Colleges and local authorities will get a multi-million pound Skills Funding Agency (SFA) payout for non-apprenticeship provision this month while independent learning providers (ILPs) look set to miss out on the cash boost, FE Week can exclusively reveal.

In a letter seen by FE Week, SFA funding and programmes director Keith Smith told colleges and local authorities they would be getting in-year growth allocations before the end of the current financial year if they had delivered at least 97 per cent of their adult skills budget (ASB) contract value in 2013/2014.

Mr Smith said: “As part of the performance management process, we continue to work to ensure funding supports the skills needs of every local community. While apprenticeship and traineeship growth are still our priority, we value the breadth of skills training (including English and maths) that colleges deliver locally. We recognise that the funding for this provision has been, and continues to be, under pressure.

“Alongside increasing the funds available for apprenticeships and traineeships through the performance-management process, we are now able to make additional other ASB funds available in the funding year 2014 to 2015. We will allocate this funding to those colleges and grant-funded training organisations that delivered 97 per cent or more of their ASB contract value in 2013 to 2014.”

Among those set for the payout this month was Sheffield College. It delivered nearly 99. 5 per cent of its June ASB allocation last year and told FE Week it was in line for £700,000.

However, the SFA declined to comment on the payouts or reveal the total amount going to colleges, but said figures would eventually be published. It also declined to comment on whether ILPs would get a payout, but FE Week understands none has received such notification, sparking questions about whether they would get similar windfalls.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Stewart Segal told FE Week: “This money has been allocated to colleges because of the different type of funding systems for colleges and independent providers.

“Our view for the long term is that all providers should be funded in the same way and this will ensure that allocations in the future reflect employer and learner demand rather than according to the type of provider.”

Julian Gravatt, assistant chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: “In March 2014, the SFA notified colleges of cut to the ASB of around 15 per cent for courses that didn’t lead to apprenticeships.

“The decision half-way through the 2014/15 academic year to reduce this cut by a small amount is helpful but is also late.

“We’re sure that colleges will make sensible use of the money but we also know that they’ll be tightly constrained in what they can do because they face further cut to this budget line of at least 16 per cent for 2015/16. Colleges will find out in March 2015 what precisely they have.

“The year-on-year reductions in public spending are taking their toll on adult learning and skills. The best way to get good value from the funds available will be via a more stable funding system.”

The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) is axing the public funding of 1,567 adult qualifications in its third annual cull.

Just 45 of 195 submissions from awarding organisations resulted in a stay of execution after the SFA said in November that the future of 1,612 qualifications was in jeopardy.

Of those to have their public funding cut, 700 had no take-up in 2014/15 while 867 had low take-up of fewer than 100 enrolments. All the qualifications to have survived were in the low take-up category.

The qualifications review process began in 2013, and today’s announcement covers the offer for the 2015/16. The total number of qualifications eligible for government funding has been reduced by 6,900 and will now stand at 3,100.

Skills Minister Nick Boles said: “Vocational qualifications must respond to local business needs, be respected by employers and help people into jobs. That’s why we are removing a further 1,600 qualifications from public funding, making a total reduction of 6,900 qualifications since 2013.

“The qualifications we are removing had few or no users, and are simply cluttering up the system. People who work hard towards publicly-funded qualifications must be able to trust that they are worthwhile and valued by employers, and a streamlined, comprehensible system is an essential part of this.”

The announcement came the same day as the 2015/16 qualification funding catalogue was published, but with the Skills Funding Statement yet to be published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, it contained no rates.

Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: “We were pleased that the SFA involved all of the key groups in the review of these qualifications, including training providers. It would appear that qualifications which are being used effectively will remain fundable.”

David Hughes, chief executive of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, said:“It is clearly right that qualifications should support people to get into jobs, progress in their careers and get on in life and we want people to achieve qualifications which are recognised and respected by employers and others.

“But this should not be a simple numbers game; having fewer qualifications cannot be a sensible policy aim in itself.”

For more, see edition 127 of FE Week, dated Monday February 9.

The body responsible for funding higher education has been instructed by the government to work with FE colleges to improve the “technical expertise” of learners.

In its annual grant letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce), which confirms overall funding for universities and FE colleges with higher education provision will rise from £11.1bn for 2014/15 to £12.1bn for 2015/16, Business Secretary Vince Cable called on Hefce to facilitate joint working between institutions.

The letter does not explain what form Hefce’s increased involvement with FE colleges will take.

It said: “The government is supporting new pathways into higher education through the expansion of higher level apprenticeships and National Colleges.

“The council should facilitate work with higher education institutions and FE colleges to develop innovative curricula and new modes of delivery that will meet employer needs for high levels of technical expertise, contributing to local enterprise partnerships’ growth plans, and to the government’s industrial strategy.”

It comes after Hefce reported last year that the number of people starting undergraduate study at FE colleges in 2013/14 was 10,000 higher than in 2010/11, a 57 per cent rise, and former Universities Minister David Willetts expressed his desire to see more learners taking higher education courses at FE colleges.

It also comes after the FE sector was given more than £700,000 to help 74 FE colleges encourage young people to progress into higher education.

Hefce announced earlier this month that £714,772 would be allocated to FE colleges with higher education provision between now and 2016 in a bid to improve collaboration with schools and other colleges.

The FE sector share is less than 6.5 per cent of the £11.02m total allocated to individual universities and colleges, and grants range from £2,534 for South Gloucestershire and Stroud College to £53,280 for Blackpool and The Fylde College.

Labour this afternoon lost a House of Commons vote on plans to scrap apprenticeships of less than two years’ duration and below level three.

Following a heated opposition day debate in Parliament, a vote on a motion calling for the new standards was defeated 294 votes to 218.

The motion, submitted in Labour leader Ed Miliband’s name and supported by Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna (pictured) and Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne, was criticised by government ministers and MPs who accused the opposition front bench of “dismissing” level two apprenticeships.

But Mr Umunna said: “It is not to devalue them, it is frankly to bring them up to the same benchmarks as our competitors who are more productive than us.”

He said his proposals were not about doing away with lower level apprenticeships, but re-branding them. He also said he would give local councils more power over apprenticeships, including over enforcement of the minimum wage.

Responding on the minimum standards issue, Business Secretary Vince Cable said: “I think there is an important point about levels. I think the honourable gentleman dismissed too easily the value of level two apprenticeships.

“He seemed to imply that these were not quite apprenticeships, but actually there is quite a lot of statistical evidence that people who do a level two apprenticeship and no more have significantly higher earnings than people who don’t go through that channel.

“I think the figure is 11 per cent over a three to five-year period. There are a lot of very import trades, bricklaying for example, where a level two is a valuable progression into a badly-needed occupation.

“So although he’s right that we should be moving up the level chain, and we should be doing that, I don’t want him or anybody else to devalue level two qualifications or to eliminate them from the camp.”

As well as calling for the proposed minimum standards to be implemented, the defeated motion also called for concern over the fact apprenticeship starts among 19 to 24-year-olds has fallen by 6,270 in the past year and called on the government to use money already spent on procurement to require suppliers for large government contracts to offer new apprenticeship opportunities.

Mr Cable used the debate to defend the government’s record, and said he had acted to protect FE spending as much as possible in the early days of the Coalition Government, despite having to take a “political hit” after raising tuition fees for university students.

He said: “When I came into office I was told that there were plans by his government had they returned to office to cut my department’s budget by 25 per cent. That was all very clear, and indeed we’ve had to confront that.

“This is a budget which is dominated by higher education and adult skills. The advice I got, particularly from opposite in a particularly shrill and angry way, was ‘you must give priority to undergraduates’.

“Had we followed the advice we would have had to cut the ASB by about 40 per cent. Within that we would have had to cut apprenticeships even more because they’re more expensive than other forms of training.”

“I then made a decision which I think was one of my better decisions which was to listen to the advice, to reject it and do the exact opposite. We took a serious political hit on higher education but did the right thing and we made the decision to invest more and not less in apprenticeships.”

Principals have been urged to “be brave and stand” as the Association of Colleges today (AoC) begins the hunt for its next president.

Nomination papers are being sent out, before an election and then appointment to the year-long role from August.

Current president and principal of Exeter College Richard Atkins said: “I would unreservedly recommend this role. My advice would be brave and stand and if you have a genuine appetite to get involved in this work and represent the sector you’ll really enjoy it.”

Once the nomination papers are received, a college, through its chair of governors, can put its principal forward from nomination, which must then be seconded by a separate member college.

Candidates can also be nominated by individuals, with the backing of two principals.

Nominations close on March 4, and ballot papers will then be sent out on March 9 with the deadline for returning falling on April 1. The president for 2015/16 will be revealed two days later.

“The job is partly ceremonial but it’s also very much about influencing and getting involved with policy development and giving the team at AoC the voice of a working principal who’s in college two or three days a week,” said Mr Atkins.

Former AoC presidents include Bournville College principal Michele Sutton CBE and City College Coventry governors’ chair Maggie Galliers CBE. They were principals at Bradford College and Leicester College, respectively, at the time of their appointments.

The boss of the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and the Education Funding Agency has been handed the enviable task of representing the UK at WorldSkills in Brazil this summer.

Peter Lauener, chief executive of both funding agencies, will be taking over the role of official UK delegate to the WorldSkills 2015 competition in Brazil. He replaces former SFA interim chief executive Keith Smith, who returned full-time to his director’s role over funding and programmes.

Mr Lauener said he was “pleased” to be attending the event, where young people from around the world will compete for gold, silver and bronze in a huge range of vocational skills.

“I will be personally championing the need for and value of skills training,” he told FE Week.

Ofsted today confirmed it was pushing ahead with “some of the most significant changes to the inspection of education in its history” following a public consultation on bringing all its inspections under one regime.

It was revealed in FE Week in August last year that the education watchdog planned for all education inspections to be “harmonised” under one common inspection framework (CIF) for nurseries, schools and colleges from September this year.

Its eight-week consultation on the plans, entitled Better inspection for all, closed before Christmas and Ofsted has now published a report on almost 5,000 responses, which indicated broad support for the proposals.

Ofsted’s national director of schools, Sean Harford (pictured right), also confirmed that a unified CIF would be introduced from September, along with more frequent but shorter inspections of good FE and skills providers and schools.

He said: “In recent years, we have seen encouraging improvements in schools and colleges across the country. The changes we are confirming today are designed to ensure that standards continue to improve.

“Sir Michael Wilshaw set out our proposals at the launch of the consultation in October. Nearly 5,000 people have given their views since then, with the vast majority supporting all of our proposed reforms. I am very pleased that these changes now move forward with a strong endorsement from the public, education professionals, parents, carers and learners.”

Headline fields for inspections, under the new CIF framework, will be ‘effectiveness of leadership and management’, ‘quality of teaching, learning and assessment’, ‘personal development, behaviour and welfare’ and ‘outcomes for children and learners’.

At present they are ‘overall effectiveness’, ‘outcomes for learners’, ‘quality of teaching, learning and assessment’, and ‘effectiveness of leadership and management’. Guides for the new inspections are due out in the summer term.

FE and skills providers will also, under the new CIF framework, have the following areas of provision graded “where appropriate” — ‘16 to 19 study programmes’, ‘19+ learning programmes’, ‘apprenticeships’, ‘traineeships’, ‘employability’, ‘learners in receipt of high needs funding’, ‘community learning’, ‘14–16 provision in colleges full-time and part-time’.

The report said that FE and skills providers judged good at their last full inspection would no longer be subject to a full inspection once within a six-year period. They will instead usually receive a short inspection that will take place around every three years.

It added there were no plans to introduce reinspections of outstanding providers within a definite time period, so they will “usually only have a full inspection if their performance drops or there are other compelling reasons”.

The changes come just two years after the current FE and skills CIF was introduced.

There were 4,390 responses to the online consultation questionnaire, as well as qualitative data gathered through consultative events including more than 40 short inspection pilots with FE and skills providers and schools.

More than 60 per cent of respondents supported the proposal for more frequent, but shorter inspections of good FE and skills providers.

Almost 80 per cent backed the introduction of a unified CIF.

Mr Harford said: “Our Common Inspection Framework will ensure a consistent approach to Ofsted inspections. It will focus on keeping young people safe, the breadth of the curriculum in schools, the relevance of courses and training in FE and skills, and the quality of early learning.”