A “rogue” apprenticeship provider boss has received a six-year director’s ban for failing to explain £3.5 million worth of spending, most of which was public funding.
Shakar Habib, 28, from Newham, London, was the sole director of Vista Training Solutions Limited, which since 2011 worked as a subcontractor to deliver apprenticeship training before landing its own direct contract in 2018.
The provider was found making ‘reasonable progress’ by Ofsted in an early monitoring visit later that year when Vista was training 129 apprentices, mainly in ICT.
But the firm went bust in 2020 following an Education and Skills Funding Agency investigation into its use of taxpayer funding for apprenticeships.
The ESFA last year made a claim of £2.5 million against Vista during the liquidation, and the government’s Insolvency Service has now said Habib could not account for nearly £3.5 million from the company’s accounts.
Investigators discovered that Habib had failed to keep adequate company accounts – a legal obligation for company directors – and that records from April 2019 onwards were missing.
They were therefore unable to verify whether £3.5 million of payments from the company’s bank accounts during its final year of trading were legitimate company expenses.
The company’s liquidator – FRP Advisory Trading Limited – was also unable to account for £525,000 in assets due to lack of financial records.
A statement from the Insolvency Service said the ESFA continues to work with the Insolvency Practitioner to support their investigations for potential recovery of money – but the latest statement of receipts and payments from the liquidator admits it is “unlikely” that there will be sufficient funds available to pay unsecured creditors.
Habib has now been banned from being a director of a company until November 20, 2029. It prevents him from becoming involved in the promotion, formation or management of a company, without the permission of the court.
Marc Symons, deputy head of investigations at the Insolvency Service, said: “Shakar Habib disregarded his legal duty to keep accounting records. But thanks to the joint working between ESFA and the Insolvency Service, he has been removed from the corporate arena for a substantial period.
“His ban should be a stark warning to other rogue directors that we will act to protect the public from those who abuse taxpayers’ money.”
Andrew Thomas, director of finance and provider market oversight in the ESFA, said: “This successful outcome demonstrates that ESFA will take robust action and work with regulatory partners across government to hold individuals and organisations to account.”
Rachel Bown was crowned the FE lecturer of the year at the 2023 Pearson National Teaching awards for the inspirational PE teaching she does at her small specialist college, Fairfield Farm in Wiltshire.
But Bown is inspiring not just for her teaching.
After a brain tumour left her blind in one eye and at one point fighting for survival, she went on to win an international medal as a triathlete and broke a Guinness World Record as a marathon runner – while dressed as a happy hippo.
Bown also makes ends meet as a part-time celebrant, which involves writing funeral eulogies celebrating the lifetime achievements of others.
In the photographs of Bown winning the European triathlon championships for her age (40 to 44) in 2012, which she won “by a second”, she wears a look of fierce determination.
These days, it feels “weird” for her to see those pictures knowing there was a “big fat tumour” sat in her head that she had no idea about. She had been having problems with her vision and headaches, but doctors put that down to her strict training schedule. A year later, at the age of 44, she was diagnosed with three brain tumours.
That same fierce determination which brought her to the winning podium has been needed in spades since.
Rachel Bown winning the European Triathlon Championships
Teaching in a dinner hall
When Bown was announced the winner of the Pearson national teaching award in November, she was proud of having won for her “little college in a village” where she teaches “in a dinner hall”.
She was also “a bit shy” about the accolade.
“I didn’t want other people to think that I thought it made me better than them, because I don’t think that,” she says. When she looks around her staff room, she knows “everybody here works really, really hard”. But her job is “slightly different” to theirs, so she has been able to “make it my own”.
“I don’t just teach PE – I do a lot of other things. That’s what made it a winning application.”
But Bown says she doesn’t teach sport, but “what you can learn through sport”.
For example, she teaches counting and tallying skills by recording step-ups.
She has also personalised PE experiences for pupils by setting up individual goals, and customising life skill sessions.
Since Bown introduced PE to the college in 2016, it has “progressed year on year” and now boasts a leadership in sport pathway, two annual county mass participation events, a multi-sports day, and football matches.
Rachel Bown scooping FE lecturer of the year award
Competitive streak
Football was Bown’s first love. She would spend hours on end playing “keepie uppy” with her boy mates as a kid. Her parents “never had a sporty bone in their bodies”, and she puts her sporting drive down to her grandfather. He was “very sporty” and even aged five, “never let me win”. When she did eventually beat him at games, he would never let her play with him again.
“It made me highly competitive. I always strived to win, however many times I’d lose.”
Bown went on to play football for her Cardiff University team while studying for a human movement degree, then later for both the Somerset and Wiltshire county teams and the Southwest Regional team.
She therefore feels incensed when she hears it said that women’s football in England is a relatively recent phenomenon. “There was a different generation truly pushing football forward for girls, to allow the Lionesses to be who they are.”
When she hit 40 in 2010, Bown retired from football to concentrate on triathlon, and “to see how good I could be”. But more on that later.
Rachel Bown as a kid
School teaching
Very early in her career she realised that she was naturally attracted to working with disaffected kids and they with her as she listened to them.
She realised in her next role, in a Bristol city school, that she was “naturally attracted to working with disaffected kids”, and they with her, “because I listened to them”.
Bown would often provide cover at the school’s internal exclusion centre, where she found the same years 10 and 11 girls were always being sent.
After sparking their curiosity about football, Bown offered to set up a football lunch club for them – on the condition they turned up to lessons on time. The deal worked, and Bown even arranged for a local club to play a match against them on Saturdays.
“Lots of members of staff said, you’ll never get those girls here on a Saturday morning. They all turned up and got thrashed. They didn’t care because someone had taken care of them and shown them they could be something more than just the trouble that they were seen as.
“That’s where mainstream schools get it wrong. It’s all about competitive sport, which is why so many kids switch off to PE.”
Her next job, at a school for boys with emotional difficulties, became “the key” to her career. She was “spat at, kicked, and called all the names possible”, but “also felt the loyalty” of those boys.
“I loved unlocking them … once you’d really found out about them, they’d do anything for you.”
Bown became a senior leader at a similar school and was on the pipeline for headship, but realised she preferred “being with the kids on the ground and seeing them achieve”.
She has spent the last seven years at Fairfield College, where her salary as a qualified FE teacher is “two-thirds” what she used to make in schools.
She can only continue in the role because of the extra money she earns as a celebrant. She questions why she and other special needs teachers in FE should not be fairly rewarded.
“I want to stay at the college – I love the students, I’ve got a lot of autonomy and feel valued.” But that means she must work “really hard” in two jobs, including through the Christmas holidays.
Rachel Bown in her footballing days
When the world changed
Bown can remember “very vividly” the day the doctor called after she had her brain scans. She was about to go for a run. He asked her if she was on her own, and Bown said yes.
A phone call wasn’t ideal, but the doctor needed to stop Bown from driving and exercising straight away. She had three brain tumours, including one behind her eye which needed operating on as a priority.
“The world spun, I just remember being in a trance. It’s as if you’re looking in on yourself, it’s a very strange feeling. My world had changed but nothing had changed for anybody else.”
Telling her parents was the worst moment. “I remember not sleeping, not wanting to eat, and just being a mess.” At her ex-partner’s house, she recalls excusing herself to use the toilet and waking up four hours later in a bed upstairs. “I was just exhausted.”
Rachel Bown after her operation
Operations
Whereas many people with multiple brain tumours must wait a while before surgeons will operate, Bown believes that her operation was prioritised because her specialist “knew I’d make the most of my health”.
She was “excited” before her 12-and-a-half-hour-long operation began because it signalled “the start of getting well”. She discussed with her specialist the “deficit” she was prepared to live with, and “how far to go to take out as much [tumour] as he could”.
Bown was left feeling “wobbly” with a “lot of things to relearn” afterwards. She was let out of the hospital on Christmas Eve but on New Year’s Day started feeling ill with an infection. Ten days later she was rushed back for an emergency operation and things were “touch and go”.
“I said to the doctors if they couldn’t cure me, to withdraw treatment. I wasn’t going to just lay in a bed for the next however many years being looked after, mainly because I felt dreadful.”
Bown endured another round of surgery in 2015 followed by 30 rounds of radiotherapy two years later.
Rachel Bown
She had always thought of herself as “optimistic” and “resilient” before her diagnosis. Her tumour gave her the chance to find out what she was really made of.
“I asked myself, ‘all my life have I been a fraud?’ I’m pleased to say that I am that person I thought I was.”
She still struggles with depth perception and balance and often bumps into things.
This has added an extra 30 seconds to her triathlon races because she can no longer run alongside her bicycle, jump on, and keep pedalling.
But her visual impairment has also made it easier for her to identify with her special needs students. Rachel is passionate about being their voice, because sometimes they lack the confidence and ability to speak for themselves.
“Sometimes they lack the ability or confidence to stand up and say, ‘I don’t want to do that’.”
Rachel Bown, undergoing a scan
Celebrating life
In 2016, she picked up a Guinness World Record by becoming the fastest female athlete to complete the London Marathon as a charity mascot.
She wore a “happy hippo” for Brain Tumour Support, but inside the costume, she was far from happy.
Bown felt like her “muscles were being ripped off” her legs, it was “horrifically hot” and she struggled to remove her hippo head after the race. “I couldn’t lift my arms up to take it off. If anybody has beaten that record, I don’t care. They can keep it!”
Six years later in Poland, she achieved the dream she had set when she embarked on her recovery journey, of winning an international medal, by scooping bronze in the European triathlon championship. She burst into tears afterwards for having “proved I am good enough again”.
“What I do is about being the best I can be with the tumour, because I can’t be cured. I battle demons every day. But I’m doing all these things with a brain tumour that no one else has.”
Bown has written two books about her life, The Butterfly Within and 101 Dalmatian Memories, and is currently writing ‘Special to me – a different kind of education’ about her teaching career.
She will “probably” not publish it until she retires, because the last chapter “will be me making that difficult decision to retire”.
She has “thought a lot” about whether she would choose not to have had brain tumours. Despite all the pain she has endured, she would not change that.
Without the tumours Bown would not have been a celebrant or world record holder, and “that special moment in Poland wouldn’t have been quite as special had I not known where I started that dream from – in a wheelchair.”
“I’ve never had children, or been married. I’d never known what my purpose on this earth was. What was my legacy? Now I know. To talk to people about making the most of their lives now.”
Rachel Bown
Entries for the 2024 Pearson National Teaching Awards will be open until 1 March, and college staff are encouraged to nominate their peers. Submissions can be made at teachingawards.com
Colleges, training providers, and schools handed back 15 per cent – £28 million – of cash earmarked for Covid catch-up tutoring in the first two years of the scheme for 16- to 19-year-olds, blaming rigid eligibility rules and stop-start policy.
FE Week analysis of new 16-19 tuition fund spend figures shows that of the total £187.5 million allocated to over 2,000 education providers across 2020/21 and 2021/22, £159.5 million was spent.
Almost 300 providers with an allocation failed to spend a penny over that period and returned all funding to the Department for Education.
The DfE said it was allowed to reinvest the clawed-back tutoring cash within the department to support other 16 to 19 and wider education funding pressures, rather than handing it back to the Treasury.
A further £110 million and £112 million have been distributed to spend in 2022/23 and 2023/24 respectively for the tuition fund, but clawback figures for those years are not yet available.
Sector leaders have called for the scheme to be extended again beyond this year but with more freedom over how the funding can be spent.
Strict rules stifle tutoring plans
The 16-19 tuition fund was announced in July 2020 for providers to hold “small group tutoring” for 16 to 19 students whose studies had been disrupted by the pandemic.
But colleges, training providers, and sixth forms that opted into the fund had just weeks to design, staff and implement schemes for a limited group of eligible students.
Providers could use the funding to support students in groups of up to seven in subjects disrupted by the pandemic, but only if they had not achieved a GCSE grade 4 in English and/or maths or have a grade 4 or above and were from an economically disadvantaged background.
The DfE did eventually expand the eligibility to students who didn’t achieve a grade 6 at GCSE in those subjects, but not until the 2022/23 academic year.
Funding could be used for staff costs to deliver catch-up tuition but not for non-staff costs such as diagnostic tools, room hire, equipment, laptops, transport, or stationery.
James Kewin, deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said the £28 million underspend “largely reflects the narrowness of the eligibility criteria in the first two years of the scheme and restrictions on how the funding could be spent”.
“It certainly does not reflect a lack of need – £100 million per year was never going to be sufficient to meet the needs of 1.2 million young people – and most colleges could have spent their allocations several times over if they had been able to target the funding at all students that needed additional support,” he added.
The DfE allowed providers to roll over any underspent funding from 2020/21 to 2021/22 after recognising the ongoing impact lockdowns were having.
But an independent evaluation report of the scheme, published by the DfE in July 2023, said education leaders described how other ineligible students may have a higher level of need for catch-up support for reasons that cannot be captured in the eligibility criteria. For example, those who experienced bereavement, didn’t have a supportive family, or space to study at home.
Spending varied by provider type
FE Week’s analysis shows schools with sixth forms spent 76 per cent of their allocations, while university technical colleges (UTCs) spent 78 per cent.
Kate Ambrosi, the director of education and innovation at the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, which represents UTCs, said sixth formers affected by the pandemic require innovative and specialised interventions, adding that the development of such interventions was “stifled by the original limits on how the funding could be spent”.
UTCs spent their tuition fund cash to pay staff for weekend, after-school or holiday intervention classes with small groups of post-16 students, she told FE Week, adding that the technical colleges would like to see the fund continue but with relaxed rules.
Almost 80 independent training providers opted into the tuition fund in the first two years, with combined allocations hitting £9.1 million. This provider group spent £7.25 million (79 per cent) of their funding.
Simon Ashworth, director of policy at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said his members reported that the criteria attached to the funding are too rigid still, despite being loosened recently.
Simon Ashworth
For example, tuition hours had to sit outside planned hours, with some students unable or unwilling to do so.He added that the tuition fund continued a “worrying trend of stop-start policy” in the skills sector.
“While the fund has been available for three years, it was initially announced as a one-year pot, with further annual extensions announced. Had providers known the pot was for three years, they could have invested resources with more confidence. Short-termism and stop-start policymaking continue to limit potential.”
General FE colleges and sixth-form colleges spent 87 per cent and 86 per cent of their total allocations, respectively.
Activate Learning, which runs seven colleges, received one of the biggest allocations of over £2 million across 2020/21 and 2021/22. The group handed back around £620,000 after those years but told FE Week the funding had a significant impact.
A spokesperson said: “Using the funding, we’ve introduced specific roles to help track and manage our students’ development and progress, added in additional tuition groups to provide extra help and support, and worked with external providers to put in place peer-to-peer tutoring, all of which have seen proven success in boosting student achievement.
“We recognise that we weren’t able to utilise the funding as much as we would have hoped in the first year, however since then we have used the majority of the funding made available to us and in the past two years, we’ve spent all of the funding we’ve had access to.”
Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said the tuition fund is a “helpful part of the offer to students, many of whom are still behind where they could be because of lost time at school during the pandemic”.
He said the DfE hasn’t yet publicly confirmed that the tuition fund will stop in July 2024, adding that “there is a case for continuing it as part of the collective effort to raise student English and maths achievement”.
A DfE spokesperson said the department is evaluating both the National Tutoring Programme and 16-19 tuition fund which will “help inform decisions on how best to support students going forward”.
“We will provide more information on succession planning in early 2024,” the spokesperson added.
The owner of a defunct training provider at the centre of an apprenticeship scandal has been slapped with a six-year director’s ban by the government’s Insolvency Service.
Andrew Merritt is now barred from running a company until August 15, 2029, following a three-year investigation into his conduct at SCL Security Ltd.
His wife, Kym Rowe, was also a director of the firm and has herself been handed a four-year disqualification.
SCL Security Ltd was a training provider that subcontracted from various colleges to deliver apprenticeship training. The company went insolvent in October 2020 after an Education and Skills Funding Agency audit – prompted by several FE Week investigations – found illegal claims for public funding.
The agency found, for example, that apprenticeship money was being used to pay the wages for 16-to-18-year-olds, which is strictly against funding rules.
Multiple colleges, namely Brooklands College which was left on the brink of collapse owing to the scandal, are attempting to reclaim over £20 million of funding from the insolvent business to repay the government otherwise face having to fork out the costs themselves.
Merritt declared bankruptcy in 2021. Liquidators have been working on ways to repay creditors, including by selling his assets such as his £2.2 million matrimonial property, according to a recently published statement of affairs.
Merritt had taken out an £8 million directors’ loan when the business closed, and still owes £6.5 million of the loan.
Insolvency Service documents about Merritt’s ban, seen by FE Week, states that SCL Security submitted inaccurate corporation tax returns from 2010 to 2018 and still owes around £2 million to HMRC.
The documents added that Merritt failed to properly account for his outstanding director’s loan, which has resulted in a charge of over £1 million on top of the loan itself.
The joint liquidators, Phil Deyes and Anthony Milnes from Leonard Curtis Business Rescue and Recovery, said in their report that claims to SCL Security during the liquidation to date total £2.5 million from HMRC, £25.6 million from colleges and the ESFA, £77,000 from trade creditors, and £4,500 from an employee.
The liquidators’ latest statement of affairs explained that following receipt of the funds from the bankruptcy estate of Merritt, they intend to “make a distribution to unsecured creditors”.
“The quantum and timing of the dividend is dependent on further realisations from the bankruptcy estate and the costs of the liquidation being agreed,” the report added.
And while the claims received from ESFA and the colleges have been reviewed they have “not been formally agreed at this stage”.
Due to their “complex nature” the joint liquidators will refer to the work carried out by Andrew Jackson solicitors, and “may well seek further guidance on the claims”.
A college fighting for survival has been given the go-ahead by its local council for a major redevelopment needed to repay a £23 million government clawback.
Brooklands College’s plan to refurbish its facilities and redevelop some of its land into homes was handed conditional approval by Elmbridge Borough Council in December, according to its newly published 2023 accounts.
The college told FE Week the approval puts it in a “strong position for the future” after it was embroiled in an apprenticeship subcontracting scandal in 2019 that left it with a £25 million debt owed to the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
The development will deliver a new three-storey college building and sports hall and will convert two buildings into over 300 homes – some of which will be earmarked for affordable housing, as well as providing new green space.
Redevelopment of the Weybridge campus cannot start until the college can guarantee 13 conditions imposed by the council, including the retention of all trees and hedgerows on the 27-hectare site, and a detailed application for a car park for a suitable alternative natural green (SANG) space.
A Brooklands College spokesperson said: “This decision marks a significantly positive moment in the history of Brooklands College and puts us in a strong position for the future.
“Once the final details are agreed the substantial refurbishment of the college will provide a first-class learning environment and experience for our students as well as enabling us to deliver outstanding facilities in our areas of specialism.
“The refurbished and rebuilt college will also provide a great working environment for staff and those within our connected communities.”
The college has been entangled in negotiations with the ESFA over a clawback dispute when officials in 2018 discovered its subcontractor SCL Security Ltd was using apprenticeship funding illegally.
In March last year, the college signed a repayment agreement with the ESFA as a long-term creditor, discounted to £23.1 million.
The new accounts said £5 million has been scheduled for repayment over 25 years with an interest charged at 2.4 per cent per year, while the remainder “will not be called in for two years unless the development of the estate enables this to be repaid sooner”.
‘Almost like blackmail’ to approve
The struggling college’s principal Christine Ricketts admitted to the council at a planning meeting on December 5 that the college would close if the debt was not repaid, as the £45 million development would generate funds to pay back the ESFA.
“If the debt isn’t paid, the college will be financially insolvent,” she told councillors. “Personally, I have no doubt that this will result in Elmbridge losing the college.”
The college has just over 2,000 learners and brought in just £13 million in income for the year ended July 31, 2023, a nudge up from the £11.8 million revenue in 2022.
“A new leadership team has been working with the DfE to develop proposals to repay the debt and deliver a long-term vision that will secure our future. It is vital that a decision be made tonight,” Ricketts said at the meeting.
But councillors argued that they should not be “blackmailed” into greenlighting the project, just because it owes money and the college could close.
“It’s almost like blackmail for this planning committee, isn’t it? If we don’t approve it, it’s going to close, and nobody wants to see the college close,” said councillor Ashley Tilling.
The council did not vote unanimously to conditionally approve the application. Eleven voted in favour and four councillors opposed.
An Elmbridge Borough Council spokesperson told FE Week: “The recommendation to grant is subject to the receipt of a legal agreement to secure planning obligations as set out in the report. Therefore, the planning permission will be issued once the legal agreement is agreed.
“The applicant will need to provide more documents and details to satisfy the planning conditions. Development would need to commence within three years of the date of the permission.”
The development’s residential developer Cala Homes was approached for comment.
Nine years on, his call to action has had little impact. College delivery is stubbornly stuck at under 20 per cent of national delivery. For many colleges, in fact, the appetite to expand the apprenticeship market has declined since the introduction of the levy. Funding rates, rising levels of bureaucracy, EPA and increased risks surrounding inspections and audit all contribute, making the delivery of apprenticeships undesirable for both colleges and the many SMEs that colleges work with.
However, with that back-drop there is one place that seems out of step: Wigan. I arrived at Wigan and Leigh College in 2021 with a rich experience of apprenticeship delivery. I asked about the sales team but was puzzled when the response was one of bemusement. I was told that I wasn’t to worry, sales wasn’t a problem. It was clear there’d be no pounding of pavements or intense marketing; Instead, I had employer engagement officers who were curriculum experts. I was doubtful. I wondered whether, like Dorothy, I was a long way from home.
Three years later, I can safely say that I now get it. While nationally there has been a 3.5 per cent drop in all starts over the past three years, we have had an increase. 87 per cent of our cohort is level 2 and 3, compared with 66 per cent nationally. 55 per cent are 16 to 18, compared to 23 per cent nationally. In fact, our 16-to-18 cohort has grown significantly: a 56 per cent in-learning increase since 2020/21.
Where we do fall into step with the national picture is with our 19 per cent growth in starts on higher and degree apprenticeships between 21/22 and 22/23. National data from 22/23 shows that our borough punched well above its weight delivering the second highest number of starts in the North West of England. Our apprenticeship income has gone from £4.8 million in 2020/21 to a predicted £7.4 million in 2023/24.
It is far from easy – and it is getting harder
Our commitment to the delivery of apprenticeships is driven solely by meeting the needs of our borough. Wigan needs the social mobility opportunities that levels 2 and 3 apprenticeships offer. And if our employers are going to contribute to economic prosperity, they need the essential higher-level skills that higher and degree apprenticeships offer.
However, we believe our curriculum offer should focus on sector priorities and not try to be all things to all people. High volumes of leadership and management candidates from large corporates are not our thing; we choose to do it the hard way! 72 per cent of our offer is in engineering and construction, rising to 74 per cent of our higher and degree apprenticeship activity. We have specialisms in electrical and power as well as manufacturing, and despite the work with larger employers such as Sellafield, Electricity North West, Scottish Power and several large food manufacturers, the vast majority of our employers are small- and micro-sized, each requiring the same level of care and service.
We received a ‘good’ for apprenticeships when Ofsted came last year and a coveted ‘strong’ for skills. Our apprenticeship achievement is well above national average rates. But it is far from easy and is getting harder. We don’t persevere because a minister has asked us to, and we get frustrated when rises in higher and degree apprenticeships are celebrated without addressing the fall in 16-to-18 and level 2 and 3 participation rates. We think activity should be in response to local need, and levy funds are too precious to not be wisely spent.
No one is going to steal our lunch, because in the current climate we’re not sure anyone actually wants to. But at the heart of our offer is a skills programme that is in high demand by the employers, young people and adults in our borough. In the end, it is support for that in every community that will fully deliver the opportunities apprenticeships can offer.
Chief Executive Officer, Capital City College Group
Start date: January 2024
Previous Job: Chief Executive Officer, WCG
Interesting fact: Angela has represented the country as an athlete and raced in the London Marathon from the elite start. She now competes regularly in one-day eventing with her horses
Scott Forbes
Deputy Chief Executive, Skills and Education Group
Start date: January 2024
Previous Job: Chief Operating Officer, Skills and Education Group
Interesting fact: As a youth delegate at the London G20 summit in 2009, Scott found himself sandwiched between Michelle Obama and Sarah Brown at a dinner at No 10 Downing Street
Shane Mann
Chief Executive, EducationScape (publisher of FE Week)
Start date: January 2024
Previous Job: Managing Director, LSECT
Interesting fact: Shane’s first job was president of City College Norwich Students’ Union where he was mentored by now AoC president, Corrienne Peasgood and former principal Dick Palmer
The ‘big moment’ in my own education was starting my apprenticeship and attending college. My tutors were personable, I’d chosen a subject I was interested in, and I realised that learning could be fun. That was a big change after school, which hadn’t motivated me.
Learning painting and decorating was a turning point. I’d been trained to do something and was good at it. It led to a job with the local authority. With their sponsorship, I progressed to a BTEC and then HNC in building studies. I won an award for tendering and estimating, which impressed the director of works sufficiently that he offered me a job.
Later, I got the opportunity to teach a half day each week at the college where I’d trained. I’d always wanted to do that, to share my experience. A year later, I applied successfully for a full-time vacancy. I was one of the youngest lecturers and they knew – as did I – that they were taking a gamble.
That might have set me on a lifelong career in FE, but after a few years I stepped away, becoming a youth worker. I’d done part-time youth work since my teenage years and that opportunity got something out of my system and readied me to return to FE. My family’s willingness to move around the country allowed me to work in different places and I moved from teaching craft into teaching BTEC and then HNCs.
I’d been away from construction environments and realised I needed to work on developing my industry knowledge and skills. Doing so gave me the confidence to return to the classroom and deliver up-to-date content. But it wasn’t until a professional learning opportunity of a different kind that I learned the true value of nurturing both sides of my dual professionalism – for me, my students and my colleagues.
Offered the opportunity to undertake Advanced Teacher Status (ATS), I leapt at the chance. Action research – based on practical working rather than purely theory – appealed to me. I focused on student-centered and project-based learning.
Our personalised CPD builds on the principles of action research
I started with a pilot with level 2 maintenance operative learners with a brief to design an educational game to make something easier to learn. I learned lots about the motivational effect of responsibility and saw passive learners become active, leading ones.
The second project was sustainability focused, with student businesses producing and selling kindling from waste timber from the carpentry department. Seeing learners connect work to results and effort to tangible income was exciting and motivating, and adjusting my delivery to ‘allow’ learners to learn by doing was challenging for my own development.
The much larger scale third project saw students acting as the contractor for the refurbishment of a dementia support day centre. Student feedback was excellent, highlighting the opportunity to put the skills they had learned into practice, the satisfaction of repairing an old building, and the opportunity to develop real-world skills.
At the beginning, direct instructional delivery worked well for many learners, but didn’t suit them all. That was an interesting thing to realise, and doing so through action research was transformative. I’d developed more in a single year of ATS than in the previous four.
I’d achieved a kind of unconscious competence, but almost wasn’t challenging myself to improve. At the start of my career in the sector I was happy to survive the first year – and with hindsight it’s easy to see how important that first whole-year cycle is to understanding the journey staff and learners are on – but that changes with experience.
Realising the benefits of ATS not just for me but also for my colleagues has changed the way I seek to support them. We’ve developed our own personalised CPD which, instead of being compliance based, builds on the principles of action research and gives colleagues the opportunity to undertake small-scale, personalised projects themselves.
That’s a revelation with the potential to ensure that we are offering the highest quality delivery to all the learners we have the privilege of serving, including those who – like me many years ago – found their calling thanks to our sector.
The latest report from the Sutton Trust, Social mobility – the next generation makes for depressing reading. It claims there has been a 12 per cent decline in social mobility for young people resulting from lost learning during the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis.
Other research echoes these findings. In its last annual report, the Education Policy Institute states that educational inequalities existed before the pandemic and that the last few years has seen the narrowing of the gap stall or even go into reverse.
The sad conclusion is that birth is still the best predictor of future success. This was not always the case. If you were a ‘baby boomer’ born in the 20 years after the end of the Second World War you had a fair chance of owning your own home by the age of 40 and could look forward to free university tuition. Now the picture is bleaker. If you have a bad start in life, then it’s tough luck.
Reversing the decline in social mobility is a big ask and the solutions are not just about better education. The cost-of-living crisis and escalating property prices are part of the problem. But the situation may not be as gloomy as some might imagine.
The 2022 State of the Nation report from the government’s Social Mobility Commission claims that the educational attainment gaps between pupils from higher and lower socio-economic backgrounds have narrowed, although this does not take into account the full effects of the pandemic.
Social mobility and its causes are much more nuanced and not a simple equation that can be measured by the number of people achieving entry to universities, says the report. The authors are pressing for a wider perspective, saying that education should cover routes such as further education and apprenticeships, as well as early years, schools and universities. They want to start a wider conversation to find solutions.
Distance learning providers need to be part of the debate
The further education sector must be part of that conversation. But we need to take an even broader view. As a provider of distance learning with a mission to break down the barriers that prevent social mobility, distance learning providers like the National Extension College need to be part of that debate.
Our core mission is to enable people to learn flexibly – at their own pace, in their own time and where they want to. When we were set up in 1963 by the social reformer and entrepreneur Michael Young, our main purpose was to provide second chances for people who had missed out on education during the Second World War.
Today, the majority of our students are aged 18 to 24, with an increasing number of under 18s. Many of our younger students need to gain additional qualifications in order pursue a particular career or enter higher education. Others want to learn a particular subject that their school or college doesn’t offer. Then there are those who have had interruptions to their formal education through illness and have to catch up by learning in their own time and place.
Society and the economy have changed vastly since we were set up. Then, opportunities to break through class barriers were greater, not least because of a thriving adult education sector. If Michael Young was alive today, he would undoubtedly be dismayed at the state od social mobility in 2024.
But he would see opportunity too. Technological advances and more flexible working practices mean distance learning is more accessible than ever, and second chances to make a success of education could and should be plentiful. Rapid change and the need to upskill and reskill also mean that many more of us are likely to be ‘second-chance learners’ – further breaking down the stigmas around poor school results.
So our message to the next government (whichever party wins) is clear: To address the inequalities in our society, they must fully embrace second-chance learners and finally look beyond traditional education providers to extend the ladder of opportunity.
