Ten colleges in the North West have joined forces to form a joint venture company boasting a combined income of nearly half a billion pounds.

Principals have been working on the move to form the Greater Manchester Colleges Group since 2010.

It is believed to be the first of its kind in a city region and includes include Bolton College, Bury College, Hopwood Hall College, The Manchester College and Oldham College.

Salford City, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan and Leigh colleges will also be involved in the partnership, which aims to enhance students’ job hopes.

And the partnership has moved forward after the colleges’ principals successfully secured a European funded bid worth £14m, which will play “a critical role in ensuring that the region has a skilled and educated population,” said a spokesperson.

They added that the group represented and promoted the FE sector within Greater Manchester and contributed more than £500m to the local economy each year.

Tameside College principal Peter Ryder is the group’s chair. He said: “As a group we will be continuing to work with local and regional employers to bring a greater emphasis on enterprise, entrepreneurialism and innovative thinking to the education sector.

“We aim to build capacity and excellence by developing existing provision and pulling together the expertise and specialist skills from all of the colleges involved.

“This latest development is testament to the optimism we have for the future, and our shared belief in the positive benefits for learners and the wider community of our working closely together.”

Robin Newton-Syms, the group’s partnership director, said: “Our aim is to use the new company to attract more funding into Greater Manchester and facilitate work with other organisations.

“We already have strong links with the Chamber of Commerce, private sector training providers, local authorities and the voluntary sector which is helping employers develop the skills of their workers.

“The potential now is for colleges to help shape the future of businesses, by offering effective training solutions and skills development which will enable them to grow.”

College	Million income in 2011/12	Principal
Bolton College	£29,167	Marie Gilluley
Bury College	£31,977	Charlie Deane
Hopwood Hall College	£25,755	Derek O’Toole
The Manchester College	£187,451	Jack Carney
Oldham College	£25,396	Alun Francis
Salford City College	£43,470	Martin Sim
Stockport College	£32,496	Stephen Carlisle
Tameside College	£24,405	Peter Ryder
Trafford College	£27,031	Sir Bill Moorcroft
Wigan and Leigh College	£33,621	Cath Hurst OBE
Total	£460,769

The government has accepted a recommendation that skills should be a core priority for Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPS).

The recommendation was made by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee in April.

It came in a report that also said LEPs should demonstrate engagement with providers.

“We believe that skills should be a core priority,” said the committee report.

“While we acknowledge that many LEPs have got the balance right, and note the government guidelines on the subject, we have heard that some LEPs need to refocus.

“We therefore recommend that LEPs be required to demonstrate their levels of engagement with local education, in particular with skills and apprenticeship providers, FE colleges and schools.”

The government’s response to the report was published by the select committee on Thursday, July 25.

“The government accepts this recommendation,” it said.

“It is up to LEPs to determine the priorities for their areas. Some skills elements will be included in the SLGF [single local growth fund] and LEPs will have to provide details of how they intend to deliver their strategic plans.

“The government is committed to putting control over the skills system in the hands of employers and learners and ensuring that the skills system is responsive to the skills needs of local communities to support growth and jobs.

“We have put £340m directly in the hands of employers through the Employer Ownership of Skills Pilot and will support demand from learners aged 24+ through Advanced Learner Loans.

“In response to Lord Heseltine’s report, the government stated that a skills system that is responsive to local needs can help drive economic growth.

“To ensure that local businesses can shape the pipeline of talent emerging from local further education (FE) institutions, at Autumn Statement 2012, the government agreed that LEPs would have a new strategic influence over skills policy in accordance with Lord Heseltine’s analysis.

“LEPs will be responsible for setting local skills strategies and will work with the FE providers to agree how those priorities will be delivered.”

The government said LEPs had a “number of levers to strengthen their engagement with providers,” for example Chartered status for FE colleges was now dependent upon having taken into account the skills priorities of local LEPs.

“The government is reforming the delivery landscape so that employers have direct influence over qualifications and learning programmes and by ensuring that businesses and LEPs are represented strongly on college governing bodies,” added the government.

The Education Funding Agency is to start publishing information on the value of providers’ 16 to 18 delivery, FE Week can reveal.

The agency already goes public with annual allocation details, but it doesn’t release information about the value of provision actually delivered.

However, following an FE Week request for figures on the value of delivery under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, the agency said it was planning to release 2012/13 details this year. It was also looking at releasing the information relating to 2011/12.

“The vast majority of institutions funded by the agency, including schools, colleges and academies, are funded on a lagged basis, so the funding allocated in one year relates to the student numbers recruited in earlier years, and the funding allocated and paid is the same,” said an agency spokesperson.

“However, funding for commercial and charitable providers is reconciled against delivery, and payments are adjusted according to rules published annually in the agency funding guidance.

“We have not previously published information on delivery and payments for these providers, but are planning to do so for the first time in relation to 2012/13 once we have final audited figures from all providers, which are returned in the autumn.

“We expect this information for 2012/13 to be published around the end of 2013.

“We will also publish data for commercial and charitable providers for 2011/12 as a historical record, which we are provisionally planning to make available in August 2013.”

It follows an FE Week story this month about the amount of agency funding for independent training providers for which no delivery had taken place. They were overpaid around £20m last year, it was revealed.

Around 10 per cent of the agency’s 2011/12 budget for private sector provision for 16 to 18-year-olds was not returned, even though it wasn’t delivered.

A further 15 per cent — around £25m — was handed back.

An EFA spokesperson said it allowed providers to keep a certain amount of funding for which no provision had been delivered. But, she said, it was not true that it had paid £20m to independent training providers “for nothing”.

“In 2010/11 and 11/12 we applied a 10 per cent margin for some independent providers where they under-delivered to reflect changes to the funding system in those years. This has been reduced to 5 per cent in 2012/13,” she said.

The overpayment figures were not in the public domain — prompting the FoI request — but were seen by FE Week.

They provided a stark contrast to funding for older learners, paid for by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and BIS.

The SFA makes the details of its overpayments public, but it pays independent training providers strictly on delivery. Its overpayment of £91m last year therefore ended up largely in the coffers of colleges and local authorities, for example.

Kim Thorneywork, the SFA’s chief executive, said the overpayment — revealed in December — meant some providers’ allocations for 2012/13 would be reduced, and she expected “to deliver a balanced budget for the 2012/13 financial year”.

Uncertainty continues to hang over the future of K College, which is being broken up following a “failed merger”, after the tendering process was delayed.

Invitations to tender (ITT) were due to be sent out by the Skills Funding Agency between July and September to organisations interested in taking over the college’s provision.

An email sent to interested bodies said: “In order to allow organisations to better prepare their tenders, rather than requiring work to be done over the summer, when many organisations are closed as the academic year ends, we have moved the launch of the ITT to early October.”

Short-listed organisations are now due give presentations and attend interviews on their bids in October, with contracts being awarded the following two months.

The provision and estates of the college are expected to be split up and sold off after the college, formed by a merger between West Kent College and South Kent College in 2010, ran into multi-million pound debts.

The college was issued with a notice of concern by the agency, which it owes £15m.

The agency declined to say whether the debts would be transferred to the winning bidder.

It also declined to say how many providers had expressed an interest in taking over the college’s provision.

“While a procurement is running, we are not in a position to disclose any details with regard to applications,” said an agency spokesperson.

The delay in the tendering process should not prevent contracts from being awarded on time, she said, adding: “Contracts will continue to be awarded in line with the indicative timetable we have set out.”

Seven parts of the college’s provision are on offer, including 16 to 19 provision in Dover, Folkestone or Ashford, Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells grouped together and 19+ provision in these three areas.

Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) directly-funded provision at Ashford and Tonbridge is also up for grabs.

College principal Phil Frier said: “There is a lot of interest from other colleges, training providers and universities in bidding for the work currently operating across all five towns.

“This is great news and ensures the continuation of the college’s provision for the foreseeable future.”

Details of the sell-off were listed in a sales prospectus from the agency, Education Funding Agency and HEFCE.

Two open days were held on May 22 and 23, at two of the college’s five campuses, for interested parties to find out more about the college and its provision. Fifty providers registered to attend.

Proposals to reform the apprenticeship funding system have been welcomed by former Dragons’ Den investor Doug Richard, nine months after his own review called for tax breaks for employers.

Three funding ‘models’ have been proposed by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the first of which is for a direct payment model where businesses register apprentices and claim government funding online.

The second is for a PAYE payment model in which businesses register apprentices online and then recover government funding through their PAYE return.

The third option, although all could be amended as part of the consultation, is a provider payment model where government funding continues to be paid to training providers, but it can only be drawn down when the employer’s financial contribution towards training has been received.

They are part of a ten-week government consultation ending on October 1 and come around nine months after the Richard Review looked at how apprenticeships in England could meet the needs of the economy.

It concluded the National Insurance or tax credit system should be used to give employers breaks as payment for training. Mr Richard said at the time such changes should be “at the heart” of apprenticeship reform.

“The funding models put forward by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is precisely the steps needed to encourage more businesses to take on apprenticeships and view young people as the valuable resource they are,” said Mr Richard.

“By giving more power to employers, the new schemes will help businesses big and small have more of a say on the training their employees receive, meaning more efficient businesses and better training for apprentices.”

Neil Carberry, CBI director of education and skills, said: “This could be a watershed moment for apprenticeships, putting employers genuinely in the driving seat for the first time.

“A radical overhaul is long overdue and business has been arguing loudly for targeting funding directly through employers.

“The new system must keep red tape to a minimum if we want more firms to take on apprentices. A skills tax credit is by far the best option on paper, but needs detailed piloting to ensure the transition is smooth.”

However, there were words of caution from John Allan, the Federation of Small Businesses’ national chairman; Martin Doel, the Association of Colleges chief executive; and also Stewart Segal, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ chief executive.

“Getting any change to do with funding, or wider issues around apprenticeships, right is crucial,” said Mr Allan, adding: “Therefore we strongly urge government to take its time with any reforms so that they get it right first time to create a system that will last for decades to come.”

Mr Doel said: “I question the need to make further significant changes to apprenticeship funding in the middle of a recession with youth unemployment at an all-time high.”

And Mr Segal said: “We have considerable doubts over whether the PAYE proposal would actually bring more employers into the apprenticeship programme.

“In fact, it might put smaller businesses off. The co-funding option [model 3] might have merit if it properly recognises the contributions which employers make towards an apprentice’s framework achievement.”

Shadow Skills Minister Gordon Marsden said: “We will want to examine carefully all three options.

“What the government has proposed inevitably delays implementing Richard reforms and, depending which option they go for, could depart substantially from them.

“There are also no questions about the ability of small businesses to put money up front bearing in mind we need to expand their take-up of apprentices substantially.”

The first two funding models would both need the “time-consuming” construction of a new online system, but could be in place by 2016 “at the earliest”.

However, common to each is for “the employer and provider negotiating the content and price of eligible apprenticeship training”. It would replace a system of government-set national funding rates.

Skills Minister Matthew Hancock said: “By radically reforming the funding system we will allow employers to agree with training providers the content and price of training ensuring greater competition both on quality and on price.”

Responses to the consultation should be sent to apprenticeships.consultation@bis.gsi.gov.uk by October 1. Visit www.gov.uk/government/news/government-sets-out-radical-plans-to-shake-up-apprenticeship-funding for further details.

A Dorset college that was wrongly labelled as under-performing in official statistics has won an apology.

Kingston Maurward College, in Dorchester, was ordered to improve in May having apparently fallen below the Education Funding Agency’s (EFA) new minimum standards for key stage five.

The land-based college, according to the Department for Education (DfE), failed to get at least 40 per cent of students to achieve an average point score per entry higher than 194 for academic qualifications or 172 for vocational qualifications in the 2011/12 academic year.

Figures, now known to have been incorrect and since removed, indicated the 4,000-learner college hit a figure of just 12 per cent of learners — 18 out of 153 of those eligible.

The problem with the figures came to light after they had been reported, in good faith and based on official information, in FE Week.

“We were very shocked to see our college mentioned in the report as this bore no resemblance to our own data sets,” said a spokesperson for the college, which has a £4.6m EFA allocation for the current academic year along with one of £2.1m from the Skills Funding Agency.

“We have now received an update and an apology from the DfE confirming that there was a major error in the data published on its website.”

The error came from data supplied to the DfE by City & Guilds, where a spokesperson said: “In 2012 we supplied some incomplete candidate performance data for Kingston Maurward to the processing company for the DfE performance tables.

“Although we alerted the relevant department and processing organisation prior to the publication of performance tables, it was too late to correct the data.

“While this has not impacted any learners, this error has made it seem as if Kingston Maurward has not met the Education Funding Agency’s minimum standards for key stage five.

“As a global leader in skills education, we are committed to providing the highest quality of services to our customers.

“Unfortunately, on this occasion we haven’t met our own high standards and we are working with DfE and Ofsted to put things right.

“We remain committed to continually improving our processes and working with our customers to check their data to avoid this sort of situation in the future.”

A DfE spokesperson said: “As soon as we were aware of this error, we immediately removed the minimum standards measure from the college and have written to them to apologise for any distress caused.

“As a matter of course we do offer all schools and colleges a two-week period to check our results data before publication.

“All schools then have a further six weeks, once the results are published, to make any amendments. We would always encourage schools to use this opportunity to check this data and alert us to any errors.”

Kingston Maurward assistant principal Andy Daw (pictured above) said: “We are very pleased that the success of our students has now been recognised. The DfE has confirmed that our entry on the minimum standards table was inaccurate.

“We understand that all merit, distinction and distinction star grades of our level three students had been incorrectly registered as pass grades, therefore not recognising their achievements and considerably lowering the college’s overall position.

“Although City & Guilds has now supplied the correct data, the DfE will not be publishing this on its website, so there will be no entry for Kingston Maurward College for 2011/12.”

Moves to tackle poor provision by Elmfield were ordered personally by Skills Minister Matthew Hancock before its inadequate grading from Ofsted had even been published, FE Week can reveal.

The minister is understood to have been furious with the provider following success rates, as reported in FE Week two months ago, showing just 47.5 per cent of Elmfield’s 13,420 leavers in the retail and wholesale sector, aged 25+, walked away with an apprenticeship certificate in 2011/12.

He wanted action to protect learners, which resulted in the Skills Funding Agency issuing a notice of serious breach this month after the Ofsted report, and stopping Elmfield taking on new learners.

Ofsted found outcomes for learners were inadequate and the majority of apprentices did not complete their framework within the planned time.

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: “We decided to invoke the right to impose additional conditions of funding within the breach notice and stopped Elmfield taking on any more learners.

“This underlines our tough approach to protect students and root out poor performance wherever it occurs.”

An agency spokesperson confirmed action against Elmfield, which delivers training for more than 11,000 learners, including apprentices at Barclays, UK Mail and Eon, had been agreed before the publication of the Ofsted report and discussed with the provider.

“Prior to the report being published and due to the serious nature of the concerns, the agency decided in advance to invoke its right to impose additional conditions of funding within the breach notice,” she said.

The Ofsted grading also resulted in the resignation of Elmfield founder and chief executive Ged Syddall, although he is believed to remain its majority shareholder.

The agency spokesperson added: “We have instructed Elmfield that while under a notice of serious breach it will not take on any new learners, work with any new employers or be awarded growth, until we can be assured provision has improved to an acceptable standard.

“Failure to make satisfactory progress may lead to termination of the contract. An inadequate re-inspection would lead to contract termination.”

Despite the grading blow, Ofsted acknowledged Elmfield’s success rates in newer areas of provision, accounting for around 20 per cent of its delivery and including banking, were good, although some elements required improvement.

Barclays said it was standing by Elmfield, even though it would be unable to take on new apprentices.

A Barclays spokesperson said: “While these Ofsted results predate our programme, the Ofsted report itself is highly complimentary of the success rates Elmfield has achieved for Barclays.

“We therefore look forward to demonstrating the strong results that our programme is delivering in future inspections.”

UK Mail and Eon declined to comment.

A spokesperson for Elmfield, which has 413 staff, said: “Elmfield is continuing to work closely with the Skills Funding Agency and can confirm our contract allocation for 2013/14 is currently under review.

“This is due to our contract with Morrisons coming to an end later this month. A revision of our contract arrangements for the forthcoming year is expected shortly.”