England’s apprenticeship boss, David Way, has announced that he is to step down at the end of the month.
The executive director of the Skills Funding Agency’s apprenticeship division will be leaving after 38 years in the employment and skills sector.
Mr Way, a married father-of-two, has overseen an expansion in the number of apprenticeships to more than 500,000 a-year. He was also in charge during the development of apprenticeships into new sectors and professions; the growth in higher apprenticeships (up to masters level); and, the strengthening of a network of ambassadors to promote apprenticeships to business and in schools.
David way being interviewed last year by FE Week deputy editor Chris Henwood
“Over the past five years I have greatly enjoyed developing and leading the National Apprenticeship Service,” said Mr Way.
“I am proud of our achievements and in particular the extensive work with employers and partners from across the sector. We have together achieved significant momentum under successive governments whose leadership, ambition and investment has been vital.”
David Way flying the flag for the UK at WorldSkills Leipzig 2013
Mr Way is a regular contributor to business and education publications, and in 2011 he received a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to apprenticeships. He is a keen supporter of Somerset County Cricket Club. He has also been a governor of both the University of Wolverhampton and a Warwickshire primary school.
Kim Thorneywork, chief executive of the agency, said: “David’s contribution to the success of the National Apprenticeship Service and the growth of high quality apprenticeships is significant and I welcome the opportunity to build on that.
“My ambition is to work with employers and the sector to meet the challenges of the future and to truly make apprenticeships work for England.
“I would like to thank David for his leadership, his hard work and commitment and wish him well in his future endeavours.”
David Way with FE Week editor Nick Linford (left) and director of operations Shane Mann (right)
From April 1, the National Apprenticeship Service became fully integrated within the agency.
“With the National Apprenticeship Service successfully integrated within the Skills Funding Agency and a long term reform agenda for apprenticeships set out by the government, I know this is the best time to hand over the reins to others,” added Mr Way, who was profiled by FE Week in February last year.
David Way at WorldSkills Leipzig 2013
“I remain a passionate ambassador and advocate for apprenticeships and I intend to use my extensive skills and experience to continue to develop effective partnerships between business, the FE and higher education sectors and with young people, their parents and schools.”
Mr Way is due to hand over his responsibility for the agency’s apprenticeship division on Friday, August 30.
Leave your tributes to Mr Way below.
David Way speaks to Team UK guests at a reception dinner at WorldSkills Leipzig 2013:
Apprenticeship stories in the wider media of late have made hay about young people turning their backs on university and instead considering vocational learning. However, as Lynne Sedgmore explains, such promotion of an ‘FE versus higher education’ divide could be doing more harm than good.
There has been a sudden spate of stories recently about apprenticeships and higher education, often based around thinly-evidenced claims that ‘many’ young people are now said to prefer apprenticeships to university.
It is good if, as they suggest, both young people and employers hold apprenticeships in higher regard than they did a few years ago and even better news if employers are offering more apprenticeship places at higher levels. There is however something superficial about much of the commentary with a potential to do serious harm.
The first issue is that the choice posed — university or apprenticeship is highly artificial and arbitrarily restricted. Most apprenticeships are offered at level three or below, so the real alternatives for a potential apprentice are A-levels or a vocational study programme in FE.
Although it is rarely reported, the great majority of those not on the A-level route are in FE colleges learning valuable vocational skills and, under the new study programmes, college learning will routinely be linked with work experience.
It is in nobody’s interests to persuade young people who are capable of higher education not to engage
The choice for someone qualified to go into higher education is wide, but apprenticeships are only a small part of it. Higher apprenticeships are not an alternative to higher education — they should properly be seen as part of it, although they are still pretty rare.
The problem with almost all the press reports is that they conflate higher education with full-time courses at university and miss the wide range of provision in FE colleges — full and part-time foundation degrees, higher diplomas and professional qualifications. Much of this provision is strongly vocational with clear links to employment.
The second big issue is that it is in nobody’s interests to persuade young people who are capable of higher education not to engage; through a higher apprenticeship if they want and can find one, but otherwise through one of the many other options.
Any analysis of the labour market will show that it is high level jobs that are growing most quickly and are most important for future economic growth. It is wrong to encourage anyone capable of studying at HE level to settle for less and foolish to undermine the motivation of those seeking to gain the prerequisites for higher education entrance.
We need to reflect on which institutions would be damaged if significant numbers of well-qualified candidates turned their back on higher education
Commentators need to reflect on who is most likely to be influenced by the continual implication that higher education is not an appropriate aspiration for many. It won’t be those from families with several generations of higher education experience and a clear understanding of its benefits. It is far more likely to be those for whom higher education in any form is a step into the unknown; already seen as more risky because of the scale of student debt.
Sowing generalised doubts about the benefits of higher education on the basis of little more than anecdote could set back the widening participation agenda and undermine social mobility.
Finally, we need to reflect on which institutions would be damaged if significant numbers of well-qualified candidates turned their back on higher education.
It wouldn’t be members of the Russell Group or other high status universities. It would be precisely those institutions with a widening participation mission, and ironically those FE colleges that have quietly built deep and close links with local employers. There is a risk of the legendary ‘double whammy’ if higher education recruitment faltered at the same time as patient work to encourage aspiration in those from non-traditional backgrounds was undermined.
It is possible that this crop of stories was just silly season froth that will evaporate once results are out and choices have been made. Let’s hope so.
There does need to be a debate about the choices available to young people, but it needs to be considered, evidence-based and cover the full range of options available to them rather than a headline grabbing sound bite.
Lynne Sedgmore, executive director of the 157 Group
The contract to run the government’s FE course directory could be sold on as part of a deal that could net £15m for Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
The Tory MP co-founded and partly owns Hotcourses, which hosts and provides a database for the National Careers Service (NCS) online course directory, which FE Week understands is worth £11m.
Hotcourses, which also runs a similar, competitor online course directory commercially, is understood to have brought in Ingenious Corporate Finance to advise on strategic options, according to Education Investor magazine — and one of the options could be a sale.
The company, which is on track to make profits of £4m this year and is 49 per cent owned by Mr Hunt, is estimated to be worth around £30m.
A spokesperson for the Skills Funding Agency (SFA), which oversees the NCS, told FE Week: “We have a contract with Hotcourses to provide course data in support of the National Careers Service course directory.
“If Hotcourses is sold we would expect the contract to be novated to any new organisation to ensure continuity of contractual requirements.
“It is not possible at this stage to anticipate any implications as a result of any change to supplier.”
A number of potential buyers are thought to have been approached, but it is not clear how far any talks have progressed. Hotcourses declined to comment.
According to information obtained from the SFA by FE Week under the Freedom of Information Act, the NCS course directory gets 36,200 hits and an average of 150,000 searches is conducted per month.
However, the directory has come under fire in the past over poor quality of data.
FE Week cartoon of edition 57, dated February 25, 2013
Submitting information to the directory is contractual requirement the SFA has given providers, but concerns were raised last year over the directory failing to adequately display the options available to people searching for courses.
However, Stephen Hewitt, Morley College’s strategic funding, enrolments and examinations manager, was critical of the website’s online profile having attended sector feedback meetings about the directory with the SFA and the Information Authority.
Speaking to FE Week back in February, he warned further investment would be needed to improve the search engine ranking of the course directory.
“I’ve yet to see the course provider’s directory on the first page of Google, which effectively means it doesn’t exist,” he said.
Mr Hewitt pointed out prospective learners would simply enter their desired course and location into a search engine and would find, as he had, the top results were local college websites or Hotcourses’ own commercial directory.
“I just don’t see the point of the directory — there is already a course provider directory available and easily searchable by the public and it’s called Google,” he said.
He said there were “genuine concerns about the entire validity of the project”.
An SFA spokesperson said at the time that support was available for providers, including a dedicated team of information officers, contactable at support@coursedirectoryproviderportal.org.uk.
Four advisers, including a former 157 Group chair and an ex-college finance director, have been appointed to the new FE Commissioner’s office.
The commissioner is yet to be appointed, but the adviser posts have gone to Marilyn Hawkins, Malcolm Cooper, Lynn Forrester and David Williams (see biogs below for full details).
Between them, they are thought to bring more than 70 years’ experience of FE to the commissioner’s office.
Among their first tasks will be to co-operate with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Department for Education (DfE) on ongoing sector interventions.
Skills Minister Matthew Hancock, in correspondence seen by FE Week, said: “I am delighted that we have such a strong team of FE advisers that the commissioner will be able to call upon.
“We are continuing the process of recruiting a commissioner, via open recruitment, over the summer and early autumn. A national advert will be published shortly.
“We will seek to have the commissioner in post by October, ahead of the first inspection reports from Ofsted.
“Pending the appointment of the commissioner, the advisers will support the Departments (BIS and DfE) and the funding agencies (Skills Funding Agency and Education Funding Agency) on existing intervention cases.”
The minister went on to outline the intervention process to be followed by the commissioner and their officers.
Mr Hancock said the commissioner would, “act as the single point of contact between the college or institution, and the Departments (BIS and DfE), the funding agencies and Ofsted throughout the intervention process”.
The commissioner would also, “assess the capability and capacity of the governance and leadership of the college or institution to deliver improvement (within a two-week timeframe), holding discussions with the college or institution’s governing body, the principal or chief executive, local stakeholders and the funding agencies”.
Mr Hancock added that the commissioner would, “advise ministers and recommend a course of action from across a suite of potential intervention actions, calling on a pool of advisers to support them in discharging the role; and [would] propose options for new delivery models or partners and work with the governing body of the college or institution to deliver the outcomes”.
It was unclear whether the commissioner’s three further advisory posts that had originally been planned would be filled.
Marilyn Hawkins
Marilyn Hawkins, chair of the 157 Group for 2011/12, has run Marilyn Hawkins Ltd since April last year and as director of the company works with private partners on support strategies for the FE sector.
Previously, she was principal at Barnet and Southgate College, in North London, for just under a decade, before angering union bosses with a sizeable pay-off. Earlier experience includes a stint as executive director of the Learning and Skills Council for Lincolnshire and Rutland and as principal at Grimsby College.
Malcolm Cooper
Malcolm Cooper is managing director and owner of MCA Cooper associates, which advises FE providers on finance and general management issues. He is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and holds a Master of Business Administration Degree.
He has more than 30 years’ experience in various senior finance roles, including that of Finance Director at Calderdale College, in West Yorkshire.
David Williams
David Williams is a law graduate and chartered public finance accountant. He is currently a director at management consultancy W3 Advisory Limited, based in Southend-on-Sea. The firm offers specialist advise and services to the education, non-profit and social housing sectors.
Since 2000 he has been a director, then partner at chartered accountants Grant Thornton where he was responsible for the firm’s consultancy services in the education, social housing and charity sectors. He has also worked at multinational professional services firm Ernst & Young, as well as Basildon Council, in Essex.
Lynn Forrester-Walker is director of Quality4fe, which is part of the FE Solutions confederation and offers curriculum, quality and governance support to providers.
She has worked with the FE sector for more than 15 years. A former Tribal director, she is a qualified accountant who has worked with the sector as an internal, external and funding auditor, management consultant and has lead the delivery of government funded training programmes.
Maggie Galliers, who was the association president for 2011/12, was unanimously voted into the post and joins new interim principal John Hogg in a revamped leadership team at the Midland college.
“I am delighted as someone born, bred and resident in Coventry, to be part of the team working to ensure City College delivers high calibre education and training to its students,” she said.
Mrs Galliers was appointed a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to local and national FE in June 2009.
She was Leicester College principal for around a decade having taken up post in 2002. She led the college to two grade two inspection results, the most recent of which came in January 2011. It included an outstanding grade for leadership and management.
Mrs Galliers, also a former principal of Henley College Coventry, accepted the invitation to join the City College board from former chair Warwick Hall.
Mr Hall, governors’ chair since 2001 according to his LinkedIn profile, had overseen the college’s most recent Ofsted inspection that resulted in grade four (inadequate) results across each headline inspection field.
The report, published on April 23 following inspection the previous month, also gave grade fours throughout the main findings board, including apprenticeships and 19+ learning programmes.
The 8,000-learner college’s highest mark was a single grade two for teaching, learning and assessment on independent living and life skills.
“We have made it clear through the issue of a notice of concern, that an improvement plan that does not include fundamental changes to leadership and governance will not be acceptable,” said an agency spokesperson at the time.
Mr Hall had also been chair during a number of other previous poor Ofsted inspection results at the college, including two at grade three.
He was replaced by Mrs Galliers, who also sits on the board of the qualifications watchdog Ofqual, after he announced he would not to stand for re-election as chair.
“Maggie has a great deal of very valuable experience and is passionate about the sector and the difference it can make to young people, local communities and the economy,” said Mr Hogg, a former interim principal of City of Wolverhampton College.
“Her contribution will be invaluable as we work to make sure that all who come to study at City College get the education, support and guidance they need to realise their potential.”
Mr Hogg replaced the college’s former principal, Paul Taylor, who had been in post for 16 years.
After studying law at the University of Warwick, Mr Hogg completed a postgraduate certificate of education and then began his FE career as a law lecturer at Coventry Technical College before moving to Tile Hill College.
Following a period at Handsworth College, he moved to Middlesbrough College where he was promoted to head of faculty, vice principal and then principal in 2000.
“While turning the college around will be challenging I believe that by working together we will see a significant and sustained improvement relatively quickly,” said Mr Hogg of his appointment at City College.
Mr Hogg had also inherited a college recently branded inadequate by Ofsted when he started at Wolverhampton in August last year.
Within months of taking over he told staff there that he wanted to improve “long” success rates (a mixed measure of the number of learners who start and successfully finish their courses, lasting 24 weeks or more).
They had already improved from 69.3 per cent in 2009/10 to 77.6 per cent in 2011/12. At Coventry, they have slipped from 78.4 per cent in 2009/10 to 75.2 per cent in 2011/12. The national average for 2011/12 was 81.2 per cent.
Nevertheless, Mr Hogg’s full-time replacement at Wolverhampton, former South Staffordshire College deputy principal Mark Robertson, took over in May — while Ofsted inspectors were revisiting. Their reinspection resulted in an improved, grade three (requires improvement) rating.
Shane O’Connor: You’ve got a big job ahead of you — how are you feeling about it?
John Hogg: It’s the kind of job you think very carefully about before you do it. My position is I’ve come in as interim principal. I retired as a career principal three years ago. Since then I’ve been going into colleges in this position and this is the third — I was recently at City of Wolverhampton College and that was in a very similar situation; perhaps even worse, financially.
One of the reasons I took this wasn’t intellectual, it was emotional. I started my career in Coventry. I’ve got Coventry to thank for launching me on a career programme. I came here for my higher education, I was five years at Coventry Tech and five years at Tile Hill, so it’s a mixture of emotion and intellect that made me think about the job, but I didn’t think for very long.
SO’C: It sounds, from your experience, like you’re not going to be surprised by what you see — you’ll have seen most of it before.
JH: Every college is the same and every college is different, but it’s not people that cause colleges to have problems — it’s usually the systems. It’s usually the system of accountability, where people are a bit woolly about what their responsibilities and accountabilities are. So one of my key tasks is to create a structure that shows definitive accountability from the governing body, through me, right through the management team and down to every level in the organisation, so that people absolutely know what they have to do, what the targets are and then allow them to get on with it.
SO’C: But it could be people too couldn’t it? Because they could have those clearly defined responsibilities and either can’t step up to the mark or won’t step up to the mark.
JH: That can happen and that has to be dealt with as well. I guess what I’m really saying is I feel this side of things is being judgemental and I don’t want to make judgements about the past or people based on the past, but you have to use judgement to inform the future. There has to be some sort of redemptive position in this as well to enable people who haven’t had clear responsibilities to step up to the mark and that’s what we’re doing.
SO’C: Do you think we worry about too much? The aftermath in these situations can be that we want to blame someone.
JH: Absolutely — I experienced that in another college and if I’d taken every stakeholder’s advice, by the end of the first week I’d have been left sitting in an office with tumbleweed blowing through; not having a clue where I was, who knew what or what the history was, so you have to continue the thread that existed. It’s a complex, but simple thing we have to do.
SO’C: How long do you have before people’s patience runs out?
JH: Not very long — we will have a monitoring visit from Ofsted in the next couple of months and that will make judgements about the distance travelled since March. So one of my first tasks is to do an analysis of what distance have we travelled and inevitably in colleges like this, because of the vacuum that’s created and the sort of ‘who’s to blame for this’ ethos, there’s a slight period of dysfunctionalism, but we’ve got it back on track and we’ve got to move inexorably to keep it on track.
The monitoring visit will be a bit of a curate’s egg I would imagine, but the objective is to get the college to the next stage of its development by the date of the next inspection, which could be any time from February onwards. And that’s my immediate task.
SO’C: What kind of things are you going to need to do?
JH: The college is not in a necessarily weak financial position compared to the sector. No college is in a strong financial position nowadays … if we’re in the public sector we’re facing cuts. It’s about creating a new strategic plan; to create a curriculum plan that actually focuses on the people here. That’s really, really important for the college, because a lot of colleges can gradually and unconsciously lose their way over the years by concentrating on overseas markets — on a product range that they’re not really mandated to undertake.
What we’re doing, and what we’re doing with the governing body, is to say: ‘let’s get back to basics’. And the core stuff is to actually serve the people of Coventry, and if we don’t serve them we’re letting them down, and if we do serve them well than that’s what we’re here for. So it’s simplifying — it’s back to basics. It’s getting a structure that allows accountability, authority and autonomy, to a certain extent, to allow people to actually drive it and to give people back the passion.
These are youngsters in the main in Coventry and it sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s a sacred responsibility and every time we lose a student we fail, so it’s about getting that message across; it’s about renewing the hunger; it’s about becoming offensive in the nicest possible way rather than being defensive about the past. Let’s get offensive about the future — that’s the culture we need to bring in.
Do FE lecturers need central government-defined teaching qualifications? The government appears of the view they don’t and is doing away with the requirement. Ian Pryce puts the argument for self-determination.
In the last few weeks many well-respected leaders within our sector — all of whom I admire greatly — have expressed concern at the removal of the legislative requirement that colleges use only professionally-qualified teachers.
Professional qualifications are something to be proud of; they imply a degree of autonomy from one’s immediate employer and, even more so, from government. They also imply a salary-premium, but one easily offset by the real benefits such staff bring to an organisation — professionals are expensive because they’re worth it.
When FE colleges became independent, they quickly realised the importance of professionally qualified finance staff, but it was still common to find teachers or unqualified staff managing HR or Estates.
Twenty years on and the sector enjoys highly-qualified support staff in human resources, marketing, IT and estates. Professionalism has triumphed without legislation.
Here is the golden opportunity for our excellent FE teaching staff to demonstrate their true worth
Why do we therefore fear the reverse will apply with our core purpose of teaching and learning?
Many say it will happen due to cost pressures. They think principals who support professional qualifications would have to swallow their principles in the face of funding cuts and take on cheap unqualified labour to balance the books.
Others say some employers simply don’t value professional teachers, and employ them only because of the legal requirement.
If cost was an issue then we would not have seen the rise of expensive support professionals. Is it therefore the case that teachers feel they will not be able to persuade employers that the professional premium is more than offset by their quality and productivity?
If you have the crutch of legislation you never need to make that case, employers have no choice. Indeed, if there are employers who employ qualified teachers only for legal reasons, their teachers are likely to be resented as a financial burden, and unlikely to be supported or developed.
Surely, here is the golden opportunity for our excellent FE teaching staff to demonstrate their true worth.
Let’s begin a full debate about professionalism, professional qualifications and the benefits they bring. It will raise the quality of debate about resources.
As a principal, if I saw teaching as just a commodity, I would simply procure it at the cheapest rate, there would be no place for high-cost professionally-qualified staff.
But who sees teaching as a commodity? I want professional teachers because they need less supervision, can contribute to curriculum design and strategy, get better results etc.
My own experience is that unqualified staff are a false economy even though they may be equally enthusiastic and committed.
However, I also accept there may be minor parts of some programmes of study where the additional costs are not justified.
I have always wanted teachers to own their own profession, not employers, not government.
To organise ourselves in a cost-effective way is what an independent, mature FE sector should want
Organisations that are given the precious responsibility of teaching our young people are licensed and inspected, we have freedom but high accountability.
I find it hard to see how a teaching profession owned by teachers wouldn’t be able to persuade employers of their value.
We may even conclude certain activities are best not done by expensive qualified professionals, so increasing the premium that can be extracted for professional qualifications.
Professional accountants saw their salaries in the public and private sectors rocket as they decided to focus on high value activity and allowed an equally professional, but more supervised technician-qualified class to take care of the less high value work (and the technicians do that work better, too).
Freedom to determine what professionalism means, to define professional qualifications, and to organise ourselves in a cost-effective way is what an independent, mature FE sector should want.
It is the only feasible route (despite the risks that I agree exist) to a future where professionally-qualified teachers are properly and better rewarded for delivering high value to their employers, students and communities.
Sector leaders have expressed “deep concerns” over news FE trainers will no longer need a teacher training qualification from next month.
The Further Education Teachers’ (England) Regulations 2007 requirement for teaching qualifications is being scrapped under new legislation published by the government on August 9.
Representatives of the Institute for Learning (IfL), the University and College Union (UCU) and the National Union of Students’ (NUS) all spoke out after the IfL published a 48-page booklet today: Should Teaching Qualifications be Left to Chance?
Toni Fazaeli, IfL chief executive, said: “We are deeply concerned about the possible impact of removing the need for teachers in our sector to have teaching qualifications, given their responsibility to serve a vast and diverse group of young and adult learners, including some of the most vulnerable people in society.
“We believe that tomorrow’s engineers, accountants, technicians, mechanics, plumbers, chefs and healthcare workers should be taught by teachers who know their specialist subject well and have been through initial teacher training to ensure that they have the right teaching skills too.”
Barry Lovejoy, UCU’s head of further education, said the union would continue to push the government to ensure that newly-appointed lecturers had to have teaching qualifications.
“We are disappointed that the government appears to believe it is acceptable for lecturers to teach students without having a recognised qualification,” he said.
“We shall be pressing the case for all lecturers in our colleges to remain fully-qualified professionals.”
The IfL publication includes 14 articles which further speak out against the move, from contributors including Norman Crowther, national official for post 16 education at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers; Jayne Stigger, head of maths and science at North East Surrey College of Technology; Sue Rimmer, principal at South Thames College; and, Mike Hopkins, principal at Middlesbrough College.
Joe Vinson, vice-president (further education) of the NUS and also a contributor to the publication, said: “Further education supports so many different types of students, with different backgrounds, different levels of ability and different needs.
“To have someone at the front of a workshop or classroom with no quantifiable or standardised way of supporting a diverse group of students is a disservice to the students themselves, the college and the community they serve.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said the Education and Training Foundation was “in place and developing a firm foundation for the self-regulation of the profession”.
“The foundation’s aim is to develop a well-qualified, effective and up-to-date professional workforce, supported by good leadership, management and governance,” he said.
“It will define and promote professionalism in the sector and ensure the availability, scope and quality of initial teacher training. It is for individual institutions to decide what teaching qualifications are appropriate for their particular situation.”
He added: “The highest quality of teaching is paramount to the success of each college and we trust FE institutions to employ those they believe to be best qualified for the job.”
Bosses of the FE sector’s new self-improvement body, the Education and Training Foundation, have been warned of “sycophantic nepotism” after it emerged that no advertising had taken place for senior roles.
The foundation’s chair and chief executive posts are currently publicly on offer, but interim posts, including director of contracting and procurement, look likely to be filled without having been advertised.
The body, formerly known as the FE Guild, is seen as replacement for the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS), from which a number of staff have moved via Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment), or TUPE.
And foundation bosses said they had been seeking the “best possible candidates” for posts having approached sector bodies and recruitment agencies for candidates.
However, FE Week understands that no public advertising for some key posts took place. The situation has drawn warning from FE commentators against appointments without advertising.
Jayne Stigger, head of maths and science at North East Surrey College Of Technology, said: “This is a tactic sometimes used by colleges when they already have a preferred internal candidate and using it doesn’t help change the negative perception of ‘jobs for the boys’ and political appointments, rather than best person for the role. There is a danger of giving the impression of sycophantic nepotism.
“If FE truly is at the heart of the foundation, then as wide a range of candidates as possible should be sought and interviewed.”
Meanwhile, the chair of governors at one college in the north of England, who did not wish to be named, said: “The foundation has a pivotal role ensuring FE has the leadership, governance and workforce fit for the future and any appointments process should be transparent and accountable.
“The sector needs a fresh perspective not more of the same.”
Foundation interim chair Sir Geoff Hall, former principal and chief executive of New College Nottingham and chair of the Information Authority, said: “The foundation board at its meeting on August 1 — the first day of the new organisation — agreed the delivery plan for 2013/14.
“To ensure a good start was made to achieving the plan, and given only a handful of staff TUPE’d across from LSIS, the board accepted the need to fill vacant posts initially through a combination of interim appointees and secondees.
“We therefore approached four interim agencies to help us find suitable candidates who were immediately available.
“We asked them to come back to us with prospective candidates within a week which is a normal timescale when recruiting for interim positions with an immediate start date.
“Because those agencies mainly serve colleges, we also shared the specifications with, for example, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers [AELP] to see if there were available staff.”
Sir Geoff, who was also national director of the Further Education Funding Council/Learning and Skills Council, added: “Our chair and chief executive posts are currently out to advertisement in the usual way.”
FE Week was alerted to foundation roles and the lack of advertising after the AELP encouraged members to apply — but after the closing date.
Their weekly newsletter was sent out on Tuesday, August 13, directing members to a news page on their website containing links to the job pack.
Both job packs were posted on the deadline day of Friday, August 9. The AELP declined to comment, but FE Week understands it received the job pack from the foundation on Thursday, August 8.
Foundation lead for professional learning [a role also not advertised] Sue Dutton, a former deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: “The foundation will be advertising its fixed term contracts in the second week of September for its establishment posts.
“We will be using a variety of media to ensure the fullest range of coverage and audiences within both the FE sector and in the wider community of education and training.
“We have some immediate staffing needs to cover the interim work of the foundation until the established posts can be recruited and have, therefore, used the services of four recruitment agencies well-known to the sector in order to attract the best possible candidates who are immediately available.
The former interim cheif executive of the now defunct Lifelong Learning UK added: “All candidates for both interim and substantive roles will be subject to a competitive recruitment process.”
The number of apprenticeships lasting less than a year has fallen “dramatically” after they were outlawed over fears about the quality of short-term programmes.
They fell from 43 per cent (224,000) of the total number of apprenticeship starts in 2011/12, to just 8 per cent (28,000) for the first nine months of the academic year.
The figures were obtained from the Skills Funding Agency by FE Week under the Freedom of Information Act.
A spokesperson from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), said: “It is our priority to ensure that apprenticeships are of sufficient duration to deliver the high quality training apprentices and businesses need.
“Although this is provisional data, it is good news that the proportion of short apprenticeships has fallen dramatically.
“Under the current rules there will always be a small number of apprenticeships lasting less than a year, because we allow some flexibility for adult apprentices who have relevant prior learning.”
There were 17,600 intermediate level apprenticeships of less than a year’s duration last year, among which the 19 to 24 age group saw the most at 7,600.
There were 10,300 short-term advanced level apprenticeships, with the 25+ age group the largest at 5,300. And there were 200 among higher apprenticeships, shared equally between the 19 to 24 and 25+ age groups.
David Way, National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) chief operating officer, said at the time: “We need to ensure that all apprenticeships are high quality.
“By ensuring they last between one and four years, we are not only giving employers what they say they want but also giving confidence back to everyone who has questioned the growth in shorter apprenticeships.”
The BIS Select Committee “supported” the minimum duration rule, but said it should be monitored so that, for example, talented learners did not feel held back if they felt able to complete the programme sooner.
However, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers was opposed to the rule and has continued to argue for exceptions in light of this year’s fall in short-term apprenticeships.
An association spokesperson told FE Week: “Employers and providers have down the years regularly shown that they are very flexible in adapting to rule changes in skills programmes, so the figures are hardly a surprise.
“We maintain the long-standing position though, that exceptional candidates should be allowed to complete an apprenticeship in less than a year if it is in the interests of both the employer and the learner.
“The select committee heard some evidence from employers that this was a reasonable stance and we should remember that apprenticeship frameworks are employer-owned.
“Furthermore, longer programme durations do not automatically mean an improvement in quality as there are a host of other factors which come into consideration as well.
“The committee was therefore right to recommend that the impact of the rule changes should be closely monitored to ensure that talented and older apprentices with appropriate work experience are not dissuaded from joining the programme.”
