Skills Show organisers Find a Future have challenged political parties to promise young people access to “experiential careers advice”.

Its boss, Ross Maloney, called for the parties to pledge more detailed careers guidance, including opportunities such as the ‘have-a-gos’ available at the Skills Show, in their manifestos.

“Many young people are currently unclear about the opportunities open to them, from apprenticeships, traineeships, FE and training,” he said. “We are calling on political parties to pledge to ensure all these avenues are properly promoted and utilised if elected.”

A Find a Future spokesperson told FE Week: “Political parties should prioritise the provision of experiential careers advice for all young people.”

In a speech earlier this month, Labour leader Ed Miliband said that his party would introduce “proper work experience compulsory for all as part of the school curriculum”.

A Conservative Party spokesperson said the careers and enterprise company proposed by Nicky Morgan in December would “help young people access the best advice and inspiration by encouraging greater collaboration between schools and colleges and employers”.

But, speaking to Rolls-Royce workers at a factory in West Sussex last week, Prime Minister David Cameron said: “There are good things happening, but I think there are a couple of areas we still need to get right. One is the careers advice we give to people in schools. So often when I meet apprentices and I ask ‘how did you hear about the apprenticeships’ they say ‘well, I found it online’ or ‘I knew a family friend’ or ‘I knew the business because it was nearby’. I don’t get the answer enough: ‘I was told at school about the apprenticeship pathways as well as the university pathway.’”

He also promised to publish job prospects data and likely salary for each university and academic course, and apprenticeship.

A Lib Dem spokesperson said: “We have included in our pre-manifesto, plans to improve the provision of independent careers information, advice and guidance for all, including through job centres for people seeking new options later in life.”

It comes with Labour unable to guarantee that 16 to 19 funding, which it said it would ringfence within an “overall” education budget, could not be shifted to school spending. Speaking to FE Week following the ringfence announcement, Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt said: “We will put forward those spending proposals when we’re in government.”

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who has pledged the same ringfence protection as Labour, also declined to say whether 16 to 19 education would get its own internal ringfence.

Speaking at this month’s Skills Summit in London, Skills Minister Nick Boles said he would not “offer or guarantee” that his party would offer the same protection.

A controversial five-year rule that has put off “hundreds” of potential apprentices by forcing them to re-sit GCSEs they already have is to be scrapped.

New apprenticeship frameworks written after April 6 will no longer include the rule, which meant learners with English or maths GCSEs achieved more than five years before enrolment would have to re-sit them or take equivalent Functional Skills qualifications.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) confirmed it had removed the rule — in place since 2009 — from the latest version of the specification of apprenticeship standards for England (Sase), but individual frameworks will need to be amended to reflect the change.

A BIS spokesperson told FE Week: “Subject to Parliamentary process the modification will come into effect on April 6. This change will further simplify the apprenticeship rules for employers, training providers and learners.”

It comes after Business Secretary Vince Cable said in December that he had approved plans to scrap the rule “in principle”, following threats of legal action by independent learning provider PBDevelopment. It had launched judicial review proceedings, but they never made it to court.

And the rule had been especially unpopular among early years training providers such as PBDevelopment, because the new early years educator (EYE) framework, released last August, did not allow Functional Skills as an alternative, meaning learners with older qualifications could only retake GCSEs.

PBDevelopment director Ross Midgley said: “It’s a great pity that it took an expensive judicial review to force this change. The five-year rule has put off well into the hundreds. Not to mention all those who have not been put off, but have had to endure the stress and wasted time of achieving qualifications twice.

“However, the battle is not yet over. Changing Sase makes changes to apprenticeship frameworks possible, but it does not automatically make them happen.

“What the early years sector now needs, urgently, is a retrospective amendment to the framework so that people with older qualifications are not obliged to retake them just to get through an apprenticeship.”

Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: “The rules have not yet changed for new starts. This means that if an apprentice starts today and their GCSEs are more than five years old they still have to meet the requirements of the framework that they are on.

“The SFA will inform providers when the new regulations will apply but we are hoping there will be a transition period.

“Once these new regulations apply, then apprentices that have an old GCSE will already comply with the requirements of the Sase but they may still have a need to improve their English and or maths.”

Teresa Frith, senior skills policy manager for the Association of Colleges (AoC), said: “While this may encourage more people to consider apprenticeships, it could also encourage employers to take on people who already have good English and maths qualifications as they will require less study time. This could result in limiting opportunities for those who’ve not achieved higher grades.”

The FE Commissioner has made his first two visits to inspect local authority provision, FE Week can reveal.

Dr David Collins visited Lancashire Adult Learning (LAL), run by Lancashire County Council, and Warrington Borough Council last month to review adult learning after grade four Ofsted inspection results.

The commissioner’s powers of intervention extend to FE corporations, designated institutions, and local authority-maintained FE institutions, but he had only previously inspected general FE colleges.

He visited LAL after the education watchdog’s report in December dropped the provider from good to inadequate.

Inspectors said: “Outcomes for learners have declined over the last three years from very high levels to around national averages.”

Following the Ofsted report, the principal of Lancashire’s outstanding-rated Nelson and Colne College, Amanda Melton, became principal and now splits her time equally between the providers.

Previous principal Joyce Dalton, who had been acting in the role, left at the end of August and the Ofsted report noted “the loss of senior management posts has not been managed efficiently”.

A LAL spokesperson confirmed the commissioner had visited and met with officials, but declined to comment further.

Warrington’s Ofsted report, also published in December and dropping the provider down from a good rating, found “key procedures for managing subcontractors’ work and improving the quality of teaching, learning and assessment are weak”.

Gareth Hopkins, assistant director for human resources at Warrington, said: “We have an action plan in place, which will be monitored by senior management to ensure that the necessary improvements are quickly made to get this service back on track. A number of identified issues have already been addressed.”

Meanwhile, Dr Collins has also made visits to several more colleges in recent weeks. City College Brighton and Hove was visited over financial concerns, as was New College Nottingham and Central College Sussex.

Greenwich Community College was visited after a grade four inspection result, which is the same reason he’s due this month at Barnfield College, which was visited by the FE Commissioner already last year over financial concerns.

Staff at the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) and the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion (Inclusion) face an uncertain future with a possible merger on the horizon after the two organisations formed a “strategic alliance”.

Neither organisation said it could “rule out job losses or a name change” if the alliance, which entails shared resources and joint contract tenders, resulted in formal merger later in the year.

Niace chief executive David Hughes (pictured) told FE Week the move to form an alliance was part “exploring whether a more formal arrangement or even a merger is a sensible way forward”.

“It may or may not happen, but meanwhile we’re going to develop working relationships between our staff and that work starts today,” he said.

The alliance came into effect on February 2 and statements from both organisations said it would be “business as usual” over the coming months.

“In a world in which policy makers, Local Enterprise Partnerships and others increasingly talk about how to integrate employment and skills, we felt it made sense to bring the two organisations to work more closely together,” said Mr Hughes.

He said the shared “purpose, ethos and values” of 65-worker Niace, which is based in Leicester, and 20-worker Inclusion, based in London, meant the process of aligning the organisations’ work would be “simple”.

“Nobody else will be able to offer the same level of standing across the welfare, employment and learning and skills systems than we can combined, and that’s the driver behind this,” he said, adding that no decision on where a merged organisation might be based had been taken.

Inclusion and Niace have collaborated in previous years sharing research, but Inclusion chief executive Dave Simmonds said the alliance would mean they could achieve “a greater impact”. “Our strategic alliance will combine our expertise to offer more to our stakeholders,” he said.

“It will create exciting opportunities to deliver new services, more research and new ideas in the challenging times ahead.”

He added the partnership would be “focused on improving skills and employment support for everyone, but especially for those who need it most”.

The alliance will centre around five core areas — a united voice on employment, skills and lifelong learning, integrated, practical research and policy development, a new national events, campaigning and public affairs function, improving service and cost-effectiveness and developing the options for closer working.

The Further Education Trust for Leadership (Fetl) has handed fellowship grants, worth up to £40,000-each, to four senior figures from the world of FE. Reporter Paul Offord spoke to Ann Creed for the fourth and final piece in a series of FE Week articles to focus on the chosen fellows.

Experienced project manager Ann Creed hopes her research for Fetl will help give part-time teachers more influence over how they are managed.

Improving the lot of teachers is an issue dear to her heart, as she has spent much of the last eight years working on projects geared toward boosting their professional development with organisations including the Learning and Skills Improvement Service, the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education and the Workers Educational Association.

Her research will focus on how different leadership styles affect the attitudes and wellbeing of part-time teachers who often have to work away from their employer’s main base.

She said: “What I don’t think has been addressed is whether there are more effective ways of leading those sort of people working in outreach locations.

“These part-time teachers may not have the same links to a particular provider as full-time staff and could, in fact, be working for two or three different providers within a locality on a part-time basis. They could be getting pulled in different directions by different employers.”

Ms Creed said her research would aim to identify what outreach teachers think about leadership and “see what ways of leading supports them best to deliver high quality teaching and learning”.

She added: “The whole purpose of my research will be to give teachers a much stronger voice in leadership, rather than focusing on management issues which is where thinking is usually confined.

“The majority of the FE teaching workforce is part-time and their activities with students and the outcomes achieved are the foundations of the sector’s success.”

Jill Westerman CBE, chair of Fetl, said: “The role of part time tutors often working across a number of organisations and a wide geographical area is a key leadership concern facing many organisations today. We feel Ann’s research will contribute greatly to the leadership of thinking in this area.”

Careers advice hotline services for young people and adults are to be brought under one roof after Serco was awarded a £6m Skills Funding Agency (SFA) contract to deliver both.

Serco, which previously ran the National Careers Service (NCS) advice line for adults, will also take up the service for young people, previously delivered by BSS.

Serco’s existing contact centre in Newcastle will expand to take on the new work, with a total of 118 staff, with workers from the BSS sites in Leicester and Manchester having been offered posts.

Both BSS and Serco, which has an initial contract for three years with the option of a two-year extension, achieved grade two Ofsted ratings for their services.

A Serco spokesperson told FE Week: “All BSS employees were offered a TUPE transfer to Serco. A number of employees found new jobs elsewhere.

“The employees who transferred have decided not to take up the roles on offer due to location. We have offered them support in terms of finding alternative roles and they will also receive a financial package.”

Sean Hanson, managing director of Serco’s public sector outsourcing business, said: “I am delighted and excited to be extending our partnership with the SFA to provide careers advice and information for the NCS.”

The new centre is expected to be accessible seven days a week and 14 hours a-day on telephone and online.

Joe Billington, NCS director, said: “We’re delighted to be working with such an experienced service provider as Serco to ensure users receive the best possible service.”

An SFA spokesperson said the contract had been awarded following a “competitive procurement process”. She said: “This is part of an integrated approach to the delivery of careers information and advice to young people and adults in England.”

Jan Ellis, chief executive of the Careers Development Institute (CDI), the professional body for careers advisers, said: “Congratulations to Serco. We’re really delighted that it’s going to be delivering personalised support and inspirational career guidance.

“And the CDI would hope that people providing the service are qualified to do so and are members of the CDI.”

The CDI sits on the advisory board of the new careers and enterprise company, proposed by Nicky Morgan in December to provide links between schools and employers — but Ms Ellis said the two services would be “completely separate”.