The SFA has been entrusted with meeting the government’s target of 3m apprenticeships starts in England during this Parliament. Peter Lauener outlines measures to help reach the goal.
One of the government’s key manifesto commitments is to create 3m apprenticeships by 2020 in England. Last week, Richard Harrington MP was announced as the Prime Minister’s apprenticeships adviser to help the government achieve this commitment.
Creating 3m apprenticeship starts in the next five years is a challenge. But it’s achievable and meeting the target is an economic imperative. My team will be supporting the Prime Minister’s new apprenticeships adviser in his drive to secure greater engagement of employers in delivering more apprenticeships.
Providers must continue to improve the quality and responsiveness of the training to better meet employer needs
If we are to meet this Parliament’s 3m target, it is essential that apprenticeships are really owned and driven by employers.
More than 1,200 employers in over 100 sectors are already involved in the Trailblazer programme, which sees groups of employers designing new apprenticeship standards themselves. The aim is to increase the numbers and sectors involved, giving greater control to more employers, focusing particularly on new occupations where there have not been apprenticeships before.
And on both apprenticeships and traineeships, we need to work closely with all our partners to make both programmes a success.
There is a strong role for both FE colleges and independent learning providers in helping to stimulate demand from employers for apprenticeships. They must continue to improve the quality and responsiveness of the training to better meet employer needs.
But we also need more employers to get involved in apprenticeships for the first time. We have a successful base to build from — the number of workplaces involved in apprenticeships has grown from 173,600 in 2010/11 to 240,900 in 2013/14.
But there is definitely room for improvement — this still represents less than 14 per cent of the employer population.
As well as securing more apprenticeships in the private sector, the public sector has a key role to play.
Skills Minister Nick Boles has announced proposals for public bodies to lead by example and recruit more apprenticeships.
Everyone involved in apprenticeships will support the ambition for we want apprenticeships to be seen on an equal footing with university as routes to a successful career. That’s why the government is increasing the number of higher and degree apprenticeships, allowing apprentices to gain a full Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree while working and employers to shape the graduate/post-graduate level skills they need.
It is important that young people make informed choices about their future careers and are made aware of all of the options available. The National Careers Service ensures that young people are provided with advice about the benefits of and routes into apprenticeships and traineeships.
Achieving the 3m target will increase productivity growth in the economy by raising the overall level of skills and ensuring that the skills of the workforce best match the needs of employers.
The SFA will be doing everything we can to support the achievement of this critical ambition.
Ofqual recently outlined its plans for closing the unit databank as part of its ongoing work to withdraw the regulatory arrangements for the Qualification and Credit Framework (QCF). Andrew Gladstone-Heighton outlines his concerns.
Just to make it clear at the outset; I’ve been in the sector long enough to remember the introduction of the QCF (which means my FE career has now outlived two qualifications frameworks), so I’m fully aware that the QCF is in need of some reform.
However, from reading their plans, there are a number of things that need to be taken into consideration about what the proposals outlined will mean for the sector.
I do agree that removal of some the restrictions of the shared unit databank (and the regulatory arrangements of the QCF in general) will enable awarding organisations (AOs) to provide more creative and innovative responses to employer and learners needs — this is where AOs really add value to our qualification framework.
However, we have to bear in mind that this has been published in the middle of an ongoing Ofqual consultation, and following a period of intense and ongoing reform for vocational qualifications. Having previously set out their aspiration to withdraw the QCF rules in the 2015/16 session; I can’t help but get the impression that these reforms are being rushed through.
As they are currently set out by Ofqual, any changes or restrictions to AO accessing the unit databank may, in my opinion, lead to a situation where qualifications may have to be redeveloped as the shared content within them may be restricted to the original unit submitting body, should they choose to withdraw their content.
I can’t help but get the impression that these QCF reforms are being rushed through
While it’s currently unclear as to whether this would mean the qualification would have to be resubmitted to the Ofqual register (with the new Qualification Accreditation Number that this usually entails), it may mean that learners and other stakeholders will face further changes to qualifications they are interested in studying.
There may be disruption in the qualifications available to learners as some component units of qualifications are no longer ‘available’ as shared units.
Also of concern is a potential increase in the volume of units available, as a version of each (now shared) unit becomes owned by each AO that offers it. Transferability between qualifications (a key concept of the QCF that I strongly support) may become harder to achieve as a consequence, as they will no longer be made up of transferable common content. This will place additional burdens on providers, AOs and employers when agreeing to and recognising any prior learning.
I have concerns, shared by SquareOneLaw, that the disentanglement of ‘ownership’ of shared and co-created units currently on the unit bank introduces the potential complexities posed by possession (or otherwise) of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). While it is acknowledged that IPR cannot be retrospectively attached to a product, there is no doubt some AOs may feel somewhat aggrieved that their hard work and financial investment channelled into shared unit development may now not be rewarded with reciprocal rewards, should some AOs choose to withdraw their content.
It is highly unlikely that small to medium-sized AOs have the appetite or the resources to fight one another over ownership. Ideally, we would want an industry-wide solution with perhaps contractual agreements between AOs and/or an open source arrangement, perhaps with Ofqual’s facilitation.
Another thing that is currently unclear is to what extent Ofqual’s reforms have been linked to the various funding agencies’ plans for qualification approval. From what I’ve heard, Ofqual is working with the relevant agencies where appropriate, and it would be a missed opportunity to align a new qualifications and unit funding system with the removal of shared units and withdrawal of the QCF rules more widely.
All of this may seem quite geeky and technical to the layperson, but if we are to secure confidence in vocational qualifications as a rigorous and responsive high quality alternative to academia with employers, learners and policy makers, then I fear the some of the unanswered questions above may undermine this noble aspiration.
The people have voted, the government has been formed and now the policies must be enacted. Martin Dunford outlines how the skills sector should respond to the challenges ahead, and how sector funding must also be looked at.
The AELP national conference is the first opportunity we have had to debate the plans that the new government has for employment and skills programmes.
Whatever your own political views, the result of the General Election means that we have some clear understanding of what is coming in policy terms and even the same Skills Minister in Nick Boles.
Our preference is for early confirmation of key policies and the changes that they will entail, and then hope for a period of real stability in terms of policymaking.
The reappointment of Mr Boles is very encouraging because, as City & Guild’s ‘Sense and Instability’ report last year showed, responsibility for skills has been bedevilled by numerous machinery of government changes and an endless succession of ministers. Nevertheless, announcements in the last couple of weeks around budgets and programme growth show the focus on government spending will mean that overall budget levels for employment and skills will be under constant pressure over the next five years.
Many of the key proposals AELP made in our own manifesto are reflected in this government’s plans but as always the devil is in the detail and it is how these issues are implemented that will be the key factor on whether these policies will be successful. It is important that the organisations delivering these programmes are involved in the policy development and definitely the implementation of those policies.
The ten points in the AELP manifesto still remain our key drivers and the highest profile policy push has been the drive to increase the numbers of apprenticeship starts. Employment and skills were also very high profile in the election campaign and they were one of the first things the Prime Minister listed in his acceptance speech and at the first Cabinet meeting. These policy areas have arguably never had such a high profile and it’s the efforts of providers and employers that have got them to the top of the agenda. We know that apprenticeships will be at the core of the challenge for us but providers will also be involved in the delivery of full employment and the new approach to getting young people into work.
The challenge has been underlined by recent announcements about £900m cuts from next year’s budgets and deferral of growth proposals. But if we are to be at the centre of these policies’ implementation, then we have to be positive and constructive about what we need to deliver for employers and individuals. There is now an understanding that spending on employment and skills is an investment and not a cost to individuals, employers and the UK economy but we know that investment will be under huge scrutiny. We know there will continue to be a drive to deliver more for less but we need stability of policy, longer term contract commitments and more realistic funding to be able to take that longer term view and develop plans that build confidence in our sector.
Contract reform means addressing the Skills Funding Agency’s guidance that providers over-deliver at their own risk, ie they won’t necessarily get funded for any additional delivery. To achieve 3m apprenticeships, more delivery has to be encouraged by providers with a proven track record.
We have a real opportunity to build on the growing confidence employers and learners have in vocational pathways. Young people and their parents are now considering different routes to high level skills.
We have to build on this change and working with government, we can together continuously improve delivery, outcomes and penetration of the employer market.
Women from across the FE and skills sector were at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills conference centre in Westminster on June 17 for the WLN annual conference. Sara Mogel gives an overview of the event.
Women leaders in FE were told by Anne Doyle, journalist, author and former director at Ford Motor Company, to ‘embrace and exert our women power’ in a reflection of Michelle Obama’s recent assertion about girl power.
Anne, a renowned international speaker on women’s leadership, was addressing at this month’s annual conference of the Women’s Leadership Network entitled ‘Women mean Business’.
She compared women leaders in the UK with the rest of the world and pointed out to delegates that only 20 per cent of UK leadership positions were held by women whereas Russia has 43 per cent and China 38 per cent, which underlined the business case for having more women in leadership roles.
She outlined strategies women can use to ensure they are given a fairer chance of leadership and gave some practical advice from her own career.
At a time of great challenge in the FE sector the need for women leaders to both step forward and be given the support, especially by men, to do so was well set out by Anne as she challenged delegates to ‘dare to lead’.
At a time of great challenge in the FE sector the need for women leaders to both step forward and be given the support, especially by men, to do so was well set out
Delegates also heard from Julia Von Klonowski, director of education for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Oracle, and her daughter Lauren Best, PR manager at the Lawn Tennis Association, about the power of being a role model where they discussed their views, sometimes differing, about not just being a role model but current good and bad role models.
During the day workshops and other speakers covered a wide range of topics including confederations, growing apprenticeships in challenging time, developing an online profile, delivering organisational change through wellness, managing and developing talent, being a connected leader and meeting the challenges currently facing the sector.
There was also a chance for delegates to get a taste of coaching in the WLN’s ‘speed coaching’ sessions throughout the event.
The WLN’s Star Award for 2015 was also announced at the conference. This annual award, sponsored this year by AA Projects, went to an outstanding woman leader in the FE sector.
The recipient was Sue Middlehurst, principal and chief executive of Grimsby Institute Group. In the award citation, Sally Dicketts, WLN chair, said Sue had “come through the ranks of FE, from teacher to principal, in both the North and the South East of England”. She had also seen life from the other side of the fence as a well-respected inspector for both the FEFC and Ofsted, said Sally.
Throughout Sue’s career she has developed and demonstrated a coaching style that has seen her managers and staff succeed through empowerment and trust. She has done this while taking on some of the most challenging roles in FE and in particular has made her name in successfully managing change.
She is known for saying ‘how it is’ and not hiding difficult messages and because of this is respected and trusted both within the sector and outside of it by stakeholders. She is steadfastly unwavering in her ‘learner first’ ethos which underscores her passion for the core business of FE and the importance of the sector for people’s life chances and choices.
This was reflected in Sue’s acceptance speech where she urged delegates to be true to their values in all they do.
The conference was attended by more than 120 women leaders and future leaders, including 40 aspiring leaders who were the recipients of conference bursaries from the Education and Training Foundation.
The principal of a large and well-established FE college writes about life at the top — the worries, the hopes, the people and the issues they have to deal with every day.
Britain’s supply of skilled workers may “vanish into history” if looming budget cuts in FE and the unchecked expansion of universities are allowed to continue.
She adds that “unstable, inefficient, untenable and unjust” funding is destroying education provision for school-leavers outside of universities. But let’s not get into the ‘University or us’ debate (we’ll lose that one) and ask the government to think long and hard about the value of FE and ‘who pays’.
FE provides the bulk of the UK’s post-secondary training and faces collapse and the loss of a valuable source of professionals and technicians.
Whither lifelong learning?
Adult education and training funding has been in freefall for some years with millions fewer learners and forced redundancies — averaging more than 100 staff per college since 2010 and climbing. A 24 per cent cut is pending for 15/16 and we’ll see another double digit cut in 16/17 unless Osborne pulls a budget rabbit out of the hat and/or the Comprehensive Spending Review throws us a lifeline in October.
FE colleges — already under budget pressures — face a further threat if the government takes resources from the FE budget to fund its plans to expand apprenticeships. The last remaining vestiges of the Adult Single budget (other) will be raided to feed apprenticeships, moving money away from where there’s abundant demand to where money has to be spent on marketing and advisers to boost demand.
Some solutions
FE colleges are the best place for technical and professional training that is business-facing and rooted in the local economy.
The FE sector has taken more than its share of the austerity cuts. Many colleges are in deficit and selling off the family silver just to survive. Please support us.
And consolidation (aka merger) doesn’t necessarily solve anything — witness the financial blackholes in some of the bigger colleges.
And I don’t sense any pressure to make schools more effective and efficient. Why are there more than 1,100 schools in this country with fewer than 100 learners in their sixth forms? Where’s the value for money and what’s the quality and learner experience like?! Wouldn’t these learners be better served in FE and sixth form colleges which offer a wider range of courses which relate to UK PLC? This would save money and reduce over-supply.
Less money more freedom
Reduce hypothecated funding which leads to underspend or rushed work. We want freedom to follow demand, let the customer decide. They know best not ministers (or principals).
If the taxpayer won’t pay then we’ve got to get the customer (or their bosses) to, so extend FE loans to level two and adults 19+ and above uncapped.
You do it for higher education so do it for FE
Let us charge for maths and English — if they are that important, learners should pay. We have discretion to waive fees for those who can’t afford to.
Don’t give the money to employers — there’s a conflict of interest, let them use their own training budgets; and scrap nonsense schemes like the Employer Ownership pilots and put them into FE budgets.
Governments should also switch other training budgets for example those at the Department for Work and Pensions to education and skills to avoid waste and duplication.
Liam Byrne, Shadow Skills Minister, said Wolf’s report is a wake-up call for the “brutal neglect” of the UK’s FE sector. He also famously left the ‘there’s no money left’ note for the incoming Coalition government in 2010. That’s still the problem. Everyone says they love FE, but no one wants to pay for it.
Skills Minister Nick Boles has posed a series of hard questions for the future of FE and skills. But for Lynne Sedgmore they raise just as many issues about the minister and the government as they do of the sector.
It is unusual for a Minister to be as clear as Nick Boles has been about his priorities for discussion with the sector.
They are a good guide to the areas where government is focusing attention in relation to FE and each indicates the possible direction of change.
They also reveal some policy confusion and unhelpful assumptions.
The first question concerns the age at which vocational education should start — should it be 14 or 16?
It raises issues about the role of university technical colleges (and their half-brothers about which ministers rarely speak — studio schools and career colleges) as well as the role of FE colleges themselves.
The fact that most FE colleges currently undertake a richer and more complex set of missions, which inter-relate and can be mutually supportive, is routinely ignored
It is odd however because one might have thought that the question had been answered definitively by his colleague [Schools Minister] Nick Gibb who has only recently insisted that all pupils follow the academic path prescribed by the EBacc until age 16.
The insistence that all pupils study English, maths, science, a modern foreign language and history or geography, as well as moves to make GCSEs harder effectively squeezes out time for any serious engagement with vocational education. Is the question really still open or do ministers just not talk to each other?
The second question should quash any thoughts that the ‘Dual Mandate’ consultation was closely aligned with Vince Cable and might fall from the agenda when he fell from power.
Mr Boles asks exactly the same question. ‘Should colleges specialise?’ and to avoid any doubt asks whether some should focus more on ‘higher level skills’ and some on ‘training’ for those who have not had an ‘adequate education’.
Far from being novel, the Dual Mandate proposals reflect what appears to be the default option in Whitehall when considering FE — separate out higher level work into a limited set of high status institutions which are allowed to prosper: and retain a set of post-16 secondary moderns subject to ever more detailed central prescription.
The fact that most FE colleges currently undertake a richer and more complex set of missions, which inter-relate and can be mutually supportive, is routinely ignored.
The third question asks who should make decisions about any re-organisation; ministers, local enterprises or combined authorities. The answer ‘none of the above’, though perfectly reasonable, doesn’t appear to be contemplated. The question moreover is ominously silent about whether ‘making decisions’ is limited to approval of college proposals or prefigures a much more active set of interventions as seen in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland where there has been sector wide rationalisation.
Whichever it is, it is curious that a minister who believes passionately in the efficacy of markets should limit the choice to one of which public sector bureaucracy should dictate the re-organisation of independent colleges.
It also seems risky to contemplate wholesale structural change at a time of destabilising cuts in funding.
The final question asks whether we have the right set of qualifications and whether the government has ‘been prescriptive enough’.
It is hard to know where to start. Someone should take Mr Boles aside and point out the long and sorry history of failed government reforms to the curriculum — GNVQs, AVCEs, the Diploma, the QCF.
They should point out the slowly unfolding disaster of compulsory resits in GCSE English and maths; they should show him the massive degree of prescription embodied in the funding and eligibility rules set out in ever expanding documentation from the Skills Funding Agency.
Like FE college specialization, the reform of vocational qualifications has long been seen in Whitehall as magic bullet, but a true reforming minister should ask himself whether he really wants to see any more of this.
It all started with coffee for globe-trotting college tutor Dr Richard Spencer, whose acclaimed classroom approach has seen him meet Pope Francis and former US President Bill Clinton.
The Middlesbrough College head of science has been to The Vatican, in Rome, and Dubai having been listed as the only European teacher named in February’s 10-strong shortlist for the $1m (£636k) Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize, widely considered the Nobel Prize for teaching.
Bede College, a sixth form college in his home town of Billingham, County Durham, won an excellence in teaching biology Beacon Award during his 22-year spell there.
And 51-year-old Spencer, who plays piano and violin, has won a number of other awards, including two national STAR awards (FE teacher of the year and outstanding subject learning coach).
He was also awarded an MBE in 2010 for services to science communication and has involved his students with projects which have been presented at conferences and festivals across Europe.
But it all started with coffee back at Bede not long after he started.
“For most of my time there, my principal was Miriam Stanton, who was just brilliant at nurturing the staff,” explains Spencer, who started at Bede having completed a PGCE at Durham University.
Some students can be a bit shy at first with the dances, but they usually come round pretty quickly and 99 times out of 100 will get involved
“She encouraged me and all the other teachers to try different things out.
“I taught chemistry and biology A-level at first but switched 100 per cent to biology in 1997 and that’s when I really started to get into creative teaching.
“The one that started it off is something called the Mitosis Mamba —a dance that explains what chromosomes do in cell division.
“I remember I taught a very bright lad called Ben, but after trying to explain mitosis to him through practical work, a video and simulation using pipe-cleaners, he still told me ‘I don’t get it’.
“I started explaining how cells divide using my hands and fingers and told him: ‘It’s a bit like a dance’. Then I thought: ‘It could be a dance’.
“I remembered a Maxwell House coffee advert from when I was a child that featured a woman shaking a fist of coffee beans. It matched my actions well, so I found an old 1920s song called ‘There’s an awful lot of coffee in Brazil’, to do the dance to.
“I still do it with students today and you can see them shuffling around in exams remembering how it goes.”
Spencer as a baby
Spencer, known by his learners as Doc, has since created include the DNA Boogie, to the Jackson Five song Blame it on the Boogie, and The Heart Song, which explains the structure of the heart to the tune of Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.
He has also developed the Gram Stain Rap, which explains staining techniques to distinguish between different bacteria, the Meiosis Square Dance, which explains how sex cells are produced, and an animated pantomime video that loosely uses the story of Jack and the Beanstalk to explain different modes of nutrition.
“Some students can be a bit shy at first with the dances, but they usually come round pretty quickly and 99 times out of 100 will get involved,” says Spencer.
“Traditional teaching methods are still very important, but I find that it helps to think of other ways of helping students to learn.
“I bump into students 12 or 13 years down the line who can recall all the words and actions, which is nice, including my dentist.”
Spencer’s own interest in science is rooted in the same personal style of connection he adopts with his learners.
It came from his great uncle Eddie, who “lived around the corner” during his childhood and he “loved nature”.
Spencer in a science lab in 1994
“He used to take me out to a place called Saltburn [in North Yorkshire], which was a beach by a wood where you would see all sorts of animals,” recalls Spencer affectionately.
“He also bought me a book called ‘Animals of East Africa’ which fired my imagination.
“I got really into animals and nature and was lucky that my parents let me keep my own pets, mostly tortoises and budgies. I also bred butterflies and moths in a cage at my dad’s allotment — I think I was a bit strange.”
He moved briefly to Cardiff to study applied biology at the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology after his Billingham school days
“I had an offer to do a DPhil at Oxford University after graduating, but I don’t think I realised how prestigious it was, so turned it down,” he says.
“It’s crazy looking back, but I decided instead to do my PhD at the North East Biotechnology Centre instead, which was part of Sunderland Polytechnic.”
He lived in Sunderland in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but returned to Billingham in 1994 after marrying Elaine, now aged 52.
“We went to St Michael’s Roman Catholic Comprehensive School, in Billingham, but didn’t know each other very well as children. We got married within six weeks of properly meeting each other,” says Spencer.
He progressed from the PhD to post-doctoral research in Salmonella genetics at Sunderland University, where he was given the chance to lecture for the first time.
“That was how I got into teaching, because I realised that I enjoyed teaching more than research,” he says.
More than two decades at Bede followed before Spencer moved to Middlesbrough College in 2014, the same year he was named as one of the UK’s Leading 100 Practising Scientists.
Spencer learned in February that he had been shortlisted for the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize and was particularly excited to meet Pope Francis as a result.
He said: “It was an amazing experience, as I am religious. To me it comes down to a simple question of whether you believe or not. Religion can co-exist with science, as in my view you can never prove or disprove that God exists.”
Spencer was interviewed ahead of the award ceremony in Dubai on the BBC Breakfast television show, Good Morning Britain, Saturday Live on radio four and radio Five Live.
“I’m pleased if that helped generate some recognition for the FE sector, as I don’t think it gets the credit it deserves,” he said.
“Winning these awards has been great, but the most important thing to me has always been teaching and inspiring young people,” he added. “I didn’t think up the songs and dances for public recognition — the priority behind them all was always to find new ways of explaining complicated processes and making learning fun.”
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It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
Spencer demonstrating one of his dances to learners
The Go-Between by LP Hartley
What do you do to switch off from work?
Research my family history
What’s your pet hate?
Discourtesy
If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party who would it be?
Sir Anthony Carlisle, my distant cousin who was possibly the inspiration behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
