Leading learning through innovation

Sell me the benefits of having seats on the wings of an aircraft!” This might seem like an unlikely starting point for a workshop on great teaching and learning in FE, but the answers – many of which a certain low cost airline is happy to charge extra money for – illustrated the art of the possible to the 70 people who gathered at the Hellenic Centre in central London last Friday, and energised an event that produced some truly inspirational visions for the future.

Supported by the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS), the 157 Group has been working in partnership with the Institute for Learning (IfL) on a series of events and activities to build on ‘Leading learning in further education’, a thinkpiece published last year by the 157 Group and CfBT Education Trust.

The aim is to set out not only a vision of what great teaching and learning looks like – both now and in that uncertain future we all face – but also to think about how we make it happen.

What set last week’s event apart from the norm was its style and the nature of the participants. Deliberately challenging and creative, those present started by visioning a ‘gold standard’ of pedagogy, sharing their own greatest learning moments and highlighting what it truly feels like to be experiencing greatness.

The resulting ‘Wall of Great Teaching and Learning’ served to back up the view that what feels good is not one particular pedagogy, but rather trusting and being in the presence of teachers with particular attitudes and skills and, above all, a passion for enabling student success.

This output was all the more powerful because it came not just from teachers themselves, but also from curriculum managers and senior leaders and, perhaps most importantly, from learners themselves. The 70 who attended were drawn from FE colleges, work-based learning providers and adult education services, and, possibly for the first time, the event was able to capture a truly cross-sector view of what great teaching and learning is.

Unfazed by the range of people there, young and adult learners of all ages asserted that the best teaching happens when they have some control, when relationships are good and when content is delivered with passion. There was remarkably little to choose between the views of learners, teachers and leaders too, when the event moved on to consider what helps to bring about this greatness. Freedom was a highly prized commodity, and the fear of being judged a failure, which leads to teachers not taking risks, was palpably present for everyone when they thought about what might get in the way.

These conclusions reinforce the findings in IfL’s most recent review of CPD that teacher autonomy is preferable to top-down development activity, and it was fitting also that the event served as a launchpad for a report jointly published by IfL, the 157 Group and the Institute of Education (IOE), ‘Learning and letting go: building expansive learning environments in FE’, which details the outcomes of a powerful seminar on expansive learning environments, held earlier in the year at the IOE.

“Good teaching is born of innovation, and this involves a degree of experimentation that is unlikely to happen if an organisation is highly controlling or risk averse,” says the report.
In the afternoon last Friday, participants split into teams to begin to produce real ideas to help that innovation take place.

There was an energy and emotionally intelligent feel, as groups considered the attitudes, skills and systems that need to develop by drawing on analogies from the world of sport, art and the military. These discussions provided a novel opportunity to challenge some of the preconceptions about how things are usually done. Over 50 ideas for ‘doing things differently’ were generated and, at the end, participants voted (with love hearts) for the ones they thought would have the greatest impact.

The challenge now is to build on the energy of the event and to use the kind of action research that it represented to really make a difference. The 157 Group, along with IfL, is committed to leading more thinking and action in this area, and, once the hundreds of ideas from Friday’s event have been synthesised, we will publish the outputs and detail next steps on our teaching and learning journey.

What we know at the moment is that there is a huge will in the sector to engage with a process that made everyone involved think afresh, and that 70 people will have returned to their respective situations all the more inspired to lead and teach and learn in a ‘great’ way. Some said they want to replicate the event for colleagues. You will know you’ve got an enthused participant in your organisation if they suggest flying you to Alicante in a way that gives you free air conditioning and great views … by sitting on the wings.

Andy Gannon is a project manager at 157 Group

Dearne Valley College open new ‘Job Zone’

The new Job Zone initiative at Dearne Valley College has been officially opened by local MP John Healey.

The service has been created in conjunction with Job Centre Plus and will help students find out about progression opportunities, part-time work and Apprenticeships.

The MP for Wentworth and the Dearne Valley said: “Compared to the rest of the country, we have twice as many young people who have been out of work for more than a year, and in parts of the Dearne that number has tripled in the last 12 months. So the Jobs Zone will be an important and, I am sure, well-used service which will give Dearne Valley College students the best possible chance of finding work.”

Jan Hodges, CEO, the Edge Foundation

The chief executive for the Edge Foundation talks to FE Week.

If her parents had got their way, Jan Hodges might have gone into banking.

While they valued education and were ambitious for their children, having left school at 15 and had “basic manual jobs” for most of their working lives, they were keen for them to have opportunities they hadn’t. With regular hours and a steady wage, banking seemed like an attractive option.

But teachers at the grammar school she attended in Burnley, Lancashire had other ideas. “They told my mum and dad that I was capable of getting into university,” says Hodges, who is now CEO of the independent education charity Edge.

“I don’t think they would have known that, so I was quite lucky in that sense that I had good teachers who encouraged me and actually said to my parents that I mustn’t leave at 16. I had part-time jobs from the age of 15, and enjoyed working…so without that, I think I would have left school.”

Getting a French pen friend in her early teens, via a foreign exchange programme, opened Hodge’s eyes to the possibility of international travel.

“A lightbulb went off in my head when I met her because I suddenly realised that the stuff I had been learning in class had a purpose,” she recalls. “In those days, you learned languages through the grammar and the rules, through very formal exercises and you didn’t get a lot of opportunity to speak it.

So when I met Chantelle, I suddenly started speaking French and I realised what it was all about.”

After a degree in English and French at the University of Sussex (including a year studying in Montpellier, in the South West of France), Hodges headed off to Pisa with “absolutely no Italian,” where she spent a summer living with a local politician and his family –none of whom spoke any English – which meant learning Italian, from scratch, in a matter of months.

A fifteen-month stint teaching English at an international school near Neuchatel in Switzerland followed. “I thought it was wonderful, because they gave me a little flat close by the lake,” she recalls. “I met people from all over the world and got the chance to hone my French. It was also quite an international community, which I enjoyed.”

But her first taste of teaching wasn’t without its challenges. “The complexities of trying to teach people something you know because you have grown up with it…you have to think about how to communicate that with other people and make it accessible to the people you are trying to teach, so it taught me quite a bit about learning,” she says.

Despite her initial struggles, Hodges discovered she enjoyed teaching and, on her return to the UK in the late 1970s, trained to teach French at Avery Hill College (now part of Greenwich University) in South East London.

The UK seems to ‘have gone down a road where we only value the academic route’

But after nine years teaching in secondary schools in Kent and Essex, she felt ready for a change and moved to South East Essex College, where in her own words, she started “to blossom”.

In the fifteen years that followed, Hodges worked towards a masters degree and MBA and held a variety of senior roles at the college, including department leader, head of business development and European coordinator.

She took on the job of principal in 2002 and, just before she left last summer, oversaw a merger with Thurrock and Basildon College, which she describes as one of the biggest challenges of her career.

Her decision to move on came, simply because, after nine years in the role she fancied a change.

Working at Edge appealed because its central mission – championing technical, practical and vocational learning – chimed with her own beliefs. “Most of my career has been spent trying to do that…so it seemed the perfect job for me,” she says.

But there are many challenges facing the sector at the moment, and top of Hodge’s list is dealing with funding cuts and “finding ways to give opportunities to people, but in a more efficient way.”

And attitudes to vocational learning are still a concern. Unlike other countries, like Germany, who have managed to maintain a strong apprenticeship and vocational programme, the UK seems to “have gone down a road where we only value the academic route,” she says.

While she is encouraged by recent government investment in apprenticeships – around £3 billion to date– there is a long way to go in raising the status of vocational education and persuading people of its value to the economy. “We turn out a lot of graduates – and there’s nothing wrong with that, we need graduates – but we don’t have enough people at technician level and that’s something we need to tackle.”

The problem is that information about vocational education and training is not always reaching young people and their parents, she says, citing recent research carried out by Edge in the lead up to VQ day, the annual celebration of vocational qualifications, due to be held next month. The study found that many young people feel they aren’t being given enough information about alternatives to A levels and other academic qualifications.

And in the introduction of the English Baccalaureate, with its narrow academic focus, (students are required to achieve A*- C grades in five subjects, including English, maths, science, a language and a humanities subject) hasn’t helped either. “I know the government says that doing the Baccalaureate doesn’t stop young people doing that (vocational qualifications), but the subjects within it have a certain status and the fact that a vocational option is not one of those – or even a more practical subject like design and technology, it does send out a message to people.”

What it suggests, argues Hodge, is that vocational education is only for young people who are not academic, but this is simply not the case. “Academically able students really thrive on, and enjoy, doing practical subjects…so it should be part of everybody’s programme of study.”
But the increase in tuition fees – due to rise to up to £9,000 a year in September – could change that, says Hodges. “Parents are certainly more willing to listen and know about vocational options than they were before.”

The new government careers service, launched in April, could also go some way to addressing the problem, but only if resources are used effectively and consistently. “Schools are only getting a small pot of money [for careers advice and guidance] and it is a concern that it is spent appropriately,” she says. “I am sure that some schools will deal with it extremely well and give it a high priority, but budgets are under pressure in some other schools and in others, it might not get the same priority.”

If she could achieve one thing during her time in further education it would be to address the imbalance between vocational and academic education, she says. “If you could get that parity of esteem between vocational and academic qualifications and if the curriculum in schools allowed all young people to do both – but that would be the standard kind of programme that anyone would follow in a school…now that would be wonderful.”

Ufi charitable trust to be ‘catalyst’ for technology

Ufi charitable trust is to use the £50 million it made from the sell off of Learn Direct to pump prime “innovation for scale” in the FE and Adult Learning sectors.

Ufi, the “big idea” of Gordon Brown, which he hoped would match Harold Wilson’s Open University idea, was finally broken up last year when Learn Direct was sold off to a private equity fund.

The other arm of Ufi, the UK Online Centres, became an employee led “mutual” set up to continue and develop the work of the UK Online.

The chair of the Ufi charitable trust, Ray Barnes, formerly Visa International, wants the fund to be a “catalyst” to deliver “permanent and radical transformation in vocational education and training and reduce face to face interaction and harness technology to reach much greater numbers with greater quality outcomes”

Invitations to bid for the £50 million funds, initially funded from the interest, although one trustee told me they were not averse to use capital if exciting, innovative and scaleable ideas emerge, will open on 2nd July at www.ufi.co.uk

Applicants will be better prepared to make their bids if they read the excellent report published by Ufi, and written by Seb Schmoller, Dick Moore, Clive Shepherd and Adrian Perry entitled “Scaling Up” also available on the Ufi website. There are six potential categories of projects:

• Training Learning Professionals in using digital tools

• Analytical tools developed to help organisations implement large scale changes to teaching models

• Empowering Learners to develop their own capacity

• Developing curriculum content and collaboration

• Level 2 Maths

• Simulations, Games, and Virtualisation

Rory Cellan Jones led a lively debate at the early morning London launch of the fund with panel inputs from McDonalds, Pearson, UnionLearn, Google and IfL.

Donald Clark, one of the Ufi trustees, was delighted this money was being recycled to support learning rather than dropping in to a Treasury black hole.

“It was only right that the considerable amount of public money that went to the years developing the value in Learn Direct should be used to support learning transformation at scale in further and adult education and training”

It is obvious that a “catalyst for change” needs to come from outside the sector if we are to avoid what Martin Bean, Vice Chancellor of the Open University describes as a “growing crisis of relevance” in our colleges.

This reflects the growing gap between the digital expectations of all learners and the digital capacity of the Further, Adult and Vocational education “system”

Whilst there are some really exciting innovative teachers using technology to enhance learning, Tony Fazaeli of the IfL claim that “two thirds of our membership are confident in the use of technology” is not supported by feedback from learners, employers and large number of FE teachers.

They may be confident using PowerPoint or Interactive Whiteboards but that is missing the point surely?

It is welcome and timely that the Ufi trust fund might stimulate innovation as it is difficult to see how this “paradigm shift” would otherwise happen with a funding, audit and inspection regime, which stifles and discourages innovative approaches to technology, enhanced and blended learning.

Bob Harrison is vice chair of governors at Northern College & education adviser for Toshiba Information Systems

‘Cheated’ colleges’ secret audit

A report commissioned by a secret group of FE colleges has accused other institutions of manipulating data in order to boost success rates.

The document, written by Tenon Education Training and Skills Limited on behalf of the Tenon Education Training and Skills College Forum and seen by FE Week, suggests FE colleges are able to improve headline success rates by up to 10 per cent by adopting unfair practises.

The “widespread” methods listed in the report include recruiting above a college’s funding targets, then declaring certain learners to be unfunded and removing them from the final Individualised Learner Record (ILR) return.

Other practices include making late decisions on whether or not they should declare a learner is studying an additional qualification to their primary learning goal.

The use of practices to improve success rates is widespread within FE colleges.”

The methods, which the report says were originally identified by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), also include changing the end dates of courses retrospectively, removing overseas or work-based learners from their ILR return and using transfer codes to remove students from specific lines of data.

The report reads: “The use of practices to improve success rates is widespread within FE colleges.

“The failure of the regulatory bodies and the funding agencies to deal with these practices in a clear and open way has led to their continuation and expansion into other colleges as the sector strives to achieve sector success benchmarks which are artificially high.”

However, the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) say they are “assured” that data manipulation is not a widespread issue in the FE sector.

“Since 2009 we have only uncovered one case of data manipulation,” an SFA spokesperson told FE Week.

“This was uncovered through audit and appropriate steps were taken.”

The spokesperson added: “We are aware of an unpublished report produced by Tenon making allegations of data manipulation in the FE Sector. As it stands, the research methods and analysis in the report do not provide for robust conclusions. We would be pleased to discuss our reservations once the report is published.”

The Department for Education (DfE) told FE Week they had nothing to add. The “unfair” practices, the report claims, now make it impossible to compare colleges with one another using success rates.

“These practices make it difficult for the colleges in the sector which put learners first and do not undertake practices to inflate success rates to compete and could ultimately result in the sector’s outstanding colleges being those that do not necessarily deliver the best chance of success to the learners,” the report reads.

The report also says colleges are using specific practices “to support in the manipulation of inspection grades.”

One of these, called “destroyed the trends”, is where a college stops offering a specific learning aim once its success rate starts to decline.

“Although the data would be included in the overall success rates for the previous two years, it would be excluded from the remit of the inspection,” the report states.

The second, called ‘buy one, get one free’, is where a college decides to run a learning aim with a declining success rate as a non-funded qualification, while choosing to use a similar learning aim under a different inspection code.

“We understand these practices have been in a number of colleges that have achieved high grades at inspection,” the report reads.

However, Ofsted say looking at success rates is only a small part of their inspection process.

A spokesperson for Ofsted said: “Ofsted uses success rate data as a starting point for inspection and as a source of evidence to judge outcomes for learners. Ofsted is confident of the reliability of the national success rates data for this purpose.”

The report says the Tenon Education Training and Skills College Forum was created because principals felt “cheated” about the practices being used to improve success rates.

Part of the forum’s role, the document says, is to show there are a “significant number of colleges who strive to act with the highest possible integrity” for their students and communities.

However, it is understood that FE colleges can only enter the group when once they have been invited by Tenon Education Training and Skills, and also passed certain “entry criteria”.

Tenon Education Training and Skills declined to comment on the report and membership of the forum.

The Association of Colleges said they have a policy of not commenting on leaked reports.

Figures published by the Data Service on the 24 May show that ‘General FE College including Tertiary’ all length success rate rose from 79.3 per cent in 2009/10 to 81.4 per cent in 2010/11.

For more on the techniques described in the Tenon report and latest success rate figures see page 4 in the FE Week newspaper.

Government must work harder to protect the apprenticeship brand

The NAO report reemphasises the criticisms we have made for many months over the Government’s handling of Adult Apprenticeships. The committee shared our concerns that nearly 1 in 5 Adult Apprenticeships lasted less than six months, which we pressed the Government on for months, backed up by the investigative work of FE Week that put this issue on the agenda last year.

This sustained pressure has obliged the Skills Minister John Hayes to introduction minimum one year duration for Adult Apprenticeships in April after initially only applying this for 16-18 year olds last December.

It remains clear that many of these additional Adult Apprenticeship starts are merely rebranded placements which would previously been delivered via Train to Gain, again highlighted here in FE Week supplements which have shown a strong correlation between Adult Apprenticeships starts rising and Train to Gain starts falling as the latter scheme was wound down. The Government axed this last year, taking over half a billion pounds from the adult skills budget.

The report shows once again that BIS Ministers must do more to engage businesses, especially small and medium sized ones, and adults alike if they are truly to boost apprenticeship take up across England. At a time where youth unemployment stands at well over 1million and its highest level for a generation, the Government simply has to boost the numbers of the crucial 16-24 group where growth has been flatlining in recent months.

They had already been warned of this last year when now departed head of the NAS Simon Waugh stated there was ‘a chronic lack of Apprenticeship places for interested school and college leavers.’ We have proposed several initiatives as part of our alternative strategy for growth and jobs that would give hope to these young people – sadly the Prime Minister and Chancellor don’t seem to be listening.

Also looming on the horizon for Adult Apprenticeships is the introduction of FE loans from 2013/14. This will affect all apprentices aged 24 and over working towards Level 3 qualifications or higher. There are very real concerns that this will severely dent demand for Apprenticeships in this age group, as well as nudging both business and individuals away from contributions vital for growth in our local economies.

It also seems squarely at odds with the Government’s current desire to promote stronger employer ownership of skills, as UKCES themselves have argued in their submission to the initial consultation on FE loans. I fear that a poorly evidenced and hastily introduced ‘Big Bang’ approach could cause havoc for providers and lead to lost life-chances for tens of thousands of adult learners.

I will continue to push John Hayes and the Department on these issues in the months ahead. The report also made it clear it is imperative the SFA and NAS work together closely to oversee the operation and standard of the Apprenticeship programme. With new chief executives imminent at both organisations, I will continue to monitor this situation carefully to ensure that the necessary oversight and scrutiny of such a key policy area can continue.

Apprenticeships will and should rightly play a key role as we look to continue to work on boosting Britian’s skills base here in line with the Leitch report agenda. The NAO report and indeed the work of FE Week and others has shown that the Government must work harder to ensure future expansion of the scheme does not come at the expense of quality to ensure the Apprenticeship brand is protected.

Gordon Marsden, shadow minister for further education, skills and regional growth

Sunderland College staff to strike over proposed pay cuts

Staff at Sunderland College are striking over a row concerning their pay.

The University and College Union (UCU) said the dispute relates to proposals to cut the salaries of more than 150 lecturers by £10,000 and downgrade 70 per cent of its teaching workforce to inferior pay grades – with staff seeing a 25 to 30 per cent drop in their salary. This would breach nationally-agreed pay scales according to the Union.

In March the College announced it needed to save £2.26m in 2012/13 due to government funding cuts and that 36 people would be made redundant. It also stated that the cuts would mean it needed to review job descriptions for all teaching staff.

Since March it has been consulting employees about ways to make savings. Only pay cuts and redundancies are being put forward according to the Union, but the College disputes this. It said that these are the initial proposals that have been put on the table for discussion and that there are other suggestions.

Nine out of ten members of the UCU voted to take strike action and over three-quarters backed action short of a strike, which would see members working to contract and not fulfilling the other duties they take on in addition to their contracted work.  The Union expects 250 people to take part.

Nobody wants to take strike action but members will not sit by while their pay and conditions are attacked”

Angela O’Donoghue, principal of Sunderland College, said: “The College is looking at lots of different ways to save money and cutting lecturers’ pay is just one of them – we want to work with the unions, not against them.”

The principal stated that the College is also “committed to working with unions to reduce the need for compulsory redundancies through a programme of voluntary redundancies.”

She added: “All proposals put forward are a starting point and talks are on-going. We want to work in a positive way with the unions to mitigate the impact on individuals.”

The Union is angry because they believe staff are shouldering too much of the burden.

They point to agency staff as an area where savings could be made, as they say that the College spent £2 million on this in the last financial year.

In response, Ms O’Donoghue stated: “All colleges have to turn to specialists in some fields as they do not have the necessary skills in their own teams, for example IT experts, architects and designers. In addition we do need to use the flexibility of agency staffing to cover sickness absence and other short term programmes were funding is provided on an adhoc basis.

“This is normal practice for colleges and for all professional businesses, however as part of the College’s strategic plan we aim to reduce these costs.”

UCU regional official, Iain Owens, said: “Nobody wants to take strike action but members will not sit by while their pay and conditions are attacked in this punitive way. The college cannot afford to dismiss this result and should be looking to work with us instead of finding excuses to deliver teaching on the cheap.

“Breaching nationally agreed pay scales is not in the long-term interest of the institution. It will succeed only in destroying morale and deterring the best and the brightest from wanting to come and work at a college where they will be paid far less than the national average.”

Ofsted adds to criticism of A4e

Staff at A4e are struggling to improve the way they deliver apprenticeships, according to a monitoring report published by Ofsted.

The document, which details a monitoring visit carried out in April, says the training provider is making “insufficient progress” in three areas and “reasonable progress” in the remaining five.

The mixed grades follow a “satisfactory” inspection rating which was given to the training provider in August 2010.

It says that while A4e has made changes to try and improve the success rates of their learners, such as a new management information system and revised learner recruitment procedures, they are “yet to result in sustained improvement.”

“These initiatives have improved success rates in a few subject areas and regions, but overall success rates declined in 2010/11,” the monitoring report reads.

A4e says they have introduced a number of successful initiatives in the company and made “significant progress” since Ofsted inspected them in 2010.

“This latest inspection commends us for doing so,” a spokesperson for A4e told FE Week.

“It has identified some areas which need improvement and we have put in place an action plan to meet these requirements.

“A4e continues to work towards providing outstanding skills-based training programmes for our customers.”

The monitoring report by Ofsted says A4e are “poor” at monitoring the delivery of their consortium partners and sub-contractors. It later says the company focuses “too heavily” on making sure these providers complete their paperwork properly, rather than on the quality of training being delivered.

“A4e places too strong an emphasis on consortium partners declaring their own areas for improvement either through discussion, their self-assessment reports or position statements,” the monitoring report reads.

However, the Ofsted report also praises staff at A4e for taking on “an increased responsibility for implementing improvement initiatives.

“They enthusiastically and swiftly make changes to the provision which have positively improved the experience of learners,” the monitoring report reads.

“During meetings, staff teams regularly discuss the progress they are making with quality improvement plans.”

It is unclear whether the progress made by A4e is common for other private training providers.

A spokesperson for Ofsted told FE Week: “Ofsted does not comment on individual inspections over and above the published report – in this case a monitoring inspection report.

“As each monitoring report will focus on issues raised at the previous inspection, we do not undertake any analysis across a range of monitoring visit reports.”

The former head of audit at A4e submitted written evidence to Parliament last week detailing how “weak management” and “inadequate control systems” led to fraud at the company.

Eddie Hutchinson, who also attended a meeting held by Public Accounts Committee last Tuesday, claims “that the incidence of frauds and irregularities was a major problem for the company.”

The written evidence, given to the Daily Telegraph, reads: “An ever-increasing volume of frauds came to my attention, often via a particular direct report of mine in the audit team.”

A4e has since issued a statement, which reads: “The majority of allegations made by Mr Hutchinson are unfounded and untrue.

“A4e always adheres to established procedures by ensuring relevant issues are referred to the relevant funder authority.

“None of the issues raised here prove there is systemic fraud at A4e and all of them relate to historic contracts.”

The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) issued a statement earlier this month confirming they have found “no evidence of fraud” in the training delivered by A4e. The finding follows allegations of fraud relating to the company’s work with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

“The Agency now has adequate assurance on current and potential future contracts with A4e,” a statement by the SFA reads.

“As with all of our suppliers, we will be vigilant and use all of our oversight and audit processes to maintain assurance that public funds and learners’ interests are safeguarded.”

The government terminated A4e’s Mandatory Work Activity contract earlier this month, despite finding no evidence of fraud in its delivery of the programme.

Employment minister Chris Grayling said: “While the team found no evidence of fraud, it identified significant weaknesses in A4e’s internal controls on the Mandatory Work Activity contract in the South East.

“As a result, the Department has concluded that continuing with this contract presents too great a risk and we have terminated the Mandatory Work Activity contract with A4e for the South East.”

Redundancies announced at the Association of Colleges

The Association of Colleges (AoC) is making redundancies as part of a cost saving and “restructuring process”.

The job losses so far affect three managers, two directors and a policy coordinator.

Martin Doel, chief executive of the AoC, told FE Week: “The reality is that AoC is not immune to the financial pressures faced by the public sector and this is, in part, a response to a downturn in public sector projects. “The commercial wing of the organisation has, as a result, seen some difficult market circumstances.”

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

This has been a difficult and upsetting time for all staff”

Mr Doel said: “It goes without saying that every member of AoC staff is highly skilled, experienced and provides, without fail, a first class service to members.

“This has been a difficult and upsetting time for all staff but we have tried to deal with it as fairly as possible and can assure member colleges they will continue to get the highest standards of service”.

The AoC has also said that an additional three posts are at risk of redundancy “through a compulsory process.”

Mr Doel said: “Unfortunately we didn’t receive all of the cost savings we needed to as part of the process and have had to identify three additional posts as being at risk of redundancy.”

Consultation with staff is currently underway, and is likely to continue until at least June 8.

It is understood that another senior member of staff at AoC will be dropping down to three days a week from the start of June.

The AoC say they will be offering all departing staff one to one careers advice, as well as job application and interview preparation through the HR Consultancy firm Connor in order to help them find new work.

“We will, of course, be offering every assistance to them through this difficult transition as valued members of the team,” Mr Doel said.

However, the organisation has also revealed they will be employing new staff as part of the company’s restructure. “In order to ensure continued strong representation AoC will be recruiting to key positions in line with the new shape of the organisation,” Mr Doel said.