The FE Commissioner has slapped a second grade four college with administered status as an Ofsted monitoring report blasted its action plan for lack of results.

The senior management team at Stockport College, which fell from grade one at the end of September, has been stripped of control over staffing and finance following a review by commissioner David Collins.

Stockport joins K College, which was given administered status last month. Mr Collins has made two further college visits, to Bristol and Liverpool, and both have seen him issue recommendations.

Stockport’s Ofsted monitoring visit report last month blamed the college action plan for slow improvement.

Further, Ofsted called for principal Stephen Carlisle (pictured) to ensure there was “less time spent in meetings discussing the plans” and more “taking action”.

And, following Mr Collins’ visit, Skills Minister Matthew Hancock wrote to Stockport MP Ann Coffey about placing the college into administered status. The letter said: “I do not believe the existing leadership has the capacity and capability to deliver the quality improvement and financial recovery needed to protect learners and make efficient use of public funding.”

He warned that changes to the governing body and executive leadership team were “urgently needed”.

Stockport College deputy principal Karen Moss said: “Although we are implementing major changes which in turn will raise standards at the college, not enough time had passed to demonstrate any impact.

“Our main focus at present is to achieve the key targets we have set out in our post inspection action plan quickly and effectively.”

Currently, the commissioner’s findings are not made public, and a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) spokesperson told FE Week they were unable to say whether the situation would be changing.

However, the BIS spokesperson added that the commissioner had “identified weaknesses in the governance” of Liverpool college.

She said: “The report makes a number of recommendations that will, once implemented, address these weaknesses and help steer the college in the right direction.

“The FE Commissioner will be monitoring and reporting back on progress regularly.”

Further, she said the commissioner’s review of City of Bristol College carried out in September had concluded that the college was “making good progress in delivering improvement”.

Vice principal Cliff Shaw said the outcome of the visit had been “positive” and “useful” and the commissioner had validated the college’s action plans. He confirmed the college would continue to be subject to further monitoring visits from the commissioner.

K College principal Phil Frier said the college would keep operating as normal, and staff would be paid as usual.

No one from Stockport College or City of Liverpool College was available to comment on the commissioner’s review.

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Editorial

Sharing the benefits of a busy FE Commissioner

The FE Commissioner certainly seems to have hit the ground running.

Four visits (that we’re aware of) so far and the results have been swift.

Administered status at Stockport and K College, plus recommendations for Bristol and Liverpool.

Skills Minister Matthew Hancock is getting nothing if not his money’s worth from David Collins.

But while we wait to find out whether the commissioner’s knowledgeable recommendations and calls for action work, how does the rest of the sector benefit?

Shouldn’t improvement for all learners at all colleges be a goal?

Ofsted reports are public documents and providers scour them to see if they can improve their own offer and practices.

On that basis, we should also see publication of the commissioner’s findings and recommendations.

It is understandable that the commissioner should focus his efforts on those most in need, but that’s no reason to deny successful colleges the benefit of his expertise.

To square that circle would be, for one, to make the commissioner’s findings accessible.

The Skills Funding Agency has beefed-up funding rules to stop rogue bosses setting up new providers to get their hands on public money.

The agency has carried out a host of changes to its eight-page Funding Higher-risk Providers and Subcontractors guidance.

It outlines the criteria that would stop a provider being considered for funding, either directly or through a subcontracting arrangement, and explains why bids might be rejected.

Among the key changes is that funding could be turned down if a senior member of staff is in place at a provider having been dismissed for gross misconduct from another provider.

The rule, which used to apply to just directors, is now in place for governors, senior employees or shareholders.

An agency spokesperson said: “The earlier version of the policy only mentioned a director and the change is intended to prevent these additional individuals from having any position of control or influence in an organisation seeking to be funded by the chief executive of Skills Funding.”
The agency can now also say no to bids if a provider has previously had their funding stopped early for any reason, failed to comply with a notice of funding withdrawal or failed to “remedy a serious breach of contract”.

It can even turn down bids where just a senior member of staff (or someone in a post already mentioned) was in place at a firm that had its funding stopped early — whatever the reason. The changes come just weeks after NTQUK bosses revealed how they were trying to breathe life back into their business after its agency contract was terminated early.

The move resulted in almost the entire 100-plus workforce losing their jobs, before the firm, which delivered apprenticeships in health and social care, customer service and business administration, went into administration.
But bosses at the 1,400-learner firm took the agency to an arbitration judge and successfully defended it against claims there had been “significant errors and missing data which constitute a serious breach of contract”.

Former NTQUK director Alex Mackenzie (pictured) said the new system was not “transparent”.

“Take the example of a training provider who has been through arbitration with the agency,” he said.

“If, for example, it is proven that the agency had acted unlawfully in terminating the providers contract, the agency could then restrict the trade of that provider — and its directors — without providing any transparent reason for doing so, other than the fact that it had previously terminated the contract.

“If a training provider considers, having won in arbitration, that it would like to re-establish itself, any future application for funding would certainly not be transparent. The application could be rejected automatically.”

The agency declined to comment on whether any specific instances had triggered the policy change. It also declined to comment on why the changes were needed.

No date has been given for the abolition of adult apprenticeship loans, despite Business Secretary Vince Cable’s (pictured left) announcement last month that the system was being dropped.

The Student Loans Company confirmed it was still processing applications for apprentice FE loans while it awaited government instructions to stop.

Dr Cable told FE Week three weeks ago he “accepted” the policy had failed and that it would be axed, although non-apprentice FE loans would remain.
Just 569 advanced learner loans have been taken out for apprenticeships in the nine months since they were introduced, compared to government forecasts that 25,000 would be taken out this academic year (by July 31, 2014).

Dr Cable said: “The advanced learning loans system has taken off for non-apprenticeships, but for apprenticeships we accept it has not succeeded and we’re dropping it.

“Regulations have to be put through Parliament to conclude it [apprenticeship loans system], but we’ve accepted it didn’t work and there’s no shame in that, but it will continue with the non-apprenticeship learners.”
An official announcement on the end of the apprenticeship FE loans system had been expected in the annual skills funding statement, which was postponed at the end of last year.

However, Skills Minister Matthew Hancock (pictured left) confirmed Mr Cable’s comments later the same day.

“While the newly available loans for FE have seen higher than expected demand, loans for apprenticeships have not,” said Mr Hancock.

“With the confirmation of a new funding system for apprenticeships in the Autumn Statement, now is the right time to reinstate co-funding for all apprenticeships ahead of more fundamental reforms, details of which will be publicised in the new year.”

The slow uptake has long-prompted concerns from the likes of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) whose chief executive, David Hughes, said the low figures confirmed that loans for apprenticeships were a “failed” policy.

He added: “We would like to congratulate the government for recognising this and accepting that they need to act, and to act swiftly.

“We are, of course, anxious to see the detail of the new proposals. Whatever is proposed, we are sure the government, employers, learning providers and learners and their representatives will need to work together to understand the full implications of this policy and how best to take it forward.”

Mr Hughes said adult apprenticeships were “essential” for both the economy and social mobility.

However, he said the axing of apprenticeship loans had left the group concerned about where future savings might come from, and about the possibility that loans might become the only funding mechanism for adults at intermediate and lower levels of learning.

“We hope that any consideration of introducing loans for other age groups and other levels of learning in the future will now be postponed,” he added.

Providers that drop to a grade three Ofsted rating will be allowed to keep taking on new trainees under new government guidelines.

Providers that fell below a good (grade two) rating previously had to stop taking on new trainees, but they could let existing learners finish their programmes.

Now providers that were outstanding (grade one) or good when they started running traineeships, but are deemed by inspectors to be in need of improvement (grade three) within the 2013/14 academic year can carry on recruiting trainees.

It is thought the government relaxed the rules because of a disappointing uptake for its flagship youth unemployment policy launched last August for 16 to 23-year-olds.

A document explaining the revised rules, published jointly by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and Education Funding Agency (EFA), stated: “We do not see this approach as compromising the quality of the traineeship programme.

“We are minimising the risk to quality provision, but employing a pragmatic approach which will minimise the disruption of the delivery of traineeships.”
The report added providers with a grade three rating will now be expected to “improve rapidly” with help from an assigned Ofsted inspector, before they are re-inspected within 18 months.

Stewart Segal (pictured left), chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: “This is a welcome and pragmatic amendment that will benefit young people and employers already engaged with traineeships.”

Julian Gravatt (pictured right), assistant chief executive at the Association of Colleges, said: “Traineeships are a new programme and the funding agencies are having to adjust the rules month by month as they see how they work in practice.

“We’ve always had some doubts about a rigid use of Ofsted grades to judge which organisations can and cannot offer traineeships, so we had no objections to this latest amendment.”

The document stressed providers must not increase the size of their traineeship programmes until they are re-inspected and achieve a grade one or two.

Providers that drop to a grade three in 2013/14 and are not re-inspected before the start of 2014/15 can continue to deliver in 2014/15.

However, they cannot deliver beyond those levels delivered in 2013/14 until they are re-inspected and achieve a grade one or two.

They will have to stop running traineeships if they fall short of a grade one or two in their first re-inspection.

Lynne Sedgmore, executive director of the 157 Group, said: “We are already concerned that important programmes such as traineeships are not available to all based on often out-of-date inspection results. These changes seem to muddy the waters still further.”

Despite there being no official figures yet, Ofsted FE and skills director Matthew Coffey told delegates at the Association of Colleges conference last November the traineeship uptake had been “disappointing”.

Kwik Fit said last month it had dropped plans to launch a traineeship programme after Ofsted inspectors gave it a grade three rating.

The firm came under fire when an FE Week investigation, which led to a BBC Newsnight probe, found it was looking to take on trainees, unpaid, for up to 936 hours across five months.

A Kwik Fit spokesperson said the firm had no plans to relaunch its traineeship programme in light of the rule changes for the “foreseeable future”.

FE Week is a printed newspaper and every edition (along with supplements) is sent to subscribers. If you do not already subscribe (tut tut) you can still benefit from £25 off an annual subscription in 2014. Find out more here (be quick!): http://feweek.co.uk/subscription/

Much of the newspaper content also goes online and in 2013 this website had more than a million page views.

To be exact, between 1 January and 26 December there were 1,147,180 page views and 545,934 visits by 249,770 unique visitors who viewed for an average of just over 2 minutes per visit (that’s more than 18,000 hours of viewing in 2014!).

Amongst more than 300 news articles in 2013, it’s always interesting to list the top ten based on page views.

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The FE Week team also produced an incredible 16 supplements in 2013, a total of 256 pages of added value. Supplements were sent to subscribers and also made available for all to download.

Full supplement list for 2013 (with links) below.