FE Week’s glitzy auction in aid of HKF

An FE Week charity auction night held in the grand setting of Birmingham’s Grade II-listed Council House raised at least £5,500 for the Helena Kennedy Foundation.

More than 100 guests attended the event on Tuesday, November 20, including National Institute of Adult Continuing Education chief executive David Hughes and Learning and Skills Improvement Service chair Dame Ruth Silver.

Principals and staff from providers such as Solihull College, Milton Keynes College and East Kent College were also there and enjoyed table-to-table entertainment from 11-year-old yo-yo trickster David Braden Holmes and psychological magician Mark Cairns.

From left. Lynne Sedgmore, 157 Group, is presented with a HKF ambassador’s bowl by Ann Limb, HKF

Among the top auction earners were a sports car experience day that went for £200, dinner for two at the House of Lords with Neil Kinnock for £240 and an iPad at £370.

And more than £1,200 of the night’s takings came from the sale of £5 raffle strips with prizes on offer including a night at an Edinburgh hotel and a tour of Premier League football club Newcastle United’s St James’s Park stadium plus dinner.

The night, which was supported by NCFE and Tribal, takes FE Week’s fund-raising for the charity to at least £15,500 in just over a year”

The evening was kicked off by FE Week director of operations Shane Mann before charity chair Dr Ann Limb OBE introduced the night’s star guest, Athens 2004 Paralympics wheelchair basketball bronze medallist Ade Adepitan MBE.

The 39-year-old, who anchored Channel Four’s coverage of this year’s Paralympics with Clare Balding, is a patron of the foundation, which hands out cash to disadvantaged students to help them go on to higher education.

He gave a speech on how his life had been affected by childhood polio and said: “Everybody needs a little help in their lives, some more than others.

From left: Graham Towse, Grimsby Institute Group (GIG), Julie Moore, GIG, Ade Adepitan, Ellen Thinessen GIG and Amanda Rudolph, GIG. Mr Towse paid £500 for a paralympic T-shirt signed by Mr Adepitan

“Two of the most powerful things in the world are sport and education, and I’m here because I benefited from both.”

Ade was presented with an ambassador’s bowl to mark his dedication to the fund, before a second bowl was given to 157 Group executive director Lynne Sedgmore.

“All I want to say is thank you to all involved in this event and also the Helena Kennedy Foundation – it epitomises what further education is all about, and that’s transforming lives,” she said.

Julie Nugent, Birmingham Met College, with David Hughes, NIACE, who won a bottle of whisky signed by Ed Miliband MP in the raffle

The night, which was supported by NCFE and Tribal, takes FE Week’s fund-raising for the charity to at least £15,500 in just over a year.

Nick Linford, FE Week editor, said: “It was so great to see a host of high-profile FE figures come along and support us and, more importantly, the Helena Kennedy Foundation.

“To have raised such a huge amount of money in the space of just over a year – and for such a worthy cause – was beyond my wildest dreams.

“All I can say is a huge ‘thank you’ to all those involved who really helped to make it a night to remember.”

From left: Sarah Linford shows off the floral display, created by Maureen Palmer and students from Solihull College

Employer ownership criticised as ‘top-slicing’

An FE leader blasted new training incentives for businesses worth £150m as “top slicing” funds from the adult skills budget.

Maggie Galliers, president of the Association of Colleges (AoC), was speaking at this year’s annual AoC conference where FE Minister Matthew Hancock announced the cash pot for businesses to help “build a skilled workforce”.

During his speech at Birmingham’s ICC Mr Hancock said businesses across the country could bid for a share of the funds to create the training schemes they needed to “grow their companies”. The fund is the second round of the Employer Ownership Pilot (EOP) which is already giving nearly £70 million to companies including Nissan, Whitbread and GE Aviation, with projects ranging from extending skills training to local suppliers, to doubling the number of female apprentices.

“For Britain to compete we need as a nation to deliver the skills employers need,” said Mr Hancock.

“This is a unique opportunity for companies across all industries to secure their futures by addressing their skills needs now.

“I would encourage businesses – large and small – to be ambitious and innovative in their vision for how the fund can help them grow, from creating new apprenticeship programmes to setting up specialist training academies.
Ms Galliers said AoC were fully supportive of their underlying purpose of “unlocking even greater investment” by employers in training.

But she reacted saying: “But, and I am afraid there is a ‘but’, these pilots are funded by top slicing from the adult skills budget. And this is not the only initiative vying for our money.

“The emerging demands around Local Enterprise Partnerships and City Deals could mean that as a sector we have less flexibility and less resource and spend too much of our time chasing funding pots.”

Government investment in EOP for rounds one and two now totals £250 million.

The other 34 successful round one projects were announced in September. These included Nissan’s programme to bridge the skills gap for more than 3,600 technical staff, new recruits and supply chain workers involved in producing new models and working with evolving technologies.

David Way, chief executive of the National Apprenticeship Service, supported the scheme.

He said: “While I am delighted to see many more employers offering apprenticeships every week, we welcome this important employer-led approach. This will help to achieve our ambition to see accelerated growth and higher quality standards for apprenticeships.

“The Employer Ownership Pilot will encourage a fresh and creative approach to stimulating employers to offer more opportunities to young people. This initiative will enable even more employers to collaborate and lead to the further expansion of apprenticeships. This is vital for ensuring employers of all sizes and in vital growth sectors invest in and benefit from apprenticeships.

“We look forward to working closely with UKCES, BIS and all of our employers in developing and delivering high quality apprenticeships.”

The round two prospectus is now available online at www.ukces.org.uk/employerownership and the deadline for bids is February 28, 2013.

Functional skills funding to double

The FE Minister has pledged to double the amount of money available for adult English and maths skills branding it a “scandal”many Britons “couldn’t read or add up properly”

Matthew Hancock (pictured) made the announcement welcomed by FE leaders during a speech at AoC’s annual conference in Birmingham.

“And there is one area where Britain should lead the world, but where sinfully we have allowed ourselves to fall behind,” Mr Hancock told the packed main hall at the ICC.

“Here in these islands, we invented the English language that now dominates the globe. It is the global language: of trade, of culture, of diplomacy, and of the arts. And our history is littered with many of the advances in mathematics too.

“Yet too many of our young people cannot read or write, or add up properly,” he said.

“This is a scandal and it must change.”

He said to “show the value” the government attached to English and maths he was “doubling the amount we pay for adult English and Maths functional skills, and for English and Maths within an apprenticeship.”

But the Skills Funding Agency declined to tell FE Week when the rate increase would become available nor where funding would come from to afford the rate increase.

A spokesperson said: “We are implementing some rate increases for English and maths qualifications. This is in advance of the introduction of the new funding system in 2013/14. Further details on this will be available on our website later this week.”

The National Institute for Adults Continuing Education (NIACE) “warmly” welcomed Mr Hancock’s news.

Carol Taylor, director of development and research, said the organisation had called for recognition that all adults “need to be able to read and write to a functional level” to play a full-part in their family, in work and society.

“Over 3000 people took part in NIACE maths challenges at the recent Skills Show, and many asked for advice on how to improve their English and maths,” she said.

“One woman was able to do entry level English at college but unable to do maths as the college was not able to offer her a class.”

“We will continue to work with colleges and providers to help them develop functional skills for all learners, regardless of their age or the stage of their learning.”

The minister also set out his intention to consult on rigorous 16-19 vocational qualifications, to help ensure minimum levels of performance were applied equally to college and school sixth forms.

The 157 Group, an organisation that represents 27 FE colleges, supported this.

Marilyn Hawkins, group chair, said: “We are pleased these announcements acknowledge the need to ensure high-quality pathways are available for all learners. They reflect our view that colleges provide a vital element in the learning of 14 to 24-year-olds of all abilities.”

Lynne Sedgmore, executive director of the 157 Group, added, “We welcome the minister’s reaffirmed commitment to levelling the quality playing field between schools and colleges, something for which we have long argued.”

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UPDATE: On Friday 23 November the Skills Funding Agency published a document which said the rate increase would apply for this year (2012/13) – click here to download the document.

Using figures from this document, the table below describes the actual increase for 2012/13, which is in fact more than double the current rate.

Panel sets out to define FE Guild

From left: Martin Doel, Peter Davies, David Hughes and Graham Hoyle on the panel at the Association of Colleges annual conference and exhibition 2012

Leaders of the new FE Guild proposals have told of their hopes for the new body, but said they were prepared for it to be rejected by the sector.

A consultation on the guild has launched and Association of Colleges (AoC) chief executive Martin Doel said he wouldn’t predict the results.

“If the consultation comes back saying the sector doesn’t want a guild, or an improvement agency, then we’ll have to conclude that’s the case and go back to government and say that’s the case,” he told a Q&A audience of delegates at the AoC conference in Birmingham.

“You can’t have a consultation and predict what it will say.”

The Q&A had been put on as an extra session on Wednesday, November 21, for delegates to find out how proposals for the guild — a single body to set professional standards and codes of behaviour as well as develop qualifications – were progressing.

An early stage consultation has been launched to feed into a summary of proposals due to be drawn up and sent out for further consultation in around two months. The plan is for the guild to be up-and-running from August.
“We’ve put on this extra session because the guild is so topical and important,” said Mr Doel.

“We’ve got an extremely aggressive timescale to work towards, but I think it’s achievable.”

Further education Minister Mathew Hancock announced last month the AoC and the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) had won government approval to “take forward” the FE Guild proposals.

David Hughes, chief executive of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, has already been appointed independent chair of a steering group on the guild, and Peter Davies, former City Lit principal, was unveiled as its project team leader.

They both appeared on the Q&A panel, along with the AoC’s Mr Doel and AELP chief executive Graham Hoyle.

Mr Hughes said there had already been talks with senior figures at the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS), which looks likely to close as its role is taken up by the guild.

“We’ve been very careful to include LSIS chief executive Rob Wye and chair Dame Ruth Silver in discussions,” he said.

“It must be a very worrying time for LSIS staff and we need to be careful about quashing any myths and rumours about the guild.

“It’s very clear to me we need to learn from what LSIS has done and to learn from it where the sector’s pressure points are.

“We have an opportunity to own an organisation within the sector that does something quite modest, but really important that is about pulling the sector together and you need that.”

Email Mr Davies on peter_davies@aoc.co.uk or feguild@aoc.co.uk to have your say on the guild.

Shadow minister’s care blow for FE leaders

The Shadow minister for Education has “disappointed” FE leaders after casting doubt on colleges’ ability to “care and support” 14-year-olds recruited full-time from schools.

Labour MP Karen Buck’s comments came at AoC’s annual conference when she was asked if she supported government proposals that could see pupils directly funded to complete a mixture of GCSEs and vocational qualifications at FE colleges.

“One of the things that worries me, and the conference may shout me down, is that there is sometimes a risk that very young people going into college may not get the full pastoral care and support they would want,” said Ms Buck.

The shadow minister’s comments were received with boos and came just a day after FE Minister Matthew Hancock declined to give a firm answer on when this proposal might go ahead.

Gary Warke, deputy principal at Hull College which recently took on 80 14-year-olds full-time, said youngsters “absolutely had the right to the full range of vocational courses” available in FE.

“We have been a major champion of this and have taken on full-time 14-year-olds who have gained confidence and progression moving forward after coming to us.”

He said Hull College had provided assembly and sports access, religious education and secure playgrounds.

“They have loved it,” he said of the young recruits.

“They get treated like an adult and have access to a broad provision of courses otherwise not available.”

Marian Plant, principal of North Warwickshire and Hinckley College, said she “absolutely disagreed” with Ms Buck and could “show absolute evidence to the contrary.”

College leaders will still have to wait for a date when the recruitment proposal might go ahead.

“We are working on plans for colleges directly recruiting pupils aged 14 and 15 to be directly funded,” Mr Hancock said in a speech on Tuesday.

When pushed on the matter, he said: “Hopefully we will hear in the next two months.”

He said he understood September 2013 deadlines loomed and added “we will have an answer by then.”

Colleges have continued to lobby the government. An Association of Colleges (AoC) spokesperson said the need for this change had been a “key point” of their manifesto.

Martin Doel, chief executive of the AoC, said: This is something we and our members are very keen to work towards. But: if this is to happen, it needs to happen quickly. This was a key recommendation of the Wolf Report and colleges are well-placed to deliver high quality provision to young people in this age group.”

In her report Alison Wolf recommended the government “make explicit the legal right of colleges to enrol students under 16 and ensure that funding procedures make this practically possible”.

The 14-16 Implementation Group, made-up of AoC, Department for Education (DfE) and Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) representatives, has been working with DfE and has produced recommendations that have gone to the Secretary of State and Ministers.

Bosses get place at heart of Richard Review

Employers are set to figure at the heart of a much-awaited review of apprenticeships, FE Week can exclusively reveal.

Former Dragons’ Den star Doug Richard, whose independent review is expected to be published by the end of the month, said he wanted to see “much more employer involvement” on apprenticeships.

“I’ve been doing everything I can, using as many different devices and activities to encourage, incentivise, drive and hope for, much more employer involvement because apprenticeships more than anything else are partly a job, which by definition means you need an employer in the mix,” he told FE Week at the launch of the Entrepreneurs and Education Programme at Lewisham College incorporating Southwark College on Monday, November 12.

“This is what’s unique about apprenticeships, therefore employer involvement on many levels is simply more important than in other things we do.

“I’ve put a lot of effort into increasing the type, the calibre and the depth of employer involvement and that’s a clear message of the review.”

Mr Richard was joined at Lewisham College’s Waterloo Campus for the programme launch by Michael Fallon MP, Minister for Business and Enterprise.

The Entrepreneurs and Education Programme is being funded by £1.1m of cash from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills over three years to provide support and advice to students, teachers and researchers across 100 colleges and universities.

Mr Fallon said: “Entrepreneurship is coming back into colleges. We’ve had enterprise societies across universities colleges and the further education sector.

“It can be taught by example. By getting entrepreneurs to come in to colleges, getting businesses into colleges and businesspeople to talk about how rewarding it can be to set up a business and start employing other people.”

The programme, supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, aims to create a new generation of educational entrepreneurs by equipping colleges and universities across the country with the tools to survive a competitive marketplace.

There were seminars throughout the day, from 9am, with students and staff listening to Mr Richard’s views and advice on business.

“Entrepreneurship can be taught,” he said. “And it’s not so much that’s it’s lacking in FE, it’s just that we don’t have the structures and the systems to promote it to flourish to the degree we want.

“This is broadly in the context of FE colleges, specifically in the context of vocational education and very much in the case of apprenticeships, which I intend to change.”

Online exclusive

 Q&A with Doug Richard on his upcoming apprenticeships review

The Richard Review was launched by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills just before the summer.

It was tasked with taking a medium to long-term look at the future of apprenticeships in England, identifying best practice and ensuring future apprenticeships meet the needs of the changing economy, and ensuring apprenticeships deliver the qualifications and skills employers need to world class benchmarks.

It is expected to be published by the end of the month, but author Doug Richard gave FE Week an exclusive interview ahead of the big launch.

How did the review go?

It was a far more complex world than I perhaps appreciated. There was a complexity that doesn’t necessarily have to endure. It’s delivering many benefits, so you have to be very careful not to flush out the baby with the bathwater and there turned out to be many more benefits than I had accounted for.

Any surprises when you carried out review?

The thing that hit me first was how complex the apprenticeship system is in this country. It’s got a lot of stakeholders and players. The second thing was because it’s so large in terms of sheer numbers of people involved, there’s a great deal of good stuff going on within it, but that doesn’t prevent there from being a lot of stuff that’s not good as well.

It was not at all intuitive, that is to say how do you set up a system that is more prepared for the future, which bear in mind was my remit — it’s not to tinker around the edges of the old system, but to say the future’s coming at us and conditions are changing enormously so what’ll we do to make sure we have a clean system that works in such way so that it’s future-proofed. It’s ready for what’s coming, which means we had to spend a lot of time thinking about what’s coming.

What conclusions have you come to?

The big conclusions we’ve drawn are about the engagement of employers on a more profound level and on lots of different levels, making sure the system engages students on an equal level at the right points of time with better information about what it means to be an apprentice versus alternative forms of education and a real focus on higher quality — but what does that mean? If you get on the ground, what does quality really mean? It is a very vague word and so we really had to dig around on it — who’s doing it right and what are the hallmarks of quality activity and how can we make sure those things happen elsewhere?

The BIS Select Committee on apprenticeships called for greater definition on the term apprenticeship. Do you agree there is a need to define what an apprenticeship is?

I think it’s reassuring that two different groups of people with profoundly different situations can look at the same thing and see many things in common — there’s more in common than not, which is a good thing. Their comment about the definition of what constitutes an apprenticeship is very relevant. In the review I’ve gone to a great deal of effort to be extremely precise about what I believe should be included within that word and what shouldn’t, and if it’s not included what should we be doing in those instances. There’s lots worth preserving, they just don’t have to be called apprenticeships. So yes, the issue of definition is going to be a part of the report.

Lord Heseltine’s report, No Stone Unturned, made much of the role of local enterprise partnerships (LEPs). Do these figure in your thinking?

Lord Heseltine has a very strong view of localism that is almost theological. It spans almost anything he looks at. He asks himself ‘how can we be local?’ He and I aren’t completely aligned, but in fairness to him there is a local element to apprenticeships and it’s wonderful when you get it right. But ignore LEPS for a moment because they’re just an entity – it’s a type of thing. The fact is if local colleges and local businesses work together for local demand that is a good thing and if we lose sight of that and the quality of community in this discussion then we short-change the apprenticeship programme. Having said that, there is an equal amount of stuff that is not divided by where are or what sector you are in. There is a marriage to be made of things that are properly sectoral and things that are properly local, and that’s where he and I differ.

The two reports mentioned brought into question the future of the Skills Funding Agency. Was your thinking along those lines, too?

We’ll have to wait for the report before I make as direct a comment as that.

Are you radical in the report?

In some ways absolutely, yes. But the problem is it’s still too early and we’re waiting for sign-offs.

Is the report going to make waves?

Anytime one seeks to build a template for a future of a system with that many participants and that many stakeholders you’d have thought a ripple or two might come up.

Has this country got it right on apprenticeships in any way?

Absolutely. There’s lots of things. We underestimate how good we are at having agile, flexible systems. When you look at the problems of apprenticeships systems, they tend to come from rigidity — it tends to come from them being so state-driven. That can be very valuable in capacity-building, but it makes them really difficult to change and the world’s changing really quickly.

How confident are you your report will be listened to and acted upon?

I’m very confident and obviously hopeful. I’ve had an open-door discussion with every relevant minister. Everyone loves apprenticeships and everyone wants to see them succeed and you don’t always have that. It’s important to remember this has been an independent review therefore I have felt very comfortable talking to all the senior people in the three major parties. You’ve got an uncommonly open door with cross-party support and I don’t think there’s grounds for a political fight over this — not a politicised fight. If there is discussion and debate over this, it’ll be over the substance rather than political background.

Report warned of merger costs

A cash-strapped college that recently got a government warning about its finances went ahead with a “costly” merger despite a report critical of the move, it has emerged.

Under-fire K College, in Kent, has a £6.4m deficit and in August became the first provider to get a government warning that could lead to the withdrawal of Skills Funding Agency (SFA) cash.

It was formed of a merger in April 2010 between South Kent College and West Kent College – but just five months earlier a report, seen by FE Week, warned about the move.

It appears to have been written by a senior figure at the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) – the predecessor body to the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) – and refers to criticisms in an earlier due diligence report on the merger by South Kent College.

“This [earlier] report highlighted that West Kent College faces significant financial challenges and lacked spare cash reserves to support the merger,” said the LSC report.

“The merger appeared to be in trouble if the Learning and Skills Council could not offer merger support or the governors of West Kent College decided to reject the merger due to a lack of willingness to borrow funds.”

The LSC report further mentioned a report by accountants KPMG to support their criticism of the merger.

“I could not quickly identify the business case for this merger when reading this document although I appreciate that there are always generic valid reasons for merger, including economies of scale,” said the LSC report.

An SFA spokesperson declined to comment on the report, but said: “The consultation for the South Kent College and West Kent College merger was handled in line with the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the former LSC’s merger process that was in place at that time.”

Nobody from K College was immediately available for comment.

However, the college’s website stated South Kent College governors chose West Kent College as their preferred merger partner following a KPMG report commissioned in 2008 by the LSC, which recommended merger as the best course of action for South Kent College students.

The college’s financial problems saw principal Bill Fearon resign on the same day staff went on strike over plans to cut around 150 jobs.

FE Minister Matthew Hancock has also been in talks with local MPs on the future of the college, while a spokesperson from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) said de-merging the two colleges remained an option.

The college has blamed its deficit on falling student numbers, funding cuts from central government, the cost of running six sites and a delay in money owed from the sale of land.

The college was asked by the SFA to work with Learning and Skills Improvement Service to balance its budget in the next two years having been issued a notice of concern.