More than £700,000 will be handed shared among 74 FE colleges to encourage young people to progress into higher education.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) has announced that £714,772 will be allocated to FE colleges with higher education provision between now and 2016 in a bid to improve collaboration with schools and other colleges.

The FE sector share is less than 6.5 per cent of the £11.020m total allocated to individual universities and colleges, and grants range from £2,534 for South Gloucestershire and Stroud College to £53,280 for Blackpool and The Fylde College.

It comes less than four years after Aimhigher, a scheme which had the same goals but had a much larger budget, was scrapped by the government.

The grants are part of Hefce’s new national networks for collaborative outreach (NNCO), set up with initial Department for Business, Innovation and Skills funding of £22m for 2014/15 and 2015/16.

Thirty five local networks will get £240,000 each over the two years, with further grants for individual providers.

Some networks will be led by existing Aimhigher regional initiatives that survived the scrapping of the national service in 2011 by seeking funding from schools and universities.

Nick Davy, Association of Colleges higher education policy manager, told FE Week: “Hefce is right to invest money to encourage more young people into higher education and the NNCO is a useful scheme. However, it has been led by universities in sub-regions and that has meant that in some regions colleges are not involved in the networks.

“We have been in discussions with Hefce officers to address these gaps to ensure that could ensure the vast majority of colleges are involved in networks.”

As well as the local networks, three more national networks will give advice and support to specific groups of students, including adult learners and care leavers. Hefce has also launched a website for colleges to find their nearest network, and individual networks will run their own sites with information about outreach activity.

Hefce chief executive Madeleine Atkins said: “We set out to establish coverage of state-funded secondary schools and sixth form colleges and, through the support of the sector, this will be achieved.

“As well as providing co-ordinated coverage of outreach activity, we are keen that the NNCO scheme contributes innovative approaches to the interaction between higher education institutions and
schools and colleges.”

Concerns that two official apprenticeship websites could be causing confusion have emerged with identical vacancy searches returning vastly different results.

The Skills Funding Agency is keeping its old vacancy matching website running until April while its replacement, which has already gone live, is being tested and developed.

However, with an example search on the old site uncovering 2,444 apprenticeship vacancies in London compared to just 71 on the new site, Andy Gannon, 157 Group director of policy, public relations and research, warned information needed to be “easy to find, navigate and understand”.

An SFA spokesperson said the differing figures were down to the old apprenticeship vacancies service automatically searching for vacancies within a 10-mile radius of the requested location.

The new site, however, operates a two-mile radius default, unless users change the radius.

The SFA launched the new webpage on the gov.uk central government site, where a link to the old website, on an lsc.gov.uk address, is also available.

Mr Gannon said: “The critical thing about information about any form of education is that it is easy to find, navigate and understand.

“We hope this move of information is underpinned by research that indicates it will definitely achieve a greater level of accessibility, as gov.uk does not seem intuitively to be a place learners might be browsing for such information.

“Of course, wherever the information is, people do need to know what it is about in order to look for it in the first place.”

David Hughes, chief executive of the National Institute of Continuing Education (Niace), said: “Unfortunately there are certain groups who are massively under-represented and if all the vacancies aren’t being posted properly [for the new vacancies search service] then this will reduce fair and equal access to apprenticeships.”

The SFA spokesperson said: “The new ‘Find an apprenticeship’ application system is currently in Beta [development] phase, which includes parallel running of both old and new systems, to allow for testing, user feedback and any necessary adjustments.

“We have user-tested the search capabilities of ‘Find an apprenticeship’ and will be continually improving the search capabilities over the course of the public Beta phase.”

Visit www.gov.uk/apply-apprenticeship to view the new and old vacancy search services.

A Basingstoke sixth form college was today expected to present a draft financial recovery plan to the Education Funding Agency (EFA) after being issued with a financial notice to improve.

Queen Mary’s College (QMC) was issued with the notice on December 12, after it was assessed as “inadequate” for financial health by the EFA.

It must now present a draft financial recovery plan by today’s deadline to EFA territorial director for the South Alan Parnum, including student number and monthly cashflow projections, as well as savings, expenditure, income and risk management plans.

According to the notice: “The EFA will determine when the college has made sufficient progress for the notice to be lifted. This will usually be when the college’s financial health grade has improved… to at least satisfactory [by the end of 2015/2016].”

Ali Foss (pictured), principal of the 2,200-learner college, rated as good by Ofsted in May 2010, said the notice was imposed because of recent increases in her college’s borrowing levels compared to its income.

The college has borrowed £5.4m, of which £4.1m still needs to be repaid, since 1997, helping fund £29m of infrastructure projects, with the rest of the cash coming from government funding, sale of land, and the college’s own cash reserves.

Among the new developments the cash went to were an English and modern languages block at £2m in 1997, a sports centre at £1.8m in 2003 and a teaching block for subjects including science and foundation learning at £13m in 2010.

Mrs Foss said that year-on-year funding had “fallen sharply” since 2010 with cuts of 12 per cent across the period. “The investments in infrastructure have allowed the college to focus its spending on teaching and learning rather than on repair and renovation,” she said.

It comes with the 3,370-learner Totton College having this month launched a consultation on merger after Sixth Form College Commissioner Peter Mucklow warned it could not function alone.

In October, he inspected Hampshire college, deemed by Ofsted to require improvement in March, after concerns about a lack of improvement since it was issued with a financial notice to improve in the spring.

Formal expressions of interest should be submitted by 4pm on Friday, January 23. Full proposals must be submitted 4pm the following Friday.

Visit www.totton.ac.uk or email corporation clerk Pam Robertson — probertson@totton.ac.uk — for details.

British Gas failed to deliver a massive 89 per cent of its £2.5m initial allocation for 16 to 18 apprenticeships last academic year.

Skills Funding Agency (SFA) data shows the energy giant, which started 13 times more apprentices over the age of 18, was ultimately paid £2.2m less than its July 2013 allocation for the programme.

According to FE Week research comparing July 2013 allocations for 704 providers with final funding figures, British Gas received just 11 per cent (£287,606) of its original allocation — the lowest proportion among providers who fell short of their allocation by more than £1m.

A spokesperson for British Gas, which was rated outstanding following its last full Ofsted inspection in July 2007, said: “We received an allocation of £2.5m [16 to 18 apprenticeships] funding from the SFA for 2013/2014. This allocation was based on our previous two-year contract performance data held by the SFA.

“The average age of an apprentice at British Gas has been rising and now stands at 25.

“However, the allocation [for 16 to 18 apprenticeships] was not used as, in addition to recruiting 33 SFA-funded apprentices aged 16 to 18 [and five not funded by the SFA], we recruited a number of apprentices from other age groups [428] including a large number [151] who are not funded by the SFA.

“The money that was not used was clawed back by the SFA and reallocated to other providers throughout 2013/14.”

Initial allocations on the 16 to 18 apprenticeship programme often vary from final allocations (with 10 months of the year having passed) as the SFA makes in-year adjustments as part of its quarterly performance management process.

However, in the same process the typically larger and more predictable adult skills budget allocations tend not to be adjusted to such a great extent.

The British Gas spokesperson added that its non-SFA funded apprentices were paid for entirely by British Gas and worked towards level two qualifications in dual fuel smart metering.

Nevertheless, the two other two worst offenders, among providers who missed their July 2013 16 to 18 apprenticeships allocations by more than £1m, were Sheffield City Council which only received 18 per cent (£604,319) of its £3.4m allocation and Carlisle-based logistics training provider System Group Limited which was paid 36 per cent (£881,355) of its £2.4m allocation.

System Group Limited declined to comment on why it missed is 2013/14 allocation.

But Andrew Hartley, business development director for the provider rated good by Ofsted in October 2012, said: “It is pleasing to report that interest in apprenticeships in the logistics industry has really picked up in the last few months as companies look to bring young people into their organisations in order to develop and grow.

“We are very busy launching a number of programmes with clients at this moment in time and there is a very positive outlook. We will certainly achieve our 2014/15 allocation.”

There was nobody available to comment at Sheffield City Council, which received a good Ofsted rating for its training programmes in February last year.

An SFA spokesperson said: “We do not comment on individual providers. When determining provider allocations we continue to apply, to all our providers, our published performance management processes according to the type of funding agreement.

“We will maximise participation funds by identifying delivery that is below funding allocation or contract value and redistributing funds to providers with a good track record and evidence of demand from employers or learners.”

Three quarters fail to deliver £136m of provision

Sources: SFA 2013/14 initial allocations and SFA final funding year values 

Almost three quarters of FE providers failed to deliver on their initial 2013/14 16 to 18 apprenticeships allocation by a total of £136m.

The SFA data shows that, of providers for whom comparison can be made, 704 were earmarked a total of £685.6m cash for 16 to 18 apprenticeships in July 2013.

But final funding figures for last academic year showed that while 200 providers (28 per cent) got a total of £32.7m more than they had been allocated, 504 (72 per cent) were paid £136m less than their combined allocation figure.

It means the sector was £103.3m down on the 16 to 18 apprenticeships it had been expected to deliver.

Julian Gravatt, assistant chief executive for the Association of Colleges, said better pre-apprenticeship training and careers advice was needed to help providers hit future allocations on a key priority by the government.

He said: “There are a number of reasons specific to 2013/14 which will have contributed to under-19 apprenticeship recruitment shortfalls, for example the tighter funding rules.

“However, this is not a new problem and illustrates the need both to develop a better pre-apprenticeship offer for young people and also to improve the careers advice given to school pupils in Years 10 and 11.”

The Statistical First Release published in November last year showed that 16 to 18 apprenticeship starts were up on 2012/13, from 114,500 to 119,800 (4.6 per cent).

It was the first annual increase for the age group in two years, with the 2010/11 number of 131,700 having been 12.8 per cent up on the previous year.

The same set of official figures for 2013/14 showed there had been 10,400 traineeship starts during the programme’s first year.

A spokesperson for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers said: “We believe that providers could have done even better if the traineeships programme had begun earlier because this would have placed more young people in a position to progress on to an apprenticeship.

“We need to throw more weight behind traineeships to maintain the increase in the number of apprenticeships starts that we saw for teenagers last year.”

All-age apprenticeship starts at 440,400 last academic year, down 13.7 per cent, having been at 510,200 the previous year, and 520,600 in 2011/12.

Within the fall in the 2013/14 figures, were decreases from 165,400 to 159,100 (-3.8 per cent) for the 19 to 24 age group and 230,300 to 161,600 (-29.8 per cent) among those aged 25+.

Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna (pictured) said: “Recently, we learned that the number of apprenticeships is falling, while there are real concerns that apprenticeship quality has been badly eroded.

“Now it emerges that the number of apprenticeships being delivered for 16 to 18 year olds has fallen far short of the government’s own expectations.

“We badly need more decent apprenticeship opportunities, which is why the next Labour government would act to ensure all apprenticeships are of high quality and would use government procurement to create thousands of new apprenticeships.”

Labour has said that all apprenticeships should start from at least level three and last a minimum of two years and the number of school leavers applying for apprenticeships should match the number starting university by 2025.

It has also pledged that all public procurement contracts would include a requirement to hire one apprentice for each £1m awarded in the contract if it won General Election in June.

A Skills Funding Agency spokesperson said: “In line with government priorities, we have maintained our investment in high quality apprenticeships and traineeships to support people to enter and progress in work.

“Applying our published performance management policy has meant that we have been able to fully fund all high-quality 16-18 apprenticeship delivery.”

No one from the government was available for comment.

College with biggest £1m-plus underdelivery comes fourth overall

The college that saw the greatest £1m-plus underdelivery on its initial 16 to 18 apprenticeship allocation hit just 38 per cent of its July 2013 target.

Northbrook College, in Sussex, fell £2.1m short of the £3.4m it had been earmarked by the SFA.

It recorded the fourth biggest underdelivery percentage among all providers who missed the sum earmarked for them by more than £1m.

A spokesperson for Northbrook College, which was rated as good by Ofsted in November 2013, said: “As part of its risk strategy review, the college took the decision to decrease the number of partner providers [for 16 to 18 apprenticeships] from August 1, 2013.

“This was in full consultation with the SFA as part of the funding reconciliation process. The SFA had automatically increased the 2013/14 allocation, based upon the prior year’s delivery with growth increases.”

He added: “The shortfall between delivery and funding allocation was planned by the college, as it was not prepared to compromise the quality of learning that its students receive.”