Download edition 91 here:
http://lsect.co.uk/fe-week-e91.pdf
You can also download our supplement on the Education and Training Foundation by clicking the image below.
Fraction of FE loans paid out for apprenticeships
Just a fraction of the 25,200 FE loans taken out between August and October last year were for apprenticeships, government figures have revealed.
The Statistical First Release (SFR) on Thursday, January 30, showed that less than 0.4 per cent (100) of the loans paid out to learners over 24 were given to apprentices.
And, taking on board application figures for the period, just one-in-four apprentice applicants took out a loan.
But the SFR, which for the first time shows FE loans uptake, contained further damning figures for the FE apprentice loan system.
Its provisional data showed that 2,800 people aged 25 or over started an advanced or higher level apprenticeship between August and October.
The figures compare to the provisional number of 24,000 in the same period in 2012 — a fall of more than 88 per cent.
It has reinforced the view among sector leaders that extending the scheme to apprentices was a mistake and comes just over a month after Business Secretary Vince Cable told FE Week that apprentice FE loans were being scrapped.
However, they continue to be processed by the Student Loans Company.
David Hughes, National Institute for Adult Continuing Education chief executive, said: “We have always had concerns about this policy and it quickly became evident that it was not working.
“This has been highlighted today by the substantial fall in the number of people, aged 25 and over, who are on advanced and higher level apprenticeships.
“These provisional figures are just 12 per cent of those reported at this level last year.
“We are pleased the government has decided to scrap loans for advanced and higher level apprenticeships, but we are anxious to see what will replace them.
“We need clarity on the funding arrangements so that more people over 24 will be able to take advantage of the opportunities these apprenticeships offer.”
A spokesperson at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills declined to answer questions about the fall in 25+ apprentice numbers or comment the possibility it was linked to the loans debacle.
He said: “These are provisional figures and we have had some data collection issues which affects the validity and makes it difficult to draw conclusions.
“It is important to know that we will have fuller and more accurate data at the end of the year.”
He was also unable to confirm when loans would stop being processed for apprentices.
The SFR figures came the same day as monthly FE loan application numbers were published.
They showed that of the 2,021 loan application made in December, just 162 were for apprenticeships.
It means the total number of application since the scheme started in April was 57,205 — of which 695, or 1.2 per cent, were for apprenticeships.
National Union of Students president Toni Pearce said: “Asking adults to pay up to £4,000 a year to study for A-levels, BTecs and even to work as apprentices was always the wrong way to go, and hugely unfair to people who want to study or re-skill later in life.
“Such sky-high fees are clearly a major deterrent for many adults who wish to study in further education.”
Phil Frier, interim principal, K College
On the office wall of K College principal Phil Frier hangs a picture of Mount Everest.
It’s a reminder of both his gruelling ascent to its base camp last year — 5,364m above sea level — and a comforting metaphor that even the most apparently impossible of challenges can be overcome.
It’s also picture that therefore understandably draws numerous glances from the man at the helm of a debt-ridden, officially-inadequate college.
“The photograph reminds me that whatever the challenge, it can be achieved through teamwork,” he says.
Frier was at the Everest base camp when he received a text message asking him to take over as principal of K College.
The trek had been on his “bucket list” having retired as principal of City College Brighton in 2012. The trip also helped raise money for Brighton students to build a school in Kenya.
It’s hard to imagine the text would have offered a proposition more attractive than completing the life-threatening trek right to the top of Everest.
K College had endured industrial action over redundancy plans for up to 150 posts, and Bill Fearon, who had been at the college for a decade, had quit as principal while staff picketed at college gates.
And to top it all, it was clear finances at the college were not healthy. So much so, it had been subject to a notice of concern from the Skills Funding Agency.
Fortunately, Frier, a grandfather-of-three, has a taste for a challenge.
“I wondered all the way down [from Everest]: ‘Do I really want to do this?’” he says with a laugh.
He agreed, he says, because he felt his 20 years’ experience as a principal in different colleges, “could make a difference”.
“It sounds very self-indulgent really,” says the 62-year-old.
It was a low point for the staff and they felt they had made a really big effort
“But that’s what drives you, it’s not about the money or the other stuff, it’s about the feeling… that you can bring your core values to bear on an organisation in crisis.”
One of Frier’s first moves as principal was to concede that the merger between South Kent and West Kent colleges, to form K College, had failed.
The answer now, it seemed, was to break up the college and so a tendering process for the provision and college sites was launched. It proved unsuccessful — the college didn’t sell.
And in the middle of the saga came a visit from Ofsted inspectors. They said the college was inadequate, before FE Commissioner David Collins was sent in. His recommendation the college be given administered status, thereby removing powers from Frier, was duly enacted by Skills Minster Matthew Hancock.
Yes, it’s fair to say the college has presented a set of pressures comparable to the seemingly impossible challenge of climbing Mount Everest.
“It was enough of a challenge to be able to give a bit of purpose, but when I was doing it I thought: ‘Why didn’t I just go and lie on a beach somewhere for six weeks? Why am I doing this?,’” he says of the Everest trek.
“But, having done it, it was one of the best things I think I’ve done.”
And Frier admits to similar thoughts about the challenge of K College.
“It’s been a really tough, but interesting, job,” says Frier.
“I think people who know me would say that I never appear to be under stress, that I always appear fairly relaxed about the way things operate — but I do think being a principal is a stressful job anyway. I think the most important thing is to share the pressures.
“I have always tried to do that… I think the principals who really suffer are the ones who are so competitive they won’t talk to others about what they are going through.”
Frier came to FE through alternative education after getting involved with a children’s guidance clinic while studying politics at York University.
In 1975 he headed south to Lewes, Sussex, when his wife Cathy got a teaching job.
He began working with difficult teenagers in a sixth form college and taught adult education classes, but with four children he had to supplement his income as a taxi driver.
“I would come home from work on Friday and go on the taxis at 7pm until 3am, just to get the cash to support a family, and the same on Sunday evenings,” he says.
“So I spent a lot of time sitting in the taxi thinking: ‘There must be a better way of earning money’.
“I love teaching, and I would like to have remained as a teacher, but the incentive is, financially, to move out — so I moved into a job as a vice-principal.”
That vice principal job, at Hampshire College in 1989, was followed by a principal role at Park College Eastbourne. From there it was onto executive director at Sussex Downs College, before Frier started at City College Brighton in 2007, where Ofsted handed him a good rating in 2011 in what he thought might be his final inspection.
But he was to play host to inspectors again late last year at K College, and describes the grade four inspection result as “the low point” of his tenure, both for himself and for staff.
The report declared the college inadequate in every headline field, saying “the continued uncertainty over plans for the college’s future existence is severely and adversely affecting the learner experience”.
It did, however, praise Frier and his newly-established leadership team saying they had “stabilised a potentially chaotic situation and sought to restore fragile staff morale, with some success”.
It added: “The interim principal has focused, rightly, on preparing the college for transition to new ownership while at the same time doing everything possible to ensure that current students benefit from improved provision.”
“We didn’t expect an Ofsted this year because we already knew,” says Frier.
“It was almost that they decided they wanted to make a statement about where the college was, and I think that was very difficult.
“It was a low point for the staff and they felt they had made a really big effort in the course of the last six or seven months to get things right. It was a judgement on the past… the positive bits in it were about the last six months — but it was very difficult to get that message out there.
However, Frier says there have been high points.
“Getting out of the office and talking to students about the experience they are having gives me a real buzz on a daily basis, as does the way the staff have actually come together to try and make this successful,” he says.
The end of the climb is in sight claims Frier, who’s optimistic the college will be split up and handed to new owners by the start of the next academic year — when he’ll be retiring again to tackle the next challenge on the bucket list.
“I want to spend three weeks living in Italy as a local, and go to the University of Sienna to learn Italian,” he says.
“My wife will come out and join me so we can order a decent meal.
“And there’s a cycle challenge fundraiser in Vietnam.”
It seems a quiet retirement isn’t on the horizon just yet.
———————————————————————————————–
It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
If you could invite anyone to a dinner party, living or dead, who would it be?
I think it would probably be President Kennedy, just because with him being shot when he was 47, I think, it’s about that unfulfilled promise
What’s your pet hate?
EastEnders — I think that’s an easy one
What do you do to switch off from work?
Walking on the Downs — sometimes ending up in the pub for a swift pint.
I’ve got a big family, with four children, their partners and three grandchildren — so there’s a lot of activity in the house generally, so I do like to get out walking, either just with my wife or walking alone
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I grew up in Manchester, so when I was nine or 10 the only thing I could actually see worth doing was playing for Manchester United
Download our introduction to the Education and Training Foundation
Concerns over nuclear college plans
Plans for a new college to train nuclear power plant workers have sparked concerns among colleges who had been hoping to deliver training for the industry themselves.
Skills Minister Matthew Hancock was at the PoliticsHome Skills Summit in London on Tuesday (January 28) when he announced the proposals. He said the new college could “provide the specialist, advanced skills” for the nuclear industry.
A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) later told FE Week the location of the new college had not been “established”.
The announcement caused raised eyebrows at Bridgwater College, in Somerset, where principal Mike Robbins has spent the last three years planning for and developing training facilities and courses for workers set to help build a new nuclear power station at nearby Hinkley Point by 2023.
Mr Robbins told FE Week: “We are awaiting further details, but would hope to play as full a part in any discussions as possible. We have invested much of our own time, effort and resources in preparing for the new nuclear build on our doorstep and in developing plans with contractors and other colleges and training providers in the region to meet the skills and training needs of the project.”
Another provider that could be affected by the plans is South Gloucestershire & Stroud College. It has submitted proposals with local enterprise partnership gfirst (Growing Gloucestershire) to develop a renewable energy, engineering and nuclear skills training centre at the decommissioned Berkeley power station, in Gloucestershire.
A spokesperson for the college declined to comment on whether its plans could be undermined by the proposed nuclear college.
Mr Hancock’s announcement came just weeks after the government unveiled proposals to create a new college, the first since colleges were incorporated in 1993, to support the engineering skills needed for the new HS2 rail project.
He said he wanted it to be an “elite centre” like the nuclear college.
“In the next 20 years, some £930bn will be spent across the world on new nuclear reactors — and £250bn on decommissioning old ones. In Britain alone, 40,000 jobs could be created,” said Mr Hancock.
“So the new college will build on the industry’s work — and provide the specialist, advanced skills to meet that demand — and then sell that expertise to the world.”
Bridgwater College has already invested more than £2m of its own money on its scheme and attracted millions more from outside organisations. Among the investors was French firm EDF Energy, which will build the new facility. Its managing director, Humphrey Cadoux-Hudson, was quoted in a BIS press release on the new nuclear college plans announced by Mr Hancock.
Mr Robbins said: “Although many of our programmes, qualifications and facilities have been designed to meet local demand, some are designed to meet industry needs on a national scale, and it wouldn’t make sense to replicate them. The extent to which a new national nuclear college would impact on this work would therefore largely depend on its intended purpose, how it will operate and where it is located.”
See Mr Robbins’ expert piece on page 10
Download our supplement on the ETF
Special supplement introducing the Education and Training Foundation.
Shock funding cut for 1,500 adult quals
As many as 1,500 qualifications face the public funding axe as the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) looks to introduce a 15-credit threshold.
The SFA has published a list of 1,477 Qualification and Credit Framework (QCF) level two to four qualifications which it says will not be approved for funding in 2014/15.
It aims to make funding only available to qualifications of at least 15 credits (one credit equates to 10 hours’ learning), despite draft proposals late last year in which qualifications had to be of at least 12 credits. The change means that certificates — not just lower-credited awards — will be hit.
Jill Lanning, Federation of Awarding Bodies (FAB) chief executive, said: “We are naturally concerned that the new rules and the resultant significant reduction in the number of qualifications eligible for public funding will have serious implications for awarding bodies but also for the breath of the offer available to providers and learners.
“FAB will continue to represent its members’ views in our on-going discussions with the Skills Funding Agency as the implications of these changes become clearer.”
The move comes after a review by BAE Systems group managing director Nigel Whitehead late last year, in which he suggested 95 per cent of the adult vocational market’s 19,000-plus qualifications could be axed in a bid to “de-clutter the system”.
Nevertheless, 15-credit announcement came via a statement on the SFA website while the sector awaits the Skills Funding Statement.
It said on the SFA website: “This is a list of QCF qualifications from level two to four approved for funding for 2013/14 but which do not meet the new size business rule of 15 credits for level two to four qualifications, and are therefore not approved for 2014/15.
“Awarding organisations may notify that they wish the agency to consider funding a qualification below 15 credits.”
Among the awarding organisations with qualifications named in the list is apt awards, which has seven qualifications on the list.
Chief executive Christine Bullock said she had a team analysing the impact the cull would have.
She said: “It is something we were aware of and we are analysing the document as we speak.”
City & Guilds has 289 qualifications at risk. A spokesperson said: “We will look into the information further and work with the SFA accordingly.”
It comes after a cull of more than 1,800 adult qualifications that had little or no uptake was reported by FE Week last September. The SFA axed the funding for a host of awards, from entry level to level four, as part of its New Streamlined Funding System for Adult Skills in August.
Among the qualifications hit were City & Guilds’ level one award in creative techniques in jewellery — personalised key fob and the Royal Society for Public Health’s level two award in health promotion.
Ms Lanning, from FAB, said: “The SFA outlined its thinking [on latest cull] to our members at a couple of forums last Autumn which did indicate restrictions on funding based on the size of qualifications so our members have waiting to see what this would mean in practice.
“It is no secret that public funding and therefore the SFA’s budget is being squeezed and they have been developing their new approach over the past few months.”
She added: “Our members will now be working through this very detailed document to understand what it means for them.
“It is important to remember that a significant number of qualifications are already taken by learners who finance themselves or are supported by their employers.”
————————————————————————–
Editorial: Skills Funding Statement leakage?
The Skills Funding Agency said in its weekly update that it could not announce funding rules for next year until BIS published the now well overdue annual Skills Funding Statement (SFS).
It might therefore come as a surprise to learn that on the same day the agency said this, it announced a significant funding rule anyway.
The new rule states level two, three or four qualifications below 15 QCF credits will no longer be funded.
Could it be the SFA could not wait any longer, and the SFS information blockage is starting to leak?
Providers, who try to plan and advertise their courses well in advance, should be the first to be informed.
Instead, this significant funding change was to be found in new ‘business rules’ for awarding organisations, like it was perfectly normal and to be expected.
Without FE Week bringing the change to the attention of providers, how long before they would have realised?
The SFS (still not out at the time of going to press) serves to communicate such changes. It cannot come soon enough.
Chris Henwood
Software problems ‘distorting’ key FE and skills statistics
Key information designed to “hold the government to account over delivery of policy” has been corrupted by ongoing problems with new funding software.
The latest Statistical First Release (SFR), out on Thursday, January 30, included a host of important information based on providers’ data.
However, they’ve struggled to submit learner numbers, course details and other key information because of ongoing troubles with new Skills Funding Agency (SFA) software.
And now the problems are affecting the SFR, which acknowledged issues with a note: “There is evidence of increased data lag for the first three months of 2013/14 compared to the same period of the previous year.”
Among the statistics most affected by the software problem appears to have been provisional data on the number of apprenticeship starts for the first quarter (August to October) of the current academic year.
They showed an unexpected 19 per cent drop for intermediate level apprenticeships (which are not subject to FE loans). There were 90,800 starts during the first quarter of 2012/13 (according to provisional figures published in January last year), compared to just 73,500 during the same period in 2013/14.
Stephen Hewitt, Morley College’s strategic funding, enrolments and examinations manager, said: “The problems with the new funding software are clearly starting to distort the FE figures, as shown in the SFR.
“Providers will obviously do our best to get the figures right for the next round of figures, but this is likely to continue for the next few months.”
Lindsay McCurdy, from Apprenticeships4England, said: “The software is not fit for purpose at the present time and is obviously contorting the figures, which you can clearly see with intermediate level apprenticeship starts. Urgent action is need to rectify these problems.”
A spokesperson for the SFA and BIS admitted there had been “data collection issues” affecting the “validity” of the SFR. However, he declined to comment further on the cause of the SFR problem. Nor did he comment on what actions BIS or the SFA was taking to rectify the software situation.
A statement explaining the importance of the SFR on the Data Service website states: “Its aim is to present the performance of the FE system, and to hold the government to account over delivery of policy.”
Shadow skills minister Liam Byrne said: “The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills [BIS] is bringing the same shambolic approach we saw in student finance to collecting figures for apprentices — this can’t go on.
“Ministers must come clean and tell us the full extent of these ‘data collection issues’, what they estimate the genuine figures are and what they’re doing to ensure this never happens again.”
The SFA and Data Service’s new Funding Information System (Fis) software is behind providers’ data submission headache.
It should have been available in August last year, but was not released until November — and providers say it is still giving unreliable funding data reports.
The government’s Learning Aim Reference System (Lars) online search engine should also have been available by last August.
It is supposed to help providers’ management information system (MIS) officers check whether qualifications are eligible for funding, and how much per learner providers should receive.
However, it is still not available and providers are having to use Lars Lite instead — a temporary downloadable database from the SFA that providers claim is also producing unreliable data.
The Association of Colleges and 157 Group declined to comment.
Former provider staff due in court on host of fraud charges
More than a dozen former employees of welfare to work provider A4e are due to appear in court charged with fraud.
The eight women and five men are due at Reading Crown Court on Monday, February 3, for a plea and case management hearing.
They face allegations including conspiracy to defraud, making a false instrument and supplying articles for use in fraud, dating from February 2009.
It is alleged they forged documentation to support fraudulent claims for reward payments from the Department for Work and Pensions under the Aspire to Inspire programme, which ended in 2011.
A Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson said: “Under the terms of the contract, payments were made when the scheme successfully placed individuals in employment.
“It is alleged that many of the reward payments related either to people who never attended A4e or to clients whom A4e had not successfully placed in employment. The contract was to deliver motivation and training and to assist people to find employment.”
The case comes amid revelations that A4e, one of the UK’s largest welfare to work providers, suffered an £11.5m pre-tax loss last year.
Company accounts also show revenues fell by 14 per cent to £167.1m in the 12 months to last March.
And the company owes £17m to the Co-operative Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland, and has extended the loan until the end of 2015.
Company owner Emma Harrison resigned as chairwoman and also gave up her role as Prime Minister David Cameron’s back-to-work tsar following the fraud allegations.
Ms Harrison, who still owns 85 per cent of the company, has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Account manager Ines Cano-Uribe, aged 37, of Madrid, Spain, and administrator Zahar Khalil, 34, of Dolphin Road, Slough, are charged with 55 counts of making false instruments, one count of conspiracy to cheat and defraud, two counts of making and supplying articles for use in fraud and two counts of possessing and controlling articles for use in fraud.
They are joined by recruiters Charles McDonald, 43, of Derwent Road, Egham, Nikki Foster, of High Tree Drive, Reading and Aditi Sigh, of Elmshott Lane, Slough, both 30, and Julie Grimes, 51, of Monks Way, Staines.
Bindiya Dholiwar, 27, of Reddington Drive, Slough, Dean Lloyd, 37, of Rochfords, Coffee Hall, Milton Keynes, and Yasmin Ahmed, 39, of Colchester Road, of Southend on Sea, are also charged.
They were charged in September, and a further charge against Cano-Uribe and four more defendants was announced in December.
Cano-Uribe was also charged with one count conspiracy to make false instruments. The same charge was put to quality co-ordinator Sarah Hawkins, 31, of Bagshot, Surrey, operations manager Serge Wyett, 39, of Richmond, team leader Matthew Hannigan-Train, 29, of Bristol and recruiter Hayley Wilson, 26, of Springfield in Milton Keynes.
They were also due to appear in court this week.
An A4e spokesperson said: “The alleged incidents all relate to old paper-based contracts which used systems that have since been replaced.
“We are fully co-operating with the police to ensure the investigation can be concluded quickly and are therefore unable to comment further on an ongoing enquiry.”
[Proceeding]