The Education Funding Agency (EFA) has today published guidance that confirms new funding requirements for English and maths.
Its post-16 funding regulations for next academic year cover rates and formula, individualised learner records funding returns and sub-contracting control regulations.
Also covered is the EFA’s new requirement for English and maths. The guidance says: “Students who do not hold an A* to C [at GCSE] in these subjects are expected to continue to study towards them as a part of their 16 to 19 study programme.
“To support this aim the teaching of English and maths qualifications are a condition of funding for students undertaking new study programmes with effect from August 1, 2014.”
It lists as qualifications that would apply as GCSE, or i-GCSE — including lelvel one/level two certificates — that count towards the English Baccalaureate (Ebacc) measure in Key Stage four performance tables; entry level, level one or level two functional skills; foundation, intermediate or advanced free-standing maths qualifications (in relation to maths only); and English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) qualifications (in relation to English only).
A 79-year-old who counsels people with mental health issues and a 22-year-old who has started a charity to promote science to girls were among the winners at Adult Learners’ Week Awards.
A total of 16 awards were given out to individuals, projects and employers at the event in London on Monday (June 16), organised by the National Institute for Adult Continuing Education (Niace).
Senior adult learner of the year was won by Robert Nott, from Kent, who found a new lease of life through learning after retiring.
Fourteen years ago, and at the age of 65, he became a full time student at Canterbury Christchurch University where he studied for an undergraduate and then a masters’ degree in business administration.
He said: “There were lots of younger learners when I went to do my degree — and when I went into the students common room I got some very funny looks.”
Edge Foundation chief executive Jan Hodges and young adult learner of the year award winner Amy King
He now volunteers as a counsellor having gone on to take four diploma courses in psychology, criminal psychology and counselling as well as a qualification in teaching English as a foreign language and an acupressure course.
“I just wanted to do it — learning was just something I needed to do,” he said.
“As you get older your brain starts to seize up a bit and you’ve got to keep it up… it’s really worth it when you can see the achievements at the end of it.”
Young adult learner of the year went to Amy King, from Bexleyheath, who suffers from a painful condition called hyper-mobility syndrome which meant her schooling was interrupted by surgery.
Despite being told she would never amount to anything, and that pure science “wasn’t for girls”, she is now studying for a master’s degree in chemistry and runs GlamChem — a charity to encourage girls to study science.
Amy said: “It means everything to win this award. When I was 17 I had nothing going for me, I had no confidence, I’d never have thought this would happen.”
Amy plans to qualify as a teacher and continue to expand her charity.
The president’s award, given out by Niace president Nick Stuart was won by McDonald’s restaurants, which Mr Stuart described as “the unsung heroes of adult education” after the company supported 57,000 learners to complete qualifications in the past five years.
Workers’ Educational Association chief executive Ruth Spellman and Nurun Nahar Zorna-Hoque
The British Army and Topps Tiles were also recognised as being outstanding employers, both winning a national employer award.
Brigadier Garry Morris told FE Week: “In the Army training is really important on a personal level and on an organisational level.
“Learning helps people perform better in their team and develop themselves, but it also helps to prepare them for when they leave the Army.”
There were also awards for learning in the community — with an individual award going to Nurun Nahar Zorna-Hoque, 39, who improved her literacy, numeracy and IT skills, lost 10kg and got a job in a mobile phone shop through classes run by the Tower Hamlets Idea Store.
She started learning to help her children with their homework. Nurun said: “I feel confident because of my job — before I was lazy and struggled with my life.”
She added: “I am proud because my children are proud.”
Ahmed Kassam, a former learner on the Port of Tilbury pre-employment programme, which won the learning for work national project award summed up the evening, telling the audience: “Trust me, you’re never too old to learn.”
Carol Taylor, Niace deputy chief executive, said: “Awards are vital things for us to do — as adults, we don’t often get told when we’ve done something really well, it’s usually the opposite, so I think celebrating all of these amazing achievements is such an important thing for the individual.
From left: Brigadier Gary Morris, director of Army educational capability, Sue Husband, Skills Funding Agency director of apprenticeships, and Captain Lee Jones, Army learning development officer
“But I think it’s also really important to everyone else involved, the colleges, providers, employers and government because these events also inspire us and give us the confidence to do more.”
Main pic: Robert Nott and Niace chair Maggie Galliers
A report out today from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills has called for more ‘earning and learning’ with the UK having experienced a fall in the number of young people combining work with learning.
Precarious Futures? Youth employment in an international context noted no other European state saw the same fall in the years leading to recession.
It calls on business, education and government to do more to give young people opportunities to ‘earn and learn’, noting that while youth unemployment in the UK is falling, countries with high numbers of young people who work while studying have lower levels of youth unemployment.
In Australia just under half (44 per cent) of 15 to 19-year-olds in education were on apprenticeships or had part-time jobs, and just 12 per cent of their 20 to 24-year-olds were not in education, employment or training (Neet).
By contrast, in the UK just 22 per cent of young people aged 15 to 19 were earning and learning — that is, combining part-time work with full-time education, or taking on an apprenticeship — and nearly one in five (19 per cent) of 20 to 24-year-olds were categorised as Neet.
Fiona Kendrick, chief and chairman of Nestlé UK and Ireland and a UKCES Commissioner, said: “The youth employment challenge we face in the UK is relatively unique compared to other countries. Too many young people aren’t making a successful transition from education into work. They risk falling in and out of short-term jobs — or in some cases not entering the job market at all — and losing the opportunity to develop careers.”
She added: “I want to call on employers to offer young people the opportunity to learn practical skills, understand how industry works, and gain experiences that are relevant for business.”
The report also stated that the number of unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK had steadily fallen in recent years, but that the UK’s youth unemployment rate was more than three times higher than the adult rate.
Employment Minister Esther McVey said: “Helping young people to get their foot in the door and build their careers is a major priority for this government. Young people have a huge amount of potential to offer future employers and just need the chance show what they are made of.
“With the number of young people in jobs going up and youth unemployment falling, we will continue to work with businesses to create opportunities for young people so they can get the skills and experience they need to secure their future.”
Michael Davis, chief executive of the UKCES, said: “This report finds that the majority of employers are happy with their young recruits. Those who aren’t happy say the main reason is lack of experience. Yet only 27 per cent of employers currently offer work experience.
“Small jobs make a big difference for young people. Opportunities to earn and learn — either through work experience, apprenticeships or part-time jobs — give young people the kind of experience that employers value.”
For more coverage of the report, see the FE Week supplement What Employers Want, out today.
Leading political figures responded on behalf of their parties to calls from the National Institute of Continuing Education (Niace) for an overhaul of the skills system.
Niace launched its manifesto on June 13 containing six key points [see table] which it wants the major political parties to take on board for next year’s general election.
Skills Minister Matthew Hancock
Skills Minister Matthew Hancock, Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne and Liberal Democrats’ manifesto working group member Lady Brinton delivered their responses at a special conference organised by Niace in Westminster, London, on Thursday (June 19).
Liberal Democrats’ manifesto working group member Lady Brinton
They all supported Niace’s call for a “new localism” integrating skills and economic growth strategies.
Mr Hancock said: “Localism is important and we are delivering through the Leps [local enterprise partnerships].
“This is not an area where there is a major difference of opinion. All parties are agreed on the need to build up the Leps [Local Enterprise Partnerships].”
Mr Byrne said: “We think there should be much greater local direction of strategic spending.
“What that would allow us to do for the first time in this country would be to integrate skills and back-to-work services. You can only do this at a local level.”
Lady Brinton was the only politician to back Niace’s call for a new government department responsible for education, skills and employment policy.
She also supported calls for an independent review into long-term skills needs, like the 2011 Dilnot Review of adult social care and the 2013 government review of state pensions.
She said: “The good thing about those enquiries was that all the parties agreed they were needed. It meant the issues ceased to be political footballs.”
Lady Brinton also supported the call for more emphasis on non-formal learning, that do not result in recognised qualifications but can for example help people find work or gain promotion.
Chairman of the management board of the Lep Network Alex Pratt
Also addressing the issue, Mr Hancock said: “With informal learning, like family education… for me, what matters is that we have an opportunity and a goal for people, but make sure all the rungs on the ladder are there to help them succeed.
“We need to free-up the system so it allow individuals to get training that suits them.”
Indicating support for another key manifesto point, Mr Byrne revealed that Labour would “support the provision of basic skills” .
However, his party thought this should include digital skills, as well as English and maths.
Lady Brinton backed the call for lifelong learning accounts which she said would “require contributions from the individual, the employer and some contribution from the tax payer” and had previously told FE Week that her party supported Niace calls for an apprentice charter.
Chairman of the management board of the Lep Network Alex Pratt, who also spoke at the conference, supported employees taking control of learning throughout their careers and not being tied to a single company funding their training.
He said: “My staff are assets being leased by my business, they are not assets that belong to my business.
“Their value stays with them as an individual [if they move companies].”
He backed Niace’s wider call for fundamental reform of adult skills training and said: “We have created a system which works against our core competitiveness, so we are blaming everyone for that — be it Scotland, Europe or immigrants.”
David Hughes, Niace chief executive, said: “I am really, really pleased that all of the speakers directly addressed the manifesto. They had obviously read it and thought about it.”
Main pic: From left: Niace chief executive David Hughes and Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne
A former principal, chartered accountant and civil servant who pioneered online procurement for colleges and the Skills4Life initiative, Mark Dawe already has an impressive career under his belt.
And at the age of 46, with a cycle challenge involving four of the French Alps on the horizon, it would appear the sky really is the limit for the chief executive of the OCR awarding organisation.
The son of Ruth, a stay-at-home mum and hospice volunteer, and Roger, a civil servant who was the first director general of the Manpower Services Commission and private secretary to Prime Minister Harold Wilson and three employment secretaries, the young Mark grew up in a world which revolved around skills.
Dawe as a boy with father Roger Dawe
“I used to go to football matches as a kid with Michael Foot sitting on one side and my dad sitting on the other,” says Dawe.
“Plymouth Argyle is a family obsession. My children are fourth generation Plymouth Argyle supporters, and Michael Foot was too.”
But a flair and passion for numbers, discovered after doing VAT returns for a family friend while in his teens, propelled Dawe into the world of accountancy following his education at Trinity School, Croydon, and Cambridge.
I used to go to football matches as a kid with Michael Foot sitting on one side and my dad sitting on the other
After a six-week internship at KPMG during his final summer of university, Dawe was offered a job. He stayed for four and a half years, and although it was itchy feet that made him look for work elsewhere, it was the incorporation of colleges in the early 1990s which led Dawe into the FE sector for the first time.
He joined Canterbury College, under the leadership of sector stalwart Susan Pember, who would go on to have a big influence on Dawe’s career.
“I started just after incorporation, when they needed accountants all of a sudden,” says the father-of-four.
“When I had that interview, I saw that the post above me — the deputy principal in charge of the non-academic side — was vacant, and I asked if she could keep that vacant for a year to allow me the chance to go for it, and she did, and I got it.
“She has obviously had a big influence on my career and my success.
“I was at Canterbury College for about seven years, and again, I think one of the things Susan recognised, if I had just been doing the job, the normal job, year after year, I would have got bored and left, so she kept throwing stuff at me.
“We won the prison contract in Kent for 11 prisons, we built a new college on the Isle of Sheppey, we had a PFI, we were one of the PFI college leads for redevelopment, so lots of things that kept me interested and gave me a wider view on my job.”
But after several years at Canterbury, Dawe saw a gap in the market which led to the foundation of e-Government Services (eGS), a business set up in partnership with Liam Byrne, now Shadow Skills Minister.
He says: “I was sitting there looking at all these businesses that were getting millions of pounds worth of funding, and as far as I could see they had no business model behind them, and it seemed crazy. So I wrote one, then the college allowed me a couple of days a week secondment to the Association of Colleges, and I basically went around with this model, which was around online procurement and a portal for the college sector, and went around touting it to venture capitalists to get funding.
“Liam Byrne brought to the table the technology partner and a more worked-up business case around local authorities. I was the FE arm and he was the local authority arm, and then it grew to around 30 to 40 people.
“That was a fascinating three or four years with him, and it still exists, but it’s much more of a consultancy now.”
Dawe as a Pickhurst Junior School pupil
Upon leaving eGS, Dawe was re-united with Pember when he became her deputy at the Department for Education and Skills, taking responsibility for the Skills4Life programme, a project he remains incredibly proud of to this day.
“Across government, it was the best performing delivery unit,” he says. “Susan did a fantastic job there, and it benefited from having a mix of outstanding civil servants, and people from the outside, and the combination of the two worked really, really well.
“There was enormous tension all the time, because you are butting up against different cultures and different ways of doing things, but it meant that a number of us understood what was needed to get this delivered on the ground, and another group knew what needed to be done to get the traction across government.
“Millions of qualifications were delivered. Obviously the focus of it has drifted away a bit, but you are seeing the publicity again around English and maths and how important it is, so I think it will have a rebirth.”
During his time at the department, Dawe was also a governor at Lewisham College, then under the leadership of Dame Ruth Silver. It was this role which influenced his decision to return to college life as principal and chief executive of Oaklands College, in Hertfordshire, where the first thing
he secured was investment in the college estate.
But his time at Oaklands, despite a transition over five years from satisfactory in 2005 to good four years later, was not without controversy.
He says: “I changed the staff contracts so there were no contact hours. I removed them, so it was a 37-hour week. I had the national office of the University and College Union fairly permanently in my office saying I couldn’t do it, but we did.
“The union’s argument was that it’s fair that everyone should have 21 hours contact, and this amount for prep. I felt that was highly unfair where you had an A-level teacher teaching English language, let’s say, with loads of prep and marking still having to fulfil the 21 hours contact, whereas you might have a construction lecturer who had a technician who was doing all the prep. To me, there wasn’t parity.”
By 2010, Dawe was ready to leave Oaklands and made the decision to cross to the “dark side” of awarding organisations, which he describes as “niche, very exciting”. The job at OCR also afforded him the opportunity to move back to Cambridge.
Keen cyclist Dawe on his bike in Cambridge
He says: “The job was looking for government experience, business experience, and education experience. So I ticked all three, and for me it was a national role, it was an area which I hadn’t been directly involved with before and also involved general qualifications and vocational.
“I had done a lot of work with schools at the college but actually had not been so directly involved in the GCSE and A-level side of things, so that really appealed. And it was at a time when I had been driving the use of online learning at Oakland, so we had a Moodle VLE, and I was making sure every course was on that over the five years, which was hard work.
“It was about getting the right resources on and training the teachers, and I had a vision of how that then could link through to the qualifications and how the qualifications and the link to resources and support for teachers is so vital that that’s a triumvirate of three things — if you don’t get them all right, it doesn’t work.
“I came here with that vision of how we could drive and develop that. At Oaklands, out of £1m of exam fees, I think OCR had about £22,000 of it — so there was something wrong on the vocational side. OCR wasn’t delivering what it could be delivering, particularly in the vocational FE sector.”
——————————————————————————————–
It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
It’s Not About The Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong. Obviously at the time of reading that he was this great hero, and he was a great hero to me in terms of what he had achieved, and I was really saddened when I heard about the doping scandal because I had been defending him as well for many years
What’s your pet hate?
I hate queues. Traffic queues, underground queues… so I prefer to run the gauntlet of riding a motorbike or bicycle in London rather than queue up in traffic
What do you do to switch off from work?
Cycling is my big thing. It always was. I used to cycle to school, I started racing at university, I raced for a number of years — and then it got pushed to the side a bit but I have picked it up again over the last year. I’m doing a charity ride in July, it’s called La Marmotte in France, it’s 110 miles with 5,000m of climbing in a day. I have been training hard — twice a week when I’m not full of a cold and stuff. I’ve been getting up at 4.30am, out at 5am for three hours, ride 55 miles into work for 9am
If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party who would it be?
My granddad, who was a head teacher for many, many years — at the time I knew him I hadn’t had any experience in education, obviously, so it would be fantastic to sit down
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
From the age of 13 or 14 I wanted to be an accountant, as sad as it sounds
The Ofsted pilot in which graded lesson observations will be dropped from FE and skills inspections, as revealed by FE Week, is evaluated by Phil Hatton.
At first I thought FE Week was doing a late — or an early — April Fool’s Day skit on seeing the headline about Ofsted dropping graded lesson observations, partially in response to a report that gives a particularly one-sided view.
The report by Dr Matt O’Leary, is based on the views of thousands of University and College Union (UCU) members (the ones who have posters in colleges saying ‘no to graded observations’) and very few college managers.
As a scientist myself, this does not seem a particularly valid methodology for conducting research, unless you want to load the dice (or as valid as asking turkeys to vote for Christmas). But what is this observation phobia of the last few years really all about?
I am very simplistic about my expectations of the FE system.
Students should get mostly good teaching as an expectation. Those entering the profession, whether as an assessor in work-based learning or a teacher in a college, should want to aspire to be good teachers – otherwise why bother?
I would also expect, as part of a sensible selection process, for all new staff to have conducted some form of ‘mini-teach’ as part of an interview day.
Giving feedback to someone who is doing a reasonable job of teaching, but saying they require improvement rather than being satisfactory is a world apart
On my first day in a college back in 1979, the senior lecturer in charge of applied science told me with a smile that I would probably not be watched in my teaching throughout my entire career, and that I should not to worry about how good a teacher I was.
There were inspectors at the time, who sometimes visited colleges, but it was very much a ‘hands off’ approach to gauging quality. Hence their ineffectiveness and eventual demise.
When I introduced a system of observation about 18 years ago at the college where I managed quality, observations were graded, but with a real focus on identifying and spreading good practice.
The unions agreed to this and the lead union representative was probably the best single teacher I have ever observed. At the same time the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) was inspecting, with graded observations that were actually published in reports, but with little of the objections that are currently being voiced.
Ofsted’s policy shift (or rather Sir Michael Wilshaw coming into Ofsted and wanting to make an immediate difference, telling inspectors what he wanted with no consultation on the likely impact) to re-classify grade three from “satisfactory” to “requires improvement” has had a completely negative impact on the use of graded observations in judging teaching and learning both on inspection and in internal quality improvement of teaching and learning (there was good reason to shake up those who repeatedly got grade threes as institutions).
This quickly translated into the four-point grading becoming two Ofsted grades in reality, two or above or below two.
Giving feedback to someone who is doing a reasonable job of teaching, but saying they require improvement rather than being satisfactory is a world apart, both during inspection and as part of internal quality improvement.
Some inspectors shy away from spending enough time to grade when they see where an observation is going and turn what would have been a graded observation, into an ungraded learning walk.
Hence there is a very different playing field to that which existed two years ago. The UCU, doing its best to protect the interests of its members rather than learners, lobbies for a three-week notice of observation, hopefully of an agreed session.
If you cannot put on a performance with notice, there has to be something very lacking in your ability. To be effective in giving students a good experience, managers surely need to know what the student is getting every day, not at a special performance?
Getting the way an observation system is viewed in a college right requires consultative management, not focusing on labelling people as a particular grade of teacher that somehow then defines them, but on a shared purpose of getting the overall package of course delivery to “good”.
I am very worried about the potential negative impact of not grading teaching during inspections. No one asks questions about how the quality and consistency of observation judgements are assured within Ofsted or by the three inspection service providers.
Learning and skills inspectors are being more and more absorbed into a homogenous inspectorate heavily focused on schools, with little time to share and standardise practice as specialist FE inspectors.
The FE Week coverage about colleges falling from outstanding to inadequate grading says a lot about the robustness of the previous inspection model.
When I looked at one 2009 report that had no curriculum areas inspected it had very little in the way of graded observation and inspection of curriculum areas (something Ofsted wanted to introduce two years ago but backed down on with unanimous feedback from the sector). This report concluded that teaching and learning was outstanding, but gave a weakness of needing to improve retention (the data included at the back clearly reflects outcomes not stacking up with the grade for teaching and learning).
The non-graded observation inspection model being spoken about, is harping back to the previous Ofsted model that was known internally as a ‘drive-by’ inspection (small teams locked in a room and not getting to the ‘nitty gritty’ of what a typical student experiences).
Look back at the boom in ‘outstanding’ grades given at that time and the correlation with how many did not focus on first hand observations.
The inspectorate of 20-plus years ago was disbanded partly because it was ineffective in judging teaching and learning, without which there was not a clear agenda to drive improvements in it.
The FEFC did some very good work in changing that focus, as did the Adult Learning Inspectorate. Hopefully the next government, whoever it is, will realise that the best way of gauging the quality of the experience of learners is to observe what they are getting in a quantitative way, in a transparent way.
Bring back the FEFC practice of allowing nominees (or others?) to co-observe a sample of observations — if you are confident in what you are doing there will not be a problem. FE is very different from schools, one model of inspection does not fit all.
Phil Hatton, former FE and skills inspector with 20 years’ experience, leading hundreds of college and work-based learning inspections. He now works as an adviser at the Learning Improvement Service
A thorough improvement plan at City of Bristol College was put in place last year when Ofsted inspectors said it was no longer good, but inadequate. It started paying off inspection-wise this month with the grade shift up to ‘requires improvement’. Cliff Shaw explains what’s been going on to achieve the feat in 17 months.
When City of Bristol College was graded four in April last year, we knew we needed to put students back at the heart of everything we do. Only by achieving that could we raise the standards of teaching, learning, assessment and the student experience.
Everything Ofsted looks at is of course related to students. Are they attending college? Is the teaching stimulating and enjoyable? Is the college equipping them well to progress onto further study or employment? While all of this sounds very simple, we know of course that it can be very complex to deliver.
The most recent Ofsted inspection which took place last month confirmed that we have made a good start. The college is no longer inadequate and, while we have a way to go before we’re outstanding, we know we’re heading in the right direction.
So, how did we do it? Underpinning all of our changes was a thorough programme of teaching observations. We knew that without a reliable observation profile we would be unable to improve.
We decided to adopt co-observed lessons with internal and external observers for all observations to give us confidence in the grades awarded and to help college staff to improve their observation and feedback skills.
Underpinning all of our changes was a thorough programme of teaching observations. We knew that without a reliable observation profile we would be unable to improve
The observations allowed us to identify our best teachers and to make some of them into teaching, learning and assessment coaches.
We invested in a number of coaches to work in specific areas of the college, with individuals and groups, as needed. Teachers also share best practice through training sessions, filmed lessons, quality learning materials and subject specific ‘top tips’ handbooks written by and for teachers.
We also agreed and enforced a number of ‘non-negotiable’ teaching, learning and assessment elements to re-establish core practice.
Alongside improving our teaching, learning and assessment we also wanted to make sure that the student experience improved outside the classroom.
The college now has a team of apprentice youth workers who engage with students, encouraging them to get involved in events and activities.
They have introduced initiatives, such as The Forum where students come together to discuss current affairs that are affecting young people, breaking down barriers, starting conversations and challenging views.
The college’s data was a significant weakness at the time of our 2013 Ofsted inspection and we knew that investment in our data systems was crucial. We have now begun to roll out a series of new tools which will allow us to use data to drive further improvements and to accurately measure our success.
So, now that we have achieved a grade three for overall effectiveness, what next? Our first grade one subject area shows that we can do it — we now need to make sure that all areas offer outstanding teaching, learning and assessment.
In a college the size and scope of City of Bristol, we don’t underestimate this challenge. In terms of teaching, learning and assessment we will continue to frame improvement around ‘non-negotiable’ elements as we move away from inadequate and move towards good and then outstanding.
We will also be able to enjoy the first full year of the implementation of our new electronic assessment and target setting systems, part of our new fully integrated management information system. These tools will transform the quality of our work and the visibility of performance information and learners’ progress.
Although our attendance figures have improved we still have work to do here. In addition to the range of initiatives we have put in place we are confident that as lessons continue to improve, so will attendance.
College staff have put in an enormous amount of hard work and dedication during the last fifteen months and should feel very proud of what they have achieved so far as we continue on our journey to become an outstanding college.
Cliff Shaw, deputy principal, City of Bristol College
Labour and the Conservatives have been urged to match a Liberal Democrat promise to protect education spending “from cradle to college”.
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg made the manifesto pledge during his monthly press conference on Monday last week (June 16).
His party wants to ringfence the entire education budget for two to 19-year-olds. The current budget is only protected for learners aged five to 16.
Mr Clegg said the pledge would mean an extra £10bn of education spending would be protected based on this financial year, rising with inflation.
He said: “The Liberal Democrats will protect the full education budget, covering children from the age of two to the age of 19 — from cradle to college”.
But the Lib Dems have stopped short of pledging specific protection for 16 to 19 education to ensure funding could not be moved to younger age groups with a spokesperson saying that to move large amounts of money from one end of the wider age group to the other was not “consistent with the policy”.
Nevertheless, the ringfence announcement was welcomed across the sector, with senior leaders calling for a similar promise from other parties.
Association of Colleges (AoC) chief executive Martin Doel said: “We welcome this very significant announcement from the Lib Dems, which reflects AoC lobbying over the last few months.
“We hope the Conservatives and the Labour Party follow-suit and pledge to protect funding all young people up to the age of 19.”
Dr Lynne Sedgmore, executive director of the 157 Group, said the pledge was “most welcome”.
She said: “Nick Clegg is right to acknowledge that the education of 16 to 19-year-olds is as vital as their experience in schools in enabling them to play full and active roles in society and in the economy.
“Because of the current ring fence on schools spending, further education colleges have borne the brunt of austerity measures in education over the last five years, and we are now beginning to see a direct impact on the availability of some programmes for young people.”
And Sixth Form Colleges Association deputy chief executive James Kewin said: “One of the main objectives of our funding campaign has been to convince the three main political parties that the funding ring-fence should be extended to include 16 to 19 education.
“We were therefore very pleased to hear Nick Clegg’s announcement yesterday. We will continue to press Labour and the Conservatives to match this commitment, which would provide a very clear sign that they are serious about improving the life chances of 16 to 19-year-olds.”
A spokesperson for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers said: “The Deputy Prime Minister spoke about education, so does that mean vocational and work-based options as well?
“Growth for apprenticeships for 16 to 18- year-olds is currently uncapped and they are fully funded. So if Nick Clegg is saying that he would protect this and funding for traineeships, his commitment would be welcomed by providers.”
Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne said: “I’m working closely with my colleagues, including [Shadow Education Secretary] Tristram Hunt, to determine how the education budget is best spent.”
Skills Minister Matthew Hancock has previously expressed support for the current ringfence of five to 16 funding, but a Conservative Party spokesperson said he would not comment on the announcement, adding that the party would reveal its education policy in its manifesto.
FE commissioner Dr David Collins criticised leadership styles at two colleges and said staff morale was being hit, his newly-released findings have shown.
Dr Collins was appointed last year to investigate colleges issued with notices of financial concern, inadequate Ofsted ratings or which failed to meet standards set by the government.
But summaries of Dr Collins’s findings at eight of the 10 colleges visited so far have only just been published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
Most of the summaries focus on financial concerns and issues around quality of teaching, but in documents about Lesoco, in South London, and City of Liverpool College, Dr Collins called for a change in management style.
In the Liverpool summary, Dr Collins said: “The ‘command and control’ model adopted by the present senior management team has brought about many positive changes but there has been a cost. Good staff members have felt under threat and a number whose skills would have benefitted the college as it moves forward have left. A change of style will be needed if the college wishes to achieve its full potential.”
And on Lesoco, he said: “Attention also needs to be paid to reducing the unusually high levels of discontent evidenced by significant numbers of staff and middle managers. A change of style will be needed if the college wishes to achieve its full potential and avoid the risk of staff dissatisfaction impacting on learner success.”
Both visits were triggered by Ofsted grade four results, but leadership and management at Lesoco was given a grade three result while leadership at the Liverpool college recently improved to grade three.
Nevertheless, his focus on leadership was defended by Further Education Trust for Leadership (FETL) president and former Lewisham College principal Dame Ruth Silver. She said: “The commissioner is right to shine a spotlight on leadership style because the lives of others depend on it.
“His role is two-fold, firstly, to show to the individual institution the flaws that are damaging it and others and secondly to pass on to the sector as a whole , the findings from the investigations in order to avoid further decay in standards.
“However, how it is done needs to take account of impact and intention to improve matters.”
A spokesperson at City of Liverpool College said: “The commissioner gave us credit for the positive steps we are taking here, commenting particularly on us having the right leadership team in place.”
Nobody from Lesoco was available for comment. However, new principal Ioan Morgan said this month: “We must ensure that leadership at all levels in the college focuses on high-quality teaching and learning. This is our core business.”
Publication of the commissioner’s reports was welcomed by 157 Group chief executive Dr Lynne Sedgmore, who said other colleges could learn “valuable lessons”.
She said: “It is important to recognise the incredibly tough demands and financial stringencies currently being placed on leaders, teachers and support staff.
“Most are doing valiant work to ensure the highest standards for our learners and the majority of colleges are doing incredibly well under the circumstances.
“Having said that we will always learn from and support as best we can colleges that do run into difficulties.”
