A Midland college is under growing pressure to go public over the departure of its former principal after she unexpectedly stepped down temporarily before it was announced this week that she would not be returning.

The University and College Union (UCU) wants the severance package being offered to Warwickshire College’s Mariane Cavalli, who officially leaves post at the end of next month, revealed along with details about what’s behind her departure.

Her temporary leave of absence was announced “with immediate effect” at the end of June and she was replaced on an interim basis by governors’ chair Sue Georgious. The college announced on Monday that Ms Cavalli would not be returning, but refused to comment further, citing legal reasons.

Andrew Harden (left), UCU head of FE, said: “It is disappointing the college is refusing to give any reasons why Ms Cavalli is leaving the college, or details of a severance package funded by public money.”

The college declined to reveal Ms Cavalli’s severance package and would not comment on why she was leaving.

Ms Cavalli was one of the five founding college principals of the Gazelle Colleges Group and each has dished out more than £530,000 to the organisation, according to figures obtained from Freedom of Information Act.

More than 20 current and former member colleges were asked by FE Week what they had spent on the organisation, which was launched in January 2012 with standard annual membership priced at £35,000.

Gazelle, which raked in around £3.5m from colleges, claims to, “develop innovative new learning models and new partnerships with business to deliver an improved outcome for students, their communities and the economy”.

Its chief executive, Fintan Donohue, said the “enrichment of student experiences and outcomes” was its “overriding goal,” but no independent research has been carried out into whether learners benefit. However, the UCU has called for publication of a report by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) which Gazelle claimed was “supportive” of its leadership development programme. Both the ETF and Gazelle have so far declined to go public with the report.

Nevertheless, Warwickshire College praised Ms Cavelli’s record on Gazelle and also pointed at the ties she had developed with China.

“Under Ms Cavelli’s leadership, Warwickshire College became one of five founder colleges of the Gazelle Colleges Group, a growing group of leading colleges from across the country, committed to developing an entrepreneurial mindset in their students. From just five the Group has now grown to 23 UK Colleges and continues to works with leading entrepreneurs from across the world,” said a college spokesperson.

“Her leadership also saw Warwickshire College launch the first UK FE college in China. The China-UK National Skills College was officially unveiled in 2012, cementing a joint venture between two leading vocational colleges from both countries and a Chinese Education Investment Company.”

However, the UCU remained critical.

“A successful college is one rooted in the heart of its local community,” said Mr Harden. “Ms Cavalli may leave with the warm words from people she met on taxpayer-funded trips to China ringing in her ears, but staff facing redundancy will probably view her tenure as less triumphant.”

He added: “We are not convinced that being a founder of the Gazelle Group is a particularly proud boast. A lot of money has gone to the Gazelle Group, but it seems to have just gone towards a promise of ‘student outcome enrichment’ and ‘educational concepts’, which have yet to demonstrate much in the real world.”

A college spokesperson told FE WEEK: “Regarding severance pay and any international visits, we are unable to comment or provide any further details at this time, however, the college’s annual report and financial statement for 2013/2014 will be made public in December.”

Ofsted proposals to merge the FE and skills inspection regime with schools and early years have drawn warnings from the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) and the Association of Colleges (AoC).

The education watchdog is expected to put the idea out to consultation “very soon,” according to Sean Harford, Ofsted’s national director for schools policy and initial teacher education, and regional director for East of England.

All education inspections would be “harmonised” under a single framework from September next year, as revealed exclusively by FE Week on Friday (August 1) when Ofsted confirmed it was considering scrapping the current FE and skills common inspection framework (CIF), introduced just two years ago.

But any change in the way inspections were carried out must take into account the differences between schools and FE, Ofsted has been warned.

Stewart Segal (pictured), AELP chief executive, said he feared that any debate on the issue would focus on schools as he insisted that any consultation should be balanced.

He told FE Week: “All Ofsted inspections should be based on a common set of principles which would include fairness and transparency. However there are a number of differences between schools and FE and Skills and the current framework arrangements are beginning to work well within the sector.

“The current CIF has not been used for very long and providers and inspectors need time to develop a common understanding of the framework. It will be useful to have the discussion about the value of bringing the inspection regimes together but need to be very careful about further changes to inspection at a time when improvements are being made and there are other fundamental changes in the sector which will affect inspection such as the changes to apprenticeship funding.

“As always there is a danger that in any change it is the schools agenda which will drive the debate so we must ensure that the consultation is balanced across the sectors.”

Joy Mercer (pictured), director of policy at the AoC, said: “We would be very pleased to see school sixth form and college 16 to 18 education inspected in the same way, but have concerns about one inspection regime spanning all of Ofsted’s remit.

“Any inspection framework needs to recognise the 16 to 18 phase as very different from schools and early years where there is a national curriculum and where a focus on behaviour may be relevant.

“We would be interested to see differentiation in Ofsted’s inspection that recognises similarities and does not expect one size to fit all.”

An Ofsted spokesperson confirmed it was looking at the merger idea and said that the proposals formed part of its Future of Education Inspection programme.

However, he said it was too early to comment further on the proposals, but he could not rule out the prospect of school inspectors visiting FE and skills providers.

Mr Harford tweeted on Friday: “Mike [Cladingbowl, Ofsted’s national director of inspection reform] is leading the work to hamonise all out education (schools, colleges, EY [early years]) inspections under a single framework ready for Sept 2015. Consultation starts very soon.”

Concerns about proposed new apprenticeship funding models remain despite an update on reform plans from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

The interim statement from BIS comes three months after its consultation on the two new possible funding models closed having elicited more than 1,400 written responses.

The consultation looked at how employers might pay their share of apprentice training, which has been set at at one third of the cost. It put forward employers either paying providers and then deducting the government’s contribution from their next PAYE payment, or employers paying for training via an apprenticeship credit account, which automatically ‘tops up’ their payment with the government contribution.

The results of the consultation are due out in the autumn, but the BIS statement published yesterday (and pictured right) provided an update and also sought to address recurrent questions, such as how reforms might affect small businesses.

However, Stewart Segal (pictured), chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said questions remained, including whether providers could still be paid directly by the government rather than funding going first to employers.

He said: “It [interim statement] does not yet address the main issue of moving to a funding system that will really engage employers by allowing them the choice of direct funding as an employer/provider or working with a provider of their choice who would draw down the funding.

“It also does not address the concerns expressed by many employers and employer representative groups who do not support mandatory cash contributions, particularly for those aged 16 to 19 and at level two.”

He added: “Employers are not just worried about cashflow and bureaucracy, but the contractual commitment that they will have to make if they are required to make cash contributions and draw the funding down directly.”

In the document, BIS claimed any new system would be “accessible and user-friendly for employers of all sizes.” It also sought to re-assure employers that they wouldn’t have to pay the full bill up front, adding that employers and providers would be free to “agree a mutually convenient payment schedule”.

In the report, BIS further confirmed it was looking at ways to phase in and test the new system.

Mr Segal said: “We are encouraged that the government will consider a ‘phased approach to implementation’ and we hope this will reflect the evidence of the employer responses.”

John Allan (left), national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: “It’s good that government has acknowledged the apprenticeship funding reform has to work for businesses of all sizes, including the very smallest firms, and we hope this is reflected in the final design of the reforms.

“We have said all along that businesses want a funding system that places employers in the driving seat and keeps administrative burdens to a minimum. Employers will welcome the fact that they won’t have to pay their entire contribution up-front, but crucially our members will need additional assurances that the payment mechanism chosen by government will not harm cash flow.”

A spokesperson for the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) told FE Week: “We have always supported the principles that underpin the reforms and believe it is vital that the new system prioritises simplicity, works for businesses of all sizes and is properly trialled and phased in. We’ll be providing a response once the government publishes its final report on the consultation.”

However, the CBI has previously aired its own concerns about the proposals, and at the AELP conference in June, its director of employment and skills, Neil Carberry (right), told delegates that businesses wanted “co-investment not co-payment”. He used social media site Twitter to call for contributions other than cash to count towards the employer’s mandatory share of the cost.

He tweeted: “We need the totality of an employer’s contribution taken into account, not just the cash — especially for the smallest.”

With just over a fortnight gone since Grantham and Stamford MP Nick Boles became the new Skills Minister, the sector is still awaiting his first public interview on his brief. As anticipation grows, FE Week reporter Freddie Whittaker delves into his past to see if there might be any clues as to what the sector can expect.

Of almost 150 Tory MPs elected for the first time in 2010, few have managed to whip up as much controversy as Nick Boles.

It could be the tempestuous nature of the planning brief he held for almost two years at the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), or the uncompromising way he handled the portfolio itself. Whatever it is, it has done a great job at dividing opinion about the 48-year-old.

Infamous for having once described green fields as “boring” and for championing the government’s ambitious housebuilding targets seen by some as imposed to the detriment of areas of countryside, Boles seems more concerned by getting the job done than by achieving consensus.

Born Nicholas Edward Coleridge Boles on November 2, 1965, the new Skills Minister’s education has all the familiar hallmarks of privilege. He studied at Winchester College, then Magdalen College, Oxford, eventually winning a Kennedy Scholarship to Harvard.

He ran a small business and was a Tory councillor representing the affluent areas of Mayfair and Soho. He chaired the housing committee and lived with another bright young Tory activist named Michael Gove. He founded the right-wing Policy Exchange thinktank, and ran it for five years and was elected to the safe seat of Grantham and Stamford in 2010 with a majority of almost 15,000.

“Posh, intolerant Nick Boles is a danger to the Conservative Party,” said Bruce Anderson in The Spectator in November last year, adding that Boles “gives the impression that everything has come easily to him”.

Others, including Association of Teachers and Lecturers deputy general secretary Peter Pendle, are equally cynical. Mr Pendle, a lifelong Labour supporter and former college vice-principal, said he was concerned when  Matthew Hancock was promoted to Business, Enterprise and Energy Minister with Boles taking his place.

Mr Pendle told FE Week: “I was more worried about Hancock leaving, particularly as we had got into a situation where he was beginning to get it — level playing field, 16-19, student-centred funding and such like — so the first thing I did was to go and look at Boles’s CV, and I have to say that that filled me with a degree of concern.

“He went to a private school, went to Magdalen College Oxford, he got a scholarship to Harvard… I just don’t believe he had been anywhere near a  general FE or sixth form college in his life.

“He was a Westminster councillor representing Soho and Mayfair — now I’m not sure if there are a lot of FE students living in Soho and Mayfair — and shared a flat with Michael Gove for four years. So a lot of warning signals.”

The surety with which Boles conducted himself and his approach to the government’s localism agenda while on the long leash of plain-speaking Eric Pickles at DCLG did not earn him friends in the rural lobby, and the “boring” comment did little to alter that.

But he has even been accused of costing his colleagues votes and criticised by members of his own party on more than one occasion.

During a particularly heated meeting in April about a 150-home scheme being fought by campaigners in Gloucestershire, Boles was told in no uncertain terms that his policies posed an electoral threat to Neil Carmichael, the Tory MP for Stroud, who has a majority of 1,299.

One campaigner accused him of creating “a monster where speculators are moving in”.

Boles also made an enemy in Lord True, the Tory peer and leader of Richmond Council, for his “interfering” in planning matters and his policy which makes it easier to convert offices into homes.

Lord True told the Evening Standard last year: “There are many people that believe a period of silence from Mr Boles would be welcome.”

But the experience of those who have dealt directly with him tell a somewhat different story — that of a sympathetic ear and a willingness to compromise that is perhaps under-represented in news stories about high-profile clashes.

The Campaign for National Parks (CNP) was one of 10 charities which wrote to the minister to plead with him to exempt national parks from rules which allow redundant barns to be converted into housing without planning permission.

Ruth Bradshaw, from the CNP, told FE Week: “In the end we were very pleased because we did get an exemption for national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty in the rules.

“We did feel that he did listen to us in the end. Before that we had been worried about some of the proposals which came forward which didn’t take into account our view, and it took quite a lot of lobbying on our part and we felt there could have been a bit more thinking in advance. On a face-to-face basis I found him to be very approachable.”

Whether Boles is seen just as a safe pair of hands to steer the skills portfolio towards the general election next year or a no-nonsense reformer sent to unapologetically hand down more cuts remains to be seen, but one thing is certain — all eyes in FE are on him.