Latest news from FE Week

Former Education Secretary Lord Baker is celebrating the first outstanding grade from Ofsted for his university technical college (UTC) project with a glowing inspection report for UTC Reading.

The report on the UTC, which opened in 2013 specialising in science and engineering for 14 to 19-year-olds and is listed as a school by the education watchdog, is due out on Monday — but UTC bosses were so keen to get the positive message out they released it today.

It got grade one ratings across the six headline fields of overall effectiveness, leadership and management, behaviour, quality of teaching, achievement of students and sixth form provision.

Inspectors, who visited last month, praised the “inspiring leadership” of principal Joanne Harper (pictured below right), and said the governors and business partners, including Cisco, Microsoft, and Network Rail, were “knowledgeable and highly effective”, which contributed to the “outstanding achievement” of learners.

Ms Harper said the UTC was “characterised by excellent working relationships with its industry partners,” giving learners the “best possible foundations for their future careers”.

She added: “Our partners have helped to shape the curriculum and continue to work with us to set projects, offer work experience and providing mentoring.

“This is what sets the school apart and we are delighted that this has been reflected in the comments from the Ofsted inspectors.”

Lord Baker, who set up the Baker Dearing Trust to promote UTCs, of which there are 30 currently open and a further 20 due to open by 2017, said: “Ofsted rightly say that it is an outstanding school – one that provides an excellent technical education for aspirational young people that fits very well with the needs of local employers.”

The grade one rating comes with question marks continuing to hover over the UTCs project, with attendance and recruitment problems having been identified at several. Indeed, the grade one result at UTC Reading comes despite the fact it was running at 44.5 per cent of its capacity in April of this year.

Hackney UTC has confirmed it is to close this summer along with Black Country UTC, which was hit with the second inadequate rating from Ofsted last month for a UTC following that of Central Bedfordshire UTC last summer. The failure of the Black Country UTC has also seen Skills Minister Nick Boles pledge to “look at the programme” to consider whether it was “as successful as it can possibly be” before opening any more.

Nevertheless, Activate Learning, the organisation behind Reading UTC, Reading College, City of Oxford College, Banbury and Bicester College, is planning another UTC in Didcot to open in September. And Activate was also praised for its business-like ethos, which meant learners were “prepared exceptionally well for their future lives”.

Activate Learning chief executive Sally Dicketts (pictured below left) said: “Prior to the launch of UTCs young people had to make a choice between school and college.

“UTCs now combine the best of vocational and academic learning, providing students with a curriculum that develops higher-level thinking and applies it in a practical setting.

“This unique offering adds real value and choice to our educational system and UTC Reading is an excellent example of the model.”

Colleges which are good at “what they do on a daily basis” should not prepare for inspection under Ofsted’s reformed regime, the watchdog’s head of FE and skills has said.

Ofsted director Lorna Fitzjohn told delegates at the launch of the new common inspection framework (CIF) and short inspections regime that those FE providers already offering a “good” education to learners should not fear reprisals.

Speaking after the introduction of the new framework by chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw, in which Sir Michael announced that new inspections of “good” institutions would be conducted on the assumption that the provider was still “good”, Ms Fitzjohn warned FE leaders against trying to prepare.

She said: “The big message is don’t prepare for inspection. It really is about coming to see what you do on a daily basis, and if you’re really good at that, you don’t need to prepare for inspection.”

As revealed by FE Week last August, the CIF, which brings the inspection of FE and skills providers into line with early years and schools, will see inspectors no longer grading individual subject areas, but judging providers on “personal development, behaviour and welfare” of learners, while also increasing the emphasis on safeguarding when assessing leadership and management.

Under new short inspections, FE providers previously rated good will be inspected every three years instead of every five or six, but inspections will last as few as two days and with as few as two inspectors per visit.

Ms Fitzjohn told the launch event at Westminster’s Central Hall acknowledged the FE sector was already well-versed in what a CIF was, having been through several guises of its own.

She said: “The word CIF isn’t new to the FE sector. It’s now been stolen by schools, but I just think we’re trailblazers, we are setting the way with that. But we now not only have a CIF for FE and skills, we have a CIF right across most of what Ofsted inspects.”

Ms Fitzjohn said there were elements which were “very much the same as the last framework”, but added that the watchdog was “moving away” from inspection based on learners gaining a certain number of qualifications to “what a college or provider actually does to prepare that young person for work”.

She added: “I think the personal development and welfare grade really gives us an opportunity to celebrate much of what is done by the sector within that area.”

Ms Fitzjohn also set out how short inspections could be “converted” into full inspections within 15 days if it was felt the provider under scrutiny had slipped from a “good” rating or could achieve an “outstanding”, but admitted it “wasn’t easy” for large, multi-site colleges.

Other initiatives announced at the event included plans for eight regional “scrutiny committees” to independently screen Ofsted’s work and proposals to boost the watchdog’s in-house service, with a pledge that 7 out of 10 inspectors will be current practitioners within the field they are inspecting by September.

Gill Clipson, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges (AoC), welcomed the fact inspections of good colleges would be based on the assumption they had not got worst, adding: “Too often we hear from colleges that inspection teams begin from a negative hypothesis which is dispiriting to say the least.

“We are also pleased to see that the Ofsted complaints procedure is to be made transparent as this is something AoC has long been calling for.

“The introduction of a scrutiny committee in each Ofsted region, made up of inspectors and leading head teachers and principals who are not inspectors, will mean that complaints are fully examined.”

Awarding organisations could be forced to withdraw qualifications with units shared with other bodies after Ofqual announced plans to close its “unit bank”.

Under the proposals set out in a letter from the regulator, awarding organisations have until July 31 to withdraw units shared and developed with others or allow those competitors to “treat them as their own”.

If units are withdrawn, awarding organisations will have two years to replace them in their qualifications and get them approved or withdraw the qualifications completely. 

The closure of the unit bank is happening as part of moves to scrap the qualifications and credit framework, but it means units on the system will have to be withdrawn by the awarding organisations which developed them unless they want competitors “treating them as their own”.

In the letter, Ofqual’s director of strategic relationships for vocational qualifications Naomi Nicholson, said the regulator would assume that awarding organisations which did not get in touch by July 31 did not intend to withdraw any units currently being used by other bodies and that they “do not object to the awarding organisations currently using those units treating them as their own”.

Ms Nicholson added that Ofqual would also assume that awarding organisations which did not get in touch recognised that other bodies would “rely on these assumptions”.

Organisations which don’t agree with “some or all” of the assumptions have until 5pm on July 31 to provide Ofqual with reference numbers for units planned for withdrawal from shared use and notify all other bodies using the shared units.

She added: “It remains our view that the appropriate notice period for withdrawing units will be two years.”

To inform Ofqual about withdrawal of units, email regulatory.relationships@ofqual.gov.uk

Skills Minister Nick Boles has reiterated his commitment to make it illegal to misuse the word “apprenticeships”.

Mr Boles, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan and the rest of their team faced a grilling from MPs on government education policy in this afternoon’s education questions in the House of Commons.

Mr Boles also suggested the funding rate for 18-year-olds, currently 17.5 per cent less than the rate for 16 and 17-year-olds, could be re-examined next year, but that the FE budget announced in March for 2015/16 definitely would not change.

Mr Boles told the House of Commons: “We will be requiring all public sector bodies to employ apprentices, and will legislate to protect the term apprentice from misuse.”

As previously reported by feweek.co.uk, the proposals from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), are expected to be introduced to Parliament in the autumn as part of the government’s enterprise bill.

Mr Boles also defended the government’s record on apprenticeships after Labour MP Liz McInnes pointed out that almost 40 per cent of the 440,000 apprenticeship starts in 2013/14 were by learners over the age of 25.

Mr Boles said: “We do not share with the opposition this obsession with the idea that anyone over 25 doing an apprenticeship is wasting their time of the government’s money.”

Conservative MP and education committee chair hopeful Caroline Nokes asked if the DfE would consider reviewing the lower funding rate for 18-year-olds.

Mr Boles described the funding rate cut as “a difficult decision” that the government “did have to make” and he agreed with Ms Nokes’ comments that those who study for an extra year at the age of 18 were often some of the most vulnerable young people.

He added: “The Chancellor will be looking at this in the spending review.”

However, he said the FE funding allocations announced in March for the 2015/16 academic year would be unaffected by the announcement last week of a £450m cut from the DfE budget.

He said: “I can confirm that the allocations that were announced in March for 16 to 19 education for the 2015/16 academic year remain in place and we are not planning to change them.”

FE staff and students are set to lobby politicians directly tomorrow afternoon as they take the fight against swingeing sector funding cuts to Parliament.

The mass lobby of Parliament in protest against Adult Skills Budget cuts has been organised by the University and College Union (UCU) and is expected to take place from 2pm.

The lobby event follows news in March that funding for Adult Learning would be cut by up to 24 per cent in 2014/15, and an announcement this month that both the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education would each be facing cuts of £450m — with FE budgets specifically earmarked for savings.

Sally Hunt, UCU general secretary, said: “For too long, further education has been underfunded and underappreciated. The support for the campaign from across the sector and beyond is testament to how valuable adult learning is for people from all sorts of backgrounds.”

The UCU says the cuts will around 400,000 learners missing out on opportunities.

Ms Hunt said: “MPs now need to listen to the concerns of those working and studying in FE and take action to protect the future of the sector.

“We should be expanding opportunities for people to retrain, not cutting vital resources.”

FE staff and students attending the event are due to meet on Parliament Square at 2pm before moving over to the Houses of Parliament to lobby their MPs between 3pm and 5pm.

They will also hear from a range of speakers, including Green MP Caroline Lucas, National Union of Students vice president for FE Joe Vinson and Association for Teachers and Lecturers deputy general secretary Peter Pendle.

A petition calling for the cuts to be reversed, signed by more than 42,000 people, is expected to be handed in to Parliament in the next few weeks.

The new chief executive of the 157 Group is to be Ian Pretty, currently a senior vice president for public sector at Capgemini UK, it was announced today.

Mr Pretty is due to take up the post on September 7 when current executive director Dr Lynne Sedgmore retires after seven years leading the 157 Group.

Mr Pretty’s previous roles include director of strategy at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and director of strategy at the Cabinet Office.

Sarah Robinson, 157 Group chair and principal of Stoke on Trent College, said: “I am delighted that Ian has decided to join the 157 Group.

“Having held a number of senior positions in both central government and the commercial sector, he brings a wide range of skills and experience to the group as we continue our influential work to raise the profile and importance of FE and skills.”

Mr Pretty’s LinkedIn profile says he has “an in-depth understanding of managing the commercial sector’s relationship with Government”.

It lists him as having been at Capgemini, which offers business and public sector consulting and outsourcing, since 2007, when he was vice president, head of global tax and welfare.

His first post is listed as a Manchester-based HMRC tax inspector in 1993, before moving to the post of HMRC director of strategy at the large business office just under three years later.

He then took on the Cabinet Office role in 1999. In August 2001 he became director of communications for the Aspire Project at HMRC and three years later he moved to the post of director of strategy at the HMRC chief information officer’s office.

In May 2007 he moved to Capgemini where his posts have since included senior vice president of tax and welfare, and senior vice president of public sector. His current “specialties” are are listed as public ssector and transformational change in tax and welfare agencies.

His appointment follows Dr Sedgmore’s retirement announcement in February, bringing an end to 35 years in the sector.

Her time at the 157 Group has seen her gain a spot on this year’s Debrett’s list of the UK’s 500 most influential people.

She told FE Week: “I have loved my 35 years in the sector and have never wanted to be anywhere else. The work that FE colleges do for a huge cross spectrum of students is totally amazing, we truly transform lives for the better.

“I will miss colleagues and professional friends but in my 60th year, it feels time for a new and different life. I have plenty of things I want to do, places to go and adventures still to be had.”

Ms Robinson said Dr Sedgmore’s “contribution to the 157 Group, and to the wider further education and skills system, has been enormous”.

“Part of her legacy will surely be the increasingly positive light in which further education is viewed as an alternative gateway to sustained employment and a successful life,” she said.

Mr Pretty was not available for comment.

Apprenticeships will be given the same legal protection as degrees, allowing a clampdown on firms which misuse the term, the government has announced today.

A plan to force public bodies such as schools, hospitals and prisons to hire apprentices has also been announced as the government sets the ball rolling on plans to create 3m apprenticeship starts over the course of this Parliament.

The proposals from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which will be introduced to Parliament in the autumn as part of the government’s enterprise bill, come after the department remained silent over concerns raised by sector leaders about apprenticeship funding.

Sector leaders have warned the government not to leave providers short-changed after the Skills Funding Agency announced a delay to a decision on in-year growth requests, which will now not yet be made until after the budget on July 8.

Having previously pledged to protect apprenticeship funding, the government has so far been unable to say whether this protection will include growth funding, which is given to providers where they have over-delivered on their contracts.

Announcing the new measures, Skills Minister Nick Boles said apprentices deserved their “moment in the sun” as much as graduates, adding: “Businesses know their value so it’s high time they were recognised both by the public and in law as being equal to degrees.

“We want far more employers to get involved in apprenticeships. This means making sure that we practice what we preach in government, so we’re going require all public sector bodies – schools, hospitals, prisons and police forces – to employ apprentices.”

The organisation behind Lord Baker’s university technical colleges (UTCs) has said it will be “working with” Skills Minister Nick Boles as he looks into the performance of the project as it comes under growing criticism.

Officials at the Baker Dearing Trust look set for difficult questions from Mr Boles with UTCs suffering much-publicised recruitment issues.

Among those to have struggled to recruit have been Walsall’s inadequate-rated Black Country UTC and Hackney UTC — both of which are set for closure at the end of the academic year.

Mr Boles pledged to “look at the programme” to consider whether it was “as successful as it can possibly be” before opening any more UTCs as questions were asked in Parliament in the wake of the decision to close the Black Country UTC.

And while Mr Boles said the government was “firmly committed” to the UTCs programme, he said: “I think it is very important now at the start of a Parliament that we look at this programme and we ask ourselves is this programme as successful as it can possibly be before we launch ourselves into the process of opening more institutions like this.”

Including Black Country and Hackney, there are currently 30 UTCs. A further 20 are due to open by 2017.

A Baker Dearing spokesperson said: “We welcomed the Minister’s strong reiteration of the government’s commitment to UTCs during the debate.

“UTCs are a new responsibility for the Minister and, in the coming weeks, we will be working with him and his team to ensure he is fully briefed on the technical education pathway offered by UTCs.”

Mr Boles’s pledge to examine UTCs, which offer specialist vocational training alongside core academic subjects for 14 to 19-year-olds, has been welcomed by college groups.

Association of Colleges deputy chief executive Gill Clipson (pictured)said: “In order for UTCs, or indeed any new institutions, to be successful in recruiting a significant number of students there needs to be a consistent demand across all the necessary age groups.”

She added that since the UK education system was “fairly fixed” around transition at 11 and 16, and with “insufficient” careers advice available “it is not surprising that recruitment has been challenging for some”.

“Therefore, the Minister is absolutely right to say that the programme needs to be reviewed,” she said.

Lynne Sedgmore, 157 Group executive director, said: “We are delighted the minister has listened to advice from the 157 Group, supported by UCU and other sector bodies, to review the UTC programme before expanding any further.

“While we all want to make sure that high quality vocational programmes are available to all young people, it is clearly the case that new institutions, including UTCs, are not always the best answer.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “As is normal practice, we will continue to look at the performance of the UTC programme and how we can make sure they work most effectively.”

 

Former North Hertfordshire College (NHC) principal Fintan Donohue has denied any “knowledge of wrongdoing” after it was discovered that success rates were artificially boosted while he was in charge.

Current NHC principal Matt Hamnett (pictured below right) launched an investigation into learner information management shortly after starting in the post three months ago and he said it had uncovered “a series of issues”.

It found, he said, that details of failing learners were omitted from ILR returns as far back as 2008, with the effect of inflating classroom-based success rates by around 4 percentage points to 90.5 per cent last academic year.

There is no suggestion NHC would have been overpaid because it meant the college would have not been funded for some learners, but the practice would have given it an unfair success rates advantage over colleges who declared all learners.

However Mr Donohue (pictured top), who was principal and chief executive of the college from 2005 until the end of August 2012 when he stood down as principal but stayed on as chief executive for another year, told FE Week: “I have no knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing in respect of data inflation when I was principal of NHC.

“I have no reason to believe the forensic investigation initiated by the new principal suggests otherwise.”

The practice of boosting success rates by not claiming funding for failing learners was condemned in a 2009 letter to colleges by Geoff Russell, then-chief executive of the Learning and Skills Council, and a report commissioned by a group of colleges just over three years ago warned of “widespread” success rates manipulation among FE colleges.

I have no knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing in respect of data inflation when I was principal of North Hertfordshire College

The report, by Tenon Education Training and Skills Limited, was leaked to FE Week at the time and identified one such method as ‘buy one get one free’, which it described as: “Where the college has declining success rates and has chosen to stop offering the learning aim, potentially it could lose many learners.

“One solution to this is to continue to run the ‘declining success rate’ learning aim as a non-funded qualification, while choosing a similar learning aim (inspected under a different inspection code).”

But despite the warnings at the time, Mr Donohue, now chief executive of the Gazelle Group of Colleges, said: “I had every reason to be confident in the senior team responsible for data management.

“I do, of course, regret anything that casts doubt on the quality of any aspect of performance of the college over that period.”

The college was even granted an Education Training and Skills Green Flag Data Credibility Award in 2013 by Icca Education Training and Skills, which counts two of the Tenon report authors among its senior staff in Scott Winter and Vici Cadwallader-Webb.

“Audit reports including the green flag voluntary audit provided me with every confidence in the quality of data management,” added Mr Donohue.

He was succeeded as principal and then chief executive by former deputy principal Signe Sutherland (pictured left) as the duo, among others, launched Gazelle. She retired and was replaced by Mr Hamnett, but could not be reached for comment by FE Week.

Mr Hamnett, who declined to comment on whether use of ‘buy one get one free’ had been discovered, said his findings influenced his decision to pull NHC out of Gazelle, as exclusively revealed by FE Week last month, to “draw a line between our past and our future”.

He said: “I instigated a comprehensive piece of work to confirm the extent of these issues, properly address them and ensure that we have the platform we need to realise our high aspirations for the institution.”

An Ofsted spokesperson would not say whether the NHC findings had invalidated its last inspection result, in 2010, of ‘good’ overall with ‘outstanding’ leadership and management.

She said: “The 2010 report is five years old and reflects evidence available at the time. Ofsted’s focus is on what can be known and how we can take this into account in relation to the next inspection of this college.”

A Skills Funding Agency spokesperson said it had reviewed the NHC findings and “sought assurance from the corporation to ensure the situation would not arise again”, but it was “not planning to take any further action”.

The Education Funding Agency declined to comment. Nobody from Icca was available for comment.

 

Editor’s comment

Ignorance is no defence

Fintan Donohue says he did not know of any “wrongdoing” in respect of “data inflation” at North Hertfordshire College during his time in charge there.

It seems a classic case of ‘if he was aware then he did wrong and if he didn’t know then he wasn’t doing his job properly.’

Neither of these scenarios offer Mr Donohue any positivity, but taking him at his word we must believe the lesser of two evils — that as principal and chief executive he failed to spot, and therefore act to halt, long-term and serious cheating in relation to success rates.

The same two scenarios extend to Mr Donohue’s successor at the college, Signe Sutherland, who would also have been in charge while this data manipulation was taking place.

It’s an issue that will rock the sector for some time and who knows how it might affect Mr Donohue’s Gazelle project, although it’s a safe bet that it will not be of benefit.

The only person to emerge with any credit is new principal Matt Hamnett, who has been open with his findings and sought to draw a line in the sand for the college.

Chris Henwood, FE Week editor

chris.henwood@feweek.co.uk