The takeover of welfare-to-work provider A4e will not lead to frontline job losses, buyer Staffline has confirmed — but backroom posts from both companies could be in jeopardy, it said.
The £35.4m deal, reported by FE Week last month, will make Nottingham-based recruitment service firm Staffline one of the biggest Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Work Programme contractors, the company claimed.
A spokesperson for Staffline said: “We’re fortunate in that they’re operating in completely separate contract areas.
“No frontline staff job losses. But over the next three months work will take place to review back office jobs — but we don’t really know what the results will look like yet.”
She confirmed that existing Staffline jobs, as well as those from A4e, would be considered under the review. Staffline currently employs around 2,000 staff and A4e has roughly the same number.
Staffline’s recruitment division, which had a final 2014/15 Skills Funding Agency (SFA) contract worth £540k, was rated as good by Ofsted last month. Its Eos Works division was allocated £955k of European Social Fund (ESF) cash by the SFA while Avanta, a £65m acquisition last summer, had an SFA allocation of £8.2m and was rated as good by Ofsted last month.
A4e had a £30m SFA allocation and posted pre-tax losses of £11.5m in 2012-13, but had climbed to a pre-tax profit of £2.2m for the year ending March 2014.
The buyout, which includes the transfer of £11m of A4e debt to Staffline, will mean Staffline has a presence in half of the DWP Work Programme’s 18 regions as a prime contractor — through its Eos and Avanta divisions, and now A4e — and six further regions as a sub-contractor.
The firm claims the takeover will give it access to learners through 150 sites throughout the UK — which, it claims, is the largest geographical reach of any Work Programme contractor.
Staffline chief executive Andy Hogarth said the company was “delighted” by the acquisition, calling it “an exciting milestone in Staffline’s growth”.
It is understood that Avanta and Sheffield-based A4e will be “integrated” and rebranded PeoplePlus over the
coming months.
The move comes three months after 10 former A4e employees were sentenced for fraud and related offences after falsely claiming to have found work for learners who were unemployed or did not exist. Its control systems were since said to have been improved.
Andrew Dutton, chief executive of A4e, said the buyout meant “starting a new chapter in the history of A4e”.
The University and College Union (UCU) has said it hopes FE Commissioner Dr David Collins’ city-wide review of vocational education under way in Nottingham could end “wasteful and unnecessary” competition between local providers.
The review, revealed exclusively by feweek.co.uk this month, could lead to the merger of two of the city’s biggest colleges, New College Nottingham (NCN) and Central College Nottingham.
The Nottingham branch of the UCU said the review was an “opportunity” — and one that “should not be wasted” — but said alternatives to a merger should be explored.
The review follows grade three Ofsted inspection results for both NCN and Central over the last year and the revelation, reported in FE Week on April 20, that New College Nottingham (NCN) plans for a multimillion pound campus revamp had to be saved by £12m funding from the local authority and Skills Funding Agency (SFA).
The first of four planned meetings, chaired by Dr Collins and involving governors from both colleges and both principals, is believed to have taken place on Monday, April 27.
A Nottingham UCU spokesperson called on the commissioner to ensure the review “enables meaningful participation in the review process by all stakeholders.”
He said: “UCU has long argued that the FE structures in the city need rethinking.”
He branded competition between providers in the city “unnecessary and wasteful”.
However, he said UCU was “neutral on the issue of merger”, but added combining NCN and Central was “only one option” and said “alternative propositions should be explored”.
“Research shows mergers do not necessarily result in better run, more stable colleges or better quality provision,” he said.
“This is particularly the case when mergers are undertaken for reasons of financial expediency.”
He added jobs should be protected in any possible merger. He also called for the review to put in place “a collaborative strategic structure”, which he said, “would be in a better position to pool resources and expertise”.
“The review is an opportunity for a broad collaborative effort that restores the democratic dimension of FE,” he said. “It is an opportunity that should not be wasted.”
Dawn Whitemore (pictured above left), principal of NCN, and Malcolm Cowgill (picture above right), principal of Central, issued a joint statement to their staff on April 28 confirming that Dr Collins had launched the review.
It said that both colleges had agreed to “participate actively” in the review and “share information and data openly”.
A spokesperson for NCN also told FE Week: “The review has been on the cards for some time and has been championed by Nottingham City Council.”
She added: “Both colleges welcome this review and will continue to work in partnership with all key stakeholders throughout the process.”
A Nottingham City Council spokesperson confirmed the council was involved with the city-wide review.
Stockport College has hit back at questions over its role as sponsor of Stockport Technical School after the announcement it would close a year earlier than planned.
More than 20 learners will have to be found schools elsewhere at which to complete GCSEs and other qualifications after the 14 to 19 free school announced it would close at the end of this academic year.
It was previously reported by FE Week that the school, which opened in the Wellington House office block in September 2013, announced in March it would close its doors in 2016, citing disappointing recruitment levels caused by the lack of a permanent building.
But principal Philippa Ollerhead this month confirmed the school would in fact close at the end of 2014/15 instead — forcing 22 Year 10 pupils to transfer to secondary schools in the area to complete their GCSEs and other qualifications, with an option to complete vocational courses at Stockport College on a day release basis.
And although Ms Ollerhead claimed the Education Funding Agency (EFA) had failed to find the school a home for its final year of operation, triggering the decision to close earlier than planned, she said ongoing problems at Stockport College, which was branded inadequate in October 2013, “didn’t help”.
“Stockport College is our sponsor and they have had a myriad of problems themselves and that hasn’t helped, but they have done the best they can,” she told FE Week.
But Simon Andrews (pictured), Stockport College’s third principal since January 2014, said the 7,000-learner institution, which has a current Skills Funding Agency allocation of £7.5m, was making “big strides”, having raised its grade to “requires improvement” following an inspection in December.
He said: “Our focus is on the wellbeing and progression of every student. We are working proactively with the Stockport Technical School to ensure all students have been placed in local schools.
“Stockport College has not failed in its duty as a sponsor. Issues outside the scope of the college, such as the failure to secure a permanent home for Stockport Technical School and the politics of local secondary schools have contributed to the situation.”
An EFA spokesperson said it had agreed to the school trust’s request to close as it was “no longer viable in the long-term”, but claimed it had found a permanent location for the school in 2014 with which its ruling trust decided not to proceed.
She added: “We and the trust are working with the local council to ensure alternative school places are found for pupils, ensuring a smooth transition.”
Ms Ollerhead said that although the former Hillcrest Grammar School site in Stockport was originally identified as a potential future base for the school, low pupil numbers meant the large building was “not a financially viable option”.
Awarding organisations have spelled out their “rigorous” anti-fraud measures for private security industry training after it emerged that 129 security guard licenses were set to be revoked after malpractice.
An undercover BBC investigation aired in March alleged staff at Ashley Commerce College (ACC), in Ilford, were prepared to sit exams for students training to work as security guards. It sparked a wider investigation into “fraudulent practices” at ACC by awarding organisation (AO) Industry Qualifications (IQ), which led this month to it revoking 251 level two and three door supervision and CCTV surveillance qualifications it had certificated for the provider.
And sector regulating body the Security Industry Authority (SIA) has now told FE Week that it had “started” revoking 129 licenses given out to security guards who passed the IQ courses at ACC.
Raymond Clarke, chief executive of IQ, said: “We carry out rigorous checks on providers. We actually visited ACC three times in the year leading up to these revelations, because of the high volume of qualifications they were giving out and they seemed to be a very good provider giving high quality training. Unfortunately, there was a back office there which we did not know about that was feeding a lesser number of fraudulent exams alongside the genuine ones. We passed on information about all 251 qualifications that were given out fraudulently to the SIA and police.”
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said it was “working closely with the SIA” to investigate alleged fraudulent activity and the Home Office said it “will be informed of the outcome”.
ACC was unavailable for comment.
Other AOs that run door supervision and public space surveillance qualifications, provided by hundreds of independent learning providers and a number of colleges across the UK, said they had strict security measures in place. A spokesperson for Pearson said it carried out “unannounced spot checks on test days on providers offering our BTec security qualifications”.
Terry Bloor, Highfield Awarding Bodyfor Compliance quality assurance manager, said it placed “undercover mystery shoppers on full courses” and held “regular, unannounced audits”.
A City and Guilds spokesperson said: “We work closely with the SIA and Ofqual to make sure all centres use best-practice training methods.”
Dr David Hutchinson, deputy managing director of NOCN (previously the National Open College Network), said: “You have to be careful who you use as a training centre and we are very particular about checking them out.”
A Scottish Qualifications Authority spokesperson said it enforced “robust quality assurance processes”.
And IQ published proposals for regulatory reforms on its website following the ACC investigation. Its paper called on the SIA to issue licenses to trainers and directors/owners of private security industry training providers.
It added the SIA and exams regulator Ofqual should keep a record of centres and staff found guilty of malpractice for reference.
An SIA spokesperson said: “Any extension to the regulatory powers of the SIA would require primary legislation by parliament.”
An Ofqual spokesperson declined to comment on the proposals, but said: “We have been notified of this incident [involving ACC] and are keeping it under review.”
A long-forgotten collection of key documents hidden away in the dimly-lit basement of a Somerset lodge for nearly half a century before their chance discovery led to pride of place at a London institute — it’s certainly not your average FE and skills storyline, writes Paul Offord (pictured above).
New College Telford governor Graham Briscoe
But it’s one that stars New College Telford governor and Association of Colleges Governors’ Council member Graham Briscoe and a huge collection of records at the Institute of Education (IoE) that charts the history of FE dating back to the early 20th Century.
Almost 900 boxes stuffed with document upon document charting the development of FE over the last century would have been lost forever if it wasn’t for Mr Briscoe’s quick-thinking.
The collection of books, official reports and other archives had been part of the library at the former FE Staff College in Coombe Lodge, Somerset, which was a national training centre for sector leaders for more than 40 years from the 1950s.
The documents were stored in the basement and largely forgotten about after Coombe Lodge, which was built in 1932 by the Bristol-based cigarette-manufacturing Wills family, closed as a training centre in 2002 and was turned into a privately-run conference and wedding venue.
Graham Briscoe, who was a governor at that time for Coleg Gwent, in South Wales, and City of Bath College, came across them in 2008, during a lunch break while working there as a Saturday conference porter.
He recalled how his quick thinking, after the building changed hands in 2009, saved what is now known as The Coombe Lodge Collection from being dumped.
“I had been developing a portfolio of housing association non-executive directorships and governorships at colleges after retiring (as operations support leader for insurance company the Royal Sun Alliance Group), but had nothing to do on a Saturday, so took on the conference porter job and was fascinated to find the archive in the basement,” said Mr Briscoe.
Pamphlets published by The Association of Technical Institutions and Association of Colleges for Further and Higher Education
“I used to spend my lunchtimes opening up boxes and reading through the papers, as I’m a bit of a heritage nerd like that.”
But he said: “I heard that the new company that took on Coombe Lodge was going to have a clear-out and throw all the boxes in a skip. I thought ‘No you’re not’ and got to work on a rescue plan.”
Mr Briscoe asked his friend Mick Fletcher, who was head of training at Coombe Lodge from 1989 until 1995, to accompany him to the basement to check through the boxes and make sure they were worth saving.
“The library at Coombe Lodge basically went when it closed as a training centre and I wasn’t aware of how many of the records had been retained,” said Mr Fletcher.
“It was really fortunate that Graham knew they were there. I saw straight away what an important historical record they were for our sector and wanted to help.”
Paul Grainger, co-director of the centre for post-14 research and innovation at IoE
Mr Fletcher, a regular FE Week expert and member of the Policy Consortium, put Mr Briscoe in touch with the IoE, in London, which agreed to take on the archive that includes many FE-related local authority and government documents and reports published by the now defunct Association of Technical Institutions (ATI) and Association of Colleges for Further and Higher Education (ACFHE) dating back to the turn of the 20th Century.
Mr Briscoe also secured around £500 funding from the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) to fund the hire of a white Ford Transit van and petrol to transport the boxes to the IoE.
“After getting the funding, I decided to do the move myself as quickly as possible,” said Mr Briscoe.
“I had to carry each box up a winding turret-style staircase from the basement and across a corridor to a door where the van was parked.”
He added: “There were far too many boxes to fit in the van, which I then drove to London, so I had to do it in two journeys over two weekends. I was really happy to save what’s a very important archive of the history of the sector.”
Staff and students from the FE Staff College pictured around 1963
Paul Grainger, co-director of the centre for post-14 research and innovation at IoE, took charge of the collection after it was dropped-off by Mr Briscoe.
He said: “It took Dr Norman Lucas [IoE senior lecturer in post-compulsory education] and I a month to sift through the material and discard duplicate documents and books that we already had at the IoE.
“It was just the two of us, shirt sleeves rolled-up and late evenings, with books stacked in our offices, on the stairs, along the corridor. The health and safety people had the heeby jeebies.
“When we had whittled it down to a room full, we got it transferred to a small room at the library to await cataloguing.”
The IoE then secured another £12,000 funding from LSIS to pay professional librarian Stephen Pickles to catalogue all the items, before the collection was finally unveiled to the public in March 2013.
Main pic: Reporter Paul Offord in the Institute of Education vaults checking out a book from the Coombe Lodge Collection
Coombe Lodge in the 1960s credit: John Hucklebridge
Archives show how history repeats itself for the sector
Reporter Paul Offord delved into the Coombe Lodge collection to see what had changed in the sector over the last century and, in many, cases what had not.
They say history repeats itself and I was struck by a sense of déjà vu as I read through FE-related pamphlets and books dating back 100 years.
So many of the documents I discovered in the IoE library vaults, which were mostly published by Association of Colleges predecessor bodies the ACFHE and ATI, dealt with issues that I have become familiar with at FE Week.
A pamphlet documenting an ACFHE summer conference in June 1977, for example, indicated that problems with poor careers advice for school students about FE are nothing new. The historical report said that “there would be advantages in colleges establishing closer ties with schools, so that the content of college courses reflecting employers’ needs could be better understood”.
Sector leaders who think recent FE-related government reform proposals, for example aimed at encourage more employer-involvement with apprenticeships, have come too thick and fast for financially-constrained providers could also take solace from an ACFE booklet published in 1979.
Further Education Trust for Leadership president Dame Ruth Silver
The document, called Education and Training of 16 to 18s, warned that “government must be resistant to temptations to make changes where none are needed. There can be a high price to be paid for disruption of established systems”. It also noted a reluctance on the part of employers to support FE training schemes and concluded that “breakthroughs to achieve a positive employer attitude… may not be achieved without promotion by central government”.
Further Education Trust for Leadership president Dame Ruth Silver, who trained at Coombe Lodge in the 1980s and signed-off around £13,000 of funding for the Coombe Lodge Collection while LSIS chair, said the lesson for policy-makers was to take note of the cyclical nature of FE. “I was delighted that the collection was saved because it charts our sector’s history. People don’t realise how much of what we are talking about now has been done or discussed in the past, “she said.
Another example of a recurring issue faced by the sector is the question of what balance should be struck between teacher-based and technology-enhanced learning. Skills Minister Nick Boles provoked controversy by announcing in January that he would not be enforcing the FE Learning Technology Action Group’s recommendation that 10 per cent of all course content should be delivered online. James B Thomas had an earlier stab at addressing the thorny ‘teacher versus tech’ debate in a 1967 ATI pamphlet called Learning Packages for Technical Education.
A diagram illustrating how the 1967 learning package devised by James B Thomas would have worked
He proposed incorporating film slides, education TV, audio tapes and “teaching machines” into lessons and said it was “not a plan to replace lectures but a scheme to improve their effectiveness”.
And sector staff of today who feel frustrated by breakdowns in the government’s online data collection systems might take solace in how much more labour-intensive the process used to be.
A 1967 ATI booklet, called The Administration of Technical Colleges, said: “At certain times of the year, the 650 colleges have to ask small armies of young women to extract data from the records… count them and then to make marks on pieces of paper either by hand or typewriter. Once sent through, the authority has to use a small army of women to take the marks from the returns and make other marks to process them.”
It added that “if means could be found whereby the data in the college records could be extracted from them automatically, then indeed we should be getting somewhere”.
And a sobering picture of the sector, it staff and learners, emerges from the 1917 ATI yearbook. It said that many people associated with colleges had been “called up to join His Majesty’s Forces” to fight in First World War. “All the institutions in the Association have been affected more or less,” it said.
“The principals and governing bodies have done all that in them lay to answer the call of the country [by] providing the best men and as many of them as possible for the defeat of the common enemy.”
The ATI and Association of Principals of Technical Institutions also produced a pamphlet in 1938, in preparation for the Second World War, entitled Air Raid Precautions in Technical Institutions.
It said: “A blackout may be imposed at certain times. The memorandum is issued without prejudice to the question of whether or not ordinary evening classes should be kept up in the event of the outbreak of war.”
Trevor Gordon was the equalities officer at South East London’s Lewisham Council in the early 1990s when he was involved in a heated debate with senior officials.
He was about to make a point when his boss “devastatingly” cut him short, saying ‘Trevor, you can’t speak — because you’re just not qualified to speak’.
It is a memory that clearly still stings the 56-year-old FE management consultant, but it is one that drove Gordon back into education.
“I went to the toilet and cried my eyes out,” he tells me of the incident.
It prompted him to sign up for a degree in social sciences at London South Bank University having left FE in 1976 with a prized A-level.
But for the teenage Gordon, there had been just one ambition. When asked by the careers officer about his future career plans, Gordon said he didn’t care — as long as he could wear a shirt and tie.
Gordon in Spain last year
“I’d never seen black men in shirts and ties,” he says.
“I’d see them on the buses and the trains. I’d see them in the factories, but I never saw any black men in shirts and ties.”
Gordon was born in Jamaica in 1959, but he and his parents, Linford and Gloria, moved to England in 1961.
“Mum was a qualified nurse, but they wouldn’t let her do that, so she cleaned floors,” he says.
“Mum was from a very wealthy family. My dad was from a very poor family, and they eloped — it’s quite romantic – and then ran away to England together, but it was never going to work. And it didn’t.”
As the marriage ended, Gordon, then aged four, was put into care for four years, before he, brother Michael and sister Maxine went to live with their father.
Their mother left for America, where her qualifications would be recognised, and Gordon didn’t see her again for another 16 years.
She has since died, but Gordon says of their reunion: “I had a fantastic relationship with my mother. At the age of 24, I flew myself to New York and knocked on her door, and she fainted — it was a very emotional moment.
“From that point on it was as if we had never been apart. She was an awesome woman and she sat me down, and explained what happened and I understood. So we had a wonderful relationship.”
But his mother’s experience of prejudice was one he shared at school where, he says, he “suffered serious institutional racism”.
From left: Gordon’s grand-daughter Sarai, aged 10, daughter Iman, 25, grand-daughter Tianna, two, and daughter Naeemah
“I had a very bright brain, but I was told, ‘Gordon, your people don’t do maths – they’re only good with their hands’” he explains.
“At that time racism was unreal, just unreal — it wasn’t education, it was containment, and we were radicalised.
“So school for me was just a laugh and a joke, just playing to the stereotype — ‘Well okay if that’s what you think I am that’s what I’ll be.’
“We were the sons and daughters of the immigrants who came after the war to clean up the mess — they weren’t about to educate us.”
At 15, he was thrown out of school but was allowed to come back to sit his exams.
He says it was one of the things that spurred him on to go into education.
“I wanted to make a difference to that whole experience,” he says.
After leaving school, Gordon started college at Kingsway Princeton (now a part of Westminster Kingsway).
“FE turned me around,” he says. proudly.
“I had a brain and college engaged it — so in one year I got six O-levels and an A-level.”
At 18, with first daughter Sharlene, now 36, on the way, he got a job as an agent for printing companies and alongside this took on voluntary youth work with at-risk children.
“I thought I had grown up poor, but these kids were dirt poor,” he says.
“And it was an eye-opener as well, because two of the children I worked with, and I really fell in love with — Michael and Natasha — died.
I had a very bright brain, but I was told, ‘Gordon, your people don’t do maths – they’re only good with their hands’
“Their mother went out raving and the pilot flame on the old immersion heater went out and they were gassed. I will never forget that.”
Following the tragedy, Gordon decided to pursue a career in youth work and local government and got a job managing a community education centre in Clapham, then as the manager of three centres in Kensington and Chelsea.
By the time he’d got the council job in Lambeth, he had met wife Paulette, and the couple had two young daughters, Iman and Naeemah.
“Paulette was lovely, a wonderful person,” Gordon says of his wife, who supported his decision to return to education, despite the financial difficulty it caused the family. Sadly, she died from cancer in 2011.
After seven years part time at South Bank, which included an MSc in sociology, law and social policy, Gordon re-entered the world of FE in 1994, this time as a head of equal opportunity services at Lambeth College, “and never looked back”.
“I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. I loved education,” he says.
After seven years there, he moved to Croydon College as a vice principal.
However, after a year there he began to be feel “disillusioned” with senior management. And he doesn’t mince his words about the bits he wasn’t so keen on.
Gordon speaking at the Newbubbles Learning Revolution Conference in March
“It took me a bit of time to realise that it’s a small world, and there’s a lot of nepotism, and a lot of institutional sexism at that time as well — and that hasn’t changed, looking at the sector, as much as it could have done — and it’s still suffering from the same old racism in parts.
“So yes, I have watched it change, but I have also seen some not so good stuff as well — I have worked with worked with some really wonderful people who have inspired me on my journey, but equally I have met some really God-awful principals.”
His particular bugbear, he tells me, is the “small cohort of principals who have never taught, and they have come up through the finance route”.
“I think if you did some research you would find a correlation between those colleges that are not getting outstanding, and the fact their chief executives have come up as finance directors,” he says.
“We went through a panic in the sector where all of a sudden money became the priority.”
After leaving Croydon, he set up Gordon French Associates, offering teacher training and equality and management consultancy, a role which has taken him, he says, into around 300 colleges nationally, and given him a brief stint as dean — principal — of a newly-set up college in Saudi Arabia.
Now, back in the UK, Gordon says he’s “going to continue to do what I do, which is teach teachers, drive them to outstanding”.
“I am going to continue to do my quality and diversity work, which I love with a passion,” he says.
“And I am going to continue to agitate and let people know that FE is an awesome sector.”
But he also admits, “deep down, I’ve always wanted to be a principal”.
“But the sector kind of shut me out, because I speak my mind, and because I have been a consultant,” he says.
“And also I think in FE there’s a glass age ceiling and I think once you hit 50, if you haven’t made principal by then, there’s a good chance you won’t.”
But that isn’t going to stop him trying he tells me, in a burst of confidence that shows how far he’s come since that rebuke at Lewisham Council.
“You give me a college, any college in this country, and in three years I will make it outstanding,” he says.
“I am not blowing my own trumpet — I am quite shy, I am quite reserved, but being able to make statements like this comes from my faith, and it comes from knowing that what I am saying is true.
“So I will also occasionally apply for the odd principalship — I still have a good few years left, and I still love FE with a passion, I really do.”
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It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
The Bible — I absolutely love it. It’s my inspiration manual. It’s important to me because it’s allowed me to deal with a lot of the situations I’ve been through in a way that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise
Gordon with Baroness Doreen Lawrence, receiving the 2002 Stephen Lawrence Award for Education
What do you do to switch off from work?
I listen to music, that’s my real kind of coming down. I try to avoid the TV as much as I can these days, and my music ranges from classical piano to jazz, reggae, hip-hop, a bit of rock. That’s essentially how I chill, with a glass of wine. And I love travelling. I think as an educationalist, there are three kinds of education. There’s your book education, your academic and vocational stuff, there’s travelling, and the third is just growing up working class, in a working class community, which is the kind I call ‘street’ education
What’s your pet hate?
Racism and nepotism, particularly phenotypic [skin colour] racism. I have fought it all my life, and I hate it with a passion. And I have seen a lot of nepotism in my career as well, I have seen a lot in FE, and I think it’s one of the reasons why we have in some instances the quality of managers that we have — because they haven’t been recruited to posts based on experience and ability. Unfortunately, education is high in nepotism
If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would it be?
I would like Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. And the reason is that I can’t think of three other men of colour who have had so much influence on the world, and I would just like to sit down at a table with them and just talk about the world — it would be awesome
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I won a child scholarship at the age of eight to Guild Hall to act. I was in a play at school and then they put it into the local civic centre, and I was seen by some people by Guild Hall who said they would give me a scholarship. The play was called The Reluctant Dragon — and I was the dragon who didn’t want to set fire to people. It was interesting, because nobody saw me because I had a mask on, so nobody saw a black kid under there. But my dad wouldn’t let me go. He said the ‘only black person on TV is Sidney Poitier — and I’m not sending my son to train to be an actor because he won’t have a career’
A group of Merseyside college learners had their eyes opened to the world of poverty as they left their first class facilities behind and headed to Cape Town to coach football to disadvantaged children, writes Billy Camden.
Being met with school settings of wooden huts and dusty waste grounds covered in rubble and rubbish was a stark contrast to life at home for a team of Hugh Baird College sport students and lecturers.
The Hugh Baird team get swamped by primary school children upon arriving in Cape Town
But despite the “worse than expected” facilities, the group — who visited the South African city of Cape Town to coach football to pupils — were greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm and smiles.
“We were treated like celebrities,” said sports lecturer Lyndsey Jamieson.
“It is very unusual for them to see people from our background and girls with long blonde hair which was a big fascination for them.”
The team of four BTec sport and fitness students included Leo Hanley, aged 27, Greg Page, 19, Anthony Jones, 16, and Stephanie Bond, 18, who all coached structured football sessions aimed at developing the youngsters’ skills while also developing their English language skills.
Some of the most deprived schools had classes of 40 students, with not enough tables and chairs to seat the children. Students had no PE kits and many participated in bare feet against the vicious terrain, which came as a shock to the Hugh Baird students.
“The kids there have got so little but they are so happy with it. It really puts in perspective what we take for granted here,” said Leo.
Greg gives expert advice to a South African pupil.
“But I did love it out there. It was a once in a lifetime experience of going and seeing different kids, seeing how they live and the different cities in a different part of the world was a real eye opening experience.”
And the trip had a career defining influence on Greg, who wants to be a sports coach.
“It has had a massive impact on me since we got back. Looking at how they live out there put into perspective how we live here and how appreciative they are compared to us,” he said.
“Seeing how the children benefited from us and the joy they got from it, I would definitely say that the trip has cemented my goal of wanting to be a coach.”
It wasn’t just all work as the group had plenty of opportunity to experience Cape Town as tourists — they surfed, went diving with sharks, sunbathed with penguins and took in the views of the Cape from Table Mountain.
But the experiences with the African children are the main memories to be taken back.
Lyndsey said: “I am extremely proud of the perseverance of the students despite the long days, heat, language barriers, facilities and sometimes lack of rest.
“They have learned a lot about the world they live in, the problems that some people face just to survive and how well-off we are in our educational setting and facilities.”
The trip was made possible through HQ Coaching’s, ‘Engage for South Africa’ project, where UK volunteers are arranged to teach or coach sport in poverty-stricken schools.
Main pic from left: Steph Bond, sport lecturer Lyndsey Jamieson, Anthony Jones, Greg Page, Leo Hanley and trip organiser Mike Carney.
Sport students at Stoke on Trent College are using their knowledge to aid the rehabilitation process for people who have survived strokes.
Each week, members of the Stroke Association have been attending the college’s sports academy to benefit from the learners who provide one-to-one support aimed at improving mobility and fitness.
Sallie Tranter, aged 17, who studies a BTec level three extended diploma in sport and exercise science, said: “I have never worked with people who have had strokes before but it is really nice to see them develop more confidence as the weeks go on.”
Services have included devising individual exercise programmes as well as health checks, such as blood pressure, height, weight and BMI.
Anthony Brannen, assistant director for sport and public services at the college, said: “It has been a huge learning curve, but one that will remain with them [the students] in their chosen careers.”
Main pic: Stoke on Trent College sport student Sallie Tranter supports stroke survivor Gavin Yorke
Five Hartpury College students found the formula for success as they clinched gold, silver and bronze medals at a chemistry olympiad.
The learners — who all study A-level chemistry — had to complete a challenging written test of chemical knowledge in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s annual competition.
Rachel Johnson, aged 18, was the Gloucestershire college’s star performer as she clinched a gold medal.
First year students Nick Gallagher, 17, and Ly Xuan Bach, 18, achieved silver medals.
Ka Hin Ng, 17, also achieved silver, while Oliver Brown, 17, won bronze.
Hartpury chemistry A-level lecturer Sion Wall said: “For five students to win medals for their academic performance up against the brightest young chemistry talent in the country is an incredible achievement, especially when two of the students are only first years.”
Main pic: Hartpury’s chemistry A-level students who achieved medals in the chemistry olympiad. From left: Ly Xuan Bach, Oliver Brown, Rachel Johnson, Ka Hin Ng and Nick Gallagher
