Dame Jackie Fisher has defended new employer Barnfield Federation amid claims it got £1m of government funding for learners it had no record of teaching.

Within days of Dame Jackie taking over as chief executive of the Bedfordshire-based federation last week, it emerged official reports in which the claims were made had been passed onto police.
A Hertfordshire Police spokesperson said it was looking into “what, if any, crimes have been committed”.

There is much to do but we are all working hard and pulling together to rapidly put in place our plans for improvement.

But Dame Jackie, who notoriously kicked Ofsted out mid inspection two years ago while she was chief executive of NCG (formerly Newcastle College Group), told FE Week: “I am very pleased to have been invited to be chief executive of the Barnfield Federation.

“There is much to do but we are all working hard and pulling together to rapidly put in place our plans for improvement.

“There are excellent activities taking place in the college and the academies and we continue to focus on providing excellent educational experiences for all young people.”

The reports with officers had been drawn up by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and the Education Funding Agency, who had both investigated the federation, which includes Barnfield College, after allegations of financial mismanagement and grade massaging.

The funding agencies’ findings have not been made public on advice from police, according to a government spokesperson on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education.

She said: “This investigation has now concluded and the reports have been passed to the police. The police have advised us not to publish the reports until they have concluded their assessment.”
However, the BBC claims to have seen the SFA report, saying the number of hours of learning claimed by Barnfield did not match registers, meaning the college was overpaid.

The claim for 16 the 18-year-olds was therefore reduced by £464,176 and by £477,000 for the adult skills budget.

The Hertfordshire Police spokesperson said: “We are assessing the reports but at this point in time an investigation into a crime has not begun. We are at this point assessing what, if any, crimes have been committed.”

Interim chief executive Dame Jackie, who led NCG to three outstanding Ofsted grades plus one at good, replaced interims Helen Mayhew and Stephen Hall who stepped in after federation founder and director general Sir Peter Birkett left in August.

He later became chief executive of GEMS Education, but quit the international school operator late last year with the funding agencies’ probes under way, saying: “In order that this issue does not become an undue distraction for my colleagues and the work of GEMS Education I have decided to resign from my position.”

The college was also visited by the FE Commissioner David Collins last month, and his report is due soon. In a letter to Labour’s Luton South MP, Gavin Shuker, Skills Minister Matthew Hancock last year said the commissioner would review the federation leaderships’s “capacity and capability” to bring in “financial control improvements within an acceptable timescale”.

A spokesperson for the federation, which according to its website, also includes four academies and a free school, declined to comment on the agencies’ reports.

Sir Peter has been reported in local media as declining to comment until the reports were published.

Newly-qualified teachers in FE colleges could have their lessons observed by Ofsted as part of its inspection of teacher training organisations.

Ofsted has launched a consultation on plans to change the way it inspects teacher training programmes so inspectors also watch former trainees teach near the start of their employment.

Ofsted is consulting on its proposals and we will be contributing a full response into it.”

In its consultation document, the education watchdog explains plans to introduce a two-stage approach to inspections of initial teacher education (ITE) partnerships from May.

Under the proposals, the first inspection would take place in the summer term, and the second would happen “relatively soon” after the end of training and focus on observations on former trainees and newly-qualified teachers.

“We believe that this will allow a sharper focus on trainees’ outcomes and how well they are prepared for teaching and the rigours of the classroom. We would then publish the inspection report,” said an Ofsted spokesperson.

The proposal has been welcomed by the Association of Colleges (AoC) and Institute for Learning (IfL), and both organisations have called for a focus on the importance of training and recruitment.
Joy Mercer, policy director at the AoC, said: “The issue we are keen to encourage Ofsted to look at is the benefit of training on the job.

“We know it has been focusing on the training of teachers in its inspections from September to December last year and we will be encouraging Ofsted to note the important role colleges play in training teachers who have come from strong vocational backgrounds to become dual professionals.

“Ofsted is consulting on its proposals and we will be contributing a full response into it.”

Toni Fazaeli (pictured), IfL chief executive, said: “There has been a finding from inspections so far that often the workplace and subject mentoring for newly-trained teachers is lacking in quantity and quality. Ofsted’s attention may help eradicate this gap.

“It is striking that Ofsted is focusing on newly-qualified teachers being properly prepared for the ‘rigour of the classroom’. Clearly, it is doing so because initial training and qualification and support are so important.”

The consultation runs until May 6, and documents and an online questionnaire can be found on the Ofsted website.

The government is to launch a consultation on “outcome-based measures of performance for all post-19 FE and skills” as it looks to tie funding with destination data.

The recently-released Skills Funding Statement (SFS) made several references to linking learner outcomes — such as progression into a job — and funding, and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) confirmed it was exploring the issue.

The SFS said the government had been working on three “core” measures that could determine funding — destination (into further learning or “into/within” employment), progression (through learning) and earnings changes (following completion of learning).

A BIS spokesperson told FE Week: “We will be looking at the extent to which linking funding to outcomes may have a stronger role to play in ensuring the quality of provision within the pre-employment offer.

“We are also developing and will consult on outcome-based measures of performance for all post-19 FE and skills, including qualifications using matched administrative data.”
The only funding linked to learner destination at the moment is the Skills Funding Agency’s ‘job outcome payment’, offering a compensation payment that can only be paid to providers when learners either fail their qualifications or walk away early — providing they’ve won employment.

The job outcome payment is half the value of the achievement payment, so in effect it can be seen as operating as a reduced fine.

Nevertheless, the move towards destination data has been welcomed by the Association of Colleges (AoC) whose policy director, Joy Mercer (pictured), said: “The SFS shows there is strong interest from government in using destination data to measure outcomes and in distributing funding.

“We have always supported the use of several measures to judge performance and warned against an excessive focus on success rates.

“Better destination data could be a useful corrective and BIS has done some experimental work in matching student, tax and benefit data, which is yet to be published

“In using destination data to set funding, it is also worth building on the existing arrangements for unemployed adults, but care needs to be taken to ensure the government understands that economic conditions and student choice play an enormous part in employment outcomes.”

The SFS was the strongest indication yet of the government’s willingness to move towards the use of destination data, which the Information Authority has said is to be renamed “life outcomes”.
It said in the SFS: “Qualifications are an important recognition of achievement. However, we recognise that they do not reflect the full range of policy outcomes we are looking for.

“We have put in place measures to capture learner destinations on the Individualised Learner Record (ILR) as we consider how funding can be more strongly linked to outcomes in future.”
The Association of Employment and Learning Providers welcomed the mention of destination data measures in the SFS. A spokesperson said: “Although some of these measures may be complex to track we believe we do need a broad measure of success for some of the programmes.”

It was not clear when the BIS consultation would be launched, but the spokesperson added: “Government funding for the sector is linked to performance. Part of the payment to providers already depends on successful completion of qualifications.

“Over the past year we have been talking with the sector about the pre-employment offer and how to ensure high quality delivery.

“Part of this has focussed on identifying and defining what positive outcomes are, including employment and progression.”

The boss of a leading independent training provider has hit out at the government’s apprenticeship funding reform proposals warning they could lead to large scale “corruption”.

John Hyde (pictured), executive chair of HIT Training, laid out his opposition at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers-organised Apprenticeship Debate with a scathing attack in which he also described Skills Minister Matthew Hancock as “weak” for changing the system.

I think there’s a serious danger of corruption,”

The system of apprenticeship funding looks likely to be restructured following recommendations in the Richard Review of Apprenticeships in England, published in 2012 and led by former BBC Dragon’s Den investor Doug Richard.

In a speech that drew spontaneous applause and laughter from the crowd, Mr Hyde described the reforms, which would see funding given directly to employers rather than training providers, as “throwing the baby out with the bath water”.

Referring to Mr Richard, My Hyde said: “We’re putting something untried, untested into place and for no reason other than the whim of an American entrepreneur and a weak minister.”
He added the changes would “decimate” apprenticeship numbers.

He warned that the reforms, which would fund apprenticeships through the tax system by offering employers a reduction in their PAYE liabilities, would be exploited to help multinational companies avoid tax.

“I think there’s a serious danger of corruption,” he said at the event in Central London on Thursday (February 20).

“Under this system, any employer can take on a learner and in 6 months’ time, remove them from the programme, but take a break from their PAYE — it’s open to enormous fraud.”
Mr Hyde also objected to the move towards assessment at the end of a course, rather than continuous assessment.

The deputy director of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ (BIS) Apprenticeship Unit, Jennifer Coupland, defended the government’s reform plans.

She insisted that end point assessment “does not preclude assessment along the way” and rejected My Hyde’s description of the new system as “untried and untested”, pointing to the trailblazer development groups set up to model and pilot the new system.

She said: “We want an open policy-making process which is collaborative with you, so that where things look like they’re going to be particularly problematic, we can adapt and grow and change the policy.”

She also conceded that including apprenticeships in the 24+ loan system was “the wrong policy for this type of programme”.

Loans were introduced for all learners aged 24 and over studying level three courses in June 2013, but it was announced in December that apprenticeships would be removed from the scheme after the number of applications plummeted.

The date for the removal of apprenticeships from loans has been announced as March 7.

A government consultation on the PAYE reforms, which proposed funding apprenticeships through the tax system alongside other options, closed in October.

The results have not yet been published, but Mr Hancock announced in November that apprenticeships would be funded through PAYE, and a technical consultation is due to be launched in the next few weeks, according to Ms Coupland.

A BIS spokesperson told FE Week: “The technical consultation will also include a summary of responses to the initial consultation which closed in October.”