Principal of Leeds City College to be chair of 157 Group

FE Week can reveal that today Peter Roberts (pictured), principal of Leeds City College, has been unanimously elected as chair of the 157 Group.

Mr Roberts takes over from Marilyn Hawkins, the former principal of Barnet and Southgate College, who retired from the post in April 2012.

The 157 Group is a membership organisation, which “represents 27 large, successful and regionally influential Further Education colleges in England.”

Mr Roberts became the first principal of Leeds City College in July 2009, following the merger of Leeds College of Technology, Leeds Thomas Danby College and Park Lane College Leeds and Keighley.

The new merged college received an overall Good – grade 2 – from Ofsted in May 2012.

Prior to joining Leeds City College, Peter was principal at Stockport College for seven years, and he has worked in the FE sector for 25 years.

Mr Roberts is also a member of a number of local, regional and national committees including national Vice Chair of the Mixed Economy Group (MEG); the Learning and Skills Improvement Service Council; the AoC Strategic Quality and Strategic Skills Groups; the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Planning Provider Representative Group, and the National Bureaucracy Reduction Group.

Mr Roberts said: “I am very excited to be taking up the role of chair of the 157 Group at this critical and busy time for the sector. Our impact review demonstrates how much we have achieved under the chairmanship of my predecessor, Marilyn Hawkins, and the learner voice publication launched yesterday is an example of how our work aims to keep a focus on those who matter the most – our learners.”

Sarah Robinson OBE, principal of Stoke on Trent College, was unanmimously elected to the position of vice chair.

FE Week will be at the 157 Group annual reception this event, so stay tuned for more information.

 

What should FE expect in the coming years?

With the budget announcements tomorrow coinciding with the half way point for this Government, Steve Besley, Head of Policy at Pearson, looks at what might lie ahead for the world of FE 

The end of the year is always a busy time for the FE sector but this year it brings the added twist of marking the halfway point for the Coalition Government. From now on, the context will be increasingly set by the build up to the May 2015 general election. Indeed there’s already been talk of updating the Coalition Agreement though it seems we’ll now have to wait for the New Year for any announcements on that.

For FE, the last two and a half years have been spent coping with the funding settlement set out in the early stages of the Coalition while trying to provide the skills programmes needed. Its faced some new ambitions such as those on apprenticeship numbers, levels of English and maths, and quality standards, some important consultations on funding reform, 16-19 programmes, apprenticeship provision and ESOL, and some significant Papers including those on HE, adult and community learning and fee loans. Its had a few sticks waved at it in the form of new inspection criteria, new efficiency requirements and a new intervention escalation process but also had some carrots dangled in front of it such as simpler systems and greater freedom. It has survived but it has been a tough slog.

So what now, what should FE expect for the next two and a half years, more of the same or something different? The new(ish) Minister’s commissioning of a Guild suggests he’s keen to keep the momentum of the New Challenges, New Chances reform programme going while funding will never be far away especially with a new spending round tomorrow. It points in other words to more of the same.

Four issues in particular, however, look likely to dominate.

First, further transformation of the skills system away from centralised planning and towards local responsiveness. The mantra here is employer ownership, putting employers in the driving seat and where possible diverting funding to them so that demand led becomes a reality. This approach can be seen in such mechanisms as the Employer Ownership Pilots and some of the City Deals and has been adopted as a way forward by both major Parties. Ed Miliband’s Conference speech pledging to put a cool £1bn of apprenticeship funding into the hands of managing employer groups and Michael Heseltine’s recent single pot proposition for locally commissioned provision are both examples of where this approach is gathering momentum.

Providers are left grappling with some of the teething problems associated with funding change while having to operate two increasingly divergent funding systems.”

The issue here is responsiveness, a strong theme in Ofsted’s challenging Report in July and a big driver for Government generally but one that is not always straightforward. Labour market signals are not always clear and providers need to know where responsibilities for identifying them lie. Under the Heseltine model for instance, labour market needs would be articulated through (LEPs) Local Enterprise Partnerships and providers would negotiate business plans with them. The danger here is that this adds another layer of complexity to an already perceived complex system. As ever, the fit between demand and supply in the world of FE remains uneasy and is likely to see further refinements in the coming months.

Second, and never far away, funding reform. The story here over the last two and a bit years has been threefold: streamlining the system so as in theory at least to free up providers from bureaucratic restrictions; protecting essential provision and those most in need; ameliorating where possible the impact of cuts by adopting more efficient forms of provision on the one hand and fee loans and co-investment on the other. Views remain mixed about the effect of all of these and given both the new funding system and 24+ fee loans don’t kick off in until next year, the full picture is unlikely to be clear for some time.

For the moment, providers are left grappling with some of the teething problems associated with funding change while having to operate two increasingly divergent funding systems, one for pre-19 provision, one for post-19 and facing considerable uncertainty about the impact of fee loans on 24+ provision. According to recent figures from the SFA, 40% of colleges have strong financial health ratings compared to 29% four years ago; it says a lot about how well the sector has adapted and it will need to continue to do so.

Third, qualification reform. Much of this is being driven by changes in the schools sector but these and other waves will equally hit FE over the next few years. At 16-19 for example, apart from the proposed introduction of English Bacc Certificates due in core subjects from 2015, there are important changes coming to both A’ levels and general Programmes of Study from next September. Maths too remains an important element as the Level 2 threshold becomes established, alternative provision post-16 is identified and the big heave to raise performance levels for a substantial number of adults gets under way. Elsewhere, further development work seems likely to follow recent consultations on ESOL and Higher Apprenticeships, Ofqual continues to review the QCF, NOS and market generally while the impact of the Innovation Code remains a subject for debate. The issue here, as for much of the qualification system, remains how best to ensure quality while providing for flexibility.

Fourth, quality, or more precisely professional standards leading to quality, brought to the fore recently by the Lingfield Review. More wide ranging than anticipated, the Review has pointed the sector in a particular direction with its proposals for different forms of governance, the setting of professional responsibilities in a standard Covenant, new forms of peer assessment for high-performing institutions let alone of course the creation of a leading representative body in the form of a Guild.

Quite what impact this Review will have on the sector is hard to say at this stage but coupled with the work of the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning and that of LSIS on professional qualifications, we may yet see much stronger professional recognition for the sector. Something at least to look forward to.

Steve Besley is Head of Policy at Pearson

College principal appointed as AoC deputy chief executive

A new deputy chief executive has been appointed to the Association of Colleges (AoC).

Gill Clipson, principal of Amersham and Wycombe College, will replace Lesley Davies who left the AoC to become Director of Quality and Standards at Pearson.

The announcement follows an unsettled time for the AoC, which has been making voluntary and compulsory redundancies as part of a cost saving and restructuring process, as reported in FE Week in May.

Gill held a number of senior management positions before joining Amersham and Wycombe, one of the largest educational institutions in Buckinghamshire, made up of over 2,000 full-time and over 5,000 part-time students. The college which specialises in the arts was ranked as satisfactory — a grade three, by Ofsted who last inspected the institution in 2011.

Gill has worked nationally on the quality and improvement agenda and has also worked as an inspector. She is a trustee on the Board of Creative and Cultural Skills and has worked with the Peter Jones Enterprise Academy since its inception. She was a board member of the Buckinghamshire Economic and Learning Partnership as well as a principal on the Gazelle Colleges Group which aims to “transform colleges through entrepreneurship”.

The AoC employs over 100 members of staff, as well more than 30 staff at three sister organisations located in separate regions.

An AoC spokesperson said: “The AoC can confirm that Gill Clipson, currently principal at Amersham and Wycombe College, is being appointed as our deputy chief executive, subject to the usual negotiations around a start date.”

At the time of going to press Gill Clipson was unavailable for comment.

 

Skills Commission search for a ‘Google College’ future

A group of cross-party MPs and leading figures from the further education sector have called on multinational companies and colleges to join forces  to help “awaken” the “sleeping giant” of FE.

The report, published today by the Skills Commission, urges companies to buy stakes in FE providers – creating new branded colleges, such as a ‘Google College’ or ‘Dyson College’.

Co-chaired by former Education Select Committee chair, Barry Sheerman MP, and chair of the Learning and Skills Improvement Service, Dame Ruth Silver, the Commission’s report follows a six-month inquiry and urges colleges to do more to adapt to local businesses’ needs and encourage investment.

Mr Sheerman said there was a “vast untapped pool of talent” in colleges that, with high quality leadership and management, could transform communities.

“The FE Sector is described by some as a sleeping giant,” said Mr Sheerman.

“Let us work together and awaken its full potential. We believe FE colleges could play a much bigger role in driving local and regional economic growth, skills and employment.

To do this colleges needed to become known as providers of “first class specialist training that fully understand the needs of their local businesses and clients”, he said.

The report sets out ten key recommendations calling for The UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) to investigate what incentives could best encourage large firms to invest in FE.

It said vocational courses could be adapted to meet the specific needs of businesses local to colleges and urges the government to create a publicly backed loan scheme which could ensure colleges had the most up-to-date facilities.

Building on Lord Heseltine’s growth review, the report also called for the creation of a network of ‘McKinsey Colleges’  — named after a leading global consultancy firm — to provide business development services to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

“We want employers to think of colleges as ‘first choice specialists, not as second best generalists’,” Mr Sheerman said.

The report’s ten recommendations:

  1. Ofsted should review technical and vocational provision across FE.
  2. The Institute for Learning and LSIS should examine professional development in FE.
  3. The UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) should consider the role of specialisation in the next phase of the Employer Ownership Pilots.
  4. UKCES should consider how large firms can be encouraged to invest in FE.
  5. UKCES should undertake an audit of specialist infrastructure, facilities and equipment across the FE sector.
  6. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) should look into a government backed loan scheme to support the specialist infrastructure, facilities and equipment within FE.
  7. The Technology Strategy Board should review the take up of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and consider how providers can be encouraged to take up more of these.
  8. The Association of Colleges (AoC) and Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) should review the number of providers that offer business development services and the funding gained from these.
  9. AoC and AELP should develop a set of best practice guidelines for business development services offered by FE providers.
  10. The BIS Select Committee should consider the role of specialist providers in regional and local economic development.

Signs of survival for the Skills Funding Agency

Business Secretary Vince Cable has rejected proposals that would call time on the Skills Funding Agency (SFA).

This comes despite the former Tory deputy Prime Minister, Lord Heseltine, recommending the agencies responsibilities should be devolved to regions through local enterprise partnerships.

In a question and answer session at the Association of Colleges (AoC) annual conference Dr Cable said he was happy with current funding arrangements for colleges and that some of Lord Heseltine’s proposals would lead to unnecessary complications.

“What we don’t want to do in a sector, where there’s sensible college funding, is to create another tier of bureaucracy. To create a model for transferring money en masse is simply not going to happen,” Dr Cable said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) said it was still looking at Lord Heseltine’s evidence and would respond shortly. “There are a number of far-reaching recommendations regarding the UK’s ability to compete in Lord Heseltine’s independent report,” a spokesperson said.

“These are Lord Heseltine’s views, and the government now needs time to consider these recommendations and hear the views of business and other stakeholders.”

BIS decline to comment on the future of the SFA.

We’ve already had to adapt so many times and it creates a phenomenal amount of extra work.”

Julian Gravatt, the AoC’s assistant chief executive, said it was good to see ministerial support for the SFA funding model.

“A shift to funding through local authorities, or LEPs, as set out by Lord Heseltine, would add extra complication to an already intricate funding system,” he said.

“We are not convinced that LEPs would be capable of taking on an enhanced role, which if instigated, would no doubt require a costly re-organisation at a time when budgets for further education and skills are already being cut.”

Eileen Cavalier, an associate member of the parliamentary group for skills and employment, and chief executive of the London College of Beauty Therapy, said the SFA should remain and branded Lord Heseltine’s proposals “totally impractical”.

“In theory Lord Heseltine’s recommendations sound good, but in practice they wouldn’t work. I don’t see how local enterprise partnerships would be able to cope with the volume of that administration, with the wide range of providers involved,” she said.

“It would massively complicate things for the provider. We deliver nationally on some programmes, if funding was split up regionally, how would it work from a provider’s point of view?

“In my time, we’ve gone from the Further Education Funding Council, replaced by the Learning and Skills Council in 2001, which became the Young People’s Learning Agency, and now it’s the Education Funding Agency and SFA. We’ve already had to adapt so many times and it creates a phenomenal amount of extra work.”

More light may be shed on the future of the agency next Wednesday when Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, sets out the government’s budget plans in his autumn statement.

Hampshire students trek out of their comfort zones

Trekking in the Himalayas, riding on elephants and visiting Buddhist temples were all part of an adventure of a lifetime for a group of Hampshire students.

Alton College students spent a year working and fundraising to save £2,000 each for a 10-day trip to Nepal in October.

Among the 31 students who flew to Asia was Daisy Van der Lande, 17, from Selborne.

“I had such an amazing time,” she said. “Going to Nepal taught me that it’s really important to get stuck in and learn about another culture. There are so many different ways of life out there, and sometimes it takes being somewhere completely different that takes you out of your comfort zone to make you stop and appreciate what’s around you. I never did that before at home.”

The adventure has given Daisy a thirst for travel and after finishing her A-levels she plans to take a gap year to explore South America, before studying English literature and history of art at university.

The trip was organised with travel company True Adventure, but the students planned what they were going to do, and booked transport and accommodation.

Daisy’s favourite part of the trip was trekking in the Himalayas. “The scenery is incredible — television doesn’t do it justice at all,” she said. “You feel so small in comparison to these mountains, they’re ridiculously big, there’s no feeling like it. You’ll be looking at one that’s the other side of the valley and you’ll be thinking, oh, that’s a tiny little hill, but actually it’s 5km above you. It’s quite humbling.

“We stayed in tea houses, which are like B&Bs, just four walls and a tin roof. They’re run by families, and we got to know the owners and played with the children. It was very one-to-one and personal, which was lovely.”

One of the hardest parts of the trek said Daisy was when two students became very ill with food poisoning.

“That hit us on the evening of the second day of the trek,” she said.

“The next day we had a really hard day, and half way through the whole team got together and worked out how we could get these people up the mountain. We carried their bags, and each of them had someone stood behind pushing them up, and another person in front pulling them forward. We got them to the top and it was freezing. That evening over dinner we had a heart to heart and everyone just broke down.”

“Then we had to decide whether to go on to Poon Hill. The leaders had decided the two people were too ill to go on, so we had to decide whether to carry on without them, or cut the trek short and miss the sunset on Poon Hill, which apparently is one of the most amazing sun sets you can ever see in the world.

“It was possibly the hardest decision that any of us had ever had to make, because you have to decide whether you want to stay as a team, or see this incredible sight. We decided to go down. It was definitely the right decision.”

Art and design lecturer Ivan Bicknell joined the students on the trip. “Out of everything I do at the college, it’s the thing where I see the learning taking place more than anywhere else,” he said.

“The life skills they learn goes way beyond what you can ever do in a classroom. It’s fantastic; they grow so much and change a lot. It teaches them about taking on responsibility, leadership, working as a team and supporting each other.

“It gives them a lot of confidence. They will reap the rewards.”

Having a laugh raising money for charity

Staff and students at West Nottinghamshire College dug deep in their pockets for Children in Need.

Top of the bill was comedy improvisation from performing arts students in the 150-seat Create Theatre at the Derby Road campus. The theatre was sold out for two nights as the students raised a laugh — and some cash (the students’ union was determined to raise more than £2,000, beating last year’s total of £1,655).

Student Daniel Salmon said: “To put a skill we learn in college into something fantastic like raising money for Children in Need is terrific. It makes you feel amazing.”

Molly Murdoch said: “It wasn’t easy — it was quite tricky to get it all prepared in time and get everyone together, but I think we pulled it out of the bag.”

Tutor Andy Dobb said: “The students really impressed us with how quickly and creatively they responded to the union request to put on a comedy show for this good cause. They should be very proud.”

Other activities to bring in the pennies included visits to other college campuses by Pudsey Bear, Children in Need’s mascot, and the college’s Butterflies day nursery staff donning their pyjamas. Students also sold Pudsey merchandise and cakes and organised a quiz, as well as a prize tombola and bingo game.

BBC Dragon’s Den star inspires students

Staff and students at Warwickshire College had a hectic “entrepreneurial week”.

It all kicked off when Julie Meyer, the founder of Ariadne Capital and a Dragon in the BBC’s online Dragons’ Den, visited the college’s Rugby centre. She talked to students before receiving business pitches from two groups from the college’s Peter Jones Enterprise Academy.

In her speech she stressed that the new world of venture capitalism was not about who had the money, but about entrepreneurs and ideas.

Student Lucy Ward, 17, said: “I thought it was really inspirational. I learned about how she planned as she went along and not be in the mindset of making money, just to do everything step-by-step.”

Other areas of the college also took on the enterprise spirit with great enthusiasm.

Construction students won a bid to refurbish old sash windows at Moreton Morrell, m otor maintenance students offered winter car checks and valeting services, and art students raised nearly £1,000 at an arts bazaar.

There was also the opportunity for students to get information on business start-up loans, get involved in workshops on setting up businesses, and take part in networking events.