Jo Grady has been re-elected to serve a second term as general secretary of the University and Colleges Union (UCU).
Grady won in the third round of voting. King’s College London law professor Ewan McGaughey narrowly missed out on the top job, losing by just 182 votes.
17,131 valid votes were cast out of 114,310 eligible UCU member voters – a turnout of just 15.1 per cent. Grady was elected with 7,758 votes to McGaughey’s 7,576.
University of Leeds widening participation officer Vicky Blake came third and Liverpool John Moores University senior education lecturer Saira Weiner came in last.
Grady, a former employment relations lecturer at the University of Sheffield, said: “I want to thank every member who has voted to endorse my strategy for our union’s future.
“We have achieved so much in the past five years, including further education’s biggest pay award in a decade and the greatest pension win in UK trade union history.
“But there is still much to do. Under my leadership, UCU will continue to be a fighting union that will stand up for education. We need a fair funding settlement for higher education and binding national bargaining in further education. I look forward to working with our incredible members to push employers and government to invest in our sector’s staff and students.”
Grady has committed to push for “enforceable” national deals on pay and terms and conditions in further education colleges. She has also pledged to strengthen UCU branches in colleges and prison education and “tackle casualisation” in adult education.
Her second term begins officially on August 1.
The remaining election results, for vice-president, national executive committee and trustee are expected to be announced on March 5.
Picket lines with FE members
UCU members at numerous colleges across the country have been striking in the last year, most recently last month at Capital City College Group about pay disputes and workload.
Grady at The Manchester College
Grady said at the time she “need[s] to be on picket lines with our further education members”, and that “our members need, and they deserve my full attention”.
Colleges have accepted pay deals of up to 10 per cent for teaching staff for the 2023/24 academic year. It comes after the Association of Colleges advised colleges to use the government’s £200 million of 16-19 funding to award a 6.5 per cent pay rise to FE staff, the same as schoolteachers.
The union has faced internal disputes recently, with UCU staff escalating a row over pay with bosses.
And last year Grady agreed a £22,000 settlement in a legal dispute over potentially libellous tweets.
UCU review into racism
The union today has also accepted an independent review of racism at UCU.
In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Unite Black members’ group claim “institutional failings” are affecting UCU staff.
Unite, who represent UCU staff, alleged that Black staff are disproportionately targeted for punitive action under internal procedures – 45 per cent of all UCU cases handled by Unite had an element of race discrimination.
“Firstly, it is Black staff who have to engage on a daily basis with the senior management team who have overseen the aforementioned failings,” said Unite UCU.
“Secondly, the exclusion of staff from an independent investigation called into question of the employer’s public response to the racism crisis.”
A UCU spokesperson said: “UCU is currently sourcing an external independent party to conduct a review examining issues raised by the black members’ standing committee and our black staff. We are already acting to address concerns raised by staff in a number of ways, including through training and support for progression, and will continue to put anti-racism at the heart of our agenda for members.”
The AoC’s consultant on equality, diversity and inclusion believes many colleges still need to put their words into action when it comes to really championing diversity.
Ellisha Soanes, the Association of College’s consultant on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), believes that many colleges are “just paying lip service” to the issue with their policies, and now need to “walk the talk” as she has done.
Diversity is Soanes’s life passion. As a lecturer and later EDI lead at West Suffolk College, Soanes brought her students up close and personal with ethnic minority political pioneers, a military hero and a footballing legend to inspire them to aim high.
She also made a name for herself by teaching of black history not just during black history month, but across the year.
Ellisha Soanes with an exhibit from her Power of Stories exhibition
Joining the dance
Soanes has sat on various parliamentary roundtable talks on diversifying curriculums and has spoken to Keir Starmer “a few times”, most recently last year at a memorial marking 30 years since the racially motivated murder of teenager Stephen Lawrence.
She calls her brand of activism “joining the dance”.
Whereas she used to feel alone on the dancefloor of FE when she first started championing diversity in colleges in 2020, she now feels that with “more and more people joining in, that cultural ripple effect is happening…I feel like I’m making a difference.”
However, there is a long way to go.
While students have become more diverse, college leadership has become even less representative. In the decade to 2021, the share of ethnic minority students in FE went from one in five to one in four, while the percentage of ethnic minority college leaders dropped from 13 per cent in 2017 to 5-6 per cent in 2020, and is believed to have fallen since then.
Ellisha Soanes’ Grandparents, John and Christolyn
Colleges are being strongly encouraged to sign up to a new EDI charter being launched at next month’s AoC EDI conference, being touted as a ‘call to action’ for the sector.
And Soanes has just started hosting six-weekly regional Equity Xchange forums for EDI leads through the AoC, to provide them with support.
She knows that “EDI can be a lonely world”.
The AoC’s director for diversity and governance, Jeff Greenidge, recently wrote how the phone calls and emails he has received have made it “clear that advocating for change in a resistant environment takes an emotional toll [on EDI leads] and can lead to fatigue and feelings of burnout”.
Soanes sees the forums she is hosting as providing a “safe space” for EDI leads to talk to each other, “especially around diversifying the curriculum”.
“They’re really important conversations. When I started my own journey, I was fortunate to have a network of amazing people supporting me. But I realise that not a lot of people have that opportunity.”
The power of stories
Soanes’s personal support network included her Windrush generation grandmother, Christolyn Soanes, who is also the inspiration behind Soanes championing real-life stories from black history.
She was a nurse in Antigua before being recruited to work in Ipswich in 1961. But as she could not afford to get requalified in the health sector here, she ended up doing menial cleaning work instead.
Soanes discusses this with me while sitting in a garishly retro mock-up of a 1970s living room. It is part of the latest exhibition she has curated in Ipswich, celebrating the town’s diverse heritage through the stories and cultural memorabilia of its residents. “This is what my grandmother’s living room used to look like,” she says.
Christolyn’s cake tin was showcased alongside three original costumes from Marvel Studios’ Black Panther film (2018) and the jewels of a local Nigerian princess, in the first black heritage exhibition Soanes helped curate to inspire her students at West Suffolk College, back in 2021.
While Soanes was growing up in Ipswich, her mother had her own restaurant business and her father was a professional footballer, Douglas Junior Soanes, who played for Norwich City and later Ipswich Town.
Her godfather is the former Norwich, Newcastle and Spurs player Ruel Fox, who these days sometimes accompanies Soanes for talks in local schools and colleges. Although Soanes is “not sporty at all”, she believes that “having role models around me as a kid was so valuable, and was something that I took for granted”.
Ellisha Soanes as a child
At school in Ipswich, Soanes claims teachers held “biases” about her based on the colour of her skin. She recalls being asked by her teacher during a career talk, “why don’t you just do hairdressing?”, and being “pulled out of lessons” along with “all the students of diverse appearance”, and “asked if we would like some free books”.
“I was thinking, why aren’t you asking the other students that? That’s not empowering people.”
Soanes’s partner, Darnte Wilson, was a National level triple jumper (“a hop, skippedy jumper” as Soanes calls it) when they met. He trained with Lynford Christie among others, and Soanes at first “lived life around his scheduling”.
She moved to London with him as a student but studied health and social care at the University of Essex, with the unconventional commute away from London each day making her life “complex”.
After having their daughter 11 years ago, Soanes focused much of her energy on motherhood while Wilson continued his training.
But his Olympic dreams were shattered when he tore a ligament while jumping live on TV, in the run-up to the 2016 Olympics. He refocused his career instead around coaching and training, while Soanes made up her mind to “really go forwards” in education.
Soanes went from supporting young people at risk of school exclusion through a private provider, Nacro Education, to becoming an employability coach and later a health and social care lecturer at West Suffolk College.
Ellisha Soanes Caribbean heritage books that make up part of her recent exhibition, along with her grandmother’s cake tin
Weaving EDI into curriculums
Soanes was teaching online during Covid when the murder of George Floyd in America affected race relations on both sides of the pond. She discussed the issue with her students, who decided to make a pictorial tribute to him.
After researching the subject further, these students came upon “stories of racial injustice from across the world” and decided to do a bigger Black Lives Matter tribute as momentum for the movement grew.
Soanes recalls looking around the college and thinking “there is so much more we can do here around EDI. It should be woven into everything we do, not just a bolt-on extra.” She started teaching her students about “disparities that have happened” in “black history and mental health”.
A group of them then asked if they could teach their peers stories from the Windrush generation.
Soanes recalls one student in particular, whose father was of the Windrush generation, who would normally “sit in the back and let other students take over”. But discussing his family’s experiences allowed him to “open up” and “tell these amazing stories of untold heroes who made the NHS service, who we just don’t normally talk about”.
As the cause “blew up”, Soanes supported her students while they took the lead in facilitating sessions for other students on black history icons. Meanwhile, Soanes co-founded Aspire Black Suffolk, a community interest company specialising in promoting positive role models.
In 2022 she gave up lecturing to become the college’s EDI coordinator and used funding from the European Social Fund to appoint student ambassadors and organise workshops on EDI issues across the college. Some were attended by “hundreds of students”.
“They just told their stories. It was about that sense of community and celebration, which they don’t normally get an opportunity to express. You really see the sense of empowerment that happens when voices are heard.”
The ambassadors helped Soanes make West Suffolk the first college in the country to embed black history into the curriculum all year round.
She has been trying to encourage other schools and colleges to do so since, but has found that “a lot of doors would shut” when she suggested it. “People would say, don’t be silly…That’s other people’s cultures, why should we integrate it?”
Ellisha Soanes’s pumpkin fritters
In the training she provides schools and colleges around diversity, Soanes asks people whether they were taught black history at school. If they were, Soanes claims that “nine times out of 10 it was civil rights and slavery”.
She then gets them to “stop and pause” and asks, “were the black community not part of the first and second world wars? Were we not inventors? As educators, we’re meant to support everyone in their journey. We’re doing a real injustice there.”
Some might argue that diversifying the curriculum is easier with arts courses than practical ones, but Soanes claims that any subject leader can invite “local heroes on their doorstep” in to share their stories.
And subjects can often have a multicultural element to them. She claims there is “so much African history and culture” involved in bricklaying, with some common gate motif styles coming from Ghana.
“It’s about creating those pause moments where people go, ‘I never realized that’.”
Soanes co-authored an interactive book, Elimu (a Swahili term for knowledge) showcasing black Suffolk heroes, designed to be integrated into school and college curriculums. Some 10,000 copies were produced, funded by Suffolk Council.
With the motif “if you don’t ask you don’t get”, Soanes reached out to a number of high profile black political activists to ask if her students could interview them.
Those who agreed include Leroy Logan, who had founded the Black Police Association, and Alex Wheatle, a British novelist jailed after the 1981 Brixton riot in London. Both their stories had been made into films as part of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe BBC series, with Logan played by John Boyega.
Her students also interviewed Stuart Lawrence, the younger brother of the teenager murdered in a racially motivated attack, Stephen Lawrence. Soanes says these interviews helped students “understand how to create opportunity” and to become “gamechangers”.
When West Suffolk College became part of the Eastern Colleges Group in 2022, Soanes was made head of EDI for the group, overseeing 17 EDI leads.
A comic from the Power of Stpries exhibition
Presentation matters
Soanes believes that “presentation matters”, and the fact that staff and students in FE “don’t see a lot of leaders who look like me is a big problem”.
While there is “representation at a lecturer or pastoral support level”, Soanes always sees a “stopping point when it gets to the next level”.
She asks, “are we really supporting people in the coaching and mentoring world to help reshape them? How many colleges are really honing into their diversity demographic, and saying, ‘what are we going to do about this?’ There’s much more we can do.”
Soanes believes there should be “more access and support in colleges linking into communities and charities” to help EDI leads achieve their aims.
She believes that “a lot of” EDI leads “get those doors closed”, as she did when she embarked on building black history into curriculums.
Soanes is worried about the impact on education leaders of certain politicians pushing the ‘Wokerati’ jibe at those who campaign for more diversity in the sector.
But she also believes that “more and more people are joining the dance”.
“I want everyone to feel empowered by telling those powerful stories.”
A former cabinet minister has called on the government to help autistic people into work by relaxing apprenticeship functional skills requirements.
Ex-justice minister Sir Robert Buckland published a review this week containing 19 “practically achievable” recommendations for getting more autistic young people into work.
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) figures suggest that about seven in ten people with autism are out of work, compared to five in ten for all disabled people.
Buckland is calling on the government to give apprentices with autism an exemption from the need for higher level functional skills by self-declaring their special needs.
He said many autistic people “struggle” to complete level three or higher level apprenticeships due to the requirement for level two qualifications in English and maths.
Under current rules, people with learning difficulties have an option to complete entry level three functional skills instead.
However, this option requires the apprentice to have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), which Buckland said are “difficult to obtain”.
Demand for EHCPs, which are carried out by local authorities, increased by a fifth to 114,500 between 2021 and 2022, with only about half of assessments completed within the 20-week target for completion.
Buckland believes his recommendations, which also include raising awareness of autism with careers advice services and recruiters, would make a “radical improvement” to the low employment rates.
The former minister, who has long campaigned on issues around children with special needs, said employers are “missing out” on skills that autistic people could be contributing.
He cited DWP figures that suggest only 30 per cent of people with autism are in employment, significantly lower than the overall disabled people’s employment rate of 53 per cent.
Charity Autistica, which supported the review, estimates that about one million autistic people are living in the UK.
In April, the Department for Education (DfE) is due to reach the end of a pilot that tested a similar relaxation of functional skills requirements to Buckland’s recommendation.
Around 20 providers in the pilot have been allowed to give people with autism who lack an EHCP or Learning Disabilities Assessment (LDA) an exemption from functional skills requirements following an assessment by a special educational needs and/or disabilities coordinators (SENDCOs).
Last November, some providers in the pilot told FE Week they were enrolling hundreds more people with learning difficulties thanks to the exemption.
Ali Khan, managing director of ELA Training Services in London, said: “Whether functional skills are fit for purpose or not, providers have had to set challenging benchmarks for applicants to achieve during their initial assessment so that we are not setting up apprentices to fail.”
Buckland said the outcome of this pilot should be used to “determine the next steps” – including a possible change to the funding rules.
He has also recommended the government set up a task force to oversee the implementation of his recommendations, chaired by a “respected independent person” who would represent the needs of autistic people.
Functional skills qualifications have also been described as a barrier to progress for apprentices without disabilities due to their difficulty and the cost of delivery to providers.
Writing in FE Week last year, Paul Warner, director of strategy and business development at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) said functional skills qualifications “no longer serve the purpose” that they were designed for.
Buckland’s review publication comes after the government’s “Back to Work Plan,” launched with the Autumn budget statement in November last year, which aims to help up to 110,000 unemployed people with mental or physical health conditions into work.
Interesting fact: After a 27 year career at bus operator Go North East, Stephen now enjoys a portfolio career spanning consultancy, non-executive, guest lecturer and mentorship roles at various organisations
Kion Ahadi
Chief Executive Officer, Federation of Awarding Bodies
Start date: February 2024
Previous Job: Director of Strategy, Futures and Insight, The Law Society
Interesting fact: Kion enjoys exercise and writing fiction. He had a science fiction novel published in 2012
A “groundbreaking” study that indicated radical progress in GCSE maths resit results has received a cash boost to expand its research.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has committed £630,575 for researchers to test new teaching approaches for college learners resitting the subject – the second largest donation ever made for a post-16 education project by the charity.
The funding will allow 160 extra teachers from FE colleges across the country to partake in the effectiveness of the Mastering Maths trial.
The research is hoped to provide a much-needed boost to maths resits pass rates, which recently fell to 22.9 per cent last year.
Since 2014, colleges have been required to help learners achieve a grade 4 or above when retaking their GCSEs or risk losing funding.
From next year, maths resit students must study the subject for a minimum of four hours per week under controversial new rules.
The Mastering Maths study is carried out by the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Research in Mathematics Education and the independent evaluation will be led by the National Centre for Social Research.
The initial pilot found students being taught by teachers on the Mastering Maths professional development programme made one month of additional progress compared with their peers, and disadvantaged students made even more gains.
Students who were from disadvantaged backgrounds, i.e. eligible for free school meals, made two additional months of learning progress.
The pilot project took place across 147 college sites and 7,453 students between October 2021 and June 2022.
It investigated three levels of intervention – placebo, partial and full which involved teachers working with lesson resources and engaging in two days of face-to-face CPD run by a lead teacher on the fundamentals of the study that should be embedded within maths teaching.
Full intervention features seven lessons using methods learned from the online sessions as well as a programme of “lesson study” which saw groups of teachers come together five times across the year and observe one of the group teaching a class, before discussing the lesson afterwards.
This time, the trial will entail an intervention group and a control (placebo) group for the 2024/25 academic year.
Researchers say the effectiveness trial will be looking for answers to why disadvantaged learners made more progress than their peers.
“We can only guess, but the research will do a little bit more to try and work that out,” said Geoff Wake, Professor of Mathematics Education at Nottingham University.
“We’re doing less telling, more engaging students try to work things out in a way that’s appropriate for them. That’s the design in the intervention and I think that’s made a huge difference,” he added.
The study is recruiting FE teachers from across England and have until June 21 to sign up.
Colleges will also receive £250 to cover the participating teachers’ classes for each lesson study meeting (£1,250 for five meetings). Additionally, each college setting in the control group will receive a thank-you payment of £1,000 for the collection of student data.
To be eligible, teachers must teach at least one GCSE maths class and should not have participated in the Mastering Maths efficacy trial as either a lead teacher or intervention teacher. They should also not be taking part in the NCETM Teaching for Mastery “trailblazer”, “cohort one” cohorts, or any other substantial professional development during the 2024/25 academic year.
The EEF has made funding available for post-16 education research previously, the largest of which was a £641,115 boost to Maths for Life, a maths resit study in 2018.
Earlier last year, the prime minister made a pledge of £40m to the EEF to expand its focus to post-16, plus £60m over two years to improve maths education.
The EEF is also currently involved in the Association of Colleges’ study of the 5Rs (recall, routine, revise, repeat, ready) teaching approach to GCSE maths resits, funded through DfE’s accelerator fund. Results of this study are expected this autumn.
Professor Becky Francis, chief executive of the EEF, said: “We know that this period offers our ‘last chance’ to minimise socio-economic attainment gaps before most young people leave the education system. We also know how important it is for future life chances to achieve a good level of maths. “It is our hope that further trials will offer post-16 educators high-quality options to consider when looking to make meaningful changes to their classroom practice.”
Students at Leeds City College were treated to an acting masterclass from former Eastenders actor turned mayor Tracy Brabin this week.
In a special visit for this year’s Colleges Week, which concludes today, Labour West Yorkshire mayor Brabin also backed calls on the chancellor to exempt colleges from VAT in next week’s budget.
The group of 32 first-year acting students were “put through their paces” interpreting a script, written by Brabin, as well as hearing industry insights from the mayor.
Student Noemi Kubiak said: “Tracy gave us some really good career advice on how to support yourself as an actor in between roles. She said to use our creative skills to branch out into writing, which isn’t something I’d ever considered before.”
Creative industries on the patch are “booming” according to Brabin, “with productions like Happy Valley and Gentleman Jack showcasing our region to the world.
“I’m thrilled we’re giving young people the opportunities they need to upskill and flourish, as we work to build a stronger, brighter West Yorkshire,” she said.
Abolishing requirements for colleges to pay VAT has been a headline ask from the Association of Colleges for several years and would save the sector around £200 million per year. Schools do not pay VAT.
The chancellor Jeremy Hunt is widely expected to use next week’s budget to cut taxes, but his Treasury predecessors have all declined to exempt colleges from VAT.
Ministers have previously rejected the call, saying the £200 million it would cost to exempt colleges from VAT is better spent elsewhere.
Brabin said: “At a crucial time for learning and development, college students deserve to have all the resources they need to thrive.
“That’s why we’re backing calls to even the playing field for colleges and reinvest vital funds back into the system.”
Ofsted’s new chief inspector admitted he was “completely wrong” about the quality of apprenticeships as a school leader, during his first public appearance in post at this week’s FE Week Annual Apprenticeships Conference.
In a Q&A session from the main stage, Sir Martyn Oliver spoke about his experience as a school leader in trying to offer independent advice to his students about apprenticeship options.
“I had a massively outdated view of apprenticeships. I was completely wrong in just how good they are,” the chief inspector said.
When asked why, despite the Baker clause, providers still report barriers to accessing schools to promote apprenticeships, Oliver said schools can struggle “finding the time” to offer “anything beyond” the curriculum.
Reflecting on his time as a school leader, Oliver said: “It was no good just giving careers advice internally. What you needed was an expert who was up to date in apprenticeships.
“I developed this contract with an external partner who came in and I was really happy for this person to say to all of my young people, even if I’ve got a sixth form, don’t to go the sixth form, go to that training provider, go to that sixth form, go to that college, whatever would work for them.”
Oliver also revealed his much-trailed “big listen” exercise will launch “a week on Friday”, on March 8. He is booked to deliver a keynote speech at the Association of School and College Leaders annual conference in Liverpool that day.
“I’m about to embark on a big listen where I’ll be hopefully listening to all of you and, really critically, the young people and adults who are taking your courses, and finding out from them what it is we best do to support and challenge and make sure standards are as high as possible.”
He would not be drawn on specific changes he wanted to make to the education inspection framework, but did say he wanted more training provider leaders to take part in Ofsted inspector training.
Oliver said he chose the AAC to be his first public engagement as chief inspector because “apprenticeships are a real engine for social mobility”.
He attended the Birmingham conference this week following a visit to Blackpool and The Fylde College where he spoke to staff and apprentices.
“I have seen incredible practice and met fantastic young people that are a real credit to the qualification, and to this country, in what they’re trying to achieve,” he said.
The Department for Education is set to hand back £60 million of apprenticeship funding to the Treasury in 2023-24, new figures show.
Of the department’s £2.585 billion ring-fenced apprenticeship budget this financial year, £2.525 billion, or 98 per cent, is expected to be spent.
The figures, released this week in the Treasury’s supplementary estimates, would mark a slight drop in the underspend recorded in 2022-23, when £96 million, or four per cent, of England’s ring-fenced apprenticeships budget went unused.
The budget is set to rise to £2.7 billion from 2024-25. However, the disparity in what is distributed by the Treasury for public spending on apprenticeships compared to how much the levy is generating continues to grow.
Latest Treasury figures show £3.170 billion was received from employers who pay the apprenticeship levy between April 2023 and January 2024, with two months’ worth of receipts to come before the end of the financial year.
When DfE’s ring-fenced budget spend on apprenticeships in England is combined with the £500 million-odd that is handed to the devolved nations from the levy, it leaves around £875 million that was generated by the levy, but held onto by the Treasury in 2023-24.
The DfE said final underspend figures for 2023-24 will be released later this year.
A DfE spokesperson added: “The apprenticeship levy has enabled us to increase investment in apprenticeships to £2.7 billion a year by 2024-25 – supporting employers of all sizes and in all sectors offer more apprenticeships. Over the last two years, 98 per cent of the budget was spent helping thousands of businesses take on apprentices.
“Spending on the apprenticeship programme is demand led, offering employers the flexibility to choose which apprenticeships they offer, how many and when. We are making it easier for employers and providers to offer high-quality apprenticeships by simplifying our systems, cutting red tape, and have removed the limit on the number of apprentices SME’s can recruit.”
Multiply underspend revealed
Treasury’s supplementary estimates also show that £14 million of the DfE’s budget for the prime minister’s flagship maths programme Multiply is to be returned to Treasury in 2023-24.
Councils attacked the inflexible funding rules of the maths programme last year after figures revealed that a third of the money allocated went unspent.
The DfE said most of the £14 million surrendered to Treasury, £9 million, was from financial year 2022-23, confirmed when local areas submitted their final statements of grant expenditure and driven by the short delivery timeframe in the first year of Multiply.
The other £5 million was returned to Treasury from a randomised control trial (RCT) budget, given that “many” trials will not commence until academic year 2024/25 and the time needed to design and mobilise RCTs, according to the DfE.
A DfE spokesperson said: “Multiply has enabled thousands of adults to undertake courses designed to boost number confidence, while giving local areas the flexibility to offer a range of innovative programmes to suit their communities.”
A Westminster debate about colleges descended into a “party political” row about apprenticeships before an almost empty room this afternoon.
Only five MPs spoke at a debate to mark this year’s Colleges Week in Westminster Hall on Thursday, leaving its proposer Peter Aldous feeling a “shade disappointed” about attendance.
However, a clash flared up between the government’s schools minister Damian Hinds and Labour’s shadow skills minister Seema Malhotra over the opposition party’s proposals on apprenticeships.
Both said they wanted to avoid “party political debate” before engaging in a tetchy back-and-forth on the future of the apprenticeship levy.
Malhotra – the only opposition MP to speak – repeated her party’s pledge to convert the apprenticeship levy into a more flexible “growth and skills levy”, which would allow 50 per cent of funds to be spent on other forms of training, alongside creating a new strategic body, Skills England.
She suggested the schools minister “did not fully understand” her policy, possibly because he had not “engaged with it in detail”.
But Hinds hit back that any “misunderstanding” about Labour’s levy proposal was “because it is not clear” itself.
He said: “I assure the honourable lady that if there is any misunderstanding about the Labour party policy it is not because people have failed to engage with it, it is because it is not clear. One great benefit of the current system is that it is clear.
“I must tell her that the approach of the levy resolves one of the fundamental questions in investing in human capital and training and investment, which is the so-called free rider problem. The levy is precisely to make sure that the whole of the industry has a like-for-like investment in skills and policy. I would urge her not to replace it with a new and unneeded quango.”
Malhotra criticised the government for overseeing falling apprenticeship starts, cutting further education funding and falling engagement with apprenticeships from small and medium-sized businesses.
She said changing levy spending rules would give employers “flexibility” to spend on modular training, which could also reduce the number of apprenticeship drop-outs.
The shadow minister added: “An estimated £3 billion in unspent levy has gone to the Treasury since 2019 that could have been spent on more training opportunities for learning.
“This is not a system that’s working as it needs to be.”
Hinds argued that the opposition’s plans would mean “less money” for apprenticeships and create “a new and unneeded quango”.
Aldous concluded the debate by calling for an urgent review of the apprenticeship levy to resolve “teething difficulties” before the next general election.
He also urged the government to “level the playing field” for colleges by fixing the pay gap with school teachers and exempting colleges from paying VAT.
