Latest news from FE Week

The government has declined to rule out a new GCSE “stepping stone” qualification for struggling apprentices.

The Department for Education (DfE) last month said new English and maths GCSEs would be incorporated into apprenticeships from 2017.

They are set to replace functional skills, which will be scrapped.

But FE leaders warned that vocational learners who couldn’t get GCSE grades C or above might struggle if they faced resitting the same exams to pass apprenticeships.

They have called for an interim qualification which, it was claimed, would boost confidence and knowledge, and improve the chances of passing full GCSEs.

A DfE spokesperson told FE Week: “No decision has been taken on this.”

She added: “It is our ambition that once the reformed GCSEs are implemented, all apprentices will use GCSEs rather than functional skills to meet the English and maths requirements in apprenticeships.”

The Association of Colleges called for stepping stone qualifications in a consultation published last month on the new GCSEs.

Senior policy manager Teresa Frith told FE Week she was pleased to hear the association’s suggestion had not been ruled out.

She said: “There is an opportunity here we will be pursuing to make sure new-look GCSEs meet the needs of apprentices and other students.

“We would certainly not support any system that prevented a young person from accessing an apprenticeship based solely on their ability in maths and English.”

Carol Snape, chief executive of awarding body OCN Eastern Region, said: “If the Prime Minister’s aim that everyone should either go to university or an apprenticeship is to be achieved, it is vital the design of the new apprenticeships includes stepping stone qualifications.

“With good use of bite-sized qualifications, learners can gain formal recognition as they

 progress towards, ultimately, taking their GCSE.”

Stewart Segal (pictured), chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: “Although our submission to the consultation [on the new GCSEs] did not specifically call for ‘stepping stone’ qualifications, we called for flexibility and expressed concerns about single exam and terminal assessment not suiting all candidates.

“We would also want to keep functional skills until the content, assessment strategy and flexibility of exam structure is appropriate for the work place.”

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has scrapped the Information Authority (IA) board.

It was announced on November 11 that decision making on what FE and skills data should be collected would shift to senior figures at BIS and the Skills Funding Agency (SFA), rendering the IA board redundant.

But sector leaders have told of their concerns that they were not consulted about the move.

Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: “It would have been helpful to have consulted the sector before this decision was made, but simplification to the decision-making structure is welcome.

“It is vital that all the stakeholders in the sector have a significant input to the decision-making process, so we can be reasonably confident the sector as a whole will benefit.”

A BIS statement on the IA website said Mike Keoghan, director of vocational education at BIS, and Kim Thorneywork, interim chief executive of the SFA, would instead decide on sector data collection.

Support is to be provided by a new Technical Group of government statisticians.

“To further the general simplification in vocational education policy, it has been decided that data collection decisions should be brought within the department and the IA board should be abolished,” read the statement.

The new governance structure aims to ensure that decision-making continues to be informed by the sector.”

Julian Gravatt, assistant chief executive for the Association of Colleges (AoC), praised the IA for helping to ensure there is “robust, comprehensive and accurate” data on English colleges.

He said: “Our priority now is to ensure colleges have a strong voice in the data they are required to collect about their students, the work of the new Technical Group is carried out fairly and openly and that we focus now on how to improve our good data collection arrangements to make them outstanding.”

Ian Pryce, principal of Bedford College a board member since 2007 said he was “sad” the Information Authority board had been abolished, as it was one of the most impressive groups of people he had ever worked with and careful management of college data was needed “more than ever”.

He added: “I’m disappointed. I understand it in terms of the landscape of simplification, but there is a potential that we are going to lose something with really strong expertise that was able to take things at a strategic level and make sure it was done properly and practically.”

During its final meeting on September 13, the IA board considered 24 requests for changes to data collections in 2014/15 — and rejected four.

The rejected requests came from the Education Funding Agency, as well as a software supplier, the Information Authorities own Secretariat and the SFA.

A Peterborough-based provider made “insufficient progress” in protecting the welfare of its learners and preventing bullying and abuse, Ofsted has found.

The education watchdog slapped the National Farriery Training Agency (NFTA) with a grade four inspection result in February after finding evidence of “bullying” and “abuse” of farriery apprentices.

Inspectors said learners’ on-the-job supervisors, or approved training farriers (ATFs), were getting away with abuse.

And an Ofsted monitoring visit last month — eight months after the full inspection — found the NFTA had done little “to properly ensure the well-being and welfare of its apprentices”.

The monitoring visit report said the provider had carried out a review to identify concerns, but added that bullying allegations were not being investigated “properly or fully”.

It also noted that “inadequate quality assurance measures in place at the time of inspection remain largely unchanged”.

But the NFTA, the UK’s only provider of training to shoe horses, has since given up responsibility for the apprenticeships.

The colleges which previously provided classroom learning as subcontractors — Hereford and Ludlow College, Myerscough College and Warwickshire College — took over provision from the NFTA at the start of the month.

The monitoring report said “reasonable progress” had been made in improving and dealing with complaints about off-the-job training, provided by colleges, which had carried out “either internal or externally-led reviews of the quality of teaching and learning”.

Ian Peake, Hereford and Ludlow College principal, told FE Week: “Now that the management of this apprenticeship provision has been fully handed over to the colleges, I am confident that we will make very significant improvements to farriery education and training.”

A Skills Funding Agency spokesperson said: “We are working with the three colleges concerned to ensure that the welfare of learners is protected and that the quality of learning is of the highest possible standard.”

Neville Higgins, NFTA operations manager, declined to comment on the monitoring report on the grounds that the provider had since been wound-down.

Nobody from NFTA parent body the Farrier’s Registration Council, which will continue to oversee provision at the colleges, was available for comment.

The Education and Training Foundation was heading for a £7m underspend this financial year, FE Week can exclusively reveal.
A spokesperson for the foundation, which was officially launched four months ago, said it was handing £7m of the £18m budget back to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) on condition it was spent on the FE sector.
A spokesperson for the foundation, formerly known as the FE Guild, conceded delays with setting up a competitive tendering process had prevented it from committing funding to several large contracts before the end of the financial year.
It is understood to be one of the main reasons behind the foundation’s predicted underspend.
It has the same £18m indicative budget for 2014-15 and is set to get up to £10m the following year.
David Hughes, the foundation’s interim chair, told FE Week: “We have worked hard to establish the foundation on simple principles of transparency, sector ownership and impact.
“That required thorough work on setting priorities through consultation, new procurement and commissioning processes and an honest relationship with the government as the initial sole funder.
“I am pleased with the progress we have made and that we have been able to announce new projects and funding so quickly.
“We are making the best possible use of our 2013-14 funding through all our commissioning and direct spending to secure effective impact.
“It takes time to commission and procure the right services to implement the advances we are all seeking.”
A BIS spokesperson confirmed the underspend money would remain destined for FE.
A spokesperson said: “We have confirmed a commitment to ensure that the sector is able to access the full level of intended 2013-14 funding support whether that is direct via the Education and Training Foundation or via other routes.
“These routes may include grants or bursaries to improve and strengthen the workforce, especially in the key areas of English and maths.”
Mr Hughes, who is also chief executive of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace), and foundation interim chief executive Peter Davies announced last month that they were binning contract bids received under a previous non-competitive tendering process.
Organisations involved have since been invited to re-submit bids in a competitive process.
However, £75,000-worth of contracts awarded to member organisations such as the Association of Colleges (AoC) and Niace under the old rules were allowed to go ahead.
The foundation, with its sector ‘self-improvement’ role, is seen as the replacement body of the Learning and Skills Improvement Service.
But within weeks of its launch, Sir Geoff Hall, the interim chief executive, quit resulting in the temporary return of former FE Guild consultation project leader Mr Davies, who took on Sir Geoff’s post.
Department for Education policy director David Russell, a governor at Central Sussex College. was last month announced foundation’s first permanent chief executive.
Paul Mullins, chair of the BIS-sponsored Industrial Development Advisory Board since January 2012, was also named the new foundation chair, replacing Mr Hughes. Both men are yet to take up their new posts.
The foundation is funded by BIS, but “owned” by the AoC, Association of Employment and Learning Providers and the Association of Adult Education and Training Organisations (also referred to as Holex).

A Berkshire provider left in ruins after the Skills Funding Agency terminated its contract amid allegations of fraud has been cleared by an arbitration judge.

The agency severed its funding of NTQUK in March last year, saying it had “not submitted the requisite evidence” to support funding claims.

The move resulted in almost the entire 100-plus workforce at NTQUK losing their jobs, before the firm, which delivered apprenticeships in health and social care, customer service and business administration, went into administration.

However, its two former directors, Allan Bate (pictured left) and Alex Mackenzie (pictured right), and former HR manager, Jackie Rippington (pictured below), challenged the agency through arbitration.

They wanted to defend the 1,400-learner firm against agency claims, published at the time by FE Week, that there had been “significant errors and missing data which constitute a serious breach of contract”.

And the trio won rulings that the agency’s termination of contract without notice was unlawful and uncontractual.

It was also ruled that none of the breaches alleged by the agency amounted individually or collectively to a serious breach and that there had been no fraud or irregularity.

Mr Mackenzie told FE Week: “The original termination listed 23 breaches. By the time we got to the hearing in October that had decreased to three. By the time we left the hearing that decreased to two, and then by the end of the verdict, we ended up that there were no breaches at all.”

A number of arbitration rulings remain confidential, along with the financial details of an out of court settlement reached between the agency and NTQUK, he added.

An agency spokesperson said: “NTQUK and our chief executive agreed to resolve this dispute using arbitration.

“The clear legal position is that arbitration is confidential between the parties except in limited circumstances, for example, where the parties have agreed to waive confidentiality. We have not agreed to waive confidentiality.”

Nevertheless, the arbitration judge’s decision means the trio at NTQUK, rated as good by Ofsted in late 2009, are now looking to resurrect the firm having cleared its name.

“Here we are with a shell — nothing left compared to 18 months ago. There’s nobody left now,” said Mr Mackenzie, who said he had been legally advised to announce elements of the case in the public interest.

“The company has disappeared — it has gone into administration, but we’re trying to re-establish it with the same name…for the good name of the people who used to work for us.

“We’ve had some lovely emails from staff saying that they were really pleased to see that our name had been cleared with the verdict.”

He added: “Initially, a stigma suddenly appeared when you have your contract terminated, and then very quickly 100-plus people lost their jobs being made redundant. Then myself, Allan and Jackie were left to fight the arbitration — it was a very David and Goliath situation.

“It’s not been personal. It’s been obviously a business thing, but you do feel a little bereft knowing that a really good company and 100 people have lost their jobs and all that kind of thing.

“We had 13 years of developing a really good company that got to be in the top 10 per cent in the country in terms of quality, great provider, really good feel to the company.

“Thirteen years gone up in smoke — you have this reputation in the sector, in the industry and suddenly that’s taken away from you.

“So it’s one of the things that drove us to actually take the agency and ourselves through the arbitration process because we knew that it was wrong.”