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Woman who learned to read aged 60 features on television

Bracknell and Wokingham College featured on ITV’s Daybreak morning show in an item highlighting the importance of adult literacy.
Daybreak’s Philippa Tomson spoke to mature student Sue Chapman, aged 64, and her tutor Rosalynde Smith about the college’s free adult English classes.
The mother-of-two joined the college when she was 60 years old, having been unable to read or write throughout her life. She started by passing a level one functional skills English course and is now taking level two.
Sue’s achievements were recognised by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace), which gave her its Outstanding Individual Learner Award (for adult learners) in 2011.
She said: “I think it’s brilliant that these courses are receiving this coverage. If I’d have known how nice the tutors were I would have done them a long time ago.”

Cap: Sue Chapman taking notes from a book

To the defence of colleges over Leps

Ofsted director of FE and skills Matthew Coffey told the Education Select Committee last week how colleges needed to do more to engage with local enterprise partnerships. His comments reaffirmed the overall message of the education watchdog’s annual report last year, but Phil Hatton asks whether such college criticism is justified.

Strangely, if you take a quick look through the information available online about local enterprise partnerships (Leps), there is no mention of the role of colleges or providers.

As usual, it is all about employers.

When inspection by the Further Education Funding Council started 20 years ago, one of the cross-college themes specifically inspected and graded was Range and Responsiveness.

The college where I worked at the time did particularly well in liaising with local and national industry to meet their needs (including training for multinational car companies and many small businesses) as well as reaching people who had previously not been engaged in education and training.

One of the ways in which the latter was achieved was by being the first college to effectively use postcode analysis to see where we did not have learners, and then knocking on doors to find out what people wanted and what we were not doing.

Giving colleges autonomy should not mean that they suddenly have a duty to spend their ever-diminishing funding on projects for which they are not adequately funded

The college received a grade one for the area and we were all proud of our role in improving the lives and employment prospects of local people.

At that time, Education Business Partnerships often instigated some really interesting ideas that made a difference locally, such as giving school pupils real work experience in industry rather than the easy option of a placement in a retail store that predominates now.

The whole ethos and mission of colleges, and the majority of providers, is to spend their funding for the benefit of their students and the needs of their local community.

That is the main basis of the funding formulae that are being continually squeezed.

Leps replaced the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) two years ago, which in turn had replaced Government Offices.

Are Leps having an impact, or are they following in the footsteps of RDAs, which were continually hyped as the next big thing in shaping changes in the economy?

Giving colleges autonomy should not mean that they suddenly have a duty to spend their ever-diminishing funding on projects for which they are not adequately funded.

The key focus of the current Common Inspection Framework is on delivering high quality teaching and learning.

The wording that refers to the inspection judgement for a college or provider about the unmet needs of industry are how the leaders of a college, ‘successfully plan, establish and manage the curriculum and learning programmes to meet the needs and interests of learners, employers and the local and national community’.

Colleges and providers do work closely with local employers and many do so on a national basis. Where work is new this is often on a full-cost basis which is not always adequately captured during inspection. Inspection covers government-funded provision.

As for getting jobs for youngsters who are not in education, employment or training (Neet), and the inference that the high numbers are partially the fault of college, you should take a look at some outstanding school reports where there will be little or no mention of impartial advice and guidance that includes real vocational training such as apprenticeships (and numbers going onto them at 16 and 17 continue to fall), but their guidance does cover the stuff that can be delivered that has little relevance to industry.

If we really want to reduce those who are Neet, take the example of the flagship traineeships which few seem interested in.

With my knowledge of young people and work-based learning, gleaned from surveys that covered some very successful Young Apprenticeship and school links programmes between schools, colleges and training providers, the most suitable age group would have been 14 and 16 rather than waiting for their disaffection with traditional schooling to increase as you wait for them to reach 16+.

The words stable, door and bolted come to mind. All this talk of Leps identifying unmet skills shortages is a little like the Somerset Levels where some investment in dredging just may have had a positive impact in preventing flooding.

Phil Hatton is a former HMI with 20 years’ experience. He now works at the Learning Improvement Service — www.learningimprovementservice.co.uk — as an adviser

York College fined £175k over nursery death of three-year-old Lydia Bishop

York College has been fined £175,000 over the death of a three-year-old girl who got her neck caught in a rope at the college nursery in September 2012.

It was also ordered to pay £45,000 in court costs over the death of Lydia Bishop (pictured), who became entangled while going down a slide on her first day at the nursery.

Leeds Crown Court jurors found York College guilty last week of health and safety breaches relating to the tragedy.

The judge, Mr Justice Coulson, sentencing the college today, said: “A child is priceless, so the loss of a child is an irredeemable loss.”

He also paid tribute to Lydia’s distraught family, including mother Rebecca Dick, saying they had behaved with “dignity and restraint” throughout the three-week trial, which ended last week.

The court had heard safety measures to stop children using ropes alone or going unsupervised to a slide had not been enforced.

It emerged that the rope that had been left tied to the slide against health and safety policy.

The college was found guilty of failing to ensure the safety of babies, toddlers and pre-school children at its nursery between August 1 and September 18, 2012.

Lydia had been at the nursery with her mother having just enrolled on a course at the college.

York College principal Alison Birkinshaw said: “We remain deeply saddened by the events of September 17, 2012, and know that no family can ever recover from the death of a child.

“Nothing can reduce the pain felt by Lydia’s family and we are truly sorry for what has happened. Lydia and her family will be forever in our thoughts.

“We remain committed to learning from these tragic events and took the difficult decision to close the nursery permanently immediately after the tragedy.

“While the nursery was separate from the college, we also brought in the British Safety Council to conduct a full inspection of health and safety implementation across all college sites.

“As noted by the judge in his closing sentencing remarks: ‘The college has taken a number of steps to ensure that this sort of accident could not happen again.’

“We would like to thank the local community for the support shown to everyone affected by these terrible events.”

Nursery worker Sophee Redhead, aged 25, from York, was cleared of the charges against her at the end of the trial. She had been accused of manslaughter by gross negligence and faced an alternative charge of failing to ensure Lydia’s health and safety.

Speaking at the end of the trial last week, Detective Chief Inspector Nigel Costello, of North Yorkshire Police, said: “This was an extremely tragic case for all concerned, not least for Lydia’s family who have been left devastated by the loss of their daughter.

“It is only right that a full investigation into her death was conducted to provide her family with some answers and to establish if there was a criminal case to answer.

“Unfortunately, it has taken the death of a three-year-old girl to expose the flaws in their health and safety practices and I hope this case serves as a warning to other organisations that it isn’t enough to just have a procedure written down.”

Principal of inadequate Greater Manchester college to ‘work from home’

The principal of a Greater Manchester college is to take early retirement after it dropped from outstanding to inadequate in six years.

Stephen Carlisle (pictured) is to “work from home” for the remainder of his contract at Stockport College. He is expected to be replaced by former Blackburn College principal Ian Clinton.

It comes four months after the 9,000 learner college was given a grade four rating from Ofsted before FE Commissioner David Collins hit it with administered status, stripping the leadership of staffing and finance powers.

Former Blackburn College principal Ian Clinton

An Ofsted monitoring visit report in December then blamed the college action plan for slow improvement.

A Stockport College spokesperson confirmed to FE Week that Mr Carlisle, who had served as principal since November 2012, was leaving and that his replacement had been named.

She said: “The agreement is that Stephen Carlisle has decided to take early retirement from March 31.

“For the period in between now and then he will be working from home and supporting the college and its interim principal.”

Stockport College, which has a current Skills Funding Agency allocation of just under £8.2m, achieved the highest possible rating in 2007, but fell to grade four following a visit by the education watchdog last October.

The college was hit with inadequate ratings across each of the headline fields and told it needed to “rapidly improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment”.

The report said “too many” learners left without achieving their qualifications and attendance was low with many students arriving late to lessons.

“Leaders have not acted quickly to reverse the significant decline in student achievement,” it further said in the report, adding that quality assurance arrangements and self-assessment were “weak” and that the “quality of much of the accommodation and many resources is poor”.

Mr Carlisle said after the report: “We won’t regress from this report and as many of the weaknesses had already been identified through our self-assessment process, we are well under way at making the changes needed”.

The college, which has an Education Funding Agency allocation of £12.7m, had already been issued with a financial notice of concern from the Skills Funding Agency before the Ofsted report.

Its financial problems include the 2011 axing of the second phase of a £100m rebuild after the Learning and Skills Council programme collapsed, despite the college already having invested £4m.

Mr Clinton took over at Blackburn College in 2004 and left at the end of last year. His college was rated outstanding in January 2008 following its most recent Ofsted inspection.

Mr Carlisle became principal at Stockport in November 2012 after a five-year spell in charge at Accrington & Rossendale College, where he had already been deputy principal for five years, achieving an outstanding grade in mid-2009. He was not available for comment.

Watchdog promises to ‘fundamentally re-design’ quals appeal system

Ofqual has announced plans to overhaul the A-level appeals system in England, dubbing it “overly complex” and “opaque” in a report published today.

The qualifications watchdog’s Review of Quality of Marking in Exams in A-levels, GCSEs and Other Academic Qualifications praised the quality of grading, but pledged to review the process when mistakes were made.

It comes after grades on 54,380 GCSEs and A-levels were changed last year following 301,267 enquiries. The figures compare to 28,903 changes from 164,874 enquiries in 2009.

Ofqual said it would “fundamentally re-design” the appeals process, with a new system in place by next year. Exam boards will be asked to provide more data on the quality of their marking and to improve aspects of both onscreen and traditional marking. They will also be expected to contribute to an Ofqual led programme to develop understanding about what makes a good mark scheme, for candidates of all levels.

The move was welcomed by the Association of Colleges’ policy director, Joy Mercer (pictured), who said the current appeal system was ” not transparent, fair or strong enough”.

And Andrew Hall, chief executive at AQA, which sets the papers for around half of all GCSEs and A-levels with nearly 2 million students sitting its exams every year producing more than 7 million exam scripts, said: “We welcome today’s report.

“We know that getting the right results is absolutely crucial for both students and their teachers, and we agree the current appeals system needs to be improved so that it properly addresses genuine marking errors and builds confidence in the exam system.”

Currently there is a six-stage appeals process, which with ‘service one enquiries about results’— a clerical check to ensure all questions have been marked and all marks have been added up correctly.

The final stage is an ‘examinations procedures review service’, a hearing with a panel of senior Ofqual and independent figures.

Last year, 1,950 service one enquiries about results were made, while eight examinations procedures review services were carried out and two were upheld.

The Ofqual report found that many teachers saw this system as “opaque”. It called for teachers to have a better understanding and be more engaged with the system.

Its chief regulator, Glenys Stacey, said: “Our report has found that the overall quality of marking is good. There is much to have confidence in, but there is no doubt that it could be better still.”

More than 16 million exam scripts are marked every year and Ms Stacey acknowledged that mistakes did occur “in a system of this scale”.

“Although genuine mistakes are few and far between, they undermine confidence in the system,” she said.

“The appeals system has been under increasing pressure, particularly from accountability measures and overly complex processes.

“To make our appeals system fit for the future we need to overhaul it. We want a new system that is more transparent, fair and sufficiently robust to differentiate between reasonable variations in marks and genuine marking errors.”

Ms Mercer said: “We feel there is a clear set of recommendations, which particularly support a decision to completely redesign enquiries about results and the appeal system in England.

“We agree that at the moment the system is not transparent, fair or strong enough to demonstrate the difference between variations in marks and genuine marking errors.

“However, Ofqual has highlighted that there needs to be better interaction between teachers and the exam systems… we welcome Ofqual’s understanding that colleges need up-to-date information and a further level of transparency.”

She added that the current situation left many colleges confused over what help they could get from awarding bodies.

Mr Hall said: “It’s important to remember that the process of ensuring students get the right results starts long before an examiner sits down to mark their scripts.

“Dealing with the root causes of the issue is critical and that starts with the design of the qualification, the question paper and the mark scheme guidance, which all have to work well. If they don’t, then there is only so much you can do to put that right further down the line.”

Brian Lightman, Association of School and College Leaders general secretary, said: “The qualifications system is not broken, but aspects of it need to be reviewed and adjusted. The challenge now is for Ofqual and the awarding bodies to put these recommendations into action.

“The fact that we cannot currently compare the quality of marking of qualifications and subjects between exam boards is clearly an area that needs addressing.”

He added that he was hopeful that issues with the appeals system would now be addressed.

“Large inconsistencies or marking errors can have significant consequences for the students affected and the current appeals system does not enjoy the confidence of schools and colleges,” he said.

“We recognise that the enquiries about results and the appeals system need changing. However, we are disappointed that the report gives no indication of the importance of engaging with … leaders on proposed changes. “

He added that Ofqual and the awarding bodies needed to take a lead on improving the understanding of teachers and the general public about how the marking processes work.

Skills Minister Matthew Hancock greeted by protest at Question Time college

Students at MidKent College last Thursday (February 6)

A controversial funding rate cut for 18-year-olds was the subject of a lively protest and crunch talks when Skills Minister Matthew Hancock visited MidKent College last week to appear on Question Time.

Members of the college’s Students Union (SU) formed a flag-waving picket line at the college’s Medway campus, in Gillingham, on Thursday night while BBC cameras rolled.

And although Mr Hancock did not visit the demo, he did meet with SU members and college principal Sue McLeod to discuss the funding rate cut for 18-year-olds. Full-time learners in the age group will be funded at a level 17.5 per cent lower than that of 16 and 17-year-olds. At current levels that would mean a cut from £4,000 to £3,300 a year.

Matt Stanley, SU president and level three diploma student, told FE Week: “We felt it was a really unfair funding cut, and something which affects the most vulnerable students.

“He [Mr Hancock] wouldn’t come and speak to us unfortunately, but he did meet with some of our members and the principal.”

Ms McLeod said: “I was keen to stress to the minister how deeply unfair the planned funding cut is for FE colleges, and the negative effect it will have on the young people of Medway and Maidstone in particular.

“We have more than 1,000 students aged 18 at the college, so a funding cut of £700-£800 per head equates to about £800,000 in total.

“Mr Hancock appeared sympathetic to our situation and said he regretted the decision, adding that the government would seek to assist those colleges that are hardest hit, which provides us with some hope for the future.

“However, we will continue to campaign on behalf of 18-year-olds from across Medway and Maidstone who are being unfairly targeted by this poorly-researched plan.”

The students also protested about the sell-off of student loans, but the funding rate cut, along with concerns about an official impact assessment justifying the move, has been raised with Mr Hancock on numerous occasions by colleges, students and fellow MPs, with a number questioning the skills minister in parliament.

Among the most recent to question the cut was Lib Dem MP Tim Farron, who wrote to Mr Hancock asking if, “he will consider reversing the reductions in funding for full-time education places for 18-year-olds announced by his department in January 2014”. MHANDDD

Mr Hancock wrote back: “We have to make the funding reduction for 18-year-olds in order to live within the Department for Education’s funding settlement at the spending round 2013, which was reduced at the autumn statement of December 2013.

“The published impact assessment of the reduction in funding for 18-year-olds sets out why it was the least detrimental of the options for savings that we considered.

“We will consider whether we can afford to introduce measures to mitigate its impact on individual colleges.”

Heseltine tells fellow Lords of doubts over EU powers to curb youth unemployment

Tory grandee Lord Heseltine has expressed doubts over the ability of the European Union (EU) to help solve the problem of youth unemployment in the UK.

The former deputy prime minister made the comments to the House of Lords EU sub-committee on internal market, infrastructure and employment yesterday as part of its investigation into EU action to tackle youth unemployment.

Lord Heseltine questioned the extent to which EU could play a part in tackling the issue with his 2012 report, No Stone Unturned, having said economic growth could be stimulated by devolving power from central government to Local Enterprise Networks (Leps).

“I am a strong believer in Britain playing a part in Europe,” he said.

“But how can I solemnly sit here and criticise London for its effect on the provinces and then say I want Brussels to cover more? It makes no sense.

“The effect of everything I believe is that these are problems which should be addressed by who people live there, know there and understand it — that is localism.”

The Conservative peer also rejected the idea that Leps should have an unemployed young person on their board, saying: “Would I single that group of people out to put on the Lep boards? No, I wouldn’t actually.”

He told committee chair Baroness O’Cathain: “I think that if you had asked whether I thought we should put a representative of young people on the board you wouldn’t have received firm answer, but I don’t regard unemployed youth as representative of young people.”

Last week the head of the Department for Work and Pensions European Social Fund Division, Angus Gray, told the committee that he believed European funding for tackling youth unemployment could be better spent at local level, rather than centrally. Lord Heseltine agreed.

“It sounds to me as though the criticism is right — the European view of their funds is that they should be generally available for local allocation to meet local problems,” he said.

“But that doesn’t suit the way Britain works, so the functional departments have taken their bits of the European policy and functionalised them, and that does suit the way Britain works — but of course it very seriously limits the discretion locally available.

“As part of the package that I recommended to be devolved were the European funds. So do it — give [Leps] the discretion locally without the functional departments getting their hands on it and that would then enable people to do what they thought was appropriate locally, such as employment.”

However, he said he did not believe youth unemployment should be seen as separate from joblessness in adults.

“I wouldn’t myself concentrate on one aspect of unemployment because I think they’re a seamless row,” he said.

He went on to describe London’s influence on the rest of the UK as “monopolistic”. He said: “The more you explore the consequence of that on the more ineffective I find it, the more intense my frustration has become… and the more indefensible the way in which now in the most minute detail London takes the decisions and the local discretion is very constrained.”

However, he described himself as an “admirer” of the government’s moves to implement his report recommendations so far, although he pointed out that he had asked for and extra £40bn in funding.

Dame Jackie Fisher returns to FE front line at under fire Barnfield Federation

Under fire Barnfield Federation has announced that Dame Jackie Fisher (pictured) is to become its new interim chief executive.

Dame Jackie, ex-chief executive at NCG (formerly Newcastle College Group), replaces previous federation leaders Helen Mayhew and Stephen Hall, who stepped in for the last six months following the resignation of Sir Peter Birkett.

Her appointment comes with the Department for Education (DfE) and Skills Funding Agency (SFA) due to publish the findings of investigations following allegations of poor financial management at the Bedfordshire college.

DavidCollins-FE-Commissioner — FE Commissioner David Collins

FE Commissioner Dr David Collins CBE also visited the college last month and his recommendations are due as well.

Judy Oliver, federation board acting chair, said: “We are delighted to welcome Dame Jackie to Barnfield.

“She brings a wealth of experience and expertise that I know will prove invaluable in the coming weeks as we move forward and make changes to secure Barnfield’s future.”

She added: “On behalf of the board, I would also like to thank Helen Mayhew and Stephen Hall for their work over the past six months in leading the federation through this challenging time. They both return to their substantive roles within the federation.”

Dame Jackie arrives at Barnfield following 13 years as chief executive of NCG, one of the UK’s largest education and training providers with an annual turnover of £185m.

She achieved three outstanding Ofsted ratings at the college, but then hit the headlines in 2012 when she kicked inspectors out following what she referred to at the time in an internal email as “some troubling incidents”.

Dame Jackie left the college group around six months ago and in an exclusive interview with FE Week last month said the inspection experience — which eventually resulted in an Ofsted downgrading to good — had left a bitter taste.

“It was unlike any of the other six or seven inspections I have been party to as a senior manager,” she said.

“There was an agenda in play that was not directly related to the inspection.”

Nevertheless, during her time at the helm of NCG, she also oversaw the acquisitions of independent learning provider Carter & Carter and national young people’s learning charity Rathbone, along with the merger with West Lancashire College, plus the creation of a national e-enabled shared service with flexible working practices.

And in 2010 she was recognised with a Dame Commander honour in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to education.

Before her time at NCG, Dame Jackie was principal of Tameside College, in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester.

The DfE and SFA have been looking into Barnfield following allegations of poor financial management along with concerns about “extensive” staff restructuring and redundancies that were passed onto Education Secretary Michael Gove by local MPs Gavin Shuker and Kelvin Hopkins in October.

The college is part of the Barnfield Federation, which also includes six secondary school academies and four primary school academies.

Founder and former director general of the federation Sir Peter stepped down in the summer, just over a year after the college went from an Ofsted rating of outstanding to satisfactory (now termed requires improvement).

Coffey issues warning to government on college and Lep relationship

The man in charge of England’s college inspections has called for “oversight” of the relationship between colleges and local enterprise partnerships (Leps).

Concerns that colleges were not meeting the skills needs of their local areas were raised by Matthew Coffey, director of FE and skills at the education watchdog, during a meeting of the House of Commons Education Select Committee this morning.

Flanked by his boss, Sir Michael Wilshaw, Mr Coffey called on the government to address a “mismatch” between the skills offered by colleges and those required by their communities and Leps.

His comments reaffirmed those made in Ofsted’s annual report last year, which called for a move towards a higher quality and more relevant provision in the learning and skills sector. They also reaffirmed comments made in an exclusive Q&A with FE Week following the annual report.

And responding to a question from Stroud MP Neil Carmichael, Mr Coffey told the committee that the skills gap was a key factor in Ofsted’s demand for better working between colleges and Leps.

Mr Coffey said: “I think the key area for us in this annual report is that we think the country is facing a skills crisis.

“There are a million unemployed young people, there are employers that continue to report significant skills shortages and layered on top of that we have got a sector which has been given more and more autonomy over the years.

“We visited 17 colleges and we found that only three of those colleges had changed their curriculum to any large degree to meet the needs of the local area, as being defined by the Lep, so there is a real mismatch there and the concern we have expressed in the report is that with that autonomy there has to be some oversight as to how the skills are being delivered to meet the nation’s needs.

“I think the government has got to take this very seriously now, because we could have a situation where colleges are empowered to deliver whatever they want to deliver, and yet that doesn’t meet the skills requirements of the country, and who is going to intervene is the key question.

“If it is the LEP, then they need to use the P in their title of partnerships and work very closely with FE colleges and what we have found from our report is that that relationship is at its very early stages, to be generous.”

He said meeting skills need in the community was already something inspectors looked for, but said a data dashboard would be launched for governors in the FE sector in April to allow them to compare the curriculum of colleges against skill priority areas set by Leps.

But Mr Carmichael said: “All of that is predicated on there being a really effective understanding of the local labour market, and we are giving a big challenge there to Leps to make sure that they provide that.

“Surely there must be a need for some sort of strategic overview of Leps, because you have certain colleges reaching out beyond certain Lep boundaries.

“For example, in my own patch we have two Leps looking after a unified college, Filton and Stroud, so that wouldn’t necessarily work particularly well unless you had a strategic view of the labour market in that whole area.”