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Eight months after the Children and Families Act came into place with the aim of better meeting the needs of learners with special educational needs and their families and all is not well with the policy, explains Kathryn Rudd.

The Children and Families Act, which came into effect in September, promised a brave new world. It was designed to offer transparency, clarity and a more joined-up system.

But young people and their families are reporting a very different reality.

At the Natspec conference last month we heard from two parents about their experiences and their views of the new system.

One mother said she entered into the new planning process for her son with positive expectations that they could establish provision that would meet his requirements.

The first planning session took two hours and they quickly outlined her son’s interests, aspirations and the services he required. She was really optimistic that the plan would work for him.

What she hadn’t realised was that the plan and the funding were not connected. It took her 11 months and 21 different assessments to get the funding required for her son’s plan to be carried out.

Instead of introducing national procedures to support the new legislation in its early stage, the government opted for a system where individual local authorities (LAs) introduced policy and guidance appropriate for their local area.

Families report a ‘post code lottery’ based on where they live, the blanket policies operated in their area and the ability they have as a parent or family to fight the system

Somehow it is assumed that all young people want to stay within two miles of their parents, that LAs have the capacity, funding and expertise to make all the aspirations of the Act a reality, and that the LAs will telepathically deliver the same solutions to funding constraints and expectations.

It also assumes that the various government agencies will ‘play nice’ and set exactly the same thresholds for services and support and, that they will walk hand in hand into the sunset linking up budgets and systems around the young person.

The reality for many young people couldn’t be further from the truth. Families report a ‘post code lottery’ based on where they live, the blanket policies operated in their area and the ability they have as a parent or family to fight the system.

The heralded joined-up education, health and care plan was described by one parent as a fight to the death to protect each agency’s budget from actually funding the plan established.

The Department for Education has recognised the issues and spent a considerable amount of money and resource on tackling the individual issues as they are raised.

Now it has launched a wider review of the high needs funding reforms which all of us who work in this field are desperately hoping will address some of the cultural and systemic issues young people and their families are facing.

Without a considered review of the system, we are hurtling towards a two-tier system of educational provision post 16.

Parents and families who are articulate and well-informed are desperately using all available resources to fight the system (including ever-expanding legal support) to get the education they believe is right for their son or daughter.

On the other end of the spectrum the more disadvantaged families are seeing services and access removed.

This system unfortunately does not have any clear winners — young people, their families, providers, LAs are all suffering under expectations they cannot deliver and a plethora of different systems, paperwork and approaches.

As a country we need to consider carefully what we want, and equally, what we are prepared to fund, for young people with disabilities.

We need to ensure we can make this a reality ‘on the ground’ and carefully think through the unintended consequences of reform, so we can be clear that any future changes really do enable young people to have aspiration and choice over their lives.

The political appetite for apprenticeships has never been greater, and neither has the pressure on funding — so where could the money for this booming programme come from, asks Richard Atkins.

Politicians in all of the political parties are telling us what a great success apprenticeships are and how they must be increased during the next Parliament, particularly up to the age of 24.

Civil servants, meanwhile, are preparing dossiers for new Ministers, giving them options for achieving their manifesto promises, including how the new government can grow apprenticeship numbers. So, what might the options be?

Firstly, we will need more young people, who are employment-ready, to choose the apprenticeship route.

Much better careers education, planned work experience and high quality vocational options for young people from age 14 will be essential if more young people are to be persuaded that the work-based apprenticeship route is right for them.

A comprehensive pre-apprenticeship programme for 16 to 24-year-olds, building on traineeships, will also be required. Secondly, we will need many more employers to offer more apprenticeship opportunities in their businesses if we are to meet the politicians’ huge targets.

The National Insurance exemption for apprentices aged under 25 included in the Chancellor’s December 2014 budget was a good start in incentivising employers to create more apprenticeship jobs.

But if we manage to achieve all of this, and create lots more apprenticeships, where is the money going to come from to fund them? Next year’s budget of £770m is already largely committed to existing and planned numbers with the current providers.

If we are going to expand apprenticeships significantly then new ways of funding them will need to be introduced in the age of austerity

Soon after I left school in the 1970s I joined a large retail and distribution business which put me through a series of planned training programmes with both on-the-job and off-the-job elements.

At various times over three years I was sent on day release and block release to colleges in London to gain relevant vocational qualifications alongside work-based training.

The company invested heavily in training because it was registered with and paid a financial levy to the Distributive Industries Training Board, based on its payroll costs, and could earn that levy back by investing in staff training of an appropriate standard and quality.

The company’s target was to earn back at least 110 per cent of the amount it paid out through the levy, giving it a real incentive to invest in internal and external staff training and development.

Indeed, like many large businesses my employer over trained, providing skilled staff for other businesses in the same sector. I notice that in the UKCES 2014 Employer Perspectives Survey of 18,000 businesses only 69 per cent said that they train their staff, and less than 40 per cent provide both internal and external training.

In the construction industry, an Industry Training Board and a levy system have been retained ever since the 1960s, and systematic sector-wide training including national qualifications is embedded in the structure of this sector.

For the past 25 years or so it has been unfashionable to argue that the training levy system should be re-introduced in this country, particularly when governments could afford to fund apprenticeships, train to gain and other schemes.

One of the key arguments against the levy has been that it would produce a burdensome bureaucracy for employers to deal with. Looking at the Construction Industry Training Board website recently, I saw that employers can register electronically, and then access a range of training services funded via the levy. This looks no more bureaucratic than several other recently proposed schemes, such as vouchers for apprenticeships or linking apprenticeship funding to HMRC for businesses.

If we are going to expand apprenticeships significantly then new ways of funding them will need to be introduced in the age of austerity.

The training levy system has been heavily criticised at times over the past 30 years but I would argue the next government should re-consider because the levy could help fund a major growth in apprenticeships while also increasing the percentage of employers who train their staff. It might also increase employer ownership of apprenticeships, because “he who pays the piper calls the tune.”

What would happen to your college if the Skills Funding Agency held back funding for 45 days? It’s just one of the tough questions that need to be asked if you’re planning to stay afloat, says Ian Sackree.

One of the most (if not the most) important tasks for the college’s accounting officer, is to ensure that the college remains a Going Concern — and is a ‘thriving business’, even in the most challenging of times.

To fulfil this responsibility it is not necessary for the principal to be an accountant, but it is essential to ask the right questions of the accountant, and often.

Look at your own financial situation (or perhaps that of others you know) and imagine life without the next three pay slips and without replacement employment.

Some commentators suggest that more than 80 per cent of us could be facing mortgage arrears or eviction if we had to go 90 days or more without income, but with the same level of expenditure. This is a practical, sobering interpretation of Going Concern.

The problem with Going Concern is that you generally only hear the term from your auditor, once a year at accounts sign-off time.

Given that the number of acutely balanced colleges is believed to be 50-plus and rising, I suggest to you that ‘Going Concern’ and ‘Organisational Sensitivity — the what if? questions ‘ought (if not already) to rapidly become part of your daily and weekly leadership and management overview.

Do not leave it to the finance committee that meets too infrequently to be wholly effective; start to take an interest today

Now I know that for every financially-qualified or savvy principal there is a principal and chief executive out there who prefers only to know the necessary when finance is concerned. Now that’s OK to a point — what on earth would the sector look like if it were led by just accountants. But let’s not forget the role and responsibility attributed under the FE Act to the accounting officer. This cannot be delegated so my advice is to start to ask some frequent and regular questions of those in the college that do and should know about the factors associated with Going Concern.

Do not leave it to the finance committee that meets too infrequently to be wholly effective; start to take an interest today.

These are my top tips for those who are feeling the financial noose tightening: monitor (and discuss with your senior leadership team) reported bank balances and cash projections weekly; make it your business to understand where the cash is coming from over the next 12 months, and any timing issues that may arise between significant payments out and receipts in. Remember, cash is king.

Understanding cash days is key; it’s your 90-day plan.

Guard your college’s cash; avoid capital project-creep or the ‘can you just’ jobs in estates and ICT that may unwittingly eat in to your cash.

Ask questions about long-term debtors. Are there any chunky ones over 90 days, if so, why? Effective credit control is essential.

On the journey in to college each morning ask yourself a new ‘what if?’ question — what if the SFA withheld payment for 45 days, could we run the payroll? What if the SFA clawed £1m back under audit, could we pay the final balance on the new build? If the answer is ‘No’ then you have a challenge.

For cash purposes remember that depreciation is your friend. It is a non-cash expense in the income and expenditure account, which effectively makes it cash generative. It is not the long-term solution to ‘feed off the estate’ but it will get you through the next three years if you can spend less than your depreciation charge on estate and ICT infrastructure.

Make a point of asking your financial director to reconcile monthly management accounts to the college cash forecast. If a planned surplus of £500k switches to a deficit of £500k then you have a ‘negative swing’ of £1m in your bank account that needs financing.

Make it your business to know your college bank relationship director, and keep your borrowing facilities (short-term and long-term) under regular review. Include this as board-business.

Watch the use of ‘Income Accruals’. It’s a common trick to replace income not yet invoiced with income that we think in an ideal world has actually been earned. If used correctly, no problem. In difficult times they can however be used to ‘prop up’ income when delivery may actually be behind the level of income recognised.