Former Skills Funding Agency (SFA) chief executive Geoff Russell will head up the board of directors at Positive Outcomes, the training provider has announced.

Mr Russell (pictured), who left the top job at the SFA in July 2012 after holding the post since the Agency’s inception in 2010, will become chairman at Positive Outcomes Training Ltd with immediate effect, the company said.

The training and apprenticeships provider claims to be “one of the top 10 independent training providers in the UK” and by its own admission receives funding from the SFA, but is not currently listed by the Agency as a lead provider or sub-contractor.

Mr Russell said: “I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of establishing the Skills Funding Agency and re-shaping it to meet the needs of the further education sector.

“I am now thrilled to be joining Positive Outcomes’s board of directors and look forward to my new role which will involve capitalising on the organisation’s booming success and strengthening further its offering to young people looking for training or apprenticeships.”

A former chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) has been appointed Chairman at national training and apprenticeship provider Positive Outcomes.

Before he led the SFA, Mr Russell was global chairman at the auditors KPMG.

It comes as the SFA is still seeking a permanent replacement for Mr Russell, almost two years after his departure.

His initial interim replacement Kim Thorneywork (left) stepped aside last year to concentrate on her battle with cancer and was replaced in November by Barbara Spicer on an interim basis.

The deadline for applications for the £142,000-a-year job, which requires “no FE and skills experience” according to adverts, is Monday (July 7).

Association of Colleges (AoC) chief executive Martin Doel has criticised the government after it was announced that new rules requiring learners without GCSEs in English and maths will come in two years earlier than expected.

Skills Minister Matthew Hancock has announced that from August 2015, it will become a funding condition that all full-time learners with grade D or below in English or maths GCSE will have to study the subjects at that level as part of 16 to 19 study.

But Mr Doel, who said his organisation was expecting the reforms in 2017, has raised concerns about the readiness of colleges to deal with increased pupil numbers.

It comes after a government document revealed that 40,000 learners would need to study GCSE English in 2015 and 26,000 students would need to study GCSE maths.

Mr Doel said: “We urged Government to ensure sensible timescales were agreed for the introduction of the new GCSE qualifications into colleges in 2017 – two years after their introduction in schools – in order to allows us the opportunity to judge their effectiveness in contributing to the improvement levels of underlying numeracy and literacy in young people. This, after all, should be the ultimate objective of these reforms.

“We are therefore disappointed by today’s announcement which accelerates the changes and means that colleges will be required to enter 16 and 17-year-olds who fail the old GCSEs onto the new qualifications in 2015. As with any proposal to change curriculum rules, DfE needs to take notice of those running and teaching in colleges and schools and work out the best approach for 2015-16 that achieves our shared objective to raise maths and English standards.

“Our experience with young people who’re failing to make the grade with the current qualifications is that colleges need to use approaches that are different to those used in schools to ensure students remain motivated.”

He added: “Simply doing more of the same won’t work with some students – contextualized learning alongside vocational studies can be very effective. For this reason we believe that colleges and their students should continue to benefit from having a mixture of ‘stepping stone’ type courses to re-engage some young people in order to help them achieve a GCSE C grade by the age of 18 or earlier.

“We believe college staff are best placed to decide which courses and approaches are most likely to be successful. We’re therefore disappointed that, despite our advice, it’s been decided that all students who achieved a grade D in maths or English must be placed on a GCSE course and that this will be a condition of funding.”

According to the government’s equality analysis, the funding condition “would not apply to students with the lowest grades, as these students are more likely to benefit from alternative courses”.

It adds: “While this may reduce opportunities for some of these students to study GCSE, providers are free to offer GCSE to students with lower prior attainment where appropriate.

“Progression for students with prior attainment of grade E is currently low for both males and females and many currently study ‘stepping stone’ qualifications. Effective teaching that motivates and engages low attainers will be important to raising standards in English and maths GCSEs in 16-19 education and should help close the overall attainment gap between males and females.”

Of those aged 18 during 2013, 73 per cent of girls had achieved a grade C or above in English at aged 15, and 59 per cent of boys achieved that benchmark.

In maths, the figures for the same period were 62 per cent for girls and boys.

The news comes after the government announced incentives for new maths and English teachers in FE in a bid to boost the workforce.

School sixth forms are to receive a separate grade from September 2014, Ofsted has confirmed.

The decision to include a separate grade follows an open consultation which ended in May, which sought views on the introduction of separate graded judgements on early school years and the sixth form.

In a letter to schools this week, chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw (pictured), said: “As you may be aware, Ofsted consulted recently on plans to introduce separate graded judgements on the quality of schools’ work in the early years and sixth form. We consulted on this because of the vital importance of both of these stages.

“These proposals received strong support. I intend, therefore, to introduce separate graded judgements for the early years and sixth form, where these apply, from 1 September 2014. These grades may influence the judgement on a school’s overall effectiveness.”

Ofsted first told FE Week it was considering a separate grade in July last year, and at the time Joy Mercer, the Association of Colleges (AoC) director of policy, said separating sixth forms was “the right decision”.

“AoC has been campaigning for a separate grading for schools sixth forms for some time so we are very pleased that Ofsted have listened,”

She added there was “an obvious injustice” in cases the AoC was aware of, where school and academy sixth forms did not retain their students after the age of 17, failed to achieve success rates comparable to a local college, but were part of a school rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted.

The Sixth Form Colleges’ Association (SFCA) has also campaigned for this measure.

Deputy chief executive James Kewin said: “We are very pleased that Ofsted will be introducing a separate graded judgement for school sixth forms from September.

“This is something that SFCA has campaigned vigorously for, and we believe it will help learners to make informed judgements about where to study.

“It will be very interesting to see the details of the proposal – we believe the judgement for the sixth form should act as a limiting grade for the whole institution, and that inspection practice (particularly the use of data) should be consistent across all sixth form providers.”

The cost of an ongoing strike at Lambeth College over new contracts for staff is nearing the £200,000-mark for the cash-strapped University and College Union, while learners brace themselves for a possible fifth week of disruption.

Teachers and lecturers on the picket line have been getting £50 a-day from the UCU, which has said up to 180 workers were on the strike called over new contracts containing longer working hours and offering less annual leave.

It comes just over a year after the UCU’s own honorary treasurer, Alan Carr, called for £2m of annual savings to be made by April next year.

And the UCU has already tried to raise more money to pay protestors with fund-raising during a “national day of action” on Wednesday (June 25).

Meanwhile a YouTube video has emerged (pictured above) in which protesting staff performed music hall song The Lambeth Walk — which they called “The Lambeth Walk(OUT!)” — in front of the college while learners and non-striking colleagues were inside working.

A UCU spokesperson said picket lines were “almost always enjoyable, good humoured places to be with members finding a variety of ways to get their message across,” but declined to comment on the effect the strike, which started on June 3, was having on union finances.

However, he added: “Like most unions, the UCU pays strike pay during strategically important or prolonged disputes. That is one of the many benefits of being a union member.”

The new contracts at the centre of the row offer 50 days a year annual leave — 10 days less than that given to existing staff.

However, Lambeth principal Mark Silverman has said the terms of the contract, introduced from April 1, were “in line with sector norms”.

He said they were part of the college’s recovery plan following financial deficits of £4.1m in 2012/13 and £3.5m this year.

And he told staff on Tuesday (June 24) that he was willing to enter into talks having emailed the UCU “firm proposals for discussion” the previous day.

Mr Silverman said his proposals included an offer to discuss the “implementation and management of the new contract,” including the proposed changes to sick pay and holiday entitlements.

He said he would also look at providing assurances to existing staff that they would not be affected by the new contract.

The UCU said, two days after Mr Silverman’s message to staff, that it had been consulting members and was therefore ready to negotiate.

The UCU spokesperson said: “We have been trying to resolve this dispute for months. It was a welcome first step, however late, to receive the proposals.

“During the week we have consulted with our members and have now responded. If the principal is prepared to seriously consider UCU’s response we can begin negotiations immediately.”

Meanwhile, the UCU was on Friday (June 27) due to consider an Association of Colleges pay offer said to be the biggest it had received in five years. It included removing the lowest current pay grade.

Pay for staff on the lowest remaining grade would also increase by 2 per cent to £7.65-an-hour, with all other grades rising by 1 per cent.

(Pictured above: A still from a YouTube video of Lambeth College staff singing and dancing while picketing outside work.)

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Editorial 

Draw the line

It was great to hear the UCU and Lambeth College principal Mark Silverman were set to follow the advice of learners who told FE Week they wanted those responsible to sit down and thrash things out.

But it took far too long to get that little progress.

This is a strike that has been costly to all parties involved.

Financially, reputationally and worst of all for the learners. It is just not right that they were without their lecturer for nearly a month.

In the coming years college bosses are going to be faced with some very tough decisions in the face of cuts.

And while it’s hard to imagine any principal relishing the thought of reviewing staff contracts, the wage bill and employment terms are always going to be bones of contention.

While further industrial action might therefore seem inevitable, both parties need to draw a line under this particular dispute.

Chris Henwood

New financial incentives of up to £10,000 for maths teachers who stay in the FE sector have been unveiled as the government seeks to improve literacy and numeracy.

It comes after grants of up to £20,000 for graduates who choose to teach English or maths in the sector were announced in February.

In the government’s further education Workforce Strategy, Skills Minister Matthew Hancock (pictured) emphasised a need to increase the number of English and maths teachers in FE.

He unveiled plans for a retention scheme involving “golden hello” payments of £7,500 for maths teachers in their second year of teaching.

Those who train to teach learners with special educational needs could get up to £10,000 under the scheme, taking the total potential incentive offered to new teachers to £30,000.

The launch of the payments will coincide with a change in funding rules which will mean full-time learners without a grade C in GCSE English and maths will have to work towards the qualification.

In the strategy document, Mr Hancock said: “FE is not seen as a sufficiently attractive career option. It isn’t attracting enough of the best young graduates to replace those teachers who are coming up to retirement; it is not as immediately attractive as teaching in schools or working in industry.

“And there are skills gaps. There are too few specialist teachers in the key areas of maths and English and insufficient support from the wider workforce for the work of maths and English specialists.

“The sector struggles to fill vacancies in some key occupational groups and to keep vocational education up-to-date and relevant in order to meet skills gaps in the economy (particularly higher vocational skills).

“The government’s infrastructure plan, and our growth objectives for industrial strategy sectors, will increase the demand for these skilled individuals further, making it harder still for colleges to recruit suitable individuals.”

Under the scheme, the grant of up to £10,000 in a teacher’s second year in the job could be paid on top of grants of up to £20,000 aimed at encouraging graduates to teach in the sector.

The new scheme has been welcomed by the Education and Training Foundation, which will administer the payments.

Chief executive David Russell said: “We are delighted that the generous financial incentives that have already boosted the recruitment of able and committed subject specialists to teach in our schools are now being made available to the education and training sector.

“There has never been a better time to come and teach in our vibrant and diverse sector, and we hope that colleges and training providers across the sector familiarise themselves with what is on offer, and take full advantage.”

Peter Roberts, chair of the 157 Group and chief executive of Leeds City College, said: “The additional funding for staff recruitment contained within the “FE Workforce Strategy” is clearly welcome.

“Such government investment is a clear acknowledgement of the good work already being done by the vast majority of FE colleges to support high-quality vocational training and the raising of skill levels in English and maths.”