West of England’s LEP funding withheld amid political infighting

Infighting between councils and the mayor of the West of England has led to an uncertain future for a body that gives local businesses a say on the region’s skills strategies.

The government has told the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) that it will withhold £240,000 in funding for the region’s local enterprise partnership (LEP) in 2024-25 because the authority has failed to formulate a plan to absorb its functions.

According to a report before a WECA committee this week, the constituent authorities have “differences of opinion” with regional mayor Dan Norris on what the future LEP should look like.

It adds: “As a result, no integration plan has yet been submitted and it is anticipated that government will withhold the £240,000 funding until progress is made.”

In August last year, the government told LEP chairs, councils and combined mayor authorities that financial support for LEPs would end in April, save for “some revenue funding” for them to be integrated in 2024-25.

However, WECA is the only mayoral combined authority in England that has not already absorbed its LEP’s functions into a new board or committee dedicated to business and skills.

The report comes a week after the government issued a best value notice, warning that a “poor state of professional relationships” between WECA and its constituent councils means there is a lack of “clear, shared narrative” for the region.

Peterborough and Cambridgeshire Combined Authority has also been issued with a best value notice due to “significant questions on the culture, behaviour and integrity” of its leadership, but the notice did not specify whether the issues have impacted the delivery of adult education in the region.

Run by Labour mayor Norris since 2021, WECA is responsible for adult education, transport and housing strategy across three councils: Bristol City, Bath and North East Somerset, and South Gloucestershire.

In a letter published last week, the government said WECA’s problems – first raised by auditors in 2022 – are yet to be resolved and ordered the appointment of an independent improvement panel.

‘More pressing is how business is going to be represented’

Launched across the country in the early 2010s, LEPs were bodies that brought local business, political and academic leaders together to shape skills priorities and local economic growth.

But the further steps towards regional devolution in the government’s levelling up white paper published two years ago said LEPs should be absorbed into mayoral authorities.

Although there is no indication that political disagreements have impacted on how effectively WECA’s £16 million adult education budget is being spent, the disagreement over the LEP’s future suggests that regional coordination on skills could be hindered by the political row.

In exchange for government funding in 2024-25, England’s eight other combined mayoral authorities and the Greater London Authority have all already set up new “business boards” that absorbed their local LEPs’ functions last year.

WECA is now likely to use the LEP’s reserves to cover the running costs of operating the partnership, which amount to more than £1 million a year.

The West of England LEP has a role in managing £1.2 million on careers hubs and creative industry “scale ups” that includes training for businesses.

Members of West of England’s LEP, which include representatives from Airbus’s Bristol plant, the Bristol Port Company and regional council leaders were concerned by the potential loss of the partnership, which has run for more than a decade.

Minutes of a LEP board meeting last year say that without setting up a new board at WECA “the constructive challenge and support to ideas would be lost”.

Speaking to FE Week, chair of WECA’s overview and scrutiny committee chair, which reviews the work of the combined authority, Ed Plowden said: “£240,000 is not a huge amount, more pressing is how the business community is going to be represented.”

He said a key “contentious issue” is whether neighbouring North Somerset – which is not a member of WECA – is allowed to remain a member of the board that would replace the LEP.

A spokesperson for North Somerset told FE Week its leader Mike Bell has written to the government to complain that WECA’s mayor has only offered his council “affiliate membership” of the board, despite its significant role in the regional economy.

The spokesperson added: “North Somerset will bring key partners to the business board with both the Bristol Port Company and Bristol Airport as well as key neighbouring developments such as Hinkley Point C and the newly announced £4 billion gigafactory.”

Tensions appear to remain high between the mayor and local council leaders, with Norris accusing Lib Dem councillors on Bath and North Somerset Council of being “party political” rather than collaborating on regional strategy at a scrutiny meeting this week.

Formed in 2017, WECA has had control of its £16 million annual adult education budget since 2019. In 2025-26, it is also expected to oversee about £14 million in spending on skills bootcamps and other training programmes.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, WECA, and its constituent councils were approached comment.

‘Adult education is [viewed as] the least interesting area’

Green Party councillor Christine Townsend, who chairs a Bristol City Council scrutiny committee, said the disagreement between Norris and WECA’s constituent councils is down to “ego”.

She added: “It’s as simple as that. The [WECA] mayor doesn’t like the other [Bristol] mayor even though they’re both red. One wouldn’t give the other one an underground [train system] even though it was a fantasy nonsense, it’s pathetic.

“That’s between mayors in the same political party, they’ve been told to ‘play nice’ together.”

Councillor Townsend began investigating WECA’s adult education service two years ago after becoming concerned about whether young people with learning difficulties were falling through the gaps.

She told FE Week: “WECA is responsible for three areas, transport, housing and adult education and skills – but adult education is [viewed as] the least interesting, the least sexy. It’s the smallest team.”

Procurement paused on college antisemitism training

The search for a firm to conduct “tackling antisemitism” training in colleges has been mysteriously paused by the Department for Education.

The DfE has indefinitely extended the bidding deadline for its “tackling antisemitism in education” contract, which now has an “arbitrary” closing date of March 7, 2030 “simply to ensure the opportunity remains open”, according to new tender documents.

Successful bidders were supposed to have been told the outcome of their application by March, with the contract going live in April. 

Instead, all bidders have been told to wait for updated procurement timelines via the department’s portal, Jaggaer.

The 2023 autumn statement dedicated £7 million over three years to tackling antisemitism in schools, colleges and universities.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said at the time: “I am deeply concerned about the rise of antisemitism in our country, so I am announcing up to £7 million over the next three years for organisations such as the Holocaust Educational Trust to tackle antisemitism in schools and universities.”

According to new tender documents, seen by FE Week, the funding has been split into two lots: £3.75 million dedicated to universities, and £1.72 million to schools and colleges.

DfE is earmarking the remaining funds to go towards an “innovation programme”. Details of the are expected at some point this spring.

Lot two – a programme for schools and colleges – is looking for one or more providers to create resources that will improve the understanding of antisemitism amongst staff and students and help staff identify and tackle incidents of antisemitism.

What is the programme?

The programme will deliver five initiatives across three strands: “bespoke” training, student-facing opportunities, and resource development.

DfE wants a “dynamic” staff training package which aims to help to build the confidence of college staff in discussing and tackling antisemitism on campus.

Staff will be trained in such things as the history of antisemitism and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

Bidders will also need to develop a national train-the-trainer scheme so a “champion network” of specialists to train others and “act as experts in tackling antisemitism” in colleges.

Students will receive face-to-face workshops with experts and webinars to “improve understanding of antisemitism, and tackle dis- and misinformation”.

An annual scholarship programme for 151 students aged 15 to 18, one per local authority area, will also be created. Students applying for the scholarship will need to produce an essay or research project about antisemitism. If successful, students will access talks from experts and an international trip to build their understanding of the history and legacy of antisemitism.

The successful providers will have to tailor the education to different student ages and learning environments as well as “the distinct challenges they are facing (for example, types of antisemitic incidents), and to support take-up”.

Market engagement

Interested parties were invited to a market engagement event in January and the competitive tender was officially launched in February.

At the supplier engagement event, providers were informed that they will have to work closely with DfE and the college sector to address its “distinct needs”.

DfE was also grilled on why the funding had an uneven split. “Considering the relative number of schools and colleges v the number of universities, why has the allocation of funding been split in the way it has?” one attendee asked.

DfE answered: “There were a number of factors we took into account that informed the funding allocation as well as population, including: instances of antisemitism; resulting problems from antisemitic behaviours; and what interventions could be delivered in each section.”

According to the tender documents, DfE doubled down at the virtual event on the use of the IHRA definition of antisemitism after questions were raised over the “problematic and contentious” definition.

The non-legally binding definition is as follows: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 455

Lisa Davies

National Sales Director, Woodspeen Training

Start date: February 2024

Previous Job: Sales Director, Woodspeen Training

Interesting fact: Lisa changed career in her mid-30s from an IT role to business development in a college without any knowledge of FE or apprenticeships. Sixteen years on, Lisa says she is still learning the acronyms!

Alison Davies

Deputy Principal, Colchester Institute

Start date: March 2024

Previous Job: Director of Learner Experience and Progression, Chelmsford College

Interesting fact: Alison’s love of water led her to take up scuba-diving. She’s had some great adventures underwater, including sitting on an abandoned toilet at the bottom of the Red Sea.

Sue Pittock and Rob Foulston, the duo with a remit for excellence

The formidable duo leading Remit Training, chief executive Sue Pittock and her chair Rob Foulston, are currently riding high after what Pittock sees as the best year of her career in 2023.

Pittock scooped an OBE in January, Remit got top ‘outstanding’ marks from Ofsted for the first time in the summer, then the company finished the year with a platinum Investors in People accreditation.

Pittock has always lobbied hard for her sector, and last month was elected to serve on the Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ board. Its constitution does not allow two people from the same organisation on the board, so Foulston, who had been AELP’s vice chair, stepped down to enable her to step up.

Foulston is, he says, “very happy to let Sue take the spotlight”. He describes their professional relationship as “amazing”, despite the pair being “completely different”.

Foulston describes Pittock as “really bubbly” and “super bright” – which he says, “catches people out all the time”, as well as “very vocal”. She “really enjoys lobbying”, whereas he is “a little quieter” and “definitely more serious”.

Foulston also has plenty else to occupy his time, as he is also chair of South Thames Colleges Group. He has learned through doing both chair roles that while colleges are hardly “awash with cash, the difference is quite stark” with ITPs, who are “very much being treated as secondary to colleges”.

“We have to fight for every penny,” says Foulston.

Rob Foulston and Sue Pittock with AELP’s chief executive Ben Rowland (centre)

Life on the Remit road

Pittock talks to me whilst sporting a Paddington Bear jumper, in between attempts to prevent her golden doodle Oakley (who is “full on” personality-wise) from chewing household ornaments.

Today she is working from her home in Portsmouth, but she normally spends weekdays in Nottingham, where Remit is headquartered, or Derby where the company recently opened its fifth automotive training academy.

Her commute for the last decade since joining Remit has taken up to four hours each way. But Pittock is not tempted to move nearer to Nottingham because family is “hugely important” to her. She has 26 cousins, most of whom live nearby, and loves living by the beach.

Like Pittock, Foulston also spends a lot of time in a car, travelling between his houses in Surrey, the Lake District and Spain, as well as Remit’s Nottingham office and his parents’ home in Yorkshire, where he grew up.

It seems appropriate that Remit’s biggest remit is the automobile sector, given how much time the pair spend driving – and that Foulston’s hobby is collecting cars.

He “wanted to be a car salesman” as a kid but became a “wordsmith” instead, becoming the first in his family to go to university when he studied law at Newcastle.

Rob Foulston speaking at a conference

From law to trade floor

Foulston’s legal career began at one of the “largest and most prestigious” law firms. But “the horror stories about working in big City firms played out” with “too much photocopying, proofreading and working straight through the night”.

Upon his resignation, he told one of the partners “I just don’t want to be like you”.

He transferred to a smaller firm, where he learnt a lot from partners who “took me everywhere with them”. It was “an apprenticeship in the true sense” and taught him the value of “complete immersion” in learning.

“How anyone thinks those skills can be learned remotely, I have no idea. Young people need to be in the workplace … learning first-hand from those around them.”

He worked as a lawyer for a French investment bank before joining a distressed debt trading team of the American firm, Bankers Trust, recalling how he “absolutely loved the trading floor, the buzz, the travel and the team”.

Around this time, his involvement in education began with his purchase of ITEC, an awarding body for health and beauty qualifications where his sister was lead examiner. They developed the business over the next 18 years, particularly internationally, before selling it on in 2016.

A Remit automobile apprentice

Remit’s rebirth

When Bankers Trust was taken over by Deutsche Bank, Foulston felt its “entrepreneurial spirit” had “been lost”. He retired in 2004, having always promised himself he would leave the City at 40.

Foulston’s interests in automobiles, education and buying and selling distressed businesses all came together when, in 2008, he came across Remit, an automotive apprenticeship provider which was then part of the insolvency of Carter & Carter plc. “It ticked all my boxes,” he says.

Remit had been sold to Carter & Carter for £25 million by its founder, the Retail Motor Industry Federation (RMI), almost two years earlier. Foulston “knocked on the administrator’s door” asking to buy the business back and “after a bit of a battle” they agreed, on condition he partnered with RMI.

“It was a slightly uncomfortable relationship,” he admits.

Remit recruited Pittock, initially as a consultant and then chief executive, in 2013, and three years ago the pair managed to buy the RMI out.

Pittock’s rise to Remit

Pittock’s career path was quite different to Foulston’s. Being “mad on sport”, she only went to college (for a sports diploma) because her volleyball coach worked there.

Pittock recently discovered that she still has the metabolic age of a 39-year-old, which she believes is partly thanks to playing volleyball at national level as a youth. She later harnessed the strong competitive drive that playing sport gave her in her corporate career.

Pittock planned to join the RAF but, before completing her final entrance exam, got a job at Granada Rental Services where she stayed for the next 17 years.

The company saw potential in her and paid to train her up, first with a customer service apprenticeship then an MBA. This meant a “really intense” four years working and studying, including most evenings and Sundays.

When she graduated and was promoted to client services director, Pittock felt she had “so much extra time” because she was no longer studying.

She moved to the education sector, joining Protocol Training as its sales director at age 34. Pittock was its only female board member in a sector then dominated by men, but brushes this off as irrelevant. “I’m one of those individuals so focused on what I want to achieve, that it didn’t really matter.”

In her next role at Tribal Group, she was told to expand its international reach. As the company had no international team in its business division, she feared this to be impossible and persuaded her boss instead to let her design and expand the company’s very small apprenticeships and offender learning and skills (OLASS) provision.

She proved her worth by landing a contract with McDonald’s, growing their programme from 200 learners to 4,000.

When Tribal restructured, Pittock joined Remit which at the time specialised in apprenticeships for automotive SMEs. It was “the historic model of one apprentice in one garage”, explains Foulston, and was “quite difficult to run because it didn’t have cohorts”.

So, when the apprenticeships levy was introduced in 2017, Remit moved from SMEs to levy paying clients. It has since broadened into digital, food and business and management, with clients including Starbucks, Morrisons, Volvo, Scania, and the Royal Mail.

The provider’s supermarket programmes cater for skills including “butcher, baker and fishmonger”, which Pittock says “always makes me laugh” because she never imagined they would end up teaching such skills.

A Remit classroom

Covid blow

Alas, Covid struck Remit a blow from which it is still recovering. The provider was teaching its learners remotely when DfE started telling Remit’s clients they could put learners on a break in learning, thereby pausing its funding streams.

Pittock explains with frustration how, for six weeks, Remit’s staff were telling the department to “please stop” this as “we were still servicing these learners!” The episode was “super challenging”.

Revenue “took an absolute dive”.

But “we’re building it back up again”. Whereas turnover and profit before tax for 2018 was £20 million and £761,959 respectively, for 2023 it was £18 million (up five per cent on the previous year) with a profit of £190,629.

Remit currently has just under 300 staff compared to 317 in 2018, but the company’s strong focus on its people means it is managing to retain existing employees well; staff turnover has halved in the last 18 months.

Yogic expectations

Pittock describes Remit’s five training academies as operating “a bit like colleges” in their look and feel. But she also worries about Ofsted treating providers as colleges when it comes to meeting its criteria. For example, during Remit’s recent inspection staff were asked if they provide yoga for learners.

“We were like, ‘yoga? No, they’re full-time apprentices who are at work! We’re not a college.”

An inspector also remarked to Remit staff that they “haven’t seen enough governors”, despite having seen all the company’s board members “bar one”.

Pittock believes that the inspection framework “lends itself better” to sixth-form colleges, which she claims fare better in Ofsted inspections than training providers. She estimates that around 5 to 10 per cent of what providers are required to do to meet Ofsted expectations are “not adding any value to anyone, and it’s wasting taxpayers’ money”.

However, she also sees the value in “the other 90 per cent”. She believes that “if you try to work with most of those key metrics that Ofsted want, it does help you run a really good business”.

Sue Pittock upon collecting her OBE

Lobbying life

Pittock wears many hats: she sits on the CBI Council for the East Midlands and recently signed up to IfATE’s light vehicle Trailblazer group, as well as joining AELP’s board.

“I’m quite happy to stick my head above the parapet and talk about the things I’m passionate about, but always in a super polite way”.

Recently, she has been “really vocal” around the HGV technician apprenticeship funding band, which in 2019 was slashed from £18,000 to £15,000. Pittock helped write the appeal which she felt was “solid”, but DfE disagreed.

“I’ve never let that go.” Although funding for this three-year engineering programme was last year boosted to £20,000, she believes it “still needs to be higher”.

Pittock is also lobbying hard to get green skills (electric vehicle (EV) and hydrogen) into automotive apprenticeship standards, amid an acute shortage of technicians. But in the meantime, Remit is filling its automobile clients’ skills gaps by branching into bespoke shorter courses.

Pittock is also “watching with interest” the recently signed East Midlands devolution deal, which could persuade Remit into re-entering adult education budget provision.

“They’re going to need to try and compete with the West Midlands where [mayor] Andy Street’s done quite a lot of work around green skills … we will see how we can help with hydrogen, EV, and the alternative fuels. The deal should bring more opportunities for us.”

Remit staff celebrating after getting the platinum ‘Investors in People’ accreditation

Private equity

Remit’s new commercial arm is also helping counter “loss-making and challenging” elements of its apprenticeships business.

Remit is unusual these days in being a large provider that has not been funded through private equity, which means Pittock and Foulston are used to having free rein over decisions.

Both are familiar with the private equity market. During Pittock’s time at Protocol Training, it received equity backing, and Foulston knows the market well as a former investment banker. They both know that private equity would give them the resources to expand, which they are keen to do.

But neither are tempted by the lure of equity funders.

Foulston sees private equity as being “just a money game [and] they only care about your business to the extent that it produces a big profit.”

Pittock often gets calls from private equity firms and recruiters, including two in the previous week.

But she’s “not going anywhere”.

“I put money into the business, and I love what we do. And being grade one is now providing us with new opportunities.”

Grady accepts bumper UCU pay hike to pay libel fees

University and College Union boss Jo Grady has accepted a near-£18,000 salary hike to help her pay damages in a libel case.

The rise in 2022/23 equates to 16 per cent, which breaks the general secretary’s 2019 manifesto pledge to never take a salary boost above the national offer in FE.

UCU denied this was a pay increase because Grady accepted – for the first time – the full pay she was entitled to, instead of donating a planned portion to the union’s fighting fund as she would normally. The donations are not detailed in the union’s accounts.

But the revelation is also problematic for Grady as just last week she lambasted cabinet minister Michelle Donelan for using money from her employer – the taxpayer – to pay damages after losing a libel claim, and called for her resignation.

A UCU branch at Grady’s former employer, the University of Sheffield, this week passed a motion to call for an investigation into the finances of the general secretary, including Grady’s “considerable” salary increase.

A UCU spokesperson said: “This line of questioning is frankly embarrassing. Whilst thousands of college lecturers are paid far less than teachers doing the same job, the media are sadly doing the bosses bidding by bizarrely attempting to spin a union official donating tens of thousands of pounds to her members as a negative.

“If this level of scrutiny was applied to the actions of government and bosses then it would greatly assist in building a fairer sector for everyone that works in it.”

In a statement to members issued last week, just days after Grady was narrowly re-elected as UCU general secretary, it was revealed that she was paid a £127,690 basic salary in 2022/23.

This is 16.3 per cent more than the £109,762 salary paid in 2021/22, as stated in the union’s accounts.

UCU claimed this technically wasn’t the huge pay bump it appears to be as Grady donates a portion of her salary each year, which is not shown in their accounts, to a fund which supports members involved in disputes, including strike pay.

Her donations are not published, but Grady claims to have given tens of thousands to the fighting fund since she was first elected in 2019.

Instead of donating what she planned to in 2022/23, she accepted the larger than usual salary to pay damages and legal costs, understood to be around £22,000, to trade union activist and author Paul Embery following a Twitter row in which she accused him of “bullying women” and being “pathetic” to settle a libel claim.

The near-£18,000 increase in Grady’s salary from 2021/22 also continues a trend of the general secretary breaking a manifesto pledge from her 2019 campaign not to accept pay rises higher than the most recent pay recommendation for colleges.

Her manifesto said: “If elected, I will ensure that any increase in my salary is no higher than the most recent national pay offer in further education — the sector where our union has made least progress in protecting or improving our members’ wages.”

The Association of Colleges pay recommendation for FE staff was one per cent between 2019/20 and 2021/22 before being upped to 2.5 per cent in 2022/23. Grady’s salary rose 2.5 per cent in 2020/21 to £104,841 and 4.7 per cent the year after (see table), and appears to rocket by 16.3 per cent in 2022/23.

UCU declined to comment on Grady’s salary in 2023/24.

Defending her pay, Grady said: “After years of tireless campaigning by UCU, English further education workers have now received their biggest recommended pay uplift in over a decade.

“Meanwhile, during my tenure tens of thousands of pounds of my full entitled pay package has been donated to UCU’s fighting fund. I have also refused to take any of the pay spine salary increases I am entitled to.”

The general secretary’s salary scales are agreed by UCU’s national executive committee. The additional London weighting (currently £4,278) is negotiated with the union’s recognised staff unions.

UCU bosses have recently been accused by staff union Unite of “prioritising the pay of senior management” and are currently embroiled in a pay dispute with staff. 

“Clearly our employer’s priority during the cost-of-living crisis is to bolster senior manager pay at the expense of lower-paid staff,” Unite said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, in January.

Grady has hit out at large college principal salaries during her tenure as UCU general secretary.

She told college bosses last year to “reign in their own salaries” to support the staff who keep colleges running but receive below-inflation pay rises.

Chamber and training provider suddenly shuts down

A Merseyside chamber of commerce, which is also a training provider and employer representative body, has suddenly gone bust, leaving more than 200 apprentices in limbo, and a local skills improvement plan up in the air.

St Helen’s Chamber, which is also an independent training provider, called in administrators this afternoon amid a “perfect storm” of government funding cuts, losses from its skills business, and a “nationwide fall in office values”.

The chamber was named the designated employer representative body for the Liverpool City Region in 2022, charged with developing the city region’s statutory local skills improvement plan (LSIP).

Around 260 apprentices and 30 study programme students have been told to await further information about their next steps, while most of the chamber’s 70 staff have been made redundant.

Ofsted rated the chamber ‘good’ in its January 2023 full inspection. It had 740 members, according to its latest accounts, including local colleges and training organisations.

Its apprenticeship offer included level 3 business administrator apprenticeships, level 3 early years practitioner, and level 2 customer service practitioner standards.

At the time of its last Ofsted inspection, it also had 67 adult learners on bookkeeping, construction and hairdressing courses.

The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority said it was “working with administrators and other partners to support learners to access to access alternative provision.”

“We will also offer whatever support we can to those employees impacted,” a spokesperson said.

Thirty-eight employer representative bodies (ERBs) were chosen by the government to develop local skills improvement plans, most of them chambers of commerce. Funding worth £20.9 million over three years was made available, £550,000 each, to ERBs to develop, implement and review LSIPs.

St Helens posted a £200,000 loss for 2022-23 on a turnover of £5.7 million. It received £157,000 in government grants this year. 

It has been led by chief executive Tracy Mawson since 2020. Mawson was previously deputy chief executive and director of business services at the chamber, clocking up over 12 years at the organisation.

Administrators from Grant Thornton said “a perfect storm of reductions in government funding, difficulties in generating a surplus from its training arm, and the hit to its balance sheet from the nationwide fall in office values” led to the chamber’s immediate closure. 

There are four remaining chambers of commerce operating in the Liverpool City Region area. However, as a designated employer representative body has never gone bust before, it’s not known how the ERB status gets transferred to another organisations.

Great Gatsby: Creating the conditions for apprentices’ professional growth

Anyone working in further education will know that careers advice and guidance is a hot topic in recent Ofsted reports. Off the back of Wigan & Leigh’s ‘good’ rating for its apprenticeship provision in 2022, we decided it was time to pour some much-needed investment into our careers sector.

For too long, the fall in apprenticeship starts has been overshadowed by a celebration of the increased uptake of higher education courses. But the two are not locked in a zero-sum game. It’s time we start looking at apprenticeships as a career stepping stone with genuine value, rather than the poor relation to a degree.

Earlier last year, we received funding from the Department of Education via the Apprenticeship Workforce Development fund for an individual project to implement action research. The six-month career-driven project, which ran from March to September 2023, focused on improving and enhancing the provision of advice and guidance within the apprenticeship journey. The long-term aims were increased achievement, better retention and improved learner destinations into employment or higher education.

During the project, we identified 450 full-time students wanting to go into either an apprenticeship or employment. With the help of ten sector-specific career talks and events, we managed to get 101 of those students onto their chosen career path.

In addition, I received an overwhelming response from other colleges and training providers during a speech I did at a careers talk last October to disseminate the project and to outline the need for more funding and better education around career potential.

It’s vital to increase the knowledge and confidence of staff

One thing that was vital to this project was increasing the knowledge and confidence of staff around providing career advice and guidance to apprentices. Utilising the Education and Training Foundation’s work, which recognises that staff working with apprentices should adopt less of a tick-box approach and more of a motivational coaching approach, we set up to create a continuing professional development training package. This was designed to develop staff’s confidence by improving their knowledge of local market information and, most importantly, their understanding of how to use that information as part of their conversations around careers advice and guidance.

Our other overarching objective was to produce current full-time students with the resources they need to get into an apprenticeship. In pursuing that goal, we also noticed how significant it was to bridge the gap between employers and the college. Not only does this ensure a professional working relationship that will ultimately benefit the apprentice, it also has the potential to promote growth and career development within the business they’re in.

As a result of these efforts, we progressed on four out of the eight Gatsby benchmarks, used to identify improvement in our career provision, and will be continuing these actions in this academic year. We’re already ahead of the curve on the national achievement rate for apprenticeships (currently 64 per cent), but this year we are aiming for 70 per cent of our apprentices to complete and achieve.

Moving forward, we’ll be continuing with the employer events and progression panels, with a particular focus on improving accessibility and increasing networking opportunities. We’ll also be doing another action research project around what role parents can play in terms of advice and guidance for 16-18-year-old apprentices.

We believe that young people need a focus on their professional growth in the same way that all working people do, to inspire, motivate, and gain key skills around their objectives and their development. If we can provide a platform for apprentices to take some time for themselves and their careers, to hone in on their aspirations while receiving effective support from their employers, then we can create a stepping stone on a genuine journey of lifelong learning.

The Staffroom. Feel the fear and gather student feedback anyway

I entered education in the secondary sector, working on a supply basis in schools around Wolverhampton. That was a formative experience; both because I saw a bigger picture of social circumstances and behaviours than working in a single institution would have shown me, and because there isn’t time to build relationships.

With that work pattern, when you’re not seeing learners enough to properly get to know and form relationships with them, it can be easy to make assumptions about individuals based on your experiences of others with seemingly familiar patterns of behaviour.

Doing so is, of course, a mistake, as my personal, atypical journey underlines. I wasn’t particularly academic at school, but discovered a passion for business when I started studying it in year 10. I became the first person from my family to go to university, and then I worked in discount retail.

Those experiences inform my approach. They underline the importance of empathy and the way it underpins longer-term relationships with students. They remind me that not every student is on that same neat, linear journey to their destination. Recognising that is important, particularly in FE where many students are facing GCSE re-sits and haven’t had overly-positive experiences of school.

Embracing those realisations has been a significant driver in reflecting on my teaching and the ways I work with students, listen to them and adapting my delivery and approach to their needs. It also drove my decision to place personal development at the heart of the project work I undertook when I attained Advanced Teacher Status (ATS).

Central to that work was the roll-out of 360-degree feedback, not just among colleagues but students as well. It’s fair to say that some colleagues had mixed feelings about this, and I understand why. There’s an element of needing to trust both that you are good at your job and that students will be constructive in their responses. It’s also important to think about how their responses will be evaluated and how they can be used to benefit development.

My advice is to begin small; ask about a single lesson

We gathered the feedback through a questionnaire, something that can be done over a time period that suits the process. It could be a short questionnaire after a session topic, or a longer termly or even annual one. You could select one group to give feedback or you could give the questionnaire to all of your groups. It all depends on the level of depth you want to go into.

The kind of questions that can be useful to ask are:

  • How helpful were the feedback and assessments I provided for gauging your progress and understanding?
  • Is there any way I could improve the way I provide feedback to you?
  • How clear and organised were the learning materials?
  • How can I make my lessons more engaging for you?

It’s also important to think about how their responses are considered; they are food for thought to be reflected on as a mechanism for improving your own teaching and learning practice. You are treating your learners as customers, and customers don’t always appreciate the challenges a business faces.

For anyone who hasn’t done this before, my advice is to begin small; ask about a single lesson. Ask whether it could have been delivered differently, whether it felt relevant and whether different activities might have worked better.

You’ll find out things you won’t if you don’t ask. In my activity, one class said they would like more quizzes; something I hadn’t done very much of but they found helpful.

Then, having asked about a particular lesson you can scale up the process to ask for wider feedback. Not only can it be useful for professional development, but it also builds positive rapport between staff and students when the latter feel respected and heard.

For me, teaching in further education is about much more than the skills and knowledge we develop in the classroom; it’s about engaging a diverse group of learners, unlocking their potential and equipping them to thrive in a dynamic world. Ensuring the individuals in that group are heard, considered and valued, plays a significant part in achieving that.

Will the UK Shared Prosperity Fund go over the cliff edge in 2025?

As a general election looms ever closer, one thing all political parties have in common is their silence on what will happen to the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) beyond March 2025.  The UKSPF is a central pillar of the UK Government’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda. The fund replaced European funding following the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union and is providing £2.6 billion of new funding for local investment by March 2025.

Brexit failed to deliver for the employability and skills sector.  €16.4 billion (around £15.4 billion at July 2020 exchange rates) was received by the UK during 2014 to 2020 through European Structural and Investment (ESI) Funds.  In contrast, a mere £2.6 billion of UKSPF funding over a 3-year period was made available by the UK Government. This was never going to have the impact nor fill the void left behind by European funding. 

As was widely predicted and as I set out in my June 2022 article in these pages, a large chunk of this funding was swallowed up by local authorities after years of austerity. Very little money actually made it out of town halls to sustain organisations who were struggling to survive after European funding came to an end.

Whitehead-Ross Education has been very fortunate to secure £2.4 million of UKSPF contracts across nine local authorities in South Wales and South West England. Despite very tight implementation timescales and many local authorities lacking concise guidance from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), the funding is enabling us to support almost 1,900 participants. This includes providing support to disengaged young people to re-enter education and employment, delivering Multiply numeracy provision and providing digital upskilling for economically inactive individuals among other activities.

All of this work is delivered in economically disadvantaged communities across the UK and targeted at supporting the hardest to reach. And all of this work is at risk beyond March 2025 as all political parties fail to commit to further funding for the UKSPF. It was bad enough that the UK lost £15.4 billion of European funding. Now, we are on track for seeing the UKSPF go over the cliff edge come March next year.

Without it, there is no plan to support people back into work

I have heard rumours in Wales that plans are being drafted by DLUHC for UKSPF 2.  However, a decision needs to be made fast otherwise local authorities will have little time to plan and finalise their procurement processes ahead of March 2025.  Once a general election is called and we enter purdah, government decision making will grind to a halt. We therefore need all political parties to commit now to sustaining the UKSPF to enable proper planning and sustainability of valuable projects.

Economic inactivity – the proportion of people who are neither working nor looking for work – has risen since the pandemic. In 2022, 22 per cent of working-age people in England, Scotland and Wales were economically inactive – some 2.5 million individuals – in spite of workforce shortages in key economic sectors.

The European Social Fund and now the UKSPF have enabled projects to provide tailored and specialist support to target priority groups such as those suffering from ill health, the over-50s, young people and single parents.

Just this week, shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall announced that ‘a life on benefits’ will not be an option under a Labour government. If the phrase ‘a life on benefits’ seems familiar, it might be because it appeared in chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Conservative conference speech last November. Clearly, the major parties agree that unemployment is a scourge and major economic headwind.

Without a shared prosperity fund, there is no plan and no money to support the groups who are most at risk of enforced worklessness back into the workplace. The predictable consequence will be rising inequality and a failure to move the dial on the number of benefit claimants.

For all these reasons, Westminster must offer clarity and certainty about the future of this vital funding without delay.