UTCs – a revolution in technical education

This week the government approved a further 15 University Technical Colleges (UTCs). This raises the total number of projects to 34. Two UTCs are open, three more will start this September, with the rest opening in the following two years.

The concept of UTCs was the brainchild of Lord Baker and Lord Dearing, who won the support of the then Education Minister, Lord Adonis. The first two UTCs were agreed by the last government and the coalition government embraced the idea. The number of UTCs in the pipeline now exceeds the government’s ambition to create 24 by 2014.

For the past four years, the Baker Dearing Educational Trust (BDT) has been working with the Department for Education, local employers, universities and further education colleges to develop a national network of UTCs.

UTCs are new, state funded, full-time secondary schools for 14-19 year olds of all abilities. They are being established under the government’s academies programme and they have strong cross-party political support. They offer highly regarded, technically-orientated courses of study and are equipped to the highest standard.

A UTC must be supported by a university and local employers who are involved with governance, who help with student teaching and mentoring, and who shape the specialist curriculum. FE colleges are playing a crucial role in many UTCs as they recognise the need for this specialist offering. UTC leavers at 19 will be well prepared to make the best of either higher education or proper apprenticeships. This will give them a flying start for a great career.
UTCs typically operate a longer school day from 8.30am until 5.30pm . For 40 per cent of the time, or two days each week, pre-16 students follow a technical curriculum and for 60 per cent – three days – they pursue the academic study needed to support the technical, including English, maths, science, a working foreign language and the history and geography of industry, invention and innovation. These ratios are reversed post -16, with the technical curriculum taking up three days a week. The whole curriculum is designed to link the hand with the mind. A wide range of extra-curricular activities completes the picture. UTCs have five 8 week terms amounting to 40 weeks per year rather than the usual 38. The extended day and the shorter holidays mean that over a four year period a whole extra year and a half of teaching is provided.

There is a severe shortage of capital in the current recession. We realise that we can no longer afford glamorous school buildings with splendid atriums. But what matters is that teachers can teach and students can learn in facilities that work and with modern technical equipment.

BDT has secured the government’s agreement to a capital expenditure programme that allows UTCs to be developed along these lines, often by remodelling existing redundant educational buildings. Our business partners are proving to be most generous with the supply of equipment as they believe in what UTCs are doing. UTCs will be housed in business-like buildings doing a business-like job. They should be fit for purpose and affordable to maintain.

The successful UTC applications announced this week are linked to over 200 employers. They have a wide geographical spread: from Warwick UTC, supported by Jaguar Land Rover, specialises in engineering with digital technology; to MediaCityUK UTC on Salford Quays, supported by The Lowry, BBC, ITV and The Aldridge Foundation, specialises in creative and digital technologies, and entrepreneurship, to Cambridge UTC, supported by Cambridge University Hospitals and Napp Pharmaceuticals, which specialises in bio-medical and environmental science and technology. Norfolk UTC in Norwich, supported by East Anglia Offshore Wind, specialises in energy skills; Heathrow UTC, supported by British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and the RAF, specialises in aviation engineering; and Elstree UTC, supported by The Meller Educational Trust and Elstree Studios, specialises in entertainment and digital technologies and crafts.

These projects have all been backed by local employers who need the skills that the students will acquire and a university which will ensure academic rigour and a high status.

We are constantly told of the need for growth in our economy. We must produce enough of our own engineers to staff the businesses that will generate this growth. Employers up and down the country tell us that they cannot get enough work-ready, energetic, skilled young people to become highly valued technicians and engineers. UTCs will not plug this gap overnight, but this programme is a great start. Our intention is that young people leaving our UTCs will all have the potential to become the CEOs of the future.

Charles Parker CEO,
Baker Dearing Educational Trust

Ofsted inspections – why are the grades dropping?

The decrease in colleges’ Ofsted grades has been well documented in FE Week. In 2009-2010, about a quarter of colleges that were previously judged to be good or outstanding saw their grade decline.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, has been vocal in his concerns, claiming that colleges were “using the complexity of FE as a cover for not doing what they should be doing, which is monitoring the quality of teaching”.

If we are to comprehend and reverse this trend, we must understand what is happening. It is too early to be definitive. Some say that Ofsted inspections are now strongly focused on teaching and learning, and this will be even more true with the new Common Inspection Framework.

Therefore, it could be argued that if a college broadens its horizons too far from that focus, it could diminish its ability of attaining a good grade.

Risk analysis is a factor that many have raised. Ofsted focus their inspections on the basis of risk, with colleges in the lower bands, or where analysis of data suggests there is an issue, being more likely to be inspected – and more likely to gain a lower result than the true average of all colleges.

Another theory is that there may be a tendency for a college’s self assessment to be optimistic rather than realistic, which can result in it failing to identify its weaknesses and so underperform during inspection. Over-confident self assessment could also indicate inadequate management.

This is the speculation. But we do know that when provided with the support to develop impartial self assessment and to improve teaching and learning, colleges can improve their learner success rates and inspection grades.

The colleges who have received help from LSIS to avoid or resolve issues of concern have, on average, improved by one grade at their next inspection.

There is also a strong demonstrable link between working with LSIS and success rates.
On May 30, Ofsted announced its new inspection regime: from September this year, providers will need to demonstrate outstanding teaching, learning and assessment to be judged outstanding overall (note, not all teaching must be outstanding).

Under a normal distribution only a small number of colleges will achieve an outstanding grade at any one time”

This reinforces the message to colleges that they need to focus on the learner experience and success. Inevitably, under a normal distribution only a small number of colleges will achieve an outstanding grade at any one time.

In March, LSIS set out its three priorities for 2012-2013 in Refining our Strategy 2012 to 2015: to drive forward outstanding teaching and learning, to forge excellent leadership and management, and to move with powerful intervention to avoid and resolve cases of failure. LSIS offers help to colleges in these vital areas to help them to improve and, in doing so, serve their learners best – and attain good inspection results.

As to the third priority – “to move with powerful intervention” – LSIS offers services pre- and post-inspection; the new LSIS Escalated Intervention Service is being set up for those found inadequate twice in a row (under the new Ofsted rules, the number of times a provider can be judged as “requires improvement” will usually be limited to twice).

There does not appear to be a single explanation for the decline in Ofsted grades. However, the need for a strong focus on teaching and learning is a recurrent theme. It will be interesting to see the impact, positive or negative, of the new regime.

LSIS will continue to be guided by the sector to provide what it requires, whether it is help to improve Ofsted grades, striving for excellence in teaching and learning, or supporting strong college leadership, management and governance.

Rob Wye, chief executive,
Learning and Skills Improvement Service

Data management – abuse or inadequacy?

The recent FE Week headline about the leaked Tenon report once again brings to the fore accusations of manipulating data in order to boost success rates.

Originally highlighted by Geoff Russell’s infamous ‘cease and desist’ letter whilst Chief Executive of the LSC in December 2009, it’s also the reason we developed our ADaM software, allowing providers themselves to quickly and simply identify any data management issues and take remedial action where necessary. More than two years on, it seems the issue just won’t go away.

Just this week, the latest FE Week survey shows over 80% of respondents still think there’s a problem with the majority seeing it as widespread amongst colleges, seemingly reinforcing this argument.

So, are the dramatic headlines true? Are you being cheated or are you a cheat? Perhaps a good question to ask is why the number of providers using ADaM continues to grow (it’s currently well over 100).

If they thought or even knew they were manipulating their data why would they continue to pay for a piece of software whose specific purpose is to bring any bad practice into the light? In our experience, yes there is a problem but the truth behind it is normally far more ordinary and less clear-cut than feared or portrayed.

It doesn’t mean that data is never wrong (a next to impossible task with large datasets, a highly flexible curriculum and complicated rules) but making the jump from bad data to cheating is a huge one to make and somewhat simplistic.

What we’ve consistently found since 2010 is that, where they do arise, most data issues that could be interpreted as impacting on success rates are due to inadequate data management practices or processes. That’s to say, the significant number of in-year data changes which we do see are largely representative of corrections to data which shouldn’t have been wrong in the first place.

The report makes reference to a number of data issues which certainly concur with our own findings, including: enrolments being removed from later ILRs; enrolments becoming non-funded; learners being enrolled late; and planned end dates being changed. However, whilst it seems to imply that there are underhand motives behind these in-year changes, our extensive experience is very different – generally, the data was wrong so they corrected it.

That said, it’s certainly not unusual to come across isolated pockets of inappropriate behaviour, but even these tend to reflect plain ignorance of the rules rather than a deliberate attempt to flout them. However, their generally isolated nature means that they’re typically not large enough to have a significant impact on a provider’s success rates.

We look at provider data every day and rarely (if ever) come across one which doesn’t have issues but I can count on one hand the number of instances we have encountered that could be termed systematic abuse. Whilst that doesn’t mean the rest are acceptable, what I can say with confidence is that there is quite obviously a great desire across the sector to self-improve and the year-on-year data we see bears this out.

So where does all this leave us regarding the latest headlines? Do we agree that data management practices still leave plenty of room for improvement – yes.

Do we understand that the scale of in-year data changes could be interpreted as smelling fishy? – yes. Do a small number of providers occasionally do stupid things which tarnish the reputation of the many – yes. Do we see any widespread evidence of systematic abuse? – very little.

In our experience, most people are just trying to ‘do the right thing’ and are using tools like ADaM to help them identify data issues and go on to improve procedures, staff training, workflow and efficiency. Ultimately it’s in their best interest so why wouldn’t they?

Looking at the raw data only raises questions, it doesn’t provide answers. Only by working hand-in-hand with providers, in examining their practices and the motives behind them, can one hope to jump to the right conclusions.

Mark Smith, Development
Director, Drake Lane Associates

Green light for another 15 UTCs

A further 15 University Technical Colleges (UTCs) are to be funded by the government and rolled out over the next two years. The announcement will nearly double their number to 34.

The government is investing £8 to £10 million for each UTC to help them get started, including building costs, and will then give the same amount of money per pupil that other secondary schools receive.

Lord Hill, the Schools Minister said he was “very pleased” to be announcing the approval of more UTCs. “Right around the country there is a lot of enthusiasm from employers, universities, pupils and parents for high quality, rigorous technical education.

“They provide more choice for children as well as helping provide the kind of highly skilled technicians our economy needs.”

The UTC model is the brainchild of Lord Baker and the late Lord Dearing, who decided four years ago that the one thing missing from the education system was technical colleges.

The institutions are for 14 to 19 year-olds and each has one or two specialisms – ranging from engineering, to manufacturing, to construction or bio-medical sciences.

The technical course is taught alongside a core GCSE curriculum, and some pupils go on to A Level subjects.

Students spend about 60 per cent of their time on academic study and work the business hours that would be expected of them in industry (for example, 8:30am
to 5pm).

All UTCs are supported by a university, a range of local employers and very often an FE college.

One of the two UTCs currently open, the JCB Academy in Staffordshire, is backed by a multinational construction company, and the presence of big business is felt strongly in the upcoming UTCs.

The owners of Heathrow, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are backing one of the colleges, which will specialise in aviation engineering, and Jaguar Land Rover is a stakeholder in Warwick UTC.

Overall, 300 companies are supporting the 34 UTCs.

The other college currently in operation, Black Country UTC in the West Midlands, works with more than 50 high profile companies, including Siemens UK.

Chris Hilton, the principal, said that its relationship with employers is critical to ensuring that students have the best chance of finding work after they leave school.

“The curriculum is actively shaped by employers and industry stakeholders, ensuring the knowledge and skills pupils gain fully meet the demands of industry,” he said.

The growth of the economy is not going to come from bankers or real estate developers”

“The College supports the Black Country regeneration agenda by addressing the need of more relevant and current educational and training opportunities for young people in engineering and manufacturing.”

He added: “We also utilise our industry links to ensure students are able to work on live briefs set by employers and have real exposure to industry through company visits and work experience opportunities.”

Technical colleges look set to become a prominent aspect of the educational landscape. Since the first two opened two years ago the number has snowballed and Lord Baker hopes to see 100 set up.

He believes the colleges are crucial for this country’s financial health: “The growth of the economy is not going to come from bankers or real estate developers.

“It’s going to come from innovation and technological design.”

Speaking exclusively to FE Week, he added: “We’re training engineers and technicians, which this country is desperately short of.

“We can’t have nuclear power stations and high speed rail, tunnelling and broadband communications, unless we have lots of engineers and technicians.

“That’s what keeps the economy going today.”

Ed Miliband spoke recently about the “snobbery” that exists towards vocational courses, arguing that higher education should not be the only catalyst for social mobility.

Lord Baker echoes this and describes UTCs as “agents of social mobility”, highlighting that 23 per cent of children at the Black Country UTC in Walsall are on free school meals.

“[UTCs] fulfil a very important social obligation of engaging the disengaged. [There are] lots of 13 and 14 year olds who are very fed up and we have to switch them on again.”

He believes that the technical colleges that existed in the 1950s closed because of “snobbery” and that this attitude is still present.

“We have to beat that snobbery and recreate real opportunity,” he said.

‘Massive’ error in the National Success Rates Tables

The National Success Rate Tables (NSRT) for 2010/11 will need to be republished after significant errors were identified.

More than 23 per cent of all qualifications are showing an ‘unknown’ level, up from just 2 per cent in the earlier Qualification Success Rate (QSR) report (see table below).

Members of the College Management Information Systems (CMIS) network say the “massive” anomalies include BTEC qualifications and Access to HE courses. Values also vary for similar qualifications from different awarding bodies.

One example given is a Diploma in Complementary Therapies (QCF) from City & Guilds, displayed as a level 3, while the equivalent qualification from VTCT is an ‘unknown’ level.

Comparisons to the 2010/11 QSR reports show a difference of 672,123 ‘unknown’ starts across all age groups and providers.

Our investigation into this issue has determined that there is an error and we have therefore removed the reports temporarily.”

The number of ‘unknown’ starts has also risen from 8,777 in the QSR to 546,295 in the NSRT for learners of all ages in general FE colleges.

Jerry White, head of planning and performance at City College Norwich, told FE Week: “The 2010/11 tables provide national averages (benchmarks) which clearly differ from those published within the 2010/11 Qualification Success Rate reports.

“As these national averages play a major role in college self-assessment and the judgements made on our performance by bodies such as Ofsted, it is vital that there is accuracy and reliability in this national performance data.

“I would hope that the Data Service would explain why there has been a variance and make the corrections necessary to produce a definitive, reliable dataset against which providers can measure themselves.”

The Skills Funding Agency (SFA), on behalf of the Data Service, has since told FE Week the NSRT has been removed and will be re-published within the next two weeks.

“The NSRTs that were published on May 24 had an unusually high number of unknown notional levels in the ‘other’ qualification type category,” said an SFA spokesperson.

“Our investigation into this issue has determined that there is an error and we have therefore removed the reports temporarily.

“The revised reports, with details on the revision, are expected to be available by mid-June.”

The retraction differs drastically from the Service’s original response last month.

“Unfortunately this is due to the classification in the LARA tables,” it said then.

“You are correct that this is an issue. Unfortunately the 2010/11 tables cannot be changed, but measures are in place to address this so this will not happen in the 2011/12 tables.”

Colleges ‘fixing’ the success rate figures. Where will it end?

An overwhelming majority of staff working in FE colleges have concerns with the credibility of success rate data.

A survey conducted by Lsect, publisher of FE Week, revealed that after excluding those who responded ‘don’t know’, 90 per cent said “yes” to the question: “Across colleges, do you think there is a problem with success rate data credibility?”

Becky Dowst, CIS manager at Totton College, said: “The artificial inflation of college success rates causes the national rates to rise, putting colleges under greater pressure to improve their own success rates still further…where will it end?”

Angie Tithecott, head of funding and performance review at Canterbury College, added: “Over the years I have had other staff within my college come back and tell me how other colleges improve their rates; this has been using methods I would have said were not acceptable, like changing end dates and removing fails.”

The survey, which had 106 responses from 94 colleges, followed a confidential report, seen by FE Week, from Tenon Education Training and Skills Limited. The document, which FE Week reported in its last edition, was written for a secret group of FE colleges and suggested headline success rates could be improved by up to 10 per cent by adopting unfair practices.

Jon Brown, MIS manager for Loughborough College, said: “There is certainly pressure within colleges to find ways to maximise success rates (other than by making sure the data is correct).

“This is unhelpful to say the least and in discussions with colleagues in the sector, there is definitely a spread of views as to whether this is acceptable.

“Given this, it is highly likely that a significant number of colleges ‘fix’ the success rates.

“The problem is that most of the information is anecdotal, but there is a growing unease that some colleges have knowingly decided to take actions that disguise the true picture.”

If we receive reliable intelligence about any provider manipulating their data the Agency will investigate fully.”

The Tenon report claimed: “the use of practices to improve success rates is widespread within FE colleges.”

Seventy-per cent of respondents to the Lsect survey agreed when asked if they thought this was true. Dean Carey, head of MIS at South Nottingham College, said: “I’ve worked in four colleges in an MIS role and there has always been pressure applied to the MIS/data teams to ‘sort’ the data out either with individual department heads or cross-college.

“It requires these teams to maintain a strong stance and make managers aware of the risks and ultimately providers can be setting themselves up to fail by artificially inflating success rates.”

He added: “We’ve all seen the letters from the funding agencies warning us not to adjust data and there will be tighter checks done, etc.”

Mr Carey said the reality was that resources were being squeezed at the Skills Funding Agency (SFA).

However, 24 survey respondents disagreed that the practices were “widespread”.

Neil Reeves, MIS team leader at City College Brighton & Hove, said: “There may be some instances where the practices outlined are occurring, but I feel they may be looking for a scandal that isn’t there.”

A spokesperson for the SFA told FE Week: “The Agency does not use overall success rates as a means of managing and regulating funds, or as a trigger for formal intervention.

“If we receive reliable intelligence about any provider manipulating their data the Agency will investigate fully.”

The Tenon report also said colleges were using specific practices “to support in the manipulation of inspection grades.”

However, a spokesperson for Ofsted told FE Week:  “Ofsted is confident of the reliability of the national success rates data for this purpose.

“Ofsted also uses a range of other sources of evidence when arriving at inspection judgments including the provider’s own in-year performance data, the provider’s self-assessment report, previous inspection findings, observations of teaching, training and assessment and the views of staff, learners and employers.”

Penny Wycherley, principal and CEO, Great Yarmouth College

“By any standards, it was a dysfunctional childhood,” says Penny Wycherley, principal of Great Yarmouth College, of her early life.

Born in Stoke, and raised in Oxford, where her father ran a successful chain of electrical shops, Wycherley was educated an independent school, where she jokes the only thing she learned was “how to carry a handbag properly.”

The death of her father, who was killed in a car accident when she just 11 years old, turned her life upside down. The family moved to the New Forest, where her mother ran a business “extremely badly” and struggled to make ends meet, and just two years after her father’s death, Wycherley herself was involved in a car accident, which left her with serious injuries. “When you have a badly scarred face – which is was at that point – people don’t look at you…they look past you,” she recalls.

But those early experiences toughened her up, making her more determined to succeed, she says. “For many people, when a parent dies, they fall backwards. That didn’t happen to me. When my father died, I knew there were a range of opportunities open to me and I suppose I chose to start working at education at that point.

“I realised that life wasn’t going to be handed to me, so it was a wake-up call… I know it’s a cliché, but I realised that life is not a dress rehearsal.”

Wycherley went on to study history at Kent University, where she got involved in student politics, most notably, she says with a grin, on the issue of overnight guests. “They had a rule that members of the opposite sex couldn’t sleep in your room overnight, but they wanted to encourage discussion about it… I can remember sitting there and saying, ‘So if I keep my boyfriend awake at night with insatiable demands, that’s fine – but if I let him go to sleep I am committing a breach of discipline?’”

What motivated her back then – giving students a voice – is what continues to drive her now, she says. “It was the 1960s…everyone was involved in student politics, everyone wanted to change the world…now I just settle for making a difference.”

But it took a further 20 years for her to find her vocation in further education. After university, Wycherley joined the NHS, on a human resources management programme, and over the decade that followed, combined high-level management roles – including the tough job of closing hospitals – with bringing up small children, surviving for many years on little more than fours hours sleep a night.

In the early 1980s, having just had her third child, and keen to spend more time with her family, she quit the NHS and went into business with her then husband, buying up failing businesses (mainly post offices) and turning them around.

But while the business was ticking along nicely, Wycherley yearned for another challenge and when an opportunity came along in the early Nineties to teach history part-time at her son’s college, she jumped at the chance. Within three years, she was running a large access and basic skills provision at Chichester College in West Sussex.

There were some governors who were… difficult. I got fed up of being accused of lying to them”

While she admits to being “terrified” by her first session in the classroom, Wycherley was immediately hooked on teaching. “I loved seeing the light in people’s eyes, particularly adult returners, people for whom education hadn’t worked first time around,” she says.

She recalls one student, who had recently been discharged from a psychiatric hospital. “She had never passed anything, was clearly bright but she couldn’t sit in the classroom for more than 20 minutes at a time, so all the teaching had to be structured down to 20 minutes,” she recalls. “She did go on to university and get a first, she now teaches psychiatrists and she is one of the country’s leaders on research around user voice in mental healthcare.”

Having taken on a senior leadership role in 1998, Wycherley became an Ofsted inspector in 2001, where she says she saw many failing colleges. And back at her own college, she was regularly being given the job of turning round departments with difficulties.

It was then she began thinking about taking on a principal’s role, and after her experience as an Ofsted inspector, what interested her most was doing “turnaround” work with colleges. She took up her first principal’s post at South Kent College in Folkestone – where she took up a post in 2006 after a vote of no confidence in the outgoing principal – did offer a turnaround challenge, but feeling unable to gain support from some members of the governing body, she decided to move on after just a year.

“I was being stymied,” she says. “There were some governors who were supportive but there was a big tranche who were… difficult. I got fed up of being accused of lying to them. I stuck it out for a year, at which point I resigned with nothing to go to and no money in the bank.”

After a spell as director of provider services at Tribal, Wycherley decided to set up her own consultancy, specialising in quality improvement for colleges.

But at the end of 2011, she was asked to take on the principal’s role at Great Yarmouth College, which having had three notices to improve from Ofsted was at the time “the worst college in the country by quite a long way”.

It was a “catastrophic” situation, says Wycherley. “The executive team wasn’t speaking to one another, there was a fight in front of Ofsted between the students when they were in…it was endemic.”

What was clear from the outset was that staff did care about the learners, but as Wycherley set about rebuilding the college, there were difficult decisions to make, and inevitably, casualties. “Doing redundancies is always hard,” says Wycherley. “It’s people’s lives. It’s their mortgages, their families and their futures… and yes, of course I lose sleep about it. In that round of redundancies, we took out £600,000 from management. I have a motto: [for carrying out redundancies]‘Do it quick and do it clean.’”

When Ofsted inspectors visited the college in April, they found “remarkable” improvements, with all areas judged satisfactory and some areas good, including the advice and guidance students get in choosing the right course for them.

But there is still work to be done, says Wycherley, who is contracted to stay at the college until the end of next year. Her ultimate aim is to ensure Great Yarmouth continues to have its own further education provision The college is currently in discussion with nearby Lowestoft College about closer collaboration, she says, but that is not the only option available. “What it has to do is to match what the community needs – and by community, I mean the local employers, the businesses, the North Sea…all those people who need support. I want to leave something sustainable.”

Stafford College and Franklin College consider Ofsted appeals

Two colleges in the FE sector are considering appeals after receiving ‘inadequate’ or ‘satisfactory’ inspection grades from Ofsted.

Stafford College, which received a grade four at the end of last month, has confirmed it will be submitting an appeal because of “crucial factual errors” in its inspection report.

Steve Willis, principal of the college, has also said the informal feedback from inspectors gave a “misleading picture of the quality of work that takes place at this college”.

A statement issued by the college said the poor inspection grade can be attributed to a measure of student performance called ‘Outcomes for Learners’ that, under new weighting, has forced its teaching, management and value for money to be downgraded.

The inspection report, which follows a “good” grade two rating in 2009, said lessons at Stafford College are “uninspiring” and fail to challenge learners.

“Teachers know their subjects well but the quality of lessons across the college varies too much,” the report said.

We decided to be entirely rigorous and transparent in our data collection, adhering to national guidelines. Once that happened, a poor inspection outcome was inevitable.”

“Inspectors found good teaching and learning in over half the lessons observed but too much (of) that was satisfactory and did not challenge learners enough to reach their full potential.”

It later said the college’s success rates have declined and are particularly low for learners on advanced courses.

The statement from the college, however, refers to a report by Tenon Education Training and Skills Limited, which was written on behalf of a secret group of colleges.

The report, seen by FE Week, suggests “widespread” methods artificially inflate success rate data and inspection grades.

Mr Willis says: “There are many ways in which we could have reported entirely different levels of student success.

“We decided to be entirely rigorous and transparent in our data collection, adhering to national guidelines.

“Colleges are under enormous pressure to find creative ways to measure their success rates and we knew that our own approach could lead to us falling below the national average.

“Once that happened, a poor inspection outcome was inevitable.”

Franklin College, which also received an ‘inadequate’ grade from Ofsted in May, said it too is considering an appeal.

The sixth form college in Grimsby, which received a ‘good’ rating in 2008, has been criticised for “not driving improvements with urgency”.

Inspectors said that the leadership and management of the college requires improvement, and that strategic priorities need to be communicated more effectively to staff.

They also say that the success rates for students on AS level courses is “consistently and significantly” below the national average.

“Since the last inspection there has been no trend of improvement in poor success rates in AS level and on intermediate courses.”

Using new pilot inspection guidelines, Ofsted said that too many courses at the college have poor retention rates, although they admit that in the current year “retention rates have improved”.

Barnfield College, which has fallen from “outstanding” to “satisfactory”, said it had decided not to appeal an Ofsted report that said a significant number of lessons did not challenge students and were unclear about what they should be learning.

It later said the college is “over-generous” when judging its own performance, and also has declining success rates for students on long courses.

Pete Birkett, chief executive of the Barnfield Federation said: “The college takes all audits very seriously and uses them to raise our game, which we are now doing.”

An Ofsted spokesperson told FE Week it did not comment on individual inspections “over and above the published reports”.

When questioned about the appeals, the spokesperson added: “Ofsted does not comment on whether a complaint or concerns have been received about individual providers.”

Flaws highlighted in the Apprenticeship Training Agency model

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) has questioned the way learners are employed by Apprenticeship Training Agencies (ATAs).

An article in the association’s weekly briefing, written by Graham Hoyle, chief executive of AELP, said there had been “simmering disquiet” from members about the legitimacy of the ATA model.

“For many the capacity allowing the ATA to employ the apprentice is seen simply as a device to get round the dictat, supported by AELP, that all apprentices must be employed.

“It is perceived as a concession to a few to circumvent what is otherwise seen as a rigid stipulation, one which merely legitimises the continuation of the now outlawed programme led apprenticeships,” he said.

Mr Hoyle suggested in his article, which was sent to David Way, chief executive of the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS), that ATAs be forced to deliver pre-apprenticeship or access to apprenticeship programmes until the learner was hired full-time by the employer.

He said providers would then be encouraged to develop a mixture of programmes aimed at progressing learners on a full apprenticeship “at the earliest opportunity”.

However, in a written response Mr Way said these concerns had been addressed with the introduction of the ATA Recognition Process.

The process, managed in partnership with the Confederation of Apprenticeship Training Agencies (COATA), meant colleges and training providers could only work with ATAs approved by NAS from 2012/13.

“All ATA apprentices are employed from day one of their apprenticeship by the ATA and undertake their apprenticeship programme with a host employer in real sustainable employment where they are able to complete their apprenticeship,” Mr Way said.

Peter Pledger, chairman of COATA said: “Graham Hoyle, he’s thrown in all the ATA manifestations all into one pot and damned the lot of them.

“It seems to me to be a fundamental misunderstanding about what an ATA actually is.

“An ATA is not a training provider, an ATA is an employer and it seems to me that he has missed that point.”

Mr Pledger said COATA would meet with NAS, AELP and the Association of Colleges later this month to discuss any issues.