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 (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.”

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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.

Vocational education charity the Edge Foundation is the new lead sponsor for the Skills Show, it has been announced.

Show organisers Find a Future revealed today that the three-year lead sponsorship deal with City & Guilds, in place for the first Skills Show event, was ending.

The pricetag of the Edge Foundation’s one-year sponsorship of the Skills Show, which takes place in November, was not disclosed.

David Harbourne (pictured below right), Edge Foundation acting chief executive, said the charity was “really looking forward” to becoming the lead sponsor, having offered some sponsorship in previous years.

“Everyone at the Edge Foundation is thrilled that we’re sponsoring The Skills Show,” he said.

“It’s our mission to champion and celebrate all forms of technical, practical and vocational learning, and The Skills Show is a brilliant way to see some of the country’s most talented young people show off their skills in a remarkable range of competitions.

“Tens of thousands of young people — not to mention their teachers and parents — will find out about careers, courses and apprenticeships, and even try their hand at new skills.

“We’re really looking forward to it.”

Last year’s Skills Show attracted 75,000 visitors to the Birmingham NEC to watch the national finals of more than 60 skills competitions, try more than 50 have-a-go activities and access careers advice.

Find a Future chief executive Ross Maloney (pictured left) has: “The Edge Foundation believes, as we do, that all young people should have the opportunity to achieve their potential, and that the UK’s future workforce needs to be equipped with the skills they need to be successful in the modern, global economy.

“Their support and involvement with this year’s event is invaluable in ensuring that we continue to spread the vocational message to all our target audiences — it’s good to be working with them again.”

This year’s Skills Show will run from November 19 to 21 and will also feature squad selection for the 2017 WorldSkills championships in Abu Dhabi.

Welfare-to-work provider A4e has been sold to recruitment services firm Staffline in a £35.4m deal that includes £11m of debt being taken on.

Nottingham-based Staffline Group claims the move will make it one of the biggest contractors of the Work Programme of the Department for Works and Pensions (DWP).

It will mean Staffline has a presence in half of the programme’s 18 regions as a prime contractor — through its Eos and Avanta divisions, and now A4e — and six further regions as a sub-contractor.

The firm claims the takeover will give it access to learners through 150 sites throughout the UK — which, it claims, is the largest geographical reach of any Work Programme contractor.

Staffline chief executive Andy Hogarth (pictured right) said: “We are delighted to be announcing today the acquisition of A4e.

“This is an exciting milestone in Staffline’s growth, considerably expanding the size and geographic reach of our employability offering and will result in the combined business being one of the largest Work Programme providers in the UK.”

Its Staffline Recruitment division, which had a final 2014/15 Skills Funding Agency (SFA) contract worth £540k, was rated as good by Ofsted last month. Its Eos Works division was allocated £955k of European Social Fund (ESF) cash by the SFA while Avanta, a £65m acquisition last summer, had an SFA allocation of £8.2m and was rated as good by Ofsted last month.

It is understood that Avanta and Sheffield-based A4e will be “integrated” and rebranded PeoplePlus over the coming months.

It comes three months after 10 former A4e employees were sentenced for fraud and related offences after falsely claiming to have found work for learners who were unemployed or did not exist. Its control systems were since said to have been improved.

A4e, which employs more than 3,000 staff and had a £30m SFA allocation, posted pre-tax losses of £11.5m in 2012-13, but had climbed to a pre-tax profit of £2.2m for the year ending March 2014.

Mr Hogarth said: “The significant strengths of both businesses will be united and we are confident that our leading position will be a strong platform from which to develop our strategy, services and innovation.

“We look forward to creating a winning team and business, and delivering significant shareholder value.”

Staffline has agreed to acquire A4e’s entire issued share capital for £23.5m and will assume A4e’s net debt of £11m. The sale is thought to have netted A4e founder Emma Harrison, owner 85 per cent of shares, around £20m.

Andrew Dutton, chief executive of  A4e, said the buyout meant “starting a new chapter in the history of A4e”.

“Staffline is exactly the right fit for us: its ambitions, robust financial position and its people and business values will all support the combined business as we grow together and build on our position as a leading Work Programme provider in the UK,” he said.

“A4e is now in the perfect ownership to both develop our customers and support our employer relationships and I wish the combined business every success in the future.”

Delivery of extra freedoms for the FE sector has been “limited” despite being central to government policy for years, a report commissioned by the 157 Group has said.

The consortium of colleges worked with law firm Eversheds LLP on the report, which is a result of interviews with sector leaders including Business Secretary Vince Cable on the subject of freedom and flexibility.

According to the report, entitled Freedom and flexibility: colleges and skills in 2015, the survey results show the “limitations of what has so far been offered and the real potential for future policy development”, and that a “real difference” could be made in terms of implementation of policies, not by new policies themselves.

The 18-page report calls for widening of colleges’ statutory powers and also calls on government to heed a warning that initiatives like sponsoring academies carry “significant risks” for colleges as well as benefits.

It also calls for a more “sensible” framing of employer engagement, with the “encouragement of strategic partnerships and mutual respect”, and goes on to say that “neither employers nor providers have all the answers to our future skills needs”.

It says the apprenticeship funding debate should be re-visited, with a “more realistic outlook”, to establish how to maintain employer choice without “disincentivising their increasing participation”, and says the government may wish to consider asking the Competition and Markets Authority to clarify what steps the law would allow providers to take to collaborate further with businesses.

Dr Lynne Sedgmore CBE (pictured), executive director of the 157 Group, said: “Freedom and flexibility have been two of the buzzwords of the last five years and, in this publication, we aim to provide an overview of what that has meant – for institutions, for communities and, most importantly, for employers and students.”

The report goes on to call for a drive towards “more strategic relationships” between the FE sector and employers after the election, and that the services of the Education and Training Foundation should be “developed, strengthened and supported” beyond May 7.

Other suggestions include one that proposals for a Royal College of Teaching should include the FE sector and that a clear focus on learners should be reflected in policy, with learners encouraged to help govern FE institutions and more support with travel and subsistence costs.

Sarah Robinson OBE, chair of the 157 Group and chief executive of Stoke on Trent College, described the report as a “high-level commentary on the skills landscape in April 2015”, adding: “In particular, we build upon the principles articulated in our manifesto for FE and skills:  that future policy should be guided, wherever possible, by stable structures, equal treatment, the freedom to innovate and durable funding.

“Our analysis, published today, indicates that while our skills system is undoubtedly more ‘free’ than it was five years ago, there is still a long way to go in matching the reality of policy with the rhetoric of politicians.”

More than a third of the workforce at NCG’s 1,200-worker Intraining division were today facing redundancy following one of the biggest job loss announcements to have hit the sector.

The loss of a major Department for Work and Pensions training contract and “uncertainty” over the renewal of European Social Fund (ESF) programmes, along with fewer than expected apprenticeships, combined to force a restructure of the Sheffield-based company.

Bosses at the independent learning provider, which last year posted a pre-tax loss of £1.39m and has a current Skills Funding Agency contract of just under £2m, have launched a consultation on the job losses, which are expected in the next few months.

Intraining managing director Linda Dean said: “Like many organisations in the current climate, we have had to make some difficult choices in response to the continued changes and challenges in the training sector.

“A major factor is the continued uncertainty over the renewal of several ESF contracts, which come to a natural end in July.

“We have also reviewed our structure to match the activity on some of our larger contracts which are running at a much lower level than previous years, and that looks likely to be the case in future.

“We have a sustainable business that is well-balanced and able to meet the needs of our customers, colleagues and stakeholders.”

A spokesperson for NCG, which operates from 142 locations nationally and also comprises Newcastle College, West Lancashire College and Kidderminster College, youth charity and training provider Rathbone and Newcastle Sixth Form College, said the wider group “continues to operate in a strong financial position”.

Ms Dean added: “The proposed actions we are discussing with colleagues in the business are to ensure that we are in the best position to be both successful and sustainable in the short, medium and long term.

“We regret that it is likely that this will result in an impact on some of our colleagues at Intraining and we have started a formal process of consultation.

“We understand that this will be a difficult period for colleagues, learners and their families and we will work hard to ensure that they have access to any support they need and we will keep them fully informed at every stage.

“We will also support colleagues to apply for any opportunities elsewhere in the organisation wherever that is possible.”

The jobs blow at the division of the grade two-rated NCG, which has around 4,000 staff in total, is one of the largest among a number to have hit the sector recently.

It comes just a week after Birmingham Metropolitan College announced plans to shed 250 jobs in a bid to reduce costs “significantly”.

Andrew Cleaves, principal of the 30,000 learner college, which employs 1,600 staff, blamed government funding cuts.

Editor’s Comment

Job losses are sadly all too common in the FE and skills sector and have been for a little while.

It’s almost the case that not a day goes by when an FE Week reporter is alerted to some ‘restructuring’ plans in which a workforce is scaled back.

One of the horrible jobs as editor of this newspaper is to decide which of these we report — or indeed do not report — these. It boils down to consideration of the sheer number and how much of the workforce that represents.

It’s as unpleasant as it is necessary, but it’s never forgotten that these ‘job losses’ refer ultimately to people — a distraught mum, a heartbroken brother, a despondent niece.

So the effect of cutting a workforce of more than 1,000 by around a third will clearly be devastating — to many families, communities and also, let’s not forget, the organisation itself.

But the Institute for Fiscal Studies said last week that further public funding cuts are guaranteed no matter who emerges victorious from the General Election.

Inevitably this will lead to more headlines about jobs losses.

Restructures will also abound and that’s a theme that our next government should think long and hard about — what FE and skills structure does it want and can afford, and how will it communicate and achieve that vision?

 

 

Greater collaboration between FE and business could help to encourage more women into digital industries, according to a report published by the Women in Technology project.

The findings of the report, produced by Coralesce with funding from the Education and Training Foundation, were revealed at the Women in Technology conference on Tuesday (April 21).

The Women in Technology Project Research Report 2015 called for a “two-way” street, “with industry and education working together” to level the playing field between women and men in the technology sector.

“The UK workforce is currently 46 per cent female but only 15 per cent of IT professional workforce is female,” report author and Coralesce curriculum director Bev Jones told delegates at the event in East London, just a stone’s throw away from Shoreditch, the heart of the UK’s tech industry.

The 33-page report’s co-author, Coralesce director Christina Conroy, said: “One of the challenges is clear when you look at where the new jobs are coming from.

“Of the 10 fastest growing jobs, eight of those were in technology… and if girls aren’t going into these areas, they’re missing out on all these new jobs, they’re missing out on the growth in the economy and they’re ending up marginalised, to lower paid jobs.”

She warned of a “cycle of non-engagement” that education and industry needed to act against.

“What tends to happen is that because there’s so few women in these organisations you get androcentric work environments — ones which are all very macho,” she said.

“And because there are so few women, this isn’t challenged and you get a lack of diversity of products and services aimed towards women.

“Then you get a poor perception of that industry among women, and they tend not to apply for those jobs.

“So the problem can’t be solved in just education or industry, it has to be working in partnership.”

The problem wasn’t just one of equality, she said — increasing the number of women working in technology could generate £2.6bn for the economy.

“Industry recognises this as a problem as well,” she said.

“But also we think by encouraging more women into tech will benefit FE by actually getting people to use learning technology — through, for example, designing lesson plans to get women into technology which actually use technology.”

Ms Jones said one crucial factor for the FE sector was staff capacity to use technology in order to help young women engage with it in lessons.

Careers advice was also important, she said, as many young women could not name female technology role models and were not aware of the roles available or the benefits attached.

However, she added: “Most the stakeholders we spoke to felt trying to do something now in the FE sector was too late because they’ve made their choices — that there needed to be interventions and nursery and primary level.”

However, Coralesce project manager Pauline Odulinski said focus groups with young women at Tower Hamlets College had pointed to a different conclusion.

She said: “Of course you’ve got to get the message over in schools at an early age but one of the interesting things with the Tower Hamlets girls was we asked them if they liked science and maths and the vast majority said they did.

“In actual fact you don’t have go to ten-year-olds, I think you could go in just before GCSE about their careers choices and once you raise their awareness, I think it would make a real difference.”

She also suggested colleges could have open days and invite women from the tech industry as mentors to raise young women’s awareness and interest. Ms Conroy agreed.

“At GCSE, IT courses are nearly half and half girls and boys,” she said.

“But when you look at A-level computer studies, it’s about 6.5 per cent, in vocational it’s 18 per cent, which is the same at undergraduate level — and that reflects the numbers that go into industry.”

The key, she said, was in partnerships which the project was looking to create between individual employment providers and an industry partner, to look at ways to break the cycle through mentoring, internships and careers advice.

Ultimately, she said: “You can’t solve it with big government schemes, you have to sweat the small stuff. You have to do a bit here, a bit there and gradually it does get better.”

Main pic: From left: Christina Conroy and Pauline Odulinski present the report findings