources.

With improved access to digital technologies, teaching resources and continuing professional development, prison education departments could more closely resemble colleges in the community.

PLA is also focused on ways we can help develop education staff and enable them to network with each other. Our member, The Education and Training Foundation, works to support the sector by offering resources on its Excellence Gateway online hub (http://offender-learning.excellencegateway.org.uk/).

How far is education currently supporting prisoners’ rehabilitation? We know it has the potential to do so. People with qualifications are 15 per cent less likely to commit crime after leaving prison.

However the current system is not doing enough: 58 per cent of prisons inspected in 2013/14 were judged by Ofsted as ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ for learning and skills provision.

None was ‘outstanding’. However, there are positive signs of change on the horizon. In December 2014 education provision at women’s prison HMP Askham Grange, run by The Manchester College, received an ‘outstanding’ grade.

It was soon followed in January 2015 by the education at HMP Hollesley Bay, run by A4e. The inspections reveal that what sets these prisons apart is strong leadership, a positive learning culture across the prison, and an ambition for prisoners to succeed in turning their lives around through education.

We believe other prisons can follow their lead with greater flexibility from the contracts. We urge Ministers to take on board our eight solutions to achieve this aim, and we invite our colleagues in the sector to work with us to keep striving for excellence.

High profile football referee honoured at old college

Former international football referee and Rotherham College alumni Howard Webb has been recognised by the Association of Colleges (AoC) for the role that FE played in his career.

He was presented with a Gold Award at a ceremony held by his former college.

“I’m absolutely thrilled and delighted to have won, it’s not something I expected,” he said.

Mr Webb studied French at Rotherham from 2005 to 2007 to be able to speak with more international players.

“For me, just having a better chance of communicating with overseas players gave me an advantage in my career,” he said.

Mr Webb, who officiated 500 Premier League and Football League matches, the 2010 World Cup Final and 2010 Champions League Final, blew the final whistle on his 25-year career in 2014.

He’s now the technical director of the Professional Game Match Officials Board.

Main pic: Ken Barrass (left), chair of the Corporation at Rotherham College, presents Howard Webb with his the gold award. Also pictured is AoC regional director for Yorkshire and the Humber Caroline Rowley