Matthew Coffey, Ofsted’s national director for learning and skills, writes for FE Week about the issues raised for providers.

It has been an eventful year for all of us involved in the FE and skills sector. In July, for example, we held our first learning and skills lecture at City and Islington College where the panel discussions, chaired by Baroness Sally Morgan, got to the heart of many issues affecting our sector.

Joining the discussion was Frank McLoughlin, principal of City and Islington College; Neil Carberry, director of employment and skills at the Confederation of British Industry; and Professor Ken Spours, head of the department of continuing education at the Institute of Education.

And it will come as no surprise that the new common inspection framework for FE and skills will start this week. From now on, providers can no longer be judged as “satisfactory”. Instead, we are replacing the category with “requires improvement”.

At last week’s AoC seminar, several HMI-facilitated workshops allowed delegates to explore the new framework in detail.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector, recognised the quality of our providers.

He said that he was impressed by learners and the wide range of courses, from entry level to degrees. He had often heard the FE and skills sector described as the “Cinderella” of education, but he did not share that view.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “I have no doubt about the importance of FE, the range of learners you serve, the talent and commitment of the people working within the sector or the expectations now being placed on you to help the country out of the depths of recession.”

Like me, Sir Michael was struck by the differing in standards, both in providers he visited and our inspection findings.

Just raising expectations through targeted inspections will not be enough”

He recognised our risk-assessed approach had targeted inspections on providers where there was the greatest concern. This inevitably led to a more negative grade profile than if we had kept using our previous approach.

The conference was also an opportunity to underline our concern about the quality of teaching and an undue focus on passing qualifications without ensuring that learners were sufficiently challenged or adequately prepared for the next stage in their lives.

In September last year, there were more than 350 learning and skills providers judged as satisfactory in their most recent inspection. Sixty-nine colleges had been judged satisfactory for two consecutive inspections, including 29 that had been judged satisfactory for a third time.

Just raising expectations through targeted inspections, however, will not be enough.

Ofsted has a greater role here. We can complement the work of those bodies charged with bringing about improvement and invest more of our resources to supporting providers to improve.

I will provide more detail on our plans in November.

Inspections under the new framework will start this week with a much-reduced notification period of two days. We launch Learner View, our online tool designed to enable learners to tell us their views about their college or provider, at the same time.

And, of course, as the new academic year begins, the production of the chief inspector’s annual report gathers pace.

This year’s report is much more interactive to enable greater access to the vast body of knowledge collected from inspections last year.

I look forward to seeing all FE professionals out and about, either on inspection or at the packed conference programme we have committed to attend throughout the autumn term.

Professor Daniel Khan OBE, chief executive of OCN London, considers this year’s change in grade boundaries.

Since thousands of 16-year-olds collected their GCSE results, the unprecedented decline in A* to C grades has hardly been out of the press. For the first time in the history of the qualification, the percentage of students gaining these grades has fallen. At the fore of the fiasco is the altering of the grade boundaries for English between January and June.

The consequence of such interference was that a student who received a C grade in January could have received a D in June, with the exact same mark. Altering the boundaries in the same academic year has been labelled “scandalous” by some teachers and head teachers and will undoubtedly have serious implications for the futures of thousands of young people.

Ofqual immediately responded that the June grades were “fair” and the issue lies in the January examinations. The grades awarded in January were “generous” and, as a result, in June the boundaries were raised and fewer students achieved the crucial C grade.

Yet, contradictory to this, recently leaked letters reveal that Ofqual ordered the awarding organisation, Edexcel, to alter the June grades just two weeks before the results were published. They did so amid fears that too many students were going to get C grades.

Education Secretary Michael Gove has offered his sympathy to students who have not received the grades that  they expected — he has even admitted that students were treated unfairly — but has ruled out ministerial intervention.

Nevertheless, the remarkable decision to move grade boundaries between January and June has sparked suspicions of pressure directly from Gove.  Since assuming office he has taken a firm stand against grade inflation and has often spoken of the “dumbing down” of exams. It seems more than a coincidence that the first decline in the number of A* to C grades happened this year — who’s fooling who?

What has happened raises questions over the very purpose of education”

Regardless of whether Gove did directly put pressure on Ofqual,  the fuss this August raises questions over the purpose of education. It highlights the direction which this Government appears to be heading and its keenness to use grades as a sole measure of success.

Gove’s vision for the future of GCSEs recommends the introduction of one exam per subject, provided by a single board, without assessment by coursework. His desire to implement a traditional examination system, which harks back to O-levels, will produce a certain culture within secondary education. Such a focus on exams, and allusions to the former system, has led to many accusing Gove of being stuck in the past and reluctant to adopt more innovative ideas.

Exams test a student’s ability to study in a very specific way. Under the Gove doctrine the general aim of education would be to prepare students to absorb as much information as possible and then recount it all in just a few hours at the end of the academic year. Other measures of ability, such as independent pieces of coursework, would be discounted. Arguably this would assess just one form of intelligence and risk reverting back to the two-tier system where students who performed less well in exams were left behind.

The direction of the Government, and the furore over the GCSE grades, begs the questions — should secondary education require students to acquire knowledge solely to perform well in exams, knowledge that they may use little of in the future, or should it prepare them for the workplace and equip them with skills for life?

Further, is intelligence a single entity or is it multi-faceted and expressed in a variety of ways? If the latter is true then surely using exams as the key driver behind learning is somewhat one-dimensional. Using exams as the primary way to test the performance of students fails to consider that there is more to education than out-performing classmates in the number of A* to Cs achieved.

The fools in this fiasco will be awarding organisations if they allow politicians or regulators to dictate their mission, values and ethos. They need to ensure that learners are fairly assessed and given the opportunity to enhance the quality of their lives and enrich their community through the acquisition of knowledge and skills.

The much-loved P35 is one of a host of forms on their way out under reforms of the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system next year. Here, former Association of Colleges finance specialist Robert Russell looks at the issues those who hold the purse strings should be aware of.

Finance directors have to budget for all the “knowns” and “unknowns” as referred to by former United States Secretary for Defence Donald Rumsfeld, who said: “There are known knowns — there are things we know that we know.

“There are known unknowns — that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns — there are things we do not know we don’t know.” And it is the unknowns which so often cause finance departments angst.

Crossing the chairman of the board’s palm with silver might provide a short-term solution, but many find creating a contingency fund more pragmatic and less risky.

The following are changes to existing procedures which may affect budgets for the coming year, and ones that all finance directors should be aware of.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has determined that the existing PAYE system wasn’t operating as intended and it will be introducing Real Time Information (RTI) from April.

The reforms, with all employers using the new system from October 2013, will result in monthly reconciliation of pay records, replacing the annual reconciliation and potentially-affected cashflow.

The new system will see the abolition of the P35, P14, P46, P38a and P38. New forms coming in their place include full payment submission, employer alignment submission, employer payment summary, National Insurance verification number and earlier year update.

The move to RTI seems innocuous, but results in some surprising changes, including the introduction of reporting of payments below the National Insurance threshold, and HMRC state, “even if the amount is less than £20 a-month”, and the removal of P38s for students.

There will be an additional cost of £150m to £200m a-year across the college sector”

With regards auto enrolment, from October, the Pensions Act 2011 and The Automatic Enrolment Regulations have established new deadlines for employers.

These were stretched for the smallest companies, but most colleges will have to comply at some point in 2013 — this staging is determined by payroll size.

The necessity of enrolling all eligible staff onto the local government pension scheme (LGPS) or teachers’ pension scheme (TPS) is likely to cost colleges quite a bit.

When auto enrolment was introduced in the US in 2006, pension take-up increased to 90 per cent from the previous 50 to 75 per cent.

Colleges, with about 60 per cent uptake of pensions currently, increasing to about 80 per cent, would see an additional cost of £150m to £200m a year across the sector.

Pension contributions increase in April; colleges should be aware that most of their TPS staff will face the second round of increases in their contribution rates from that date.

Those TPS members in colleges with pay freezes will have less take-home pay at the end of April. Most LGPS members will face increases from April 2014.

It should also be noted that in the longer term, employers may well face increases in their contributions from the current 14.1 per cent.

The Department for Education states the employer contribution cap will be set “at 2 per cent above the employer contribution rate calculated ahead of the introduction of the new scheme in 2015”.

Another issue relates to employer’s national insurance contribution rebate for contracted out staff — that is, those enrolled on the TPS and LGPS.

The Treasury has stated it will remove the 5.3 per cent existing contracted-out rebate which public service pension scheme members and their employers enjoy — 1.6 per cent rebate for employees and 3.7 per cent rebate for employers.

The Treasury has not issued a date for the closure, but the rebate will close when the new higher state pension is introduced, which may not be for a few years yet.

The abolition of this would result in additional costs to the sector of between £120m and £160m a year.