The demise of access to apprenticeship (AtA) has led to a call for colleges to be allowed to use cash for the programme on 16 to 18 traineeships instead.
Funding rules currently stop colleges using money for AtA, which the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) is closing to new starts from next year, to pay for traineeships.
The traineeship programme is seen as the replacement for AtAs, which close to new starts at the end of the year, with both designed to act as pre-apprenticeship courses.
However, the Education Funding Agency (EFA), through its study programmes budget, pays for 16 to 18 traineeships at college, while AtAs for the same age group are funded through the SFA’s adult skills budget.
But a number of colleges have already turned down the opportunity to run 16 to 18 traineeships, warning that their budgets were already stretched.
It has resulted in the suggestion that colleges be allowed to shift money from their 16 to 18 AtA budget because the end of the programme means the cash is unlikely to be spent — and could even be clawed back by government.
Graham Howe (pictured), West Nottinghamshire College vice principal for business development, warned that learners could be affected if AtA money couldn’t be spent on traineeships.
He said: “If the traineeship programme is to be truly successful, and see the positive work that we do in our college with young people and employers continue to thrive and grow, the system must allow colleges to utilise the 16 to 18 AtA budget to deliver traineeship programmes.
“If this does not happen, we will see a reduction in the opportunities available to young people to engage with the apprenticeship programme.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Education (DfE), which oversees the EFA, said: “If a college on an EFA contract wants to recruit more traineeship students than they are funded for, they are free to do so and will receive an increased allocation in the next year to make up for this.”
More than 7,000 learners did an AtA in 2011/12, followed by a provisional 4,200 for the first three quarters of last year.
An SFA spokeperson said: “Following the successful introduction of traineeships in August, AtA will close to new starts from January.
“We will continue to fund any learners on AtA programmes at that time to complete their programme.
“As AtA programmes are intended to last no longer than six months, we expect that these learners will have progressed onto a full apprenticeship by July.”
But while the DfE said it had not set a target for traineeships, the AtA figures have left cash-strapped college leaders uneasy at the thought of forking out to run similar numbers of 16 to 18 traineeships this year, but having to wait until next year to be paid.
“Our volumes of 16 to 18 traineeships will be restricted as financially the college has already surpassed its 16 to 18 EFA target and any additional activity has to be resourced from within the college as the EFA lag model prevents any in-year increases in funding allocations,” said Mr Howe.
“Therefore any 16 to 18 traineeship activity delivered in-year would mean no income in-year, but potential growth of EFA numbers in 2014/15, depending upon the consistent application of past EFA funding policy.”
The DfE spokesperson said: “We have always been clear that the size of the traineeships programme, which is still in its first year, will be determined by demand from employers and young people.”
The think-tank, in the last of its three reports this month, recommends a ‘youth allowance’ to replace existing out of work benefits for 18 to 24-year-olds. It would provide financial support for young people who need it, conditional on participation in purposeful training or intensive job search.
No More Neets also calls for a ‘youth guarantee’ to be established, offering access to FE or vocational training plus intensive support to find work. For those not learning or earning after six months, mandatory paid work experience and traineeships should be provided.
Large firms should also either offer apprenticeships to young people, in proportion to their size, or pay a ‘youth levy’ towards the costs of training young people.
Meanwhile, London and eight ‘core cities’ should take on resources and responsibility for young people, with Westminster setting national objectives.
Graeme Cooke (pictured above), IPPR research director, said: “In contrast to previous initiatives and attempts at reform in this area – Connexions, the New Deals, the Work Programme and the Youth Contract – this strategy aims to solve the fundamental failures of the school-to-work transition system, rather than making up for them.”
The second of the IPPR’s reports, The Condition of Britain: Growing up and becoming an adult, argued that up to 50,000 16 to 18-year-olds were studying low-level courses that offered little or no job preparation or incentive toward further study. Almost 250,000 teenagers who left school without good qualifications were studying these courses but IPPR said that up to a fifth would be better off on an apprenticeship or pre-apprenticeship training.
Kayte Lawton, senior research fellow at the IPPR, said: “Young people who don’t do well enough at school often end up taking colleges courses that don’t prepare them for work or further study. Many of these courses don’t include decent work experience and often fail to lead to a recognised qualification.”
She added: “We need to see big changes to the way that post-16 education works and we need employers to step up and offer more work experience to young people to help them learn the skills they need to get on in the workplace. We can’t expect schools to do this by themselves.”
But the claims were attacked by Association of Colleges president Michelle Sutton.
She said: “In two years, colleges turn the majority of these students around, helping them find employment or continue to further study. Therefore it’s not true to describe such courses as dead-end because they are often important stepping stones.”
Lynne Sedgmore, executive director of the 157 Group, said: “The finding that those who take level two courses are more likely to become Neet than those on A-levels is unsurprising, and to imply the reason is mainly to do with the design of level two programmes is simplistic and potentially misleading.”
Apprenticeships are to be funded through employers, Skills Minister Matthew Hancock announced at the Association of Colleges (AoC) conference on Tuesday.
Mr Hancock said the move was part of a wider strategy to reform the FE system “to support high expectations”.
“That includes… putting the funding for apprenticeships through employers so they can demand the high quality training they need,” he said.
The announcement comes before the results of the recent consultation on apprenticeships funding have been released.
The consultation asked whether money for apprenticeships should be routed through colleges and training providers or employers, or funded through the tax system.
Mr Hancock’s announcement came shortly after AoC president Michelle Sutton criticised employer providers in her speech to the conference.
Mrs Sutton pointed to recent inadequate Ofsted grades received by hotel chain InterContinental, where no apprentices had achieved their qualification since the scheme started in 2012, and security contractor G4S.
She said: “If we compare this year’s marked improvement for college Ofsted outcomes, to some employer-led apprenticeship outcomes, I think there should be some questions to ministers around the fitness for purpose for some large employers to be a lead position in the new employer-led landscape.”
Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne also urged a cautious approach to introducing employer ownership of funding.
“A lot of big talk is talked about employer ownership and the government, in my view, is not very clear about what it means,” he said.
He acknowledged the importance of employer ownership of the skills framework in the creation of “gold standard vocational qualifications”.
“I think it’s not a bad idea to experiment with giving employers direct ownership of some of the funding,” he said.
“But we have to proceed with incredible caution, because firstly you have to ensure that the skills people are being trained in are genuinely transferable.
“Secondly you’ve got to make sure there all the right safeguards against fraud and thirdly you have to make sure this is actually going to work for regional economies.”
He also warned that there could be issues with setting up new systems to accommodate funding for employers.
“We should be innovative and test new things, but we have to be incredibly careful,” he said.
“Everything we have learned about the fiasco which is universal credit tells us that wiring big government IT systems together is immensely difficult. We can’t risk another universal-style debacle on skills funding.”
Tens of thousands of 16 to 18-year-olds are taking dead-end courses that will end with no job and will turn them off education and training, a policy think-tank has warned.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) claimed huge numbers of late teens were facing the Neet (not in education, employment or training) scrapheap by studying low-level courses that offer little or no job preparation or incentive toward further study.
Almost 250,000 teenagers who left school without good qualifications are studying these courses but IPPR says that up to a fifth would be better off on an apprenticeship or in stronger forms of pre-apprenticeship training.
The IPPR’s new report, which is part of its flagship Condition of Britain project, is the second in a series of three on young people, work and benefits that it is publishing this month.
It shows that more than half a million young people who left education with just a low level qualification are not in work.
Kayte Lawton, senior research fellow at the IPPR, said: “Most young people don’t choose to walk away from work or education, but most employers won’t hire teenagers any more.
“Young people who don’t do well enough at school often end up taking colleges courses that don’t prepare them for work or further study. Many of these courses don’t include enough decent work experience and often fail to lead to a recognised qualification.
“School-leavers used to be able to get good jobs in manufacturing and office work that didn’t need lots of qualifications but were a source of self-respect as well as a decent pay packet. Now, low-skilled jobs in service industries are often badly paid and lacking in status, but also require skills like relating to customers that many young jobseekers have yet to learn.
“We need to see big changes to the way that post-16 education works and we need employers to step up and offer more work experience to young people to help them learn the skills they need to get on in the workplace. We can’t expect schools to do this by themselves.”
The new IPPR analysis shows that, between 2006 and 2010, more than one-in-five of those studying for a level two qualification at age 16/17 and 17/18 ends up Neet by the time they are 19/20, and nearly in one in four doing level one courses ends up Neet. The group is more than three times as likely to be Neet at age 19/20, than those studying for A/AS-levels at the same ages.
IPPR’s new report shows that more than half a million (560,000) young people who left education with just a low level qualification are not in work. It also shows that the lower the level of your qualifications, the less likely you are to find a job.
It comes ahead of the publication of the latest statistics on the number of young Neets. Labour Force Survey research showed in August that the proportion of England’s 16 to 24-year-olds who were Neet between April and June was down on the same period last year by 51,000 (0.8 percentage points) to 935,000 (15.5 per cent).
Further education colleges in England are set to be hit by staff strikes over pay early next month.
Members of the University and College Union (UCU) are expected to take industrial action on Tuesday, December 3.
More than two-thirds (71 per cent) of UCU members who voted backed strike action after employers offered a pay rise of 0.7 per cent, which, the union says, would leave staff with a 15 per cent pay cut in real terms over the past four years.
Michael MacNeil, the union’s head of bargaining, said: “This result is a reflection of our members’ anger at the employers’ refusal to do anything to address falling pay at a time when the cost of living continues to rise.
“College lecturers have seen their pay fall by 15 per cent in the past four years and fail to make up any ground against school teachers’ pay, despite increasing workloads.”
The UCU strike vote comes despite the Association of Colleges (AoC) having reached agreement on pay with Unison, AMiE, ATL, UNITE and GMB through the National Joint Forum (NJF).
Emma Mason, director of employment policy and services at the AoC, said: “We are disappointed that UCU members have voted to take strike action following their ballot on the union’s decision to reject the national pay recommendation.
“Their decision stands in stark contrast to the response of the other five nationally-recognised unions who have accepted the recommendation and reached agreement with us in the NJF.
“The pay recommendation for 2013/14 is for a 0.7 per cent increase and £282 for staff earning £14,052 or less and increases the recommended minimum hourly rate to £7.45 in line with the UK Living Wage.
“This offer reflects the very real financial constraints our member colleges are facing.
“Since 2010, government funding to colleges has reduced by 25 per cent with a cut of £250m in this year alone.
“The forum agreement explicitly acknowledges the financial pressures on colleges and recognises that it is subject to affordability at the local college level.
“UCU’s pursuit of an and unrealistic 5 per cent pay claim and its threat of industrial action risks damaging the education and training of students, undermines the reputation of colleges both locally and nationally and places an undue burden on non-teaching staff and non-union members to take measures to minimise disruption to the student experience.”
Further education leaders clashed with Ofsted over whether students needed work experience outside of their colleges.
The exchange took place during a packed debate at the Association of Colleges annual conference on November 20, chaired by FE Week editor Nick Linford and sponsored by NCFE, on new study programmes for 16 to 19-year-olds.
Panelist Asha Khemka, principal of West Nottinghamshire College, disagreed with colleges being required to arrange external work experience for all students through the programmes.
Speaking to fellow panel member Marina Gaze, Ofsted’s deputy director of FE and skills, she said: “We have got a five-star restaurant. Are you saying people working there do not learn to turn up on time or how to meet the needs of customers?
“Why should I send students working there outside of the college for work experience, just to tick a box with Ofsted?”
Andrew Patience, principal of New College Stamford, pointed out that many of
his students studied four days a week and then worked the fifth day , while not in college.
He said: “The powers-that-be will effectively force them to give up paid work to do unpaid work experience on that spare day.”
Ms Gaze said: “What we are saying is we will expect every student to at least aim to do outside work experience.”
She said it would be okay — under the right circumstances — for learners to do all their work experience within colleges after being pressed by Mr Linford.
Panelists from left: David Grailey, NCFE, Asha Khemka, West Nottinghamshire College, Marina Gaze, Ofsted, and Mike Hopkins, Middlesborough/Gateshead
Around 700 talented young people competed to be crowned the best in the UK at this year’s Skills Show.
The event, in its second year, plays host to a series of sector competitions to find the UK’s best young craftsmen and women with the aim of getting them through to WorldSkills 2015, in Brazil.
Winners were announced last night and the medallists will be invited to a selection event in Loughbrough, in January, to assess their skills and personal attributes.
It will be followed by more training and honing of skills in the lead up to the biennial WorldSkills competition, alongside mentoring to help competitors cope with the experience.
Head of international skills development at the National Apprenticeship Service Eugene Incerti (pictured) explained to FE Week reporter Rebecca Cooney how competitors got there, and what was next on their WorldSkills journey.
Most young people need a nudge from their tutors to get them started, said Mr Incerti.
“Very few people will think ‘oh I’d like to go to a competition’, it’s somebody whispering ‘you should have a go at that’,” he said.
Sometimes, he added, the level of technical skill may not be the most important thing.
“Enthusiasm is number one,” he said.
“If they’re really keen on the subject, where you don’t have to teach them because they want to learn that’s the sort of people we’re after.
“It’s better to see them do the basics right at this stage so they’re on solid base and easier to take forward, rather than somebody who can do the flashy bits but not the basics.”
Competitors normally come up through regional competitions, but being the best in your area does not guarantee getting through to the national finals, warned Mr Incerti.
“After the regional heats the top 10 or 15 highest scorers nationally may be invited to the final.
“So you could be the highest scoring in Cornwall for example, and still not get to the final because it’s about the quality of the competitors, so they are all consistent nationally.”
“The experts we have out there now are not looking for the finished product, really we’re just looking for the spark of potential,” he added.
Our Mann joins former dragon to have a go
At this year’s Skills Show, patron and former Dragons’ Den investor Theo Paphitis could be found striding around Birmingham NEC at breakneck speed doing Have a Gos and generally getting into the swing of things.
From left: Matt Ruckwood from Bedford College, Theo Paphitis and Shane Mann from FE Week tentatively put sensory skills to the test trying to guess what’s in the box at Bedford College’s Have a Go stand
FE Week reporter Rebecca Cooney caught up with him to find out what he thought of this year’s show.
“I don’t think I need to try and put into words what the show is about this year… you can hardly move, it’s rammed,” said Theo.
“The success of this show now is going to give us a springboard to go on to the next stage.
“Birmingham has proved a concept — if you have a big skills show, people want to be involved in it, they want inspiration and information, and it’s out there today.”
Theo said he was keen to keep growing the show, so that as many young people as possible could come and be inspired by it.
“We had 70,000 odd kids last year on the Thursday and Friday,” he said.
Theo tries Solihull College’s flight simulator with Shane acting as wingman
“This year we’ve built on that, we’re at 100,000 plus and I don’t think we could physically get many more people in here next year, it’s just not possible.
“So we’ve got to look at ‘what else do we do from here?’”
“I mean there’s Saturday, but that’s very much a family day, so we still need that weekend day, which reaches a different audience.”
This “next stage” he said, could be a series of regional Skills Shows.
“While we’re talking about different audiences, the show in Birmingham has proved that it works, why shouldn’t there be one in the North East? Why shouldn’t there be a Skills Show in the south, or in Scotland or Wales?”
Theo confirmed he would be staying on as patron next year, saying he was “committed” for at least the next year.
“For me the most exciting thing about the Skills Show is not one individual thing,” he said.
“For me the most exciting thing is all the people out there, it’s working, and if you put so much energy and time in and so many people put energy and time and effort into this show, to see it working — it doesn’t get better than that.”
Also see WorldSkills UK national finals league table on page 24
Nick Clegg talks to the editorabout traineeships and the review of youth employment schemes
From left: Nick Clegg talks to FE Week editor Nick Linford at the Skills Show
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has warned against the dangers of exploiting young people through unpaid traineeships.
In an exclusive interview with FE Weekat the Skills Show in Birmingham, Mr Clegg said the new government-funded traineeships with unpaid work placements lasting up to five months were “constantly under review”.
“I think over time what we need to do is make sure all these routes into full-time, fully paid work whether internships, traineeships, apprenticeships, never ever become an excuse for cheap labour,” he said.
Mr Clegg acknowledged that with such schemes there was always a risk of exploitation, but said the government would be keeping a close watch on them.
“We are the first government to introduce an apprenticeship minimum wage, so we’ll constantly keep this under review because we certainly don’t want to sully the good name of these initiatives by not making sure that young people can also financial survive as they’re learning on these schemes,” he said.
During the same interview, Mr Clegg also revealed that the outcome of the cabinet review into the schemes available through the government’s £1.5bn Youth Contract programme was “impending”.
From left: Nick Clegg talks to FE Week editor Nick Linford at the Skills Show
“I’ve asked [Cabinet Office Minister] Sir Jeremey Heywood to conduct this review, he’s now coming to the latter stages of his review but he hasn’t yet submitted his report… I hope he will be able to do so in a couple of weeks,” he said.
“I’ve had several discussions with him and his team, and constantly pushed them to be more ambitious about creating a simplified system, also making sure that the kind of information, advice and guidance which is provided for pupils at school — when it has the biggest impact — is more professionally, systematically and consistently done across the school system, and I know Michael Wilshaw and Ofsted are very much of the same view as well.”
He added: “I listened very closely to what a lot of young people told me about the dizzying array of choices they face when they’re looking to bridge the world of education to the world of work and I’ve spoken to FE college leaders, to employers.
“Everybody agrees it’s just too complicated, and the choices for youngsters need to be dramatically simplified so that the junctions in the road, if you like, are more clearly signposted for them.”
Sam with Open Sight family support officer Jenny Collins
Brave ex-carpenter Sam Appleton has gone back to Basingstoke College of Technology to retrain as a masseuse having gone blind just three months after he was diagnosed with a devastating eye disease, writes Paul Offord.
When Sam Appleton (pictured above) qualified as a carpenter from Basingstoke College of Technology, he never imagined cruel fate would soon force him back there to retrain as a masseuse.
Sam, aged 21, first graduated from the college in 2010 and spent the next two years using his woodwork skills to refurbish offices.
But in July last year he was diagnosed with an eye disease called Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON). Within three months he was blind.
Sam, from Tadley, in Hampshire, said: “I went on holiday with my mates and I woke up and my vision was all blurry.
“I thought it was because I’d been drinking and then I just thought I needed glasses, so I went to get tested.
“But it wasn’t what I thought — I got the diagnosis and my eyesight deteriorated.”
He added: “I didn’t really feel anything when I got the diagnosis. I didn’t believe it was happening and I just tried to carry on as normal.
“Then at Christmas I realised I couldn’t see anything at all. I had to quit as a carpenter.”
Sam’s 39-year-old dad, James, then suggested he should go along to his old college’s open evening last September and find out about massage courses.
Sam began training as a masseuse the following week.
“It really wasn’t something I’d ever even thought about doing before — there’s a big difference between carpentry and massage,” said Sam.”It was a bit nerve-racking walking into the first class because there were 15 girls and I was the only boy. I know that would be some lads’ dream, but I found it hard because I couldn’t read people’s facial expressions.
“But they were really lovely people and they really helped me.”
Sam completed the course in May this year and has already launched his own business, called Blind Sensations.
He said: “It doesn’t really pay a lot yet but it’s early days. I’ve always been self-employed so it’s something I’m used to. I get to get up at 9am or 10am, which is tough, but someone’s got to do it.”
Sam has also raised more than £500 for sight loss charity Open Sight, which supported him
in getting back to work, through offering clients massages in exchange for a donation.
Sam’s tutor, Alice Avenell, said: “His parents helped him start it up, creating a Facebook page, business cards, T-shirts and flyers. Sam is now building a network of clients through friends and family and attending local fairs and charity events.”
Sam did work experience at the Serenity Centre, in Ramsdell, Hampshire, and now rents a room at the venue to carry out massages. He is also gaining experience of sports massage at Reading Rugby Club.
He said: “Next year I am booked-up to do a sports massage course too. It will be an extra string to my bow.”
James said: “Quite simply, without all the flexibility and support from the department, we wouldn’t be here. The course and the tutors have really helped Sam and given him a purpose.”
Traineeships are the latest example of the myth that colleges cannot provide a true-to-life working environment for learners, says Lynne Sedgmore.
There is a strange policy gap that English politicians of all parties fall into when thinking about vocational education.
They present choices for young people in terms of either going to university or taking an apprenticeship; linking and limiting their policy options to improving one or the other — if not both.
They bemoan the low status of vocational study but then undermine it further by their rhetoric, actions and misunderstandings.
We are not arguing that places at university or good apprenticeships are bad options. For many young people they are the right choice.
There is however, a third choice, made by far more young people than ever get the chance of an apprenticeship — the choice to undertake a course of vocational education in a college.
The numbers of apprenticeship places for 16 to 19-year-olds is small and falling. Despite consistent and high profile action from successive governments, vocational FE is the only realistic alternative to academic study, though you might not realise this listening to ministerial and policy sound bites.
The latest example of downplaying the FE contribution concerns work experience, now seen as an essential part of most study programmes for 16 to 19-year-olds and the dominant element of the new traineeship scheme.
It is highly unlikely that employers, who are rapidly turning their backs on 16 to 19-year-olds, will provide sufficient substantial and high quality places to meet the hugely expanded demand that curriculum reforms have generated.
One way of filling the gap is to build on the many and varied ways in which colleges provide realistic working environments (RWEs), but the Department for Education has gone out of its way to damn that valuable contribution with faint praise.
Again, we do not deny that a well-organised and substantial placement with a good and committed employer should be the gold standard in respect of work experience.
We do, however, challenge the implied
view that any work experience with an employer, however limited and contrived and short term, is always better than a well-planned programme in an RWE.
College farms, training restaurants, travel agencies, florists, hairdressing salons, body shops and a host of other commercially-managed activities offer valuable experience for students across a whole range of vocational areas. We ought to be celebrating what they achieve and finding ways of expanding their contribution rather than stigmatising them as second best.
A college enterprise can give students an insight into real commercial pressures and the experience of dealing directly with customers, but still have staff whose primary focus is on student learning and not shareholder profit
We need to use RWEs because of the shortfall in good employer placements, but we should also use them because they meet needs that employment-based options do not. After all (thankfully), surgeons do not learn the first steps in dissection on real patients and pilots make their first flights on a simulator.
A college enterprise can give students an insight into real commercial pressures and the experience of dealing directly with customers, but still have staff whose primary focus is on student learning and not shareholder profit.
Oddly, government is more than capable of celebrating this same approach outside FE. When University Technical Colleges (UTCs) reinvent this particular wheel it is (rightly) praised as forward-thinking and innovative. When Edge sets up a training hotel or Lord Baker announces a new raft of Career Colleges it is seen as progressive and exciting.
It’s a pity however that we don’t make more of the outstanding practice that already exists in plenty across FE.
