Study programmes architect Professor Alison Wolf has warned that a Department for Education (DfE) English and maths qualification exemption could mean 16 to 19-year-olds miss out on “the single most useful thing they could achieve”.
The King’s College London academic said she was “uneasy” about the potential results of a government decision that learners without A* to C grade maths and English GCSEs, on programmes consisting of less than 150 hours, did not have to study towards passes.
Professor Wolf (pictured) said study programmes — a combination of vocational learning and maths and English GCSE requirements for 16 to 19-year-olds — had been designed with full-time students in mind.
“But I really hope they are going to monitor it,” she told FE Week.
“I’d be a bit uneasy if we found, a year from now, that no one on a programme of less than 150 hours ever took a GCSE.
“If someone is close to getting their English or maths, doing so might well be the single most useful thing they could achieve.”
She added: “I think that, as long as they are still expected to do some English and maths, it is reasonable, because standalone qualifications will tend to either need quite a lot of time, or not be worth taking really.”
It was Professor Wolf’s Review of vocational education, published in March 2011, that called for 16 to 19-year-olds who had not achieved a C or above in English or maths GCSE to keep studying toward the qualifications, alongside their vocational programmes.
Although the Department for Education (DfE) accepted her recommendation, Skills Minister Nick Boles used his speech at the Association of Colleges conference last month to announce he was exempting learners studying for less than 150 hours from the rule.
The announcement was confirmed by the maths and English condition of funding guidance, published on Thursday (December 4) and comes into effect immediately.
A DfE spokesperson denied Professor Wolf’s policy was being “watered down”.
“We want to support those individuals who might work part-time or have caring responsibilities and are considering a route back into education through short or part time evening courses,” he said.
“This policy will allow the small number of 16 to 19-year-olds taking these types of courses to focus on the core elements of the subject they are studying.”
He added that of the 1.2 million 16 to 19-year-olds in FE, around 30,000 are studying courses
below 150 planned hours in an academic year — around 2 per cent.
A “five-year rule” forcing early years apprentices to re-sit for qualifications they already had could be scrapped after a provider threatened to take the government to court.
Business Secretary Vince Cable has agreed “in principle” to scrap the rule in the Specification of Apprenticeship Standards for England (Sase), which requires all level two and three apprentices to hold English and maths qualifications less than five years old.
The Sase is used to dictate the minimum standards for apprenticeship frameworks, and although the five-year rule applies to all frameworks, most allow learners to take more applied qualifications, such as Functional Skills.
But independent learning provider PBDevelopment launched judicial review proceedings after it was discovered that, coupled with the removal of Functional Skills as an option from the new early years educator (EYE) framework in August, the five-year rule made it “impossible for anyone over 21 to complete an early years apprenticeship”.
Ross Midgley, PBDevelopment director (pictured), welcomed Dr Cable’s announcement and has agreed to pause his legal action for six months.
But he demanded changes to the EYE framework, which was developed by the National College for Teaching and Leadership, to improve participation among older learners.
He said: “Amending Sase is just the first step. What the government now needs to do is amend the early years apprenticeship framework that was made under Sase, because this makes it impossible for anyone over 21 to complete an early years apprenticeship.
“In GCSE English, unlike maths, candidates must undertake a series of controlled assessments, which have to be sat under exam conditions in a school. For work based candidates, this is just not possible.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: “The government is considering modifying the Sase so that the requirement that GCSEs in English and maths at grade B or C must have been achieved in the five years prior to the start of a level two or level three apprenticeship is removed.
“The chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency will be asked to prepare draft modifications to Sase. Once these have been received and approved, secondary legislation will be required to give effect to the changes.”
A spokesperson for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) welcomed the news, but said the government should also reconsider proposed changes to the framework that will make English and maths GCSEs an entry requirement for early years apprenticeships from next August.
He said: “The five-year rule is not applied in other apprenticeship programmes and should be dropped for EYE programmes. Furthermore, it is not a requirement if learners do the stand-alone diploma outside of an apprenticeship framework.
“We remain though very concerned about the potential impact on apprenticeship recruitment by nurseries if the government maintains that from August 2015, GCSEs in English and maths, at grade C or above, will be required on entry to an early years apprenticeship.
“Again, in every other level three apprenticeship framework, the requirement for level two English and maths is an exit requirement rather than an entry one and Functional Skills are a valid and well respected alternative to GCSE.”
The principal of a college recovering from financial difficulties has backed FE Commissioner Dr David Collins in his view that Ofsted could “be more useful” in looking at bank balances.
Mark Robertson (pictured), from City of Wolverhampton College, which was visited by Dr Collins in May over Skills Funding Agency (SFA) concerns about finances, said he wanted inspectors to take a closer look at the books.
Mr Robertson’s 10,000-learner college, complimented by Dr Collins on its financial progress, was rated by Ofsted as good overall, with leadership good as well, late last month. The college’s previous Ofsted inspection, in May last year, resulted in a “requires improvement” rating.”I agree with Dr Collins that Ofsted should look in more detail at the financial position of colleges,” said Mr Robertson. “For example, if a new leadership team puts the mechanisms in place to improve the finances, which is what the FE Commissioner recognised that we have done, that should be considered fully by Ofsted, to make its reports even more helpful.”
Dr Collins’s comments about Ofsted last month came after it rated leadership at Birmingham’s Bournville College outstanding and good overall, despite a “critical cash position,” as later identified by the commissioner.
It also emerged that the SFA issued the college with a notice of concern a month before Ofsted went in, but inspectors avoided financial issues in their report and indeed praised the leadership.
Acting principal Mike Hill said: “Ofsted judged leadership and management outstanding because it felt our financial situation did not impact on teaching and learning.”Ofsted, under the previous common inspection framework, replaced from 2012/13, used to carry out inspections with the SFA’s provider financial assurance team and their findings were given to inspectors. Ofsted argues that it doesn’t now look “directly” at finances, although a number of reports have covered the issue — including Wolverhampton’s, which complimented financial progress at the college. Another one, on Central Sussex College last month, praised “governors’ thorough scrutiny and careful monitoring of the college’s financial position” but still handed out the college’s second consecutive grade three overall result.
Principal Sarah Wright said: “We welcome Ofsted’s recognition of the improved financial management of our new senior team and board of governors.”
An Ofsted spokesperson said: “We may on occasion and where it is appropriate refer to a provider’s financial position as a factor in its overall governance and its ability to ensure sustainable good quality provision for learners.”
Meanwhile, Merseyside-based King George V College, a sixth form college with around 1,000 learners, slumped from a 2012 grade two rating to inadequate last month. A college spokesperson said: “We’ve noted the report’s recommendations and are now moving to action them.”
Three colleges have revealed plans to leave the Gazelle College Group this month, taking the total number quitting before next year to four.
The departures will reduce the organisation to 19 members with its £35,000 annual membership fee understood to have proven difficult to justify for colleges unable to point to independent research highlighting any return on investment.
It has prompted a review of membership at Gazelle, with chief executive Fintan Donohue revealing to FE Week that he was looking at “new ways of continuing our association with colleges who share our agenda, but are not at the current time able to commit to a full membership”.
Middlesbrough College, The Sheffield College and Peterborough Regional College all confirmed they would not be renewing memberships, just weeks after Gloucestershire College announced its plans to withdraw, claiming it could better spend its money elsewhere.
Fintan Donohue
And Carlisle College, Lewisham Southwark College and Glasgow Kelvin College said they were yet to make decisions on their future membership.
Middlesbrough College principal Zoe Lewis told FE Week: “We have reviewed our subscription and I have let Fintan know that we are not going to be renewing at the end of the year, for lots of reasons.
“We have got an awful lot out of being a member, but it’s about what we pay for it and we think we can now go it alone through more informal networks.”
Heather MacDonald, chief executive of The Sheffield College, said: “We are a member of the Gazelle Group due to a mutual interest and expertise in enterprise skills and education, and that will continue until the end of this calendar year.
“We value our membership of Gazelle and have derived considerable benefit from it. In a tougher financial climate we are exploring a different relationship with Gazelle short of full membership in the future.”
A spokesperson for Peterborough Regional College, said: “Our principal, Angela Joyce, has written to Fintan that we have terminated our membership for the Gazelle College Group. To confirm, the college continues as a member until the current membership period ends at the end of the calendar year.”
Gazelle members Cambridge Regional College, Activate Learning, Amersham and Wycombe College, Gateshead College and Preston’s College confirmed they would renew.
When asked if they planned to renew, Highbury College, Warwickshire College, North Hertfordshire College, City College Norwich, Cardiff and Vale College, Plymouth College, New College Nottingham and City of Bath College only confirmed they would be members for the “foreseeable future”.
Zoe Lewis
City of Liverpool College, South West College and Barking and Dagenham College declined to comment.
It comes after Gazelle came under fire from the University and College Union as FE Week revealed earlier this year that colleges had spent £3.5m on membership of the group and its services between January 2012 and June of this year.
Mr Donohue, who at the time defended the large amounts pumped in by colleges, told FE Week Gazelle’s membership situation had always “evolved”.
He said: “Some colleges do not feel able to continue full membership of Gazelle next year. We have greatly valued their support in advancing a shared ambition to put entrepreneurship at the heart of college operations and the student experience.
“The vast majority of our members, in spite of competing priorities, have indicated an ongoing commitment to full membership.
“The difficult financial climate for our sector means that colleges are necessarily re-evaluating spending decisions. We are investigating new ways of continuing our association with colleges who share our agenda but are not at the current time able to commit to a full membership.”
The failure of a government plan to make any major dent in £300m of FE and skills sector red tape costs for providers has prompted a call for “democratic scrutiny” to ensure greater progress in cutting bureaucracy.
The House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee should, it has been suggested, investigate in light of a National Audit Office (NAO) probe that found the Simplification Plan had shaved less than 2 per cent of the cost of complying with funding, qualifications and assurance requirements.
The plan was produced by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in 2012, but according to NAO head Amyas Morse, it had “not significantly cut the cost incurred by hard-pressed providers”.
“Despite some progress there is still too much red tape,” he said, adding: “BIS, working with the Department for Education [DfE], needs to consider more radical ways to simplify complex funding arrangements.”
Dr Lynne Sedgmore (pictured), 157 Group chief executive, told FE Week: “We are not surprised by these findings. Our members report that their administrative burdens have barely changed in recent years. As they rightly prioritise teaching and learning with less and less funding, dealing with an overly complex policy environment is extremely unhelpful.
“We would support calls for progress with the simplification agenda to be democratically scrutinised, perhaps by the select committee.”
Mikki Draggoo, director of corporate relations at City & Guilds, said: “The intention was to make the system clearer and reduce costs. The report shows this didn’t happen and FE providers were put to one side — despite it being designed for them in the first place.”
She added: “The BIS select committee should conduct its own inquiry into the skills and employment system.”
BIS select committee chair Adrian Bailey (pictured front) said: “It is astounding that something [Simplification Plan] which set out to achieve so much has achieved so little.
“My instinct is we wouldn’t launch a full inquiry into this, not least because we are running out of days before Parliament dissolves. But what I think we will do when we have the ministers in to talk about the annual report and accounts is raise questions about this.”
The NAO report, released on Thursday (December 4), said a “much more serious effort” was needed from BIS and pointed out the plan was “not a strategic stocktake of where simplification might have the greatest impact” and that providers themselves had “little voice” in its development.
Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges (AoC), said: “All unnecessary bureaucracy needs to be removed so the maximum resource can be focused on students rather than red tape.”
Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said: “The NAO report is welcome because it highlights how providers are often delivering similar programmes, particularly for young people, for three different government departments, ie DfE, BIS and the Department for Work and Pensions, which require different procurement and contracting processes.
“This inevitably has significant cost implications. We continue to call for more alignment of cross government programmes and the need for an environment where more resources are focused on delivery.”
A BIS spokesperson said: “We have made good progress in removing and reducing bureaucracy for FE providers. Funding and inspection systems have been streamlined and providers tell us that this has had a positive impact.
“We will carry on working with the sector to reduce bureaucracy while driving up the quality of FE provision and making it more responsive to the needs of learners and employers.”
Click here for more coverage and a link to the NAO report.
Google glasses, YouTube and digital reward badges were all hot topics at a learning technology discussion group for FE practitioners at London’s Science Museum on Monday (December 1).
Delegates at the Think Out Loud club, hosted by City & Guilds, heard from experts, tried out the latest technologies and explored the barriers to turning technology into learning tools.
The event was the second Think Out Loud club meeting, following the launch event in February. Among the speakers was Mark Riches, chief executive of learning website Makewaves, who talked about digital badges — small awards displayed on a website or CV, containing information about what the learner had to do to achieve them.
“Learning is no longer contained in any institutional place, learning happens all over the place,” he said.
“So why not let everybody play and be rewarded for the little bits of learning that they do?” Although it was still “early days” he added he thought most CVs would contain badges as standard in the future.
Mark Riches, chief executive of learning website Makewaves
“The value of badges is growing really quickly as more and more organisations — like O2, Amazon and Microsoft — seek to get connected with the learner,” he said.
Warwickshire College chief technology officer Yousef Fouda spoke about online video platform YouTube, which, with Google glasses, could be used to create demonstration videos. But, he added: “Eighty per cent of employers Google applicants to screen them before interview. So YouTube offers learners the chance to promote themselves and show off their skills to the world.”
The Further Education Learning Technology Action Group (Feltag) report, published in March, recommended all courses have a minimum of 10 per cent online delivery and in the discussion section of the event there was fierce debate over funding and whether it might lead to ‘box-ticking’.
For City & Guilds managing director Kirstie Donnelly, the discussion proved the highlight of the day.
“When you hear the energy, even at the end of the event, that’s when you know you’ve had an impact and created some energy,” she said.
Bryan Mathers, chief executive of Wapisasa, a not-for-profit digital innovation company, who, along with Ms Donnelly, hosted the event, said the aim of the day has been to “kick-start thinking”.
“It’s trying to drop people in the deep end and allow them to experience something and experiment in a safe way so they can say ‘How can I bring that back to my college?’”
Main Pic: Bryan Mathers, chief executive of digital innovation company Wapisasa, addresses Think Out Loud club members
‘How tech used is key’
Perhaps one of the best bits of the Think Out Loud Club was the chance to get hands-on with technology, including the Google Glass — an internet-connected pair of glasses with a camera and a tiny screen projected on to the lens.
Popping a pair on feels a little bit clunky, as one side is bigger than the other, but at the same time it feels incredibly cool to simply press your glasses, give a command and see information appear in front of you.
Having tried them I can’t imagine sitting through an entire film without going cross-eyed, and they still feel like they’re in the early stages of development.
But like many technologies, I think the most exciting things will be in what people choose to do with them — in the classroom, for example, creating demonstration videos, showing learners everything the teacher can — or something no one, not even Google, has thought of yet.
Formula One racing has Graham and Damon Hill and football has Harry and Jamie Redknapp, while high-flying father and son duos in the world of acting include Donald and Kiefer Sutherland, to name but one.
But the world of qualifications is no exception to familial footstep following — it has Mike and Jeremy Benson.
The latter is the man in charge of Ofqual’s vocational arm, while the former spent most of his career at City & Guilds.
“Although we didn’t talk about them a lot and of course I didn’t understand a lot of what he was talking about, vocational qualifications were always part of my childhood,” says Benson, junior (Jeremy).
He adds: “My father did a range of different jobs, administrative jobs, organising different types of assessments. He worked in their international division for a while; he was responsible at various points for their land-based qualifications.”
Benson on holiday in California this year with wife Sue and son Sam
The 40-year-old grew up in Bedford and now lives with wife Sue and their children — Naomi, aged 11, and Sam, nine — in Market Harborough where he is deputy chair of governors at Meadowdale Primary School.
And Benson says he enjoyed his own education in Bedfordshire’s three-tier school system, doing well at “everything but PE”.
He says: “From when I was in the lower sixth, I guess we were gently encouraged to set our sights high in terms of universities. I remember one of the teachers taking a mini-bus full of us to go to Oxford, so I was never sort of pushed or anything, but it was introduced to us as an opportunity that we ought to consider.”
Benson studied at Lady Margaret Hall, which had been Oxford’s first women’s college, and emerged in 1995 with a 2.1 in politics, philosophy and economics.
After seeing an advert for an executive officer entry scheme at the Department for Education (DfE), he joined the civil service, where he successfully applied for the graduate-entry fast stream. In 1999, after four years at the DfE, he became a team leader for finance.
Seconded to De Montford University as special projects manager from the end of 2002 to early 2004, Benson then returned to the DfE as a deputy director with responsibility for qualifications — a policy area which interests him to this day.
“There has clearly been quite a lot of change over time,” he says. “Under the last government there was the introduction [of] diplomas and the reform to GCSEs and A-levels, and then over the lifetime of this government we have had further reforms, and now there’s an increasing focus on apprenticeships.
Although we didn’t talk about them a lot and of course I didn’t understand a lot of what my father was talking about, vocational qualifications were always part of my childhood
“It’s also interesting for me because it’s not one of the most high-profile areas of education policy, which means there are opportunities to try and make some interesting things happen in an area that possibly hadn’t been thought about in the past.”
And so Benson today finds himself atop the Ofqual vocational division. It’s a post he’s held since September, having previously been its policy director for nearly three years and before that director, strategic management, for just over a year.
But the possibility that he might end up working at the regulator, an organisation he helped to set up during Ed Ball’s time as Education Secretary at the then-Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), did not initially occur to him.
He says: “My assumption had always been that once Ofqual had been set up that I would go and set up something else, go and find a different policy area to work on.
“It was set up in fairly challenging times, about a month before the 2010 general election, and obviously we had a completely new set of ministers who had some serious concerns about the way that education policy had been, and about standards and so on, so Ofqual was facing quite a challenging environment.
From left: Brothers Oliver and Tim, dad (Mike) and Benson. Building a wall outside their home in 1981
“So when the opportunity came up to apply for a director post here in the summer of 2010, I don’t think they had particularly expected me to apply for it, but they were very pleased when I did, and obviously I was delighted to get the job.”
He adds: “Most of the thinking about the set-up of Ofqual had been driven by the DCSF, which was obviously the pre-19 side.
“The starting point was about how we build confidence in the standards of GCSEs and A-levels and so on.
“It was always going to have a role in relation to vocational qualifications as well. My previous job here was as director of policy, and I’d spent an increasing amount of time on vocational qualifications in that context because of the interest that [former Skills Minister] Matthew Hancock had on apprenticeships.
“We have a general qualifications directorate and a vocational qualifications directorate, and I actually applied for both, but the job I really wanted was the vocational one.
“There’s so much really interesting and important work to do, and we’re perhaps a little way behind in terms of developing the regulatory strategy in the vocational space.”
Benson seems optimistic about yet more changes to the qualifications landscape, but has called for clarity when it comes to Functional Skills, and a focus on quality when looking at apprenticeships.
Benson on holiday in California this year with daughter Naomi
He says: “What we need in a sense from policy makers is clarity about where Functional Skills and other qualifications sit in the landscape, because that clarity of the policy context enables us to think about how we can then regulate the qualifications as effectively as possible.”
He adds: “Under the new apprenticeship model we will probably have an ongoing role regulating at least some of the end point assessments for the reformed apprenticeships, and it’s our job to make sure that the assessments of those apprenticeships, whatever types of assessments they are, where we regulate them, are as good as they can be.
“If the numbers of apprenticeships are going to be increased because the government thinks that’s a good thing, that’s fine — but from our point of view that shouldn’t lead to any compromise in terms of the quality of the assessments, or the standards that are set.”
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It’s a personal thing
What is your favourite book, and why?
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. It’s funny, tragic, moving and wonderfully well-written
What is your pet hate?
Bad driving
What do you do to switch off after work?
Going out with the family. Listening to Test Match Special. Football — Sam and I have season tickets for Leicester City this season. I am also mildly obsessive about classical music
If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party who would it be?
Clement Attlee, Kenneth Clarke MP, Leonard Bernstein and Aung San Suu Kyi
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
A journalist. It combined two interests — writing and current affairs. But I don’t think I’d have been very good at it
I had mixed emotions when I heard Skills Minister Nick Boles’s new apprentice set off the security alarms on his first day of work at Portcullis House. This also involved the evacuation of Westminster Underground station. I had a similar experience, too.
Many years ago when as a young 16-year-old trainee hotel manager working as a commis chef, I set fire to a chip pan which resulted in Birmingham New Street Station being evacuated. The Queens Hotel, now demolished, had its kitchens at platform level of New Street Station.
While I quickly extinguished the flames from my pan, the grease and dirt in the ventilation system caught fire and spread the length of the hotel and emerged in the British Railways buffet at the far end of the platform.
A major alert evacuated the station and at that time the Post Office sorting office below the station. To add to the chaos, all signals controlling the main line trains speeding to Birmingham were put to red.
Needless to say, the British Rail bosses no longer considered me suitable management material, but I was offered a job as a chef at three times my trainee salary.
HIT scooped another award last week getting into ‘The Times and Investec Mid-Market 100 fastest growing private companies’ in the UK, albeit at number 97.
Whatever fees an FE provider charges its sub-contractors, the services offered must be listed and the prices justified to avoid the colleges and independent providers involved giving our sector more bad publicity
At the awards ceremony, one of the speakers was Sherry Coutu CBE, who holds directorships in the London Stock Exchange, Zoopla, Cambridge University Press and LinkedIn among others. She outlined her research and forthcoming report into the importance of government ‘supporting high growth firms to scale-up their operations rather than concentrating on new start-ups’.
A statistic that amazed me was that while the mid-market private companies with a turnover of £10m-plus only account for 1 per cent of all listed companies at Companies House, they collectively employ 25 per cent of the working population in the private sector.
Indeed, this UK mid-market generates nearly £1tn annually and employs six million people.
So when colleges and providers are looking to engage with local employers, engaging with those in the mid-market sector would have the most beneficial growth to the local economy.
I am glad FE Week has tackled the thorny problem of sub-contracting fees [see edition 119]. When we started HIT eight years ago we obtained two small Learning and Skills Council Train to Gain contracts in the West of England and London and in the rest of the country relied on 42 sub-contracts from FE colleges. Their fees ranged from 10 per cent to 40 per cent and in those days they offered no support services at all.
I am glad FE Week has tackled the thorny problem of sub-contracting fees
Whatever fees an FE provider charges its sub-contractors, the services offered must be listed and the prices justified to avoid the colleges and independent providers involved giving our sector more bad publicity.
Sub-contracting to primes in the Department for Work and Pensions is well-regulated and transparent.
Ironically, the Education Funding Agency has no data on its sub-contractors, although this may change now it has a joint chief executive with the Skills Funding Agency (SFA).
The SFA has a duty to make sub-contracting transparent and the fees levied explained to provide value for money otherwise we will have another plethora of Channel 4 or Panorama type programmes and angry national press articles rubbishing the sector.
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has rejected an Association of College (AoC) manifesto call to keep AS-levels linked to A-levels.
Addressing MPs on the House of Commons Education Select Committee looking at exams for 15 to 19-year-olds in England on Wednesday (December 3), Ms Morgan (pictured front) defended plans to turn AS results into a separate qualification, making A-levels into a two-year course culminating in a single qualification.
Committee member Alex Cunningham asked Ms Morgan if she would reconsider the policy in light of the AoC manifesto, unveiled at its annual conference last month by president and Exeter College principal Richard Atkins (pictured).
The manifesto had called for the next government to “maintain AS-levels in their current form and should allow for rigorous modular assessment in vocational and academic qualifications, alongside final exams”.
However, Ms Morgan told the committee she would not consider reversing the decision to split the qualifications.
“We have retained AS-levels — they have just been de-coupled from A-levels,” she said.
“I’m a fan of linear assessment, in terms having the time to study something properly, without the stress of continuous assessment.”
Richard Atkins
She acknowledged that in more practical courses some modular courses might be “absolutely necessary” but that in other courses “it is right to be assessed at the end of the course”.
Committee chair Graham Stuart and Mr Cunningham said they had heard “near-unanimous” opposition to splitting AS and A-levels from across the education sector.
They also pointed to evidence from colleges that requiring AS-levels to run alongside A-levels risked excluding students in disadvantaged areas.
However, Ms Morgan said: “I’m not sure I buy this argument about people being socially less able to do A-levels, this is part of our drive to raise the standards in education for all pupils.”
Mr Cunningham said: “Colleges tell us in many cases they can’t afford to teach both of them at the same time.”
The Education Secretary said this did not match up with the Department for Education’s “evidence and research”.
“We obviously listen to colleges and what they’re saying, but we are now funding colleges on a per student basis, with enough funding for 600 hours of teaching which should be enough to teach three linear A-levels and an AS-level, as well as a 150 hours for tutorial time, so we don’t think that’s an issue,” she said.
A consultation on GCSE and A-level reform ran from September 25 to November 20, although a response has not yet been published.
There is also an open consultation on the reforms in relation to religious studies, which closes on December 29.
Ms Morgan also defended the decision not to specifically include employers in the design of the new A-levels and GCSEs in the same way they have been consulted over apprenticeship reform, saying apprenticeships were “particularly employer-focussed”.
The committee has previously heard evidence from Ofqual as well as calling for written submissions from the education sector.
