The government is set to relax off-the-job training requirements in apprenticeships, new rules published today have revealed.
From July 31, 2024, “active learning” can take place every three months, up from the current every calendar month rule, for apprenticeships that have front-loaded or block-release delivery models.
Last year, changes were made to allow active learning to take place every calendar month rather than every 28 days to allow training to be planned around busy periods for certain employers, such as over Christmas for hospitality and retail businesses.
The Department for Education revealed it was reviewing the “minimum requirement” for active learning, which refers to off-the-job and English and maths training, in draft rules for 2024/25 published in March.
Version one of those funding rules was published today and said: “To support more flexible approaches to the delivery of training, we have changed the active learning requirement for programmes that have a front-loaded or a block release delivery model. For these two models, active learning must be delivered at least every three calendar months.”
The Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) claimed that learners, employers and providers have “supported these moves to allow for much more flexible delivery and to reduce the number of arbitrary breaks in learning taking place”.
Chief executive Ben Rowland said: “Relaxing the period in which off-the-job-training can be planned and then delivered means there’s more flexibility and will benefit learners and employers, as well as providers.
“The focus should be about delivering high-quality training and learning rather than having to stop and replan or instigate an unnecessary break in learning.”
Other notable changes from the draft funding rules include increasing the new subcontracting “de minimis” threshold from £30,000 to £100,000.
It means that from August, a provider will be allowed to use a subcontractor that is not on the published apprenticeship provider and assessment register (APAR) but who will deliver less than £100,000 of apprenticeship training and on-programme assessment “under contract across all main providers and employer-providers between 1 April and 31 March each year”.
The DfE said this will make it “easier for providers to bring in industry specialists to deliver training by introducing greater flexibility in subcontracting arrangements”.
Elsewhere, there has been a change to rules around scrapping the 5 per cent co-investment for non-levy paying employers taking on apprentices aged 16 to 21 – which was announced by prime minister Rishi Sunak in March and has applied to starts since April.
The removal of co-investment has now been extended to include apprentices aged between 22 and 24 years-old with an education, health and care plan and/or have been in the care of their local authority.
Cornwall College Group has appointed Rob Bosworth as its next principal and chief executive.
He will take the reins on July 1 from current boss John Evans who is due to retire later that month.
Bosworth (pictured) will join from Exeter College where he has worked at for almost 24 years, currently as deputy chief executive.
Patrick Newberry, chair of Cornwall College Group, said Bosworth has an “outstanding track record in further education” and has played an “integral role in the success of his current college”. The board is “assured he will build on the excellent work John Evans has done and ensure we remain an excellent college for learners and our community”.
As well as playing a key leadership role at Exeter College, which has been judged ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted twice in the last decade, Bosworth has also served as chair of Ted Wragg Multi Academy Trust, a director of the South West Institute of Technology, and is currently vice chair of Exeter Chamber of Commerce.
Ahead of his move to Cornwall College Group, Bosworth said: “In my experience, place-making, partnerships and people are at the heart of outstanding education and training.
“We will look to grow current partnerships and establish new ones, so the Cornwall and Devon economies can thrive with the necessary skills to deliver their ambitions. I know with the great team we have here at the Cornwall College Group, we can continue to be a college the region can be proud of.”
A job advert for Evans’ successor closed 12 weeks ago and final selection took place on March 20th. There was a delay in announcing Bosworth’s appointment due to the new requirement for colleges to gain government sign-off on salaries of over £150,000. Bosworth’s salary has not been revealed, but Evans earns £195,000 a year.
Other colleges yet to announce permanent new bosses due to delays in the sign-off process include Sandwell College, which closed its applications process in September, and Warwickshire College Group, which saw applications close in February. WCG’s previous chief executive, Angela Joyce, was announced as Capital City College Group in June 2023.
Retiring CEO ‘inspired an amazing energy and drive’
Evans joined the Cornwall College Group in 2019 during a turbulent period that required a £30 million government bailout and a “fresh start” business plan.
Then-FE Commissioner Richard Atkins had suggested the college should merge with Truro and Penwith College, but it was later decided that both colleges should remain standalone.
Since 2019, when Cornwall College was judged ‘requires improvement’, the group has recovered to ‘good’.
Newberry said Evans has “inspired an amazing energy and drive to ensure every learner gets the best education and learner experience possible, and I know Rob is excited to build on this excellent foundation”.
He added: “We cannot thank John enough and he deserves full recognition for the brilliant college that he is handing over.”
The Cornwall College Group consists of campuses in St Austell and Camborne, Duchy College Rosewarne and Stoke Climsland, Falmouth Marine School, Bicton College, Plymouth Engineering Skills Centre, as well as University Centres in Newquay and at the Eden Project.
Major government infrastructure projects risk going over budget due to a shortage of trained project managers and skilled workers, MPs have warned.
The government estimates that it needs to train about 16,000 civil servants at its major project leadership academy to deal with hundreds of publicly funded projects with an “unprecedented” total cost of about £800 billion.
However, a report published by the public accounts committee (PAC) has warned that the academy, which was set up 12 years ago, has only accredited about 1,000 government staff.
There is also a shortage in skilled professionals such as welders, electricians and bricklayers – all high-priority occupations that are eligible for the “skilled worker visa”.
Committee chair Meg Hillier said major infrastructure projects are at risk of being “poorly managed and delivered late and over budget” due to shortages in workers with essential skills.
The Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) estimates the total whole life cost of the UK’s 244 major projects to be £805 billion, an increase of about £476 billion in the last four years.
In its recommendations, the committee has asked the Treasury and IPA to write an analysis of the risks the lack of skills poses to the government’s portfolio of infrastructure projects.
PAC’s report was based partly on concerns raised during a hearing earlier this year with Nick Smallwood the chief executive of the IPA.
Several major government projects related to FE have been assessed by the IPA, including the Lifelong Loan Entitlement, FE capital transformation, Skills Bootcamps and Free Courses for Jobs, and the T Level programme.
After five years of assessing the T Level programme, the IPA rated it ‘red’ in 2022/23, meaning that delivery of the project to time, cost and quality targets appeared “unachievable”. Government has already spent close to £1.8 billion on T Levels, which have been taken by only 30,000 students so far.
Smallwood said a lack of trained project managers in government creates a costly “overreliance” on consultants in the private sector.
In one example, he said competition with “massive investment” in infrastructure by Saudi Arabia resulted in “several hundred” designers leaving the UK market.
PAC and the National Audit Office (NAO) have both raised concerns about “acute” shortages in skilled workers in the UK.
In 2022, they highlighted the dramatic decline in the number of adults participating in government-funded education and skills training, which fell by half to 1.6 million in the ten years up to 2020/21.
In March, PAC published a list of essential government spending that should not be put off called ‘The Big Nasties’.
One of these spending areas is a “severe shortages of skills” in government, which cost an estimated £980 million in 2018 through the use of management consultancies.
PAC said: “Many projects and programmes across government are afflicted by delays, inefficiencies and budgetary overruns, often due to a lack of specialist skills amongst officials.
“The lack of skills must be addressed otherwise there will be huge risks to delivery of major capital projects.”
A government spokesperson said: “This government delivers some of the most challenging, ambitious and innovative projects the UK has ever seen.
“Speeding up delivery, while ensuring projects are effectively managed and deliver value for money, is a priority.
“Upskilling staff is a key part of this and we recently published a new framework to enable civil servants working on public projects to utilise AI to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their delivery.
“We are on target to meet our long term ambition to accredit 16,000 civil servants as government project delivery professionals.”
A sixth form college in Essex is celebrating top marks from Ofsted – in a report that its principal describes as a “ringing endorsement” of “high quality work”.
More than 3,100 young people aged 16 to 19 study at the college and benefit from “high-quality teaching by subject specialists” in “calm and highly focused learning environments that support and enable students to learn very effectively”, according to Ofsted.
Inspectors found that nearly all students pass their qualifications, often with A* grades.
This is achieved in part by college bosses who “identify good teaching practices and share them successfully”, ensuring that “teachers are confident to try different approaches making teaching relevant and interesting”.
Inspectors also found that staff have “high aspirations for what students will achieve and where they will move on to when they leave college”, ensuring that “students are very effectively equipped to make successful decisions to identify appropriate career choices and pathways”.
Students also “consider the views and beliefs of others and treat each other with dignity and respect”, the report found, adding that their behaviour is “exemplary” and “quickly become empowered to take ownership of their futures and their place in society as active citizens”.
The Sixth Form College Colchester’s most recent previous Ofsted result was a ‘good’, achieved in 2018.
Since then, leaders have been “successful in further raising the quality of education”, the latest report said, adding: “They have diligently focused on all aspects of provision to rectify any weaknesses identified through their effective quality assurance processes.”
Principal Ian MacNaughton said: “This ‘outstanding’ judgement is a ringing endorsement to the ongoing high quality of the work here at The Sixth Form College.
“We have all worked hard to sustain a very positive and inclusive ethos for many years and this has enormously contributed to the impressive success of our students.
“I must, of course, take the opportunity to thank our fantastic team of staff: we have, for many years, benefitted so much from a team of committed professionals, very skilled at working with students this age.”
The feat makes Colchester the 17th sixth form college, out of 43, to currently hold a grade one Ofsted result.
Staff at the University and College Union have today voted in favour of strike action over their employer’s allegedly “shameful” handling of workplace racism and breach of collective agreements.
Nearly three-quarters of UCU’s 182-strong members of the Unite union said they are prepared to strike against their trade union employer, as a ballot over a long-running dispute concluded.
The ballot result also found 78 per cent were prepared to take industrial action consisting of action short of a strike. Turnout was 79 per cent.
Staff are prepared to strike for one day on May 30, the second day of the union’s annual congress on May 29 to 31 in Bournemouth, FE Week understands.
UCU will meet with Unite before the congress at an ACAS meeting on May 24.
If no resolution is found, then it will be the first time in UCU’s 18-year history that its own staff have gone on strike.
The strike ballot followed an internal dispute over UCU’s “institutional failings” into how it allegedly treats Black staff, the Unite Black member’s group claimed back in March.
The group alleged that Black staff are disproportionately targeted for punitive action under internal procedures – 45 per cent of all UCU cases handled by Unite had an element of race discrimination.
It welcomed an independent investigation into workplace racism at UCU as of March 1.
UCU said at the time that it was in the midst of “sourcing an external independent party” to conduct the review.
UCU did not specify at the time of publication whether it had appointed an independent investigator for the review yet.
A Unite spokesperson said: “Unite members have today said enough is enough. We are resolute in our demands for an anti-racist workplace, for UCU as an employer to honour its collective agreements with us and, for an independent investigation into how the organisation is run. We are determined to bring about the change that UCU staff and UCU members so desperately deserve.”
The move is a further escalation of the ongoing internal dispute at the union after Unite ramped up a pay dispute with UCU and accused bosses of “prioritising” senior management pay.
Shortly after, FE Week revealed that recently re-elected general secretary Jo Grady had accepted a near-£18,000 salary rise to help her pay damages from a libel case.
Unite also accused UCU of repeatedly breaching its agreements with the staff union, such as recognising a separate staff union by senior leaders – which Unite says breaches their recognition as the sole union for UCU workers.
The spokesperson added: “As a trade union, UCU is at the forefront of fights for equality, collective agreements and safe working environments for its members.
“It is shameful, therefore, that as an employer UCU has overseen a culture of racism within its own workplace, imposed new working conditions on staff without agreement and continues to breach collective agreements with its staff union, Unite. This includes unilaterally de-recognising Unite as the sole union for UCU staff. UCU’s actions as an employer go against the core values of trade unionism that we and the rest of the trade union movement campaign for every single day.”
A UCU spokesperson: “UCU is proud to offer its staff some of the best pay and conditions in the movement – our staff work incredibly hard, and their work is rightly valued and rewarded highly.
“We recognise that there are areas where we can improve and are actively working with Unite to address any issues of concern.
“We are pleased to have secured an upcoming meeting at Acas on Friday 24 May to further facilitate this, and our absolute focus is on finding agreed solutions to this dispute as quickly as possible.”
The strike ballot results are not the first of its kind in education. In 2018, staff at the NASUWT teachers’ union went on strike over a pensions dispute and the way it was run. The turmoil led to a step down of the then-general secretary Chris Keates in 2019.
A major change to the way Ofsted displays its judgements will not apply to further education colleges or training providers.
The education watchdog today changed school profiles on its website to show all four inspection sub-judgements alongside the overall effectiveness grade.
Chief inspector Martyn Oliver said this will give parents a more “rounded, contextual picture” of how well a school is doing for children.
However, Ofsted has excluded post-16 providers from the move.
The watchdog told FE Week this is because updating the website to show extra sub-judgements on every education provider’s profile is a large and complex technical change.
Ofsted wants to make sure it works reliably before the change is rolled out further, a spokesperson said.
The added sub-judgements will only appear on the profiles of schools that have had a full graded inspection since September 2019, when the education inspection framework came into effect.
Other inspections and provider types will only be considered once Ofsted is sure that the new system is secure, FE Week understands.
‘These changes should apply across the board’
Tom Middlehurst, inspection specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said the single-phrase judgements are “just as damaging” for colleges as for schools.
“These changes ought to apply across the board and displaying different levels of judgements depending on the type of educational establishment only risks causing confusion,” he add.
“We would hope this new system has been comprehensively tested to ensure it works reliably and if there is any danger that this is not the case then it should not be being used for any school or college.
“Ultimately though it is single-phrase judgements themselves, not the way in which they are displayed, that are the real problem.”
‘A small but important step’
Ofsted’s move comes as the consultation stage of its ‘Big Listen’ exercise nears its end.
Oliver, who was appointed as chief inspector in October 2023, said: “I hope this change shows that we have listened to parents and teachers, and that, while Our Big Listen continues until the end of the month, we are acting where we can now.
“This change is a small but important step in helping parents get more from Ofsted’s inspection reports.”
The government has resisted calls to scrap one-word judgements following the death of headteacher Ruth Perry, who took her own life after an Ofsted inspection in November 2022.
A coroner found that the “rude and intimidating” inspection, which resulted in an ‘inadequate’ grade, contributed to her death.
However, despite a recent education committee’s recommendation that a more “nuanced” alternative is found, the government said it has “no plans” to change single-phrase Ofsted judgments.
A spokesperson for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) said: “AELP supports the move to greater transparency when it comes to Ofsted inspection reports, and looks forward to this being rolled out to all education providers in due course.”
One of the country’s largest college groups has been ordered to pay more than £50,000 in compensation to a former sports lecturer for unfairly dismissing him.
Michael Barbrook, a former tourism lecturer and then course leader for sports at Havering Sixth Form College, part of New City College, won his case after the college was found to have conducted a flawed dismissal and appeal in 2021.
According to court documents, a judge suggested New City College was “creating a case to fit the outcome it desired rather than looking at evidence and allegations completely impartially”.
The employment tribunal unanimously ruled that Michael Barbrook should be paid £53,256.95 in compensation for unfair dismissal plus £174.95 in compensation for preparing for the case while not legally represented.
The allegations
Barbrook joined Havering Sixth Form College in 1997 and had 23 years of an “unblemished” disciplinary record. The college merged with New City College in 2019.
But he was sacked without notice for “gross misconduct” in January 2021 after New City College claimed he had cancelled morning coaching sessions, falsified register marks, left work early without permission and did not provide students with their allocated teaching hours in October 2020. Barbrook contested the decision but failed at his appeal.
The court was privy to an all-staff briefing from September 2020 of the difficult conditions FE staff were working in during the pandemic ahead of the new academic year. New City College CEO Gerry McDonald told staff that the senior management team were “keen to avoid” immediately moving to online learning.
“Subject to the need to provide cover where necessary, teachers will only need to be on campus when they are actually teaching if they choose to undertake marking and preparation at home,” McDonald said.
Group CEO Gerry McDonald told he had ‘superficial understanding’ of case
That month, Barbrook’s request to work from home “as students in the sports classes had been asked to work from home due to five positive incidents of Covid 19” was denied. The grievance officer in charge of Barbrook’s subsequent complaint admitted that the request was reasonable and “the college could have done more”.
Barbrook was suspended on full pay in November 2020 and invited to a disciplinary hearing to hear that he had “falsified register marks, specifically those relating to coaching sessions on a Friday morning”.
“It is alleged that your alleged actions fail to meet our expectations of proper conduct by a college employee and breach the trust and confidence which goes to the heart of any employment relationship,” the college added.
The court heard that the college was aware of an informal practice of teachers starting the final lesson of the day during the lunch break beforehand “in order to engineer an early finish”.
Barbrook worked at the college, located in Hornchurch, but he lived in in Caerphilly, South Wales, a three-hour drive away. He had a longstanding agreement with the college that his “offsite time” would be timetabled on a Friday afternoon so he could leave early to drive home.
‘No chance’ of dismissal of fair procedure adopted
The tribunal also heard that the then-deputy CEO, Suri Araniyasundaran, who dismissed the teacher, was “completely incurious” in his approach to Barbrook’s allegations.
Araniyasundaran left New City College in March 2023, three months before Barbook’s case hearings began.
Araniyasundaran admitted he had not seen Barbrook’s personnel file, his disciplinary record, or the minutes of the meeting with students which confirmed when the two sports lessons ended before sacking Barbrook.
Nor had he seen minutes of the investigation meeting with Barbrook’s line manager, where she had given verbal permission to bring forward his lesson.
An appeal was overseen by McDonald, who, as well as leading New City College as group CEO, is the chair of the Association of Colleges’ employment policy group.
The judge said McDonald had a “very superficial understanding” of the allegations of misconduct and the tribunal was “surprised” to see that the appeal outcome letter was only one page and one line long.
The tribunal concluded: “We are satisfied that the [college’s] decision to dismiss (and uphold that decision), and the standards by which those decisions were reached, fell beyond the band of responses open to a reasonable employer of a similar size and with similar administrative resources.”
It added: “If a fair procedure had been adopted and the dismissing officer [Araniyasundaran] or appeal officer [McDonald] had fairly considered the custom and practice at the college and the mitigating evidence, there was no chance that [Barbrook] would have been dismissed. At most he may have received a warning, but he was most likely to receive training on revised practices.”
The court dismissed Barbrook’s claim of disability discrimination of anxiety and depression.
A long-running training scheme for unemployed people has only helped a “small number” into work, according to government research that has gathered dust for over a year.
An estimated £35 million has been poured into Sector-Based Work Academy Programmes (SWAPs) since they were re-launched as part of the government’s Plan for Jobs in 2020. A further £25 million is budgeted for this year.
The scheme is designed to prevent long-term unemployment by moving benefit claimants into local jobs through a combination of pre-work training, work experience and a guaranteed job interview.
Despite repeatedly celebrating the “smashing” of its target of starting 80,000 people a year on a SWAP, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has failed to publish data showing the impact of the programme.
After a recent FE Week investigation into the DWP’s lack of transparency, the department finally published a report this week that was completed in March 2023 by its in-house labour market analysis division.
Positive experience but doubts over effectiveness
The qualitative report was based on 93 interviews and focus groups sessions carried out in late 2022. It aimed to address the “gap” in understanding whether SWAPs moved people into employment, and whether they then claimed less benefits.
The research found that only a “small number” of claimants reported moving into work, despite the fact that this was a “key intended outcome” of SWAPs.
It was also unclear to researchers whether those who had moved into employment had found roles that were linked to the sector the SWAP training and work experience had focused on.
Although claimants tended to be “positive” about the programme, many doubted whether it was “useful”.
Researchers found that “few” participants were offered work placements and some were “disappointed” because there was no job interview at the end of the programme – two components that were supposed to be mandatory.
Although the government advertises the programme as lasting “up to six weeks”, most participants said it took “two weeks or less” – with SWAPs for some civil service jobs taking only half a day.
‘No closer’ to knowing whether SWAPs work
The DWP refused to say why it failed to publish the report for more than a year after it was completed. The department is also yet to publish an “impact assessment”, understood to have concluded last year, of how many SWAP participants moved into employment.
Sam Avanzo Windett, deputy director at Learning and Work Institute, said although the research suggested the scheme had had “real benefits” for jobseekers and employers, it was “concerning” that many participants did not have work experience or job interviews.
She added: “Crucially, we’re still no closer to knowing whether SWAPs are successfully supporting people into sustainable jobs – in fact, the latest research casts doubt on SWAPs’ employment outcomes and their effectiveness in filling employer vacancies.
“We need data on job outcomes and claimant sanctions to better understand their impact and effectiveness.”
Given the increasing numbers participating in SWAPs, finding out whether they worked was “particularly important”, the report said.
Despite the DWP’s “strong focus” on how many people start SWAPs, staff showed “little evidence” of keeping track of their working life afterwards.
One staff member told researchers: “What we’re not doing enough of at the moment is capturing that result of what the actual outcome of the SWAP was.”
A lack of transparency
In 2020, then chancellor Rishi Sunak stood at the dispatch box and claimed the “evidence” showed SWAPs worked.
But the evidence he was referring to appeared to be research from 2013 and 2016, which had a “restricted” depth of insight because they looked at specific groups – such as young people or employers – rather than the impact of the whole programme.
Despite this lack of evidence, Sunak will have injected £60 million into the scheme by April 2025.
The DWP only began regular publication of data showing the age, sector and location of people starting SWAPs in February this year.
However, this falls short of recommendations made by the parliamentary work and pensions committee last year, which said the department “lacked transparency” around the performance of work schemes such as SWAPs, making an evaluation of their success “unfeasible”.
A spokesperson for the DWP did not respond when asked whether it had made changes based on concerns in the report, but they insisted that SWAPs “helped thousands of people” learn skills, gain on-the-job experience and get into work.
They added: “Our Jobcentre network is one of the biggest local recruiters and alongside SWAPs, work closely with employers to help match jobseekers with roles.”
Seema Malhotra claims that if Labour wins power, she will unleash a “skills revolution”.
So far, the opposition’s headline post-16 policy offer includes, controversially, replacing the apprenticeship levy, creating newly badged “technical excellence colleges” and a national skills quango.
But little is known about the shadow skills minister, appointed by Keir Starmer in September, and why the mission matters to her.
Malhotra lacks the ability to boast, as education secretary Gillian Keegan can, that she herself did an apprenticeship. She also lacks the fiery charisma – as well as the controversy – of Angela Rayner. She is softly spoken, guarded in her responses, but also grounded and well-informed. If there are skeletons in her closet, they’re hidden from view.
Having previously served as the shadow business and employment minister, Malhotra knows better than most – including, perhaps, Luke Hall, her opposite-number – what skills businesses are crying out for and she has pledged to “work in partnership” with them to plug shortages.
Seema Malhotra outside the shop her family had, with her sisters
Malhotra family roots
Malhotra’s early experiences of the workplace were as a little girl standing on tiptoe to see above the counter as she helped her mum serve customers in their shop.
Her Hindu parents lived in poverty in India before moving to the UK in the 1960s “at a time of lots of racism”.
Her family of eight lived in a flat above the shop, with Malhotra, her three older sisters and younger brother sharing two bunk beds in one room. The cramped conditions meant she came to value green spaces in her local community of Hounslow, which she has represented as Feltham and Heston MP since 2011.
When Malhotra was nine, her dad became an independent financial adviser and carer for her grandmother while her mum taught English as a second language and provided special needs support at localprimary schools.
Education was highly valued in her household; her grandmothers had both been forbidden from attending school in northern India, although her maternal grandmother went to a “secret school” until she was 11.
Malhotra therefore grew up seeing education as “something so important that you need to invest in it”. She attended the local comprehensive, and her parents “put everything into supporting” their children’s learning.
Seema Malhotra school photo, with her sisters
Becoming political
At the age of 14, Malhotra was given an English assignment to “work yourself up about something”. She chose the subject of Margaret Thatcher, and joined Labour two years later.
Her politics and philosophy degree from Warwick University included a scholarship year at the University of Massachusetts.
She appreciated the flexibility built into the American education system, which offered more modular courses – a flexibility she wants to promote in the UK skills system through Labour’s growth and skills levy.
After a spell as a graduate management consultant for professional services company Accenture, Malhotra helped set up one of the country’s first regional development agencies, which she describes as a “really interesting experience of devolution”.
Seema Malhotra graduation day, with her mum
One of Malhotra’s central concerns is restoring compulsory work experience in schools. Shortly after becoming the first ever Punjabi woman MP in 2011, the government made this optional – a decision that made her “very angry”.
She acknowledges this won’t be easy because of “employer fatigue”. Currently, only around half of state school students do work experience, and employers have to fit those in with placements for new T-level courses and apprenticeships.
Malhotra describes as “really, really significant” her party’s commitment to recruit and train over 1,000 careers advisers in schools. These will, she says, help pupils to “keep in touch” with the local job market and “upskill teachers”.
Labour won some praise last year when Bridget Philipson, the shadow education secretary, suggested an incoming Labour government would “pause and review” the defunding of qualifications like BTECs that rival T-levels.
She is “very concerned” about the defunding of level 3 courses. But she also believes that some T-levels, for example those relating to engineering and early years, are “working really well” and there have been “interesting examples with healthcare”.
When it comes to the challenges some colleges are encountering in lining up T-level work placements, Malhotra doesn’t “get the sense that employers don’t want to engage” but that the government lacks “an overall strategy for engagement”.
“We want employer engagement helping to develop and set standards. We need a faster cycle of being able to review standards so that curriculums are kept up to date with changing technology.”
Seema Malhotra campaigning for Labour
Winning over business
In 2015, Malhotra became shadow chief secretary to the Treasury in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.
She was involved in “a lot of work” on the Panama Papersfollowing the leak in 2016 of more than 11.5 million documents exposing international corruption and tax evasion.
She was then one of several shadow ministers to resign over Cobyn’s leadership, a decision she has no regrets about. But that period was, she says, “incredibly difficult”.
“It’s been so important that we have rebuilt and changed the party, and how quickly we’ve become a much more united party focused on the country again.”
After being an active part of the campaign to get Keir Starmer elected as Labour leader in 2020, Malhotra returned to the front bench as shadow employment minister. Here she saw local authorities given Covid funding to roll out initiatives that supported their communities, which consolidated her belief in devolution.
“Making choices closer to the ground, understanding local needs is what can drive faster outcomes,” she says.
This was a time during Covid when post-Corbyn Labour was “rebuilding its relationships with business”.
In a sign of how much her party’s priorities have shifted in favour of the free market, Malhotra isn’t tempted to criticise the fact that foreign-owned private equity companies are taking majority stakes in large training providers.
She questions why there is no national skills strategy, like the one introduced by Gordon Brown in 2009. For this, Malhotra partly blames the government’s lurching from “crisis after crisis” since Covid – “it’s no surprise that now there’s a workforce crisis”.
She isn’t inclined to transfer the skills portfolio to the Department for Business and Trade, as was the case from 2009 to 2016, but feels “very strongly” that Labour’s industrial strategy cannot be delivered without a “really solid, cross-departmental” skills strategy, “very closely connected with the Industrial Strategy Council”.
“That’s the context in which you can then have other layers of important institutions like the Industrial Strategy Council. People tell us they still aren’t sure whether to invest in Britain, because of the instability.”
Seema Malhotra visiting an adult learning class in Greenford
Labour’s lack of detail
Although recent polls and last week’s local election results show Labour are capitalising on frustration with the current government’s lack of direction, the party has also been criticised for not setting out strong alternatives.
Malhotra disputes this, pointing to its industrial strategy, its Start Up, Scale Up Review for boosting the economy and its Missionsdocument, and she adds there was “not this much detail” from Labour before the 1997 or 2010 elections.
There is also wariness that Labour’s ideas could be stolen by the Conservatives – she claims when Labour unveiled its NHS workforce plan, they “took that idea”.
“There will be more that comes out closer to the election,” she says. “There is also a lot more to do to keep talking through that detail, and whether that detail needs to be further worked up.”
And there is more to learn from other countries that could shift Labour’s policy framework. Malhotra is visiting Singapore this week with shadow industry and decarbonisation minister Sarah Jones. The aim is to learn from a country that she says is “10 years ahead of us on changes to vocational education and skills strategies”.
Seema Malhotra at a roundtable with Keir Starmer
Apprenticeship cut criticism
Training providers are desperate to understand the nuts-and-bolts of Labour’s biggest and most controversial skills policy: replacing the apprenticeship levy with a growth and skills levy that businesses could spend on non-apprenticeship training.
Conservative ministers estimated this would cost £1.5 billion, and limit the country to 140,000 apprenticeship starts a year. But Malhotra points out that the Learning and Work Institute challenged the DfE analysis, and highlights how little of the levy businesses say they’re “actually spending”.
Analysis byFE Week, published last year, found that around £418 million was raised by employers but went unallocated, and Malhotra says “there needs to be transparency” around what the Treasury spends that money on.
She says Labour’s growth and skills levy would support “smaller, more agile modular courses” that would help with “pre-apprenticeship training and readiness” and provide “more support for functional skills”.
“If some of that investment goes into improving apprenticeship outcomes, that’s really significant because we want completions. You can also see an opportunity for building towards qualifications step by step.”
The Federation of Small Businesses said apprenticeships among their members had halved since the levy was introduced in 2017, and there is concern that Labour’s replacement would result in even less funding for those companies.
Malhotra swerves a question on whether she would commit, as her predecessor, Toby Perkins did, to additional spending for a ringfenced budget for apprenticeships in SMEs. She says “flexibility around smaller courses” would offer “pathways in” for smaller companies.
Seema Malhotra at Engineered Learning in Derby
Technical excellence
Regulating what would be fundable under Labour’s levy would be the job of Skills England, a new body Labour says will work across government departments.
Malhotra recalls a workshop she recently attended, in which advanced manufacturing companies lamented the “huge shortages” they were experiencing recruiting certain types of engineers.
“Who’s owning that problem? The answer was no one…that’s why it’s been such a fight and a free-for-all for different sectors, employees and individual colleges.”
Labour is not planning to roll back local skills improvement plans (LSIPs), but Skills England would oversee them nationally.
It will be from “within the LSIP-driven needs” that bids for “technical excellence colleges” will come forward. In other words, where there is an “identified need for specialism”.
Seema Malhotra in Cornwall College with an apprentice
She describes the colleges as “centres of excellence” which would enable the “missing middle” to achieve “the level 4 and level 5 qualifications where we know as a nation we’re behind. We’re six out of seven in the G7. That isn’t a scorecard to be proud of”.
When asked whether Labour has had any concrete pledges of support from employers for these proposals, she points to examples where employers are helping colleges to develop specialisms – for example, with electric vehicle infrastructure training at Blackpool and the Flyde College, and marine training at the Cornwall Marine Academy.
Although Malhotra is clearly itching to take her place on the opposite front bench, historically, shadow ministers are not always retained when their party wins power.
She admits that “things aren’t going to change overnight” if Labour wins. “Everybody knows that. The country is so broken…But what we do have is hope, optimism and a plan to change what we can. To not get too focused on overall structures of government, but building the infrastructure we need to make sure that we’re starting to deliver from day one.”
