Equine students in Somerset are champing at the bit to help their lecturer go for gold in an international competition.
Norton Radstock College lecturer Dawn Watkins is managing Britain’s tentpegging world cup team and has enlisted her students to stage a training event at the HorseWorld horse sanctuary in Bristol as part of their assessment.
Tentpegging involves galloping in a straight line with a sword or lance to hit wooden tent pegs on the floor.
Dawn said: “In their first week the students managed to get sponsorship from leading equestrian brand Mark Todd Clothing and have other companies expressing an interest.
“It is a discipline which none of them are familiar with so it is letting them learn about another sphere within the equine industry.
“They are going to have to organise the whole event including providing information for the riders, health and safety at the yard and will be doing all the ground work. They have been working really hard and have real enthusiasm.”
In last year’s world cup, the British team won silver, and Dawn is hoping this year, with her students’ help, they will carry away a gold.
Performance and production students from Cheshire are sharing the spotlight with one of the county’s finest stately homes as they transform it into a theatre.
More than 60 young people from Priestley College will produce contemporary dance and live music in different rooms of Arley Hall, near Northwich, on Thursday, February 14.
Audience members will be able to choose what they see as they wander between the rooms of the house, with performances taking place in the library, dining hall and up the ornate staircase.
Student Jess Collins, 17, said: “It is an amazing set in itself. We’re hoping to bring it to life with some great music and performances.”
The dances have been specially-choreographed for the event by performing arts students and production students have taken responsibility for managing and marketing the event.
Garry Fortune, general manager of the hall, which is owned by Lord and Lady Ashbrook, said: “We’ve not seen anything like this at Arley before and it will be a unique way to for people to see the hall.”
Youngsters who found their way into education, employment or training came in for praise from their local mayor.
Warrington’s Councillor Steve Wright congratulated the students, who had participated in the Xpand Project at Warrington Collegiate.
And students who studied photography put their skills into practice to record the evening.
The project aims to help young people back into education and improve their job prospects by tailoring courses to their needs and interests.
Zoe Elvin, 18 and from Orford, said: “I am doing the film and photography course which has been a lot of fun and I have learned a lot. I now have plans to carry on with this and hopefully turn it into a career.”
Many students are now looking to build on their success and have enrolled on courses at the college.
Project leader Pam Barrett said: “Many of these students face challenges in their own lives and to overcome these and gain a qualification is a fantastic achievement.”
Five students have had their “eye-catching” logo designs shortlisted in a competition to find the best seal of approval for providers.
The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) launched a contest for FE students to produce a graphic mark that best reflected “chartered status”, a concept being developed by the government that would recognise top FE providers.
FE Minister Matthew Hancock will pick a winner from six designs created by Paayal Makdani, Jess Daly, Lisa Cassidy, Mimi Jones and Daniel Mountford, who had two entries selected.
“I couldn’t believe it and was shocked and surprised to be shortlisted, especially as it was a national competition,” said graphic design student Daniel, 21 and from Newcastle-under-Lyme College.
“Obviously as a design student it’s your ultimate aim to get your work out there and this is a great opportunity for that.”
Daniel told FE Week he developed his blueprints over the course of a week and his favourite of the two was his turning arrow logo as he believed it best answered the brief which specified entries should reflect the theme of “moving forward”.
Attracting around 130 entries, the competition was shortlisted by a judging panel made up of Susan Pember, director of FE and skills Investment at BIS, Joy Mercer, Association of Colleges policy director, Gemma Painter, NUS head of FE, Andy Gannon, 157 Group director of policy, PR and research, and Stephen Ram Kissun, marketing and membership manager of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers.
Having students involved is important and could be powerful”
Mr Gannon said: “The logo needs to be clear and easy to recognise, while reflecting achievement and positive forward movement.
“It was hard to choose between the many designs submitted, but any of the shortlisted ones has the potential to represent something good for colleges and providers to be proud of.”
The winning designer picks up an iPad and the chance their emblem could represent the chartered status brand.
Chris Thompson, deputy director for performance management at BIS, said: “We were absolutely delighted with the response.
“Students will be the main customers for the chartered status so we wanted something they could identify with — having them involved is important and could be powerful.
“We wanted something eye-catching that represented the idea of movement and were pleased with how well the students took this on-board.”
Mr Hancock said the chartered status mark of quality was being developed as a “beacon to motivate improvement” and to “publicly mark success” so people knew a college was “excellent”.
In documents about the development of the scheme BIS said the FE sector would “take ownership” of the chartered status process after around three years.
Providers would apply for chartered status and if they met certain criteria such as showing strong leadership and management and having excellent feedback from learners as well a programme of community activity endorsed by Local Enterprise Partnerships, they could use the term in reference to their title.
BIS put out a consultation on the chartered status concept attracting 50 responses described by Mr Thompson as “constructive and positive”.
All of the shortlisted entries have a lot of potential but, for me, the clear leader is Daniel Mountford’s turning arrow concept.
This logo best meets the requirements of the brief for a forward–moving and instantly recognisable design.
Arrows usually represent movement forwards and upwards, evoking aspiration — perfect for a logo used to distinguish training providers with chartered status from those without.
The transparency used in the logo gives it a dynamic feel and a sense of depth, creating an eye-catching brand. The simple, one–colour design makes the logo versatile and functional. This kind of brand will be used in a variety of applications and Daniel, has clearly taken this into consideration when planning the design.
That’s not to say the concept is perfect. One criticism is that the typography that sits alongside the mark could use a little care and attention, perhaps taking cues from Lisa Cassidy and Mimi Jones. Both their designs use friendlier fonts with a little more character.
Although colours are easy to change and are usually left until last in a project like this, it would have been nice to see Daniel’s arrow concept in a few other colour options — something a little lighter and brighter perhaps, especially in a sector with a bit too much blue and grey.
For young designers it’s impressive just to get this far so well done to all the shortlisted contestants and may the best brand win.
On top of an iPad, the competition winner will spend a day (fully paid) working with Dan Duke at theFE Week offices.
Fifteen Hull College students will be offered supported internships in industries they want to work in through a pilot scheme for vulnerable students and those with learning difficulties and disabilities.
The scheme will combine real life experience in placements of students’ choice with classroom-based study towards an OCN City & Guilds qualification in work skills.
Alex Edmonds, 19, who starts his internship this month, said: “I felt excited when I heard about the course, because I wanted a way to get into sports coaching, but I wasn’t sure how to do it. Now I’m going to Soccer Sensations and I can’t wait, I feel really good about it.”
If the course is successful when the six-month internships end, similar schemes could be implemented nationally.
Claire Guynan, supported internship coordinator at Hull, said: “The pilot scheme offers a great balance between time with an employer and time in the college and because the students are vulnerable, or have additional learning support needs it’s an opportunity they might not otherwise
have had.”
A damning Education Select Committee report on the quality of careers guidance at schools, prompted FE Week editor Nick Linford to issue a rallying call for colleges to up their game in promoting their FE offer. David Walrond, who addressed the committee, has responded, explaining why he thinks the emphasis should remain on improving the advice given out by schools.
An element of the cheerfully provocative is often refreshing and, like all caricatures, Nick Linford’s FE Week editor’s column had a grain of truth in it — some colleges really are too prone to wishful thinking and even a little self-pity.
However, on the substantive points the piece gets it wrong.
First, it conflates “offering impartial careers advice” (a duty) with “promoting the competition” (an idiocy, clearly). They are two completely different things.
I do expect publicly-financed schools, charged with a public duty, to do the former. So does parliament. I suspect FE Week does, too.
I do agree schools would probably be very unlikely indeed to do the latter — but then I don’t know anyone in their right mind who expects that of them.
The overwhelming evidence — from AoC surveys and much other research that has emanated from, for example, Careers England, the recent Commons Select Committee and from colleges themselves — is that huge numbers of learners in 11 to 18 schools are denied access to, and have very little understanding of, the full range of post-16 options on offer to them, and that very many 11 to 18 schools are instrumental in that.
The consequences are not just tough luck for a few whingeing colleges who simply need to roll with the punches, wise up and spend up on the marketing front.
The consequence is a situation that is completely unacceptable — one that perpetuates major inequalities of opportunity, and damages both the well-being and life chances of those individuals who then make wrong choices.
If you find that approach sentimental, then focus instead on the damage to the economy — potentially up to £28bn worth of damage, as reported elsewhere in FE Week [as stated to MPs by Dr Deirdre Hughes, chair of the National Careers Council].
Many of the proposed “new” alternative marketing tactics for colleges are remedial and compensatory.
They are already old, tired, and frankly a bit desperate.
Careers advice is a serious business, not a marketing wheeze”
Prospectuses and application forms just get binned. Local radio jingles cheerfully with the general merits of colleges.
Buses carry (almost routinely now) short marketing slogans and happy student faces. Radio and buses do not and cannot carry data on progression, work-placement and destinations, careers advice, course details.
Social media has some real potential for colleges including, of course, supporting teaching, training and learning (that stuff, it should be remembered, colleges do when they are not marketing, campaigning or wrestling with the latest funding cuts).
However, trying to interrupt student discussions on social media with serious careers guidance and work placement chat is viewed by most students as akin to your dad turning up at a party and saying ‘it’s home time’.
Independent and impartial careers advice about what and where to study post-16 is an absolute entitlement. It is a serious business, not a marketing wheeze.
In its absence, only those from families with existing social and cultural capital get to make the right choices.
The foolishness and injustice of this are now compounded by the new set of government post-16 performance tables, supposedly provided for young people to assist them in their choices, but which in reality ignore or devalue vocational qualifications, incentivise the delivery of the narrowest curriculum, and mask the underperformance of many school sixth forms.
We certainly have a post-16 market with much competition and more choice.
Colleges will be more than at home in this environment, providing that market is a genuinely open one, properly regulated, and informed by reliable information and performance data about all the different providers.
We simply do not have those things. The FE sector needs to fight for them. So does FE Week.
David Walrond, principal at Truro and Penwith College, Cornwall
“I was once depicted as a lion,” beams former education secretary Lord Baker on his appearances in satire, most notably on TV show Spitting Image.
“Occasionally I appeared as an eagle, then an asp, a snail and of course a slug, but my very favourite was as a Cheshire cat because as the cat disappeared, all that was left was a smile and I was always seen as a very cheerful minister.
“It doesn’t matter, though, you haven’t got to be worried how you’re going to be caricatured — strong personalities don’t worry about that.”
Born in Newport, South Wales, the son of a civil servant, Lord Baker was educated at the former Hampton Grammar School and graduated from Oxford with a law degree before carrying out National Service.
He worked for Royal Dutch Shell before being elected a member of Parliament in 1968, eventually becoming secretary of state for education in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet.
Now, aged 78, the father of the national curriculum, Sats, league tables, as well as grant-maintained schools and city technology colleges has pushed the idea for another huge educational reform.
The Tory grandee has championed specialisation at the age of 14 in his latest book, 14-18: A Vision for Secondary Education. Primary school should end at nine followed by a stint at middle school before assessment at 14 when he believes the national curriculum should end and instead one of four pathways should be taken in technical, academic, arts and sports or a “career course”, specialising in areas such as plumbing and catering.
So why does he feel so strongly about vocational opportunities?
“I always enjoyed practical learning,” says the grandfather-of-six.
“I went to a good grammar school but all I remember is two hours of carpentry we had each week and I think I could still just about manage making a dove tail joint now.
“Perhaps it’s in my blood — my grandfather was a carpenter and my father liked making things with his hands. I really believe young people can learn while doing things and working together as a team — if you’re just sat in a class studying for exams you’re not really going to learn that much.”
But why has the retired politician laid out his ideas now 20 years after leaving frontline politics?
“I’ve always hankered for a change at 14. You’ve got to ask yourself why are there exams at 11 which is too young, and why 16? When I was education secretary I changed so much I couldn’t change that as well, I really couldn’t.
Margaret Thatcher was vilified, but she couldn’t care a fig for it”
“Five years ago my old friend Ron Dearing and I both decided the one thing missing was technical schools — we had them in 1945, so we reinvented a model which we then sold to Lord Adonis [the then education minister for Labour].”
University technical colleges (UTCs) were born and with five already open, 12 due to open this year, 15 in 2014, and a further 21 in the pipeline, they are growing rapidly.
“The JCB academy in Stafford did not have a single not in employment or education (NEET) leaver last year,” he says, claiming their winning formula is an employer-led and university-supported approach that provides a working day from 8.30am to 5pm for five eight-week terms. The terms mean that over a four-year period the students gain an extra teaching year.
This instils a “sense of maturity” in students who are dressed for the boardroom and which, he says, will see “truancy and disruption virtually disappear”.
“I don’t think I have much more of a career ahead at my age, but I hope by introducing this book and the UTC movement I have changed things significantly for the better,” he says.
“I thought that when I brought in the changes in the 80s but there’s no question about that as the national curriculum, testing and league tables, have led to others following on and improving it further.
“I really think I’m trying to chart a different way forward for millions of our young people. I hope I’ve shown people the way it can go and then it’s up to others to pick up the baton and continue.”
Despite his fight for a practical education Lord Baker, who is married to Mary and has three grown-up children (two daughters and a son), has proved himself as more an academic with books published on history and satire.
“I’ve always loved English and it’s enriched my life — you don’t just have to think of a job, it should be about all the things that make a happy life,” he says.
“The best teachers pass on the love of their subject like a virus, they inject it into you. It doesn’t matter what subject it is and I was lucky enough to have two teachers who did that in English and history — they inspired me and generated in me an enormous love of the subject.”
He says his lifelong passion for education came from within his family with an Irish grandmother, his wife, and several aunts and great aunts all working as teachers.
Photo by ITV/ Rex features
“I think the Baker family rose up through the education ladder,” he says.
“All my family love reading and were very well educated — all my children went to universities — Scottish universities like their mother. They were more on the artistic and creative side.”
Reflecting on his heyday in politics he says: “I was very lucky to be one of the generation at the high table of politics in the 1980s.
“It was an incredible decade, dominated by Margaret Thatcher. She changed everything — she saved Great Britain from decline and falling down. She transformed the national spirit, bought about privatisation, sold off council houses, approved education reforms, won the Falklands. It was a wonderful time to be in politics- the most exciting time since the war.
“I’d liked to have served in Churchill’s cabinet during the war but it was also wonderful to serve in Margaret’s cabinet.”
Harking back to Spitting Image’s rubber parody puppets of the 1980s, he reflects: “Margaret Thatcher was vilified, but she couldn’t care a fig for it — it didn’t matter.
“Others that did worry like John Major and David Steel let it eat into their soul but you mustn’t let that happen — you can’t let the cartoonist win and that won’t happen if you’re confident on what you’ve done, your character and the way you behave.”
Despite turning on the popular Sunday night show for its humour in the 1990s, when he branded it “cruel,” Lord Baker’s love of political satire lives on in his collection 18th and 19th Century caricatures.
“I love satire and every politician would love to appear in a cartoon. Most MPs in the House of Commons today will probably never appear in a national cartoon because they haven’t arrived,” he says.
“Once you’ve appeared in a cartoon nationally, you’ve arrived.”
It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
What did you want to be when you were younger?
Older
What do you do to switch off from work?
I like to go to the theatre and cinema. I read and write and like spending time with my wife and family but I don’t relax too much — you will fall off the perch.
If you could invite anyone to a dinner party, living or dead, who would it be?
Mary, my wife, Charles Dickens, Sydney Smith, Ted Hughes, Queen Elizabeth I and Josiah Wedgwood. And Winston Chruchill, but he would come for lunch
Tough new rules forcing prime contractors to go public with information on their deals with providers are to be introduced by the Skills Funding Agency. See paragraphs 342 to 346 on pages 79 to 81 in the Funding Rules 2013/14.
Regulations that will come into force from August will require primes to publish details of their subcontracting arrangements online.
The details, “as a minimum,” will include the management fee charged by the prime, the services offered for the management fee and, where relevant, the reasons behind any differences in management fees.
An agency spokesperson said: “Since publishing last year’s rules, we have been consulting the sector on how we ensure subcontracting is only undertaken where it is of direct benefit to learners and employers.
“Working closely with representatives from across the sector we have sought to strengthen the freedoms of providers in managing healthy supply chains.
“However, in doing so we have made clear in the new funding rules, the controls and assurances we expect providers to have in place.”
The new rules will be introduced less than a year after an Ofsted probe uncovered primes charging management fees “as a way of generating income for doing little work”.
The Ensuring Quality in Apprenticeships report highlighted how subcontractors felt they were getting “poor value for money” from management fees and revealed many primes were overcharging according to agency guidance.
We support the idea that all providers are required to be open about how they determine what amount of funding they retain”
And in June last year, FE Week told how primes appeared to take an average management fee of 23 per cent. Research from the agency suggested primes charged subcontractors more than £175m, based on allocations worth almost £760m.
But all deals could come under public scrutiny with the new rules dictating their details are published on a prime’s website. The rules will also require primes to outline the reason for subcontracting and explain how the move will benefit the quality of teaching and learning.
The move toward openness was supported by the Association of Colleges (AoC), whose senior skills policy manager, Teresa Frith, said: “We support the idea that all providers are required to be open about how they determine what amount of funding they retain and full disclosure of what they have retained.
“This type of requirement will be of no consequence to most providers, who will probably find that they can continue sub-contracting business as usual.”
She added: “In broader terms it must be remembered that colleges retain funds for a wide range of reasons, not simply managing sub-contractors. There can be other services provided such as sourcing students or delivering programme elements.”
The new rules also “highly recommend” providers refer to the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) and AoC-developed Common Accord, and the Learning and Skills Improvement Service’s good practice guide on supply chain management.
The accord and the good practice guide aim to tackle inadequate due diligence checks by primes and whether their management fee represents value for money.
Graham Hoyle, AELP chief executive, said: “I am confident the accord and the good practice guide will help providers and colleges minimise the risk within supply chains, ensuring they offer high-quality provision for employers and learners.
“If the good practice exemplified in the guide is embedded in supply chains throughout the post-16 learning and skills sector, then the government and its agencies can be confident they are getting good value from the public purse.”
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Editorial : Deals to go online
Providers want freedoms and flexibilities to subcontract their funding.
They want to be trusted to self-regulate the management of ‘high-risk’ provision.
The SFA has said ‘deal, but only if you publish who, what, where, why and how much’. Now that’s transparency.
If ever there was a carrot and stick approach to FE policy, then this is it.
It’s also very experimental, and some may object to publishing commercially sensitive information.
Importantly however, the AoC and AELP support the new rules, so it’s now up to providers to adhere to them.
Aside from greater transparency over management fees, perhaps the most important thing to be published on websites is ‘why subcontract?’.
How many would say: ‘We subcontract to protect our SFA allocation’?
Big changes in the sector mean that FE is being challenged to meet new aspirations, but, says Lynne Sedgmore, if the sector takes its opportunity then further education could gain a reputation that it has never had before.
I am excited about speaking at the Education Innovation conference next month and look forward to robust debate.
From the FE Guild to radical changes in study programmes, from international growth to strategic leadership in our communities, we as a sector are being challenged and encouraged to come up with detailed answers and innovative solutions to broad aspirations being set out by the Coalition.
If we choose to grasp the nettle, then it seems to me the role, mission and reputation of FE within our society as a whole could be enhanced in a way we have never before known.
Among the many opportunities being offered up, there is one we must respond to with particular vigour.
I am talking about the opportunity of genuinely repositioning vocational learning as both worthwhile and vital to all — as important as academic study, and of ensuring that the unique skills of FE staff engaged in vocational teaching can influence for the better others in the educational world.
The work of the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning is already doing much to set out the very broad range of skills required of individuals — both teachers and learners — in order for vocational education to succeed.
They confirm the important message that teachers must be dual professionals — equally skilled in pedagogy and industry awareness — able to command respect and plan learning in a way that encourages teamwork and complex problem-solving.
College staff are also talking on some of the biggest societal leadership challenges, through engagement with Local Enterprise Partnerships and employer ownership pilots and through work with local communities.
As the post-Heseltine agenda focuses on localism and devolved training, those in colleges must raise their game to ensure they are seen as vital hubs for their communities and can retain vital skills funding.
We can demonstrate the importance of FE colleges by celebrating our successes — just look at average college success rates and how the benchmarks have risen.
Look at the work of the Gazelle Group and the innovative ways in which entrepreneurship is being encouraged and developed among students.
Look at the fact that 80 per cent of University Technical College applications have an FE college as the main driving force behind them.
And look at colleges like Leeds and Bristol who are driving forces in the whole process of local economic planning, but who have sometimes had to fight to get a voice at the table.
I am not being complacent — we know we have a lot to do to bring the teaching of all up to the level of the most outstanding, but as a sector we are fully engaged in that work.
Colleges are investing heavily in quality improvement, organisations such as the 157 Group are using academic research to proffer theories and practices of continuing professional development that will enable outstanding teaching to thrive and nationally developments such as the Leadership Exchange and the work of the Gazelle Group are providing an example for all to follow.
Technology is essential. FE teachers are not only embracing new devices, but actively engaging with innovative delivery models — from ‘flipping’ the classroom or workshop to developing MOOCs (massive online open courses, for the uninitiated).
The cutting-edge equipment on offer in most FE settings is the envy of many and every day innovative teachers are finding new and exciting ways to engage with not just industry-specific technology but with this technology — to bring relevance to their learners for whom the tablet and the smart phone are an extension of their very selves.
But what do we need to do differently on technology?
I have been in employment for long enough to know that adaptability to new technology is among the most important skills you need to have.
Vocational teaching and learning and FE colleges really are at the forefront of the country’s battle to develop the skills to compete in a global economy.
Lynne Sedgmore, executive director of the 157 Group
Lynne Sedgmore will be taking part in a debate, chaired by FE Week’s Nick Linford, on the future of FE at the Education Innovation conference and exhibition at Manchester Central on March 8. To register, visit: www.educationinnovation.co.uk
