Westminster Kingsway College has appointed business and regeneration expert Ruth Duston as its new governors’ chair.
She takes up post next month with the retirement of six-year chair David Kogan, who is principal of the Wasserman Media Group based in London’s Global Media Rights division.
Ms Duston is currently chief executive of a number of business partnerships and heads up more Business Improvement Districts than anyone else in the UK, including the Victoria BID, The Northbank and the soon-to-be-created BID in the City of London.
Through her roles she works extensively with academic and vocational institutions, and is an advocate of the role that business can play in ensuring young people secure sustainable future job opportunities.
She said: “I am looking forward to joining the excellent team at Westminster Kingsway College and helping them achieve their ambitious goals for the future. My experiences in running multiple organisations, bringing both the private and public sectors together, and delivering large scale programmes of change will, I’m sure, add value and I am keen to get to work.”
Mr Kogan’s retirement plans were announced by the college around eight months ago.
Andy Wilson, principal, said: “Westminster Kingsway is enormously grateful to Mr Kogan for the six years of leadership he has provided to bring stability to the college.”
Meanwhile, Marcus Kingwell has been unveiled managing director of the newly-formed AoC (Association of Colleges) Sport.
He joins the organisation from London Sport, where he led the creation of a new, city-wide organisation for community sports development. He brings more than 15 years of senior experience in sport, leisure, health and wellbeing.
Mr Kingwell said: “I feel privileged to be taking on the role of AoC Sport managing director at such an exciting time for college sport. There is great potential to increase participation, investment and awareness of sport in the sector, and make a real impact on students’ lives.”
Joining Mr Kingwell in leading college sport is Clare Howard, as deputy managing director. She was previously head of sport policy at the AoC.
Richard Atkins, chair of AoC Sport and president of the AoC, said: “Our vision is that every college student is encouraged, supported and has the opportunity to participate in sport and physical activity as an integrated part of their college experience, contributing to learning, progression to employment and the development of active and sporting habits for life.”
Apprenticeships will top a list of six goals to be outlined at the Labour conference by party leader Ed Miliband today.
Making the number of school-leavers becoming apprentices equal to the number who go on to university comes first among Mr Miliband’s pledges should Labour win power next year.
His plans for increased apprenticeship numbers, to be unveiled in his keynote speech at party conference in Manchester this afternoon, include tougher regulation to force firms to hire apprentices and a renewed focus on apprenticeships for those aged 24 and under.
He will say: “A plan for our country, a plan for our families, must have at its heart a future for all our young people.
“So here we need the biggest national effort that we have seen for generations with young people showing the ambition to get on, schools and colleges offering gold standard technical qualifications, and business and government leading a revolution in apprenticeships.”
He will go on to say that Labour in power would require every firm getting a major government contract to offer apprenticeships, insist large employers hiring skilled workers from outside the EU offer apprenticeships to young people in the UK and give employers more control over how the government spends training funds.
Mr Miliband will claim his party would create thousands more apprenticeships in the public sector, including the Civil Service, creating a fast track scheme like that already existing for graduates from top universities and will focus apprenticeships on new entrants to the labour market.
It is the first of six goals, with the remaining five listed as tackling the cost of living crisis; restoring the dream of home ownership; tackling low wages; securing the future; and, saving the NHS.
He will say: “Can anyone build a better future for the working people of Britain? That is the general election question.
“So many people have lost faith in the future. I’ve met young people who should have the brightest of futures who tell me their generation is falling into a black hole. People in England who think all politics is rubbish.
“People in Scotland who wanted to leave our country because they felt they had nothing left to lose.
“Our task is to restore people’s faith in the future. But the way to do it is not to break up our country. It is to break with the old way of doing things, break with the past.”
Central government departments are failing to work together on skills policy with “alarming” consequences for the UK workforce, according to the Skills Commission.
Provisional findings of the commission’s Skills and the Changing Structures of Work inquiry were published today — with party conference season getting under way — and included four “alerts,” or skills policy trends it said required “urgent attention”.
The commission argued the trends have developed into “significant barriers to a successful skills policy” capable of providing a labour market skilled to meet the needs of employers across the UK economy.
The barriers were (1) uncertainty around the responsibility for training in an increasingly flexible labour market; (2) declining social mobility owing to a reduction in the alignment of skills provision to work; (3) fragmentation in the system making it difficult for employers to engage and, (4) “alarming policy dissonance” between different central government departments.
Inquiry co-chair Dame Ruth Silver, who is also the Further Education Trust for Leadership president, said: “The structures of work are changing but the structures and practices of training and recruitment are lagging behind and government policies are not always helping.
“The commission has identified four clear trends that we believe are deeply undermining our system of skills provision in the UK.
“It is right that we raise these four trends as ‘alerts’, such is the gravity of the threat they pose, and the urgency with which they must be addressed”.
The four-page provisional report explains how, on the fourth alert, the commission heard evidence during its six-month inquiry of “numerous policy tensions” between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) the Department for Education (DfE) and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
The commission’s interim report said: “The DWP’s introduction of universal credit needs to be more responsive to, and sensitive of, the labour market opportunities for young people and the retention rates of older workers.
“BIS will struggle to boost traineeships while inflexible rules on benefits discourage claimants from training. An adequate system of careers advice and guidance cannot be built without investment from, and the support of, the DfE, and similarly the self-employed will receive lower rates of training while the tax system works as an active disincentive.
“In a time of public austerity and in light of the challenges brought about by more flexible patterns of work, a difficult youth labour market and an ageing workforce, co-operation between the departments of government and their agencies is vital.”
The third alert explains how, “the changing structures of work, and various attempts to ‘keep up’ by government, providers and industry has left us with a system that lacks overarching oversight that ensures the best interests of learners are placed at the heart of the system. There are too many moving parts.”
And, according to the second alert: “Advancement through the labour market has become more difficult for non-graduates. While the labour market has changed the job preferences of non-graduates have not and many are pursuing opportunities in dwindling markets and low paid sectors.”
Meanwhile, the first alert said: “The labour market has become increasingly flexible, with a greater proportion of the workforce now self-employed or working in insecure and part-time arrangements. This raises the question – who is responsible for the training of individuals not working as regular employees?”
Inquiry co-chair Barry Sheerman MP (pictured left), former chair of the House of Commons Education Select Committee, said: “Let us be in no doubt about this. Ensuring the UK has a highly skilled, diverse and responsive labour market is not a party political issue.
“As all three parties head off to conference I urge all parliamentarians to understand that we must work together, with employers, education providers and all relevant players, to urgently solve the alarming gaps in our system of skills provision”.
The commission’s final report is due out at the end of next month.
BIS, DWP, HMRC, and DfE are yet to comment.
See FE Week edition 112, dated Monday, September 29, for reaction to the commission’s findings.
Improving technical education is one of three key campaign priorities for Labour, Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt has announced.
Addressing the Labour Party conference in Manchester, Mr Hunt outlined the three most important issues as his party heads into its general election campaign, including childcare reform, a qualified teacher in every classroom and efforts to provide for the “forgotten 50 per cent”.
He described technical education as the Tories’ “greatest failure” and referred to the “forgotten 50 per cent” of young people who didn’t go to university and were denied “the rewarding education they deserve”.
He added: “The third plank of our plan, is a vocational education system to rival Germany’s.
“A Labour Government will ensure Further Education colleges focused on training for local jobs, proper apprenticeships lasting two years, a technical baccalaureate, with respected qualifications, careers advice, technical degrees so young people can earn and learn.
“The old barriers between academic and technical crumbling under the next Labour government, righting the wrongs of the last five years.”
For extended coverage of the Labour Party conference, see edition 112 of FE Week.
Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna today told of his commitment to investment in apprenticeships and new technical degrees.
In his address to the Labour Party conference in Manchester, Mr Umunna said one of his biggest priorities was to see “apprenticeships quadrupled” if his party were to win next year’s General Election, and added that plans for increased investment would play a big part in that.
He also repeated a pledge to establish new technical qualifications.
Mr Umunna said: “It’s up to us to act, but we need to do more to ensure our businesses can compete in the world and create the jobs of the future.
“That’s why we set out Agenda 2030 – our long-term plan to support business, grow our economy, and earn our way to a higher standard of living for all.
“It’s a plan that does away with the snobbery that says an apprenticeship is not as important as university. So we will invest in high-quality apprenticeships, and new technical degrees.”
It comes after shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt committed to establishing a technical education system “to rival Germany’s”.
In his speech to the conference yesterday, Mr Hunt described technical education as the Tories’ “greatest failure” and referred to the “forgotten 50 per cent” of young people who didn’t go to university and were denied “the rewarding education they deserve”.
He added: “The third plank of our plan, is a vocational education system to rival Germany’s.
“A Labour Government will ensure FE colleges focused on training for local jobs, proper apprenticeships lasting two years, a technical baccalaureate, with respected qualifications, careers advice, technical degrees so young people can earn and learn.
“The old barriers between academic and technical crumbling under the next Labour government, righting the wrongs of the last five years.”
See edition 112 of FE Week, dated Monday, September 29, for full coverage of FE and skills at the Labour conference.
Governors should “be a bit braver” when challenging colleges on teaching and learning, according to former Department for Business, Innovation and Skills chief Dr Sue Pember.
The ex-head of FE and skills investment and performance at BIS, who is now a governance adviser at the Association of Colleges (AoC), said governors should trust their instincts when observing lessons.
Sue Pember addresses the seminar on college governor leadership. Inset: delegates at the seminar, organised by Westminster Briefing and the 157 Group
Dr Pember, addressing governors and principals at a seminar organised by Westminster Briefing and the 157 Group on Wednesday (September 17), said: “You as individuals, you have all been through the school system. I would trust your instinct. If it’s boring to you and you’ve just been in 10 of them [lessons] that look really boring, trust your instincts and think, would you sign up to that course? Be a bit braver about this.”
She added: “Staff and student governors come into their own with you when they’re talking about the curriculum, because they’re the ones that can signpost you through — you know, level two, level three, BTec national, HNC — they know this, they are living and breathing it.
“They will know the curriculum changes that are coming through, and I still don’t think we use enough of staff and student governors around the governing body table to help explain.
“It’s normally the senior leaders who feel they have to talk about some of these things, but other people can talk about them as well. So how can you, as individuals, use your skills? Well, first of all, you should be assured that you’ve got systems that are assessing the teaching and learning in the college.”
With the focus of the conference ‘college governor leadership: involvement on learning teaching and assessment,’ Dr Pember also spoke about the need for governors to be assertive and not get too “cosy” with college leadership.
From left: Ann Zinkin, governors’ board chair at Barnet and Southgate College, and Olivia Dorricott, director of leadership, governance and management at the Education and Training Foundation
“Yes, you have to be assertive,” she said, “but not assertive with the finger out, but assertive in the form that you’re clear and you communicate and you ask good, challenging questions.
“There is a set of behaviours in the way a governing body acts. There shouldn’t be a clique where they go away, you know, the chair, the clerk and the principal, and then they come back and say, ‘We met last week in the pub and I’ve sorted it’. That really drives me crazy, and I hate when the principal says, ‘oh, we’ve just had a pre-meeting’.”
The seminar also heard from BIS deputy director for standards and qualifications Bobbie McClelland, who said governors needed to be well-informed about policy to do the job well, and could rely on regular updates from government.
She said: “High-performing governing bodies need to be clear on their roles, setting their direction and being outwardly accountable.
“To do that, you need to understand the wider policy context and government expectations, and we have done a number of things in this area which I hope you’ll see are helping you.
Peter Eyre, governor at Sixth Form College Farnborough
“The last couple of years, the minister has written out, on a termly basis, to governors, directly, about the important things that government is thinking about. And if you’re not getting those letters, you need to be asking your clerk where they are, because they are there for you.
“They are letters which attach a whole set of briefing about latest government thinking on the important issues — and of course they featured very strongly most recently the English and maths story, the workforce measures that the government is actually putting in place to support the sector to actually improve the quality of teaching and learning in English and maths.
“I hope you are aware of those measures, because there’s more than £30m being thrown in over two years to actually enable you to recruit graduates, to enhance the skills of your existing staff — so there’s a lot going on in that front.”
Senior Ofsted inspector Julie Ashton also addressed the seminar, focusing on the importance of the role of governors in ensuring
English and maths provision is of a high enough quality.
Andy Gannon, director of policy, press relations and research at the 157 Group
Ms Ashton said: “When I was a newly-qualified teacher back in 1992, English and maths was important then. I have taught in schools, I have taught in sixth form colleges and general FE colleges, and it’s never gone away. So what really saddens me is that it’s 2014 and it’s still a priority and we still for whatever reason haven’t got it right.
“The responsibility for delivering English and maths is everybody’s responsibility, not just the English and maths specialists, it has to be much broader than that.
“To me it’s that accountability of the senior leadership team which matters most. Governors and senior leaders comparing perhaps success rates which perhaps include and exclude Functional Skills so you can
spot the differences and then challenge them.”
Olivia Dorricott, director of leadership, governance and management
at the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), spoke about the help and support the ETF offered governors, but also shared her personal experience as someone new to a governing board having recently started the role at Waltham Forest College.
She said: “I also am here I suppose in a personal capacity. I have just become a governor, and so I am living a new induction.
Patricia Tomlinson, governor at Hull College Group
“I am having some pretty significant and serious conversations with the senior leadership team about what they expect from me, and I was just saying, in my inductions with them, I have asked them what they expect from me as a governor, and that question, asked in five different places, has been very revealing.
“They want me to arrive at meetings having read the papers, they want me to ask questions and they want me to be present, and aware of the college and in particular the students.
“My initial pushback was on technology. If as a working mother-of-two with two volunteer roles you want me to read the papers, then put them in a format I can find time to read, and that doesn’t mean a deck of papers, it means technology, technology, technology.”
Bentley Motors has opened a manufacturing training base at South Cheshire College.
The new training facility, which has two classrooms fitted out for academic and practical work, will prepare level three apprentices to help build the luxury car maker’s new sport utility vehicle set to be unveiled in two years.
The first 40 apprentices, who will also work at Bentley’s manufacturing headquarters in Crewe, will be inducted at the college by the end of the month.
They will be trained at mechanical and electrical engineering, bodywork painting, and crafting fittings such as panelling for car interiors.
Principal Jasbir Dhesi said: “This is a fine example of a college working to provide a bespoke employer-led apprenticeship programme. I am proud that nearly all training associated with high-level technical skills in the production of Bentley cars will be in Crewe.”
Pic from left: Crewe and Nantwich Conservative MP Edward Timpson, South Cheshire College principal Jasbir Dhesi and chief executive of Bentley Motors Wolfgang Durheimer at the launch of the new training centre
The number of young women considered not in education, employment or training (Neet) is 29 per cent higher than it is for young men. Dr Carole Easton considers why this is the case and what it means for the skills agenda.
Young women want to work, but hundreds of thousands are stuck not earning or learning.
Our Scarred for Life? inquiry into females who are not in education, employment or training (Neet) recently presented its initial findings in the Totally Wasted? The Crisis of Young Women’s Worklessness report.
We highlighted the fact that there are 418,000 women aged 18 to 24 compared with 325,000 men.
The number of female Neets has barely changed in a decade and on average they
will also be Neet for longer — three years rather than two.
As well as the key point that young women want to work, our initial findings — based on focus groups, surveys and face to face conversations—– show that the advice, training and support available to young women not leading to any employment or leading to jobs that are too few in number and too poorly paid to be sustainable.
We have discovered a lot about what young women need, but have also heard from training and FE providers about the challenges they face, including financial constraints. But we need to gather more evidence before making detailed recommendations next year.
The right support is vitally important because in many cases young women are being sent down a path that quickly becomes difficult to escape from. They need the right advice in the first place but also the opportunity to change direction if they realise they have made the wrong decision. That’s what is lacking at the moment and that’s why they are stuck.
Many young women are directed towards traditionally female sectors even though their interests and aptitude lie elsewhere.
We commissioned a ComRes poll of 859 Neets which showed that female Neets were three times more likely than male Neets to have been told by careers advisers to think about becoming care workers, nannies, nurses or hairdressers and male Neets are at least six times more likely to be told to think about becoming IT technicians, construction workers or electricians and plumbers.
When I was 18 I decided to study IT. Finding myself in a slightly alien world dominated by men, I decided to move on. That was, I’ll admit, a long time ago, but even now the world of IT is still male-dominated and that’s not about to change — for every one woman doing an apprenticeship in IT there are ten men.
Young women should be part of the equation when it comes to considering skills shortages in
their area
Reflecting that early careers advice, young women are training for jobs traditionally associated with women. The apprenticeship figures show that five sectors account for 61 per cent of all female apprenticeships, while the same proportion of men work in more than ten sectors.
It is little wonder that so many women
end up Neet when they are competing for jobs that simply don’t exist.
A young woman I met in Blackburn had qualified as a hairdresser and become “self-employed” as none of the salons she approached would use her services otherwise. She struggled for months to
make enough money to live on and eventually gave up.
She is not alone. On average, there are five qualified hairdressers for every job in hairdressing. But young women heading down this career path aren’t told how hard it will be for them to make a living in their local area.
The same goes for childcare. So many of the young women I have met around the country have been encouraged to study childcare without being warned, for example, that in areas of deprivation and high unemployment few can afford childcare so there will be no demand for their services.
Locally, young women should be part of the equation when it comes to considering skills shortages in their area. Nationally, it is time to recognise that it doesn’t make economic sense to deny women who want to work the opportunity to do so.
