These are the political faces we’ve come to know in the world of FE and skills — but how likely are we to see them in the sector again after the General Election?
The good news for our current MPs is, at time of going to press, bookmaker William Hill said they were all odds-on favourites to win their constituencies.
But that doesn’t mean they can relax — other candidates are hot on their heels, and of course there’s no guarantee they’ll take up FE and skills posts after the election even if they do win.
Most likely to keep their seats in the Commons, according to the bookies, are Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne, MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill, and Shadow Junior Education Minister Yvonne Fovargue, MP for Makerfield, both with odds of 1/200.
Both won their seats with large margins in 2010, with Mr Byrne winning by a majority of 10,302 votes and Ms Fovargue with 12,490.
Next we have Skills Minister Nick Boles seeking re-election in Grantham and Stamford on the back of a 14,826 majority last time, Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna, MP for Streatham, with a 3,259 majority, Education Select Committee chair Graham Stuart, in Beverly and Holderness (majority 12,987), and Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee chair Adrian Bailey (majority 5,651), fighting West Bromwich West. They are all priced at 1/100.
Behind them, Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt has odds of 1/66 of keeping his Stoke-on-Trent Central seat where he enjoys a 5,565 majority. Looking slightly less comfortable are Business Secretary Vince Cable and Education Secretary Nicky Morgan. Dr Cable, who had a 2010 majority of 12,140, is still favourite to win in his Twickenham constituency but has shorter odds of 1/8. Ms Morgan, meanwhile has odds of 1/3 to win following a 2010 majority of 3,744.
So who are the favourites for next Business or Education Secretary? Wisely, William Hill said with such a high chance of another coalition, and so many possible line-ups, the the odds were impossible to calculate.
Walsall College’s supported learning football team shot to victory at the Association of Colleges (AoC) National Sports Championships.
The team of 12 learners with a variety of disabilities had to win a regional round to qualify for the finals of the Football for Students with a Disability tournament, which was part of the AoC sports championships that took place in Bath.
They then finished ahead of sides from Tyne Metropolitan College, in North Tyneside, Bridgwater College, in Somerset, Blackpool and the Fylde College, Lincoln College and Newham Sixth Form College, in London after winning four out of six matches and scoring 10 goals.
Their college’s sports development co-ordinator Mark Howard said: “The team’s commitment, desire and attitude have been fantastic and their performances were truly outstanding.”
Main pic: From left: Winning team members Matthew Hurd, aged 17, Dean Degville, 18, Ryan Williams, 17, Stuart Foster, 19, Tom Hargroves, 18, Shaun Eldon, 20, James Beardsmore, 17, Jonathan Garratt, 18, Michael Gladstone, 23, Omar Myers, 23, and Ryan McNicol, 17
A “technical error” in collecting Functional Skills papers has left learners across the country unsure whether their City & Guilds exam papers have been lost.
The glitch was said to be in the scanning equipment of un-named contractor, which meant papers were not uploaded to the marking system.
City & Guilds has ordered the contractor to rescan every single paper, but admitted originals may have been lost. It was not clear how many learners were affected.
N&B Training Ltd, based in Guildford, Surrey, is among the providers affected and is waiting for the results of around 40 Functional Skills maths, English and ICT tests taken by learners between January and March.
Sam Clark, owner, said: “We do not know if any papers submitted after March have been lost.
“We have been given all sorts of excuses from City & Guilds as to why we haven’t received the results yet. These range from changes in their policies and procedures; they have employed new markers and a whole cacophony of other excuses.
“Some of the results we are waiting for are for learners on our EFA study programmes. These are vulnerable learners for whom it was traumatic enough to sit the exams first time around. It will be devastating to have to tell them their papers have been lost and they need to sit the exams again.”
City & Guilds UK managing director Kirstie Donnelly (pictured below) apologised for the problem.
“I am deeply sorry for the difficulties and concerns this has caused our customers and our learners — many of whom I’ve been talking to over the past few days,” she said.
“I can reassure all of our customers that we are working extremely closely with our supplier to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.”
She said City &Guilds started using a new marking system for paper-based Functional Skills tests in January and had noticed a delay in results getting to providers by the end of the following, sparking an investigation.
She said: “Unfortunately, what became clear was that there had been a technical error in the supplier’s scanning system. This resulted in some papers not being uploaded into the marking system, which is why some results were delayed leading to concerns over missing scripts.
“At this stage, we cannot give a final figure because we’ve requested that our supplier rescan every single paper they have received. This way, we will be able to reconcile how many papers, if any, are permanently lost.”
Ms Donnelly said a number of papers had since been found, but that City & Guilds would work with providers to set up re-sits for those whose tests did not turn up.
City & Guilds said its online tests – which made up the majority of its Functional Skills offering – were unaffected.
Dame Asha Khemka issues an impassioned plea for FE and the benefits it can bring as the countdown to voting day nears its end.
There has been something quite worrying about the discourse in this General Election campaign.
Aside from the usual political point-scoring, we’ve seen something more sinister — an undercurrent of fear. Fear of the foreign, the stranger and the immigrant.
At a time when we need to be open to an ever-shrinking world and the opportunities international trade brings, we seem to be retrenching backwards into our small island.
People are afraid the stranger may take their job. They are sceptical about Europe, and worried about the impact of immigration on our already-stretched public services.
If we build a society based on strong employment, this anxiety will no longer exist. Instead of throwing rocks at the EU from the outside, let’s try and change things from the inside. And by creating the capacity to invest more in services and infrastructure — and a culture that doesn’t expect everything for free — people will feel less threatened by immigration.
It’s time to inject a sense of positivity back into our great nation, regardless of where we’re from, which side of a border we reside and where our political allegiances lay.
Our collective challenge is to create a country where opportunity flourishes and people can achieve their ambitions, no matter what their starting point.
Often it is easier for somebody from the outside to see the positives — and I believe the foundations are already in place.
We are an infinitely accepting and tolerant nation. I know, because this country and the people in it welcomed me and my family with open arms more than 35 years ago. Let’s not allow the rhetoric of fear to change that.
Rather than spending all our time trying to fix what isn’t working, let’s look at what does work and replicate that
Our country is one of promise and opportunity for those willing to seize it. I can testify to its life-enhancing opportunities. Let’s work together to instill in the next generation a sense of hope and create a society where people are willing to invest in their education — because in gaining skills, they gain their futures.
We are a society where people can be themselves and, because of it, innovation thrives and creativity flourishes. Let’s allow people to innovate, and have trust in those who work tirelessly in public service to put the interests of their communities first rather than meeting targets or quotas set from a distance.
Every day in my own college I see young people filled with hope and ambition, just like I was all those years ago.
I am a firm believer in allowing that ambition to flourish; in providing our young people with the skills and the personal tools to turn their dreams into reality.
Whether that is through apprenticeships or academic qualifications, our education system should be an enabler and not a blocker.
We start from the stand point that every single student has the potential to make a success of their lives and, in so doing, will go on to contribute to their communities and society as a whole. Positivity breeds positivity.
Our nation is filled with people who want to make a difference. I know because some of those people have helped me along the way. That, in turn, has made me want to give something back. The more we push people to the outside, the less they feel part of society and the less they give back in return. Negativity breeds negativity.
We have many challenges ahead — on controlling our borders, on balancing the books and repairing our fractured society.
We cannot achieve any of this with a deficit model. Rather than spending all our time trying to fix what isn’t working, let’s look at what does work and replicate that. Let’s learn from each other.
If there’s anything my many years in the FE sector has taught me, it’s that whatever our age, background or culture, we never stop learning.
They’re questions that will have kept many others in the FE sector awake at night. They include how do you guarantee good quality vocational education? How do you measure success when there’s no simple FE outcome measure? How are the steps to address low levels of literacy and numeracy working?
And then there’s how do you equip people already in the workforce with said skills and how much of an impact does it have to get those skills later in life, as opposed to when they were younger?
And, as director of the new Centre for Vocational Education Research (CVER), it’s going to be Sandra McNally’s job to help answer them.
The centre, based at the London School of Economics (LSE), was launched in March to start filling the gaping hole in research into the sector.
Historically there’s been much less research on FE than there is on schools and universities
As we sit in McNally’s airy office in the LSE’s buildings in Central London, I am struck by how mammoth the task facing her and her colleagues is.
“Historically there’s been much less research on FE than there is on schools and universities — there is some, but not as much really good research that gets published in really good places,” she says.
“The data hasn’t been as good either, but that is changing and we’re accessing data for the first time — linking the individual pupil data base to the national records which has only just become available and we’ll get even better data sets soon.
“One of our roles is to use that data ourselves to answer important research questions, and the other role is to try and get other people in the wider academic community to use the data and help facilitate that.”
Softly-spoken McNally, aged 43, is someone who is clearly more comfortable talking about her work than herself.
“I’m quite private and introverted,” she lets slip. But, she tells me, she’s “well-suited” to research.
“I didn’t decide to be an academic when I was young, but looking back I don’t think it’s terribly surprising that this is where I am,” she says.
“I’ve always been somebody who’s interested in research as well as current affairs and politics.”
Clockwise from top: from left: McNally’s half-brother Mark, stepmother Jackie, father John, sister Jennifer, brother Hugh, baby nephew Will, aunt Margaret, McNally and her sister-in-law Gill
And while most people wouldn’t connect those interests, McNally insists they’re vital to each other.
“Because I’m working in such an applied area, education and skills, you can’t do good work in that area without being clued into what’s going on around you,” she explains.
“You just have to be well informed and interested in what’s going on or you research won’t be very good.”
McNally was born in Dublin, and describes her childhood as “a very happy life”, with her parents John (a banker, who, McNally jokes, “retired a long time before the financial crisis”) and Annajane as well as siblings Hugh and Jennifer.
Sadly, Annajane died from breast cancer in 1987, when McNally was 15.
“That was obviously very painful,” says McNally.
“It does have an impact, losing a parent when you’re young has a profound impact on you for the rest of your life — I miss her hugely.”
“She was only 40, and at that time a lot people died from breast cancer. At that time it was at its peak in Britain and Ireland.
“But now, although it’s still as prevalent as it was the treatment has improved, people don’t die from it as often as they did back then.”
McNally with her father John last year
At 18 McNally went to Trinity College Dublin to study economics before moving to London to study an MSC in environmental economics at UCL.
“I absolutely loved London,” she says. “It was just so different from my life before that and it was the first time I became friends with people who weren’t Irish.
“I lived in international halls and I had so many friends of different cultures and doing different things — I just thought London was a fantastic place.”
After graduating, she found a job in Cambridgeshire at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology as an environmental economist.
Pretty soon however, she realised she was going to need to expand her research skills and started a PhD.
“Doing the PhD alongside my job was a challenge. Although my job was very related to what I was doing for my PhD so I think it really helped me do my job because before that, I wasn’t highly skilled enough to be a really good researcher,” she concedes.
“I was using the skills I was learning in college to do my work so it was a little bit like an apprenticeship — an unusual sort of apprenticeship.”
In 2001, McNally started her career in education research, when she moved to the LSE’s centre for economic performance and centre for the economics of education.
The move, she admits, was largely “opportunistic”.
“I really wanted to work in an environment where there was sort of a public policy issue and education just happened to come up,” she says.
“But working here is fantastic, the projects I was working on were really very interesting and gradually I came to know a lot about education in the UK.
“I think what I like about working in education is that as somebody who’s been through education yourself you can relate to a lot of the issues — that wasn’t the case when I was working in environment and agriculture where I didn’t really have much personal background of that although it was quite interesting.
McNally’s sister Jennifer, McNally and brother Hugh in 2013
“I do like the sense of focussing on a research area that I really believe is very important to try and improve things for people — that‘s a very attractive part of it.”
McNally now splits her time between LSE and the University of Surrey, where she started teaching two years ago — the first time in her career she’d had any interaction with students.
“That was quite difficult, actually,” she says.
“It was quite a steep learning curve and it is very strange to see the university from that other perspective and to engage with other people is a very different thing.”
McNally’s father remarried, and now has two sons in his second marriage, Mark aged 17, and Stephen, 19.
“It’s funny, when I’m teaching all my students stats in Surrey I think they all look a little bit like Stephen and his friends,” she says.
But, she adds: “It’s been very good as well — it’s nice to engage with young people and be involved in teaching.
“And it’s affected my research because you have to know subjects so well in order to teach them, I feel it’s probably deepened my own knowledge of the areas that I’ve been teaching in and also extended my knowledge because I have to go into other areas of labour economics apart from education.”
However, it looks like McNally will be scaling back her teaching to focus on the CVER, which will have be designing its first project at a steering group meeting in May — working out which of those earlier questions will be answered first.
Losing a parent when you’re young has a profound impact on you for the rest of your life — I miss my mother hugely
“We’re hopefully going to be designing an interesting programme of research,” she says.
“Initially we’re looking around few main themes. Like what are the returns on vocational education for individuals and society more generally? How do you improve quality? And what’s good?
“What are the broad benefits and how can you improve careers advice through what is a very complicated system?
“That’s about where we’re starting at and that will evolve over time.”
So what does she hope will come of it?
“Really good quality academic research — but that’s very policy-relevant and very motivated by what’s important to the country,” she says.
“I’d like the research to facilitate better, evidence-based decision-making at policy level and thereby improve things for people, especially for young people coming through the system.”#
It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. I like the character development of it — the main character is a portrayal of Tolstoy himself and I like that it tells you what he’s thinking and the phases he goes through in his life
McNally, brother Hugh, sister Jennifer, father John and mother Annajane
What do you do to switch off from work?
I read a lot and I like walking. And I watch TV miniseries — I’m watching Poldark at the moment and I love Downton Abbey and the Swedish ones like The Killing and The Bridge
What’s your pet hate?
I don’t like people who have long conversations on their phone on the train and speak twice as loud as they need to
If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would it be?
Seamus Heaney [Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet]
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I went through various phases, but I wanted to be a journalist at school and ran the school magazine and it was great experience. I suppose some of the research I do now uses similar skills
It’s more than five years since Ruth Sparkes first applied her FE and skills marketing knowledge to the sector’s use of Twitter — so what has changed since then?
I wrote my first article on colleges and Twitter in 2009, so I’m guessing that by now every college and independent learning provider (ILP) must be a member of the Twitterati.
Early Twitter adopters from ‘back in the day’ were Deeside, Havering, Regents and Sunderland colleges, and my then-own college, Cornwall.
We’ve all moved on. Six years later some colleges are using Twitter very effectively and creatively. They are properly communicating (that’s two-way engagement — not just spewing out their news), engaging, monitoring and evaluating.
Some colleges understand the value of Twitter and are using it professionally and carefully, as part of the marketing mix.
Some FE chief executives and principals now have their own Twitter accounts and are using them with varying degrees of success. There have been a few duds (these have been reported on in this very newspaper), but NewVic’s Eddie Playfair, Harlow College’s Karen Spencer and Milton Keynes College’s Dr Julie Mills are examples of welcome visitors to my Twitter feed.
We FE types still struggle a bit when it comes to writing in 140 characters — a principal’s PA recently told me that she didn’t have time to write succinctly.
But, is there really a right way to use Twitter, and what should colleges and ILPs be using it for?
Well, personally, I think there’s definitely a wrong way to use Twitter and I’m seeing it more and more. I believe this down to the pressures that FE is under to recruit the right ‘sort’ of student, and lots of ‘em.
Some FE chief executives and principals now have their own Twitter accounts and are using them with varying degrees of success
My main gripe is the constant tweeting and retweeting of apprenticeship vacancies. FE providers are more than apprenticeships; it’s a major turnoff.
Case studies, news stories and informed comment about apprenticeships are far better topics of Twitter conversation than blurting out lists of apprenticeship vacancies. You should be allowing and encouraging your followers to properly engage, whether they’re in the market for an apprenticeship or not.
What is required is a grown-up social media strategy, aligned with your other marketing and communications activities.
Strategies ought to include identifying relevant issues and topics to stimulate conversation, debate and participation from your target communities and influencers.
The key to success online is to develop memorable and remarkable content that is relevant to those you are seeking to engage.
Your strategy should include analysis of relevant influencers and communities so you can build online relationships and achieve your campaign objectives.
These days there are excellent tools to analyse what’s going on with your tweets. Twitter’s own analytics is very good, and it’s free. To check out what’s happening in your twittersphere, make sure you’re logged in to the Twitter account that you want to analyse then go to analytics.twitter.com.
Click on the “view all tweet activity” and it takes you to a 28-day overview. There’s a graph that gives you the total number of impressions you’ve received over the period, the number per day, and the daily average. This lets you instantly view trends.
You can work out the best times to tweet, what day of the week is best, whether your images and videos increase engagement. You can compare one sort of tweet with another.
Students, staff, parents, employers, schools, alumni — they’re all out there, and you need to keep them engaged and interested.
If you really must have this ‘roll’ of apprenticeship vacancies, why not set up a new, apprenticeship-specific Twitter account? Redcar & Cleveland College has done this, take a look: @Apprenticeinfo
FE providers should be projecting their personality using Twitter; communicating a sense of humour, expertise, passion and quality. You don’t want to be known as a Twitter bore.
A Conservative-led government would use a £200m fund from bank fines issued in the wake of the Libor scandal to create 50,000 apprenticeships and traineeships specifically for unemployed 22 to 24-year-olds, David Cameron will announce today.
The Prime Minister is expected to say that the money from the fines, which were issued to those banks found to have been manipulating the London interbank offered rate, or “Libor”, will be used to create a specific funding stream for 50,000 apprenticeships or traineeships over three years for 22 to 24-year-olds who have been unemployed for six months or more.
The additional starts would be on top of the 3m already pledged by the Conservatives over the course of the next Parliament, but the Tories are yet to outline how they would persuade businesses to take on the 50,000 learners.
Mr Cameron will say: “We’re going to take the fines from the banks who tried to rig markets – and we’re going to use it to train young people and get them off the dole and into work.
“This is about taking money off those who represent Labour’s failed past, and giving to those who through their hard work and endeavour can represent a brighter Conservative future.
“This is about offering hope, spreading opportunity, sharing prosperity – it’s about securing a better future for you, your family and for Britain, and from now until polling day I’m going to fight for that future with every ounce of energy in my body.”
But Labour has criticised the Tories’ record on apprenticeships, while the Liberal Democrats accused them of panicking.
Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna said the proportion of apprenticeship starts by young people was down by almost a quarter during their time in office, with figures in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills statistical first release showing the proportion of starts by 16 to 24-year-olds fell from 82.3 per cent of the total in 2009/10 to 63.2 per cent in 2013/14.
He added: “At the same time, we’ve seen the quality of apprenticeships undermined. One in five apprentices is receiving no formal training, while almost four in ten firms are unaware the in-work training they provide is branded as an apprenticeship by the government.”
A Lib Dem spokesperson said: “This is another panicked election pledge from David Cameron as it finally dawns on him the Conservatives are not going to win the election. It is a short-term announcement that doesn’t give any hope of sustaining apprenticeship training and support into the future.
“Instead of gimmicks David Cameron should come clean about the ideologically driven cuts he will make that will slashing support for education, training and apprenticeships. Only the Liberal Democrats have been clear that we will ensure that young people are given the opportunity to succeed by protecting spending from cradle to college.”
I read a blog the other day that talked about how there was so much political consensus around in our sector at the moment and how this was a ‘job done’ for the sector’s PR and lobbying efforts.
The evidence for this was a skills hustings event where representatives from the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats basically agreed with each other about everything.
After reading this blog, I found myself with a nagging feeling somewhere between disbelief and frustration.
So as the General Election campaign finally comes to an end and we gear up for a new parliament, now seems a good time to get this off my chest. Further and adult education is deeply, deeply political, if not, at times, party political, and we must not be lulled in to a false sense of security just because all parties say that apprenticeships are a good thing.
An observed consensus like this might give the impression of party political consensus, but that says more about the quality of debate than anything else.
So how to raise the quality of that debate? To me it means being honest about the politics of further and adult education, given, the sound-bite to-ing and fro-ing of a General Election campaign in this climate often doesn’t lend itself to the ‘deep and meaningful’ kind of debate I’m arguing for.
In hindsight, I think we have to learn lessons from the cut to funding for 18-year-olds last year, how the sector responded and why we were, ultimately, unsuccessful. And it’s the same with the 24 per cent cut announcement
But without it, as a sector, we run the risk of becoming complacent; accepting and supporting government policies that we know in our hearts are not good enough.
Our sector has a proud history in political movements. Many FE colleges can trace their origins back to workers’ education and trade union movements. To this day they attract and educate working class learners in deprived communities, as well as migrants and, albeit in alarmingly and drastically declining numbers, older people.
So when our core constituency are mostly the poor and we view our collective mission to be about social justice, equality and society, then we become deeply ingrained in the politics affecting people’s lives.
We’re pretty well versed in reciting the social return on investment of FE but I think we can be better at talking about the difficulties and barriers people without advantage and privilege have to overcome in order to navigate through the education system.
The notion that someone can’t afford the fees to do a part-time course at a college for example is one that most people can grasp, but I think we can be much more real and honest about the other barriers we know that some of our learners come up against that students from wealthier backgrounds don’t.
In hindsight, I think we have to learn lessons from the cut to funding for 18-year-olds last year, how the sector responded and why we were, ultimately, unsuccessful. And it’s the same with the 24 per cent cut announcement.
Were we really vocal enough about the cumulative impacts that government cuts had already done to poor people’s life chances? Did we say enough about the disproportionate impacts on people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, older people or people with mental ill health, for example, and how by reducing the resource we have to provide education and training for a group with the odds already stacked against them?
I think this is really important if we want to improve the quality of policy in our sector. Policy-makers make all sorts of assumptions about the learners that you work with, their backgrounds, their social capital, and their access to support, which are probably wrong.
So next time there’s an opportunity to influence policy and there are potential impacts on access, retention, achievement, wellbeing or progression, let’s not be afraid to be honest about the politics of and its inherent inter-relationships with poverty and equality. Consensus isn’t always a good thing.
A third of work-based learning providers are finding it difficult to recruit Functional Skills (FS) teachers, a survey by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) suggests.
The ETF has published the results of its latest annual workforce survey, which is based on responses from 186 work-based learning providers, showing that 16 per cent of respondents found it “very difficult” to recruit FS teaching staff in 2013/14, while 18 per cent found it “quite difficult”.
The results of the survey come the same month as FE Week analysis of Skills Funding Agency success rates tables, which for the first time included FS data this year, showed how nearly 40 per cent of under 19 FS enrolments at general FE and tertiary colleges and independent learning providers (ILPs) failed to achieve their qualification last academic year. The combined FS success rates for colleges and ILPs was 62.9 per cent, with 203,680 enrolments out of 323,320 achieving their learning aims — meaning 119,640 did not.
It prompted a call from a range of academics for the government to provide added support for FS teaching to boost 16 to 18 success rates from 64.3 per cent for general FE and tertiary colleges and 52.9 per cent for ILPs.
Among them was University of Wolverhampton education lecturer and researcher Dr Matt O’Leary, who told FE Week: “I don’t think these success rates are lower than might be expected — that’s not to say they shouldn’t be higher, but in order to improve them then there needs to be recognition on the government’s part that they have a responsibility to invest in adequate resources to enable the FE sector to staff these courses with specialist teaching staff.”
The survey also shows an apparent decline in the proportion of FE staff who had a relevant teaching qualification. Providers reported that, on average, 61 per cent of their teaching staff held relevant teaching qualifications in 2013/14, compared to 80 per cent in 2012/13 and 83 per cent in 2011/12.
It has also revealed that 28 per cent of the 1,637 staff identified by providers as being part-time were on zero-hour contracts.
David Russell
David Russell (pictured), chief executive of the ETF, said he would encourage everyone working in FE to use the data, and said he hoped more providers would take part in future years.
He said: “You might want to see how your place of work compares to the national average, or look at where the opportunities and recruitment challenges persist.
“We are planning some exciting developments to this annual dataset, and the reports that users will be able to generate from it. To achieve this we need to ensure as many organisations as possible contribute to the process.
“I hope that leaders and governors will use it as part of their annual planning and most importantly I hope that your organisation commits to contributing to it in future years. With sector wide commitment to data collection we can identify specific issues and support smart sector-wide solutions. Without provider support on data collection we are all in the dark.”
A separate survey of adult and community learning providers revealed part-time contracts remain prominent in that area of the sector, with respondents reporting that 83 per cent of staff were part time in 2013/14, setting it at odds with the work-based learning results.
However, a pattern does emerge when comparing the proportion of teachers with relevant teaching qualifications, with a decline also seen in the adult and community learning sector, from 84 per cent in 2011/12 to 75 per cent in 2013/14.
The survey also reported a big slump in the proportion of staff on zero-hour contracts.
A report on the results said: “The option of reporting staff as engaged on zero-hour contracts was included for the first time in the 2012/13 survey and almost a quarter of teaching staff were identified as falling into this category.
“This pattern does not appear to have continued in 2013/14 with just 5 per cent of teaching staff identified as being retained on this basis,” it said in the latest report.
