Doncaster College shows what it can do

Doncaster College showcased its courses at the re-launch of the Doncaster Show.

Held in a 12 acres of sports fields, the show was a fun-packed weekend of entertainment with craft stalls, classic cars, Zumba lessons and live music from local bands.

A college spokesperson said: “It gave us a great opportunity to meet potential learners of all ages, showcase what the college could offer as well as supporting a local charitable organisation.

“The event offered something for everyone from dog agility courses, giant inflatables and fair ground rides, classic cars, archery, a whole host of local music acts alongside local retailers and emergency services.”

 

Triple glory at Burton and South Derbyshire

Three Burton and South Derbyshire College beauty students have scooped first place in regional WorldSkills competitions at the NEC Birmingham.

Naomi Radbourne, Nicola Cockerill and Laura Hayes were asked to demonstrate their ability to carry out modern and traditional beauty therapy treatments, all judged by beauty industry experts and professionals.

The three students will now go on to compete against the best of the best in the national final of the WorldSkills UK competition in November. Naomi has also earned a place in Squad UK for the next international skills competition – Worldskills Leipzig 2013.

Jackie Heaton, beauty therapy course leader, said: “All three students demonstrated skills to the highest level and have all now obtained employment at prestigious spas. They are excellent examples of professional therapists.”

Canterbury College celebrates 65th anniversary

Canterbury College celebrated 65 years with some of its first students returning for a special anniversary open day.

The afternoon began with a commemorative cake cutting led by two former students – the Lord Mayor of Canterbury, Cllr Robert Waters, and long-serving governor Anne-Marie Nelson. Visitors then toured the campus where they saw an exhibition of college life from 1947 to 2012. The food hall stepped back in time to deliver 1940s cuisine that included spam hash, corned beef fritters and Lord Woolton pie.

In the opening welcome speech, principal Alison Clarke said: “Canterbury College has changed immeasurably during its lifetime but has always been at the heart of the city and offering its services to the whole of East Kent.

“It has grown from a few hundred students and a handful of courses to a large institution with about 10,000 learners and more than 500 subjects. So many people have benefited from their time here, including myself and several of the college’s own team.”

Award recognises Bolton College student’s dedication

Bolton College student Danielle Conn has received the Vinspired award for her dedication to volunteering.
Danielle, 18, who is studying performing arts, fits her many volunteering activities around her college work. She helps with enrolments, regularly giving tours to new students, as well as helping out at a summer school and charity shop.

“I started volunteering to build up my confidence and to gain more experience for my CV,” she said. “I’ve really enjoyed it so far and met so many different people. I really would encourage anyone to get involved
with volunteering if they can.”

David Birchall, Bolton College student liaison officer, said: “Danielle’s volunteering efforts have benefited so many people in both the college and in the various communities she is part of. She is a very busy young woman, who is always happy to help others with a big smile on her face, and is more than deserving of this recognition.”

Terry Ryall, chief executive of Vinspired, said: “Giving 100 hours to good causes, free, is no mean feat, but sadly one that all too often goes unnoticed. The v100 will give Danielle an official record of her efforts, which she will be able to use in job or university applications in the future.”

Where is the fun in functional skills?

The big conversations in FE at the moment are all around functional skills. Most providers are positive about the qualifications, and arguably they are more rigorous than the key skills qualifications they have replaced.

Every year, the CBI bemoans the English education system – employers keep telling us that young people are leaving school with arms full of GCSEs, but they can’t function in the areas that employers need.

Universities often echo these concerns around A-level results’ time, saying that with the “amount of top grades awarded to students, they can’t tell the best from the rest”, so GCSE results come into play again.

“Functional skills have to be taught. They are not course-specific, they are totally generic

It seems both sides are searching for something different to GCSEs; could functional skills be the missing piece of the puzzle? Will the revised GCSEs, which now include “functionality”, improve the situation? That remains to be seen.

Whilst most providers are positive about functional skills, colleges, private training providers and employers are worried that they are unable to get learners through.

Time, it seems is the great enemy. Gone are the quick multiple-choice questions at levels 1 and 2 that could be retaken, time and again. Room for guesswork has been eradicated.

Functional skills have to be taught. They are not course-specific, they are totally generic. And they are not portfolio-based either. They are taken under controlled conditions and competency cannot be demonstrated through activities related to students’ day-to-day vocational experiences.

They are particularly challenging to fit into apprenticeships, especially if a student only has one day a week at college, and during that time is learning the technical and underpinning knowledge to support their apprenticeship. Now they have to study maths and English too.

It’s a bit of an anomaly, but we have found that younger students, who have achieved their GCSEs in English and maths, are not necessarily able to pass their level 2 functional skills, without additional tuition.

The main reasons for this seem to be that a skills assessment has questions that are all at the same level and require the learner to work through open, often unstructured problems, drawing on a range of information to reach a conclusion. Decision-making and providing justifications for choices are key elements too.

The Wolf report tells us that students should achieve GCSEs at grade C or above in maths and English and must continue to study the subjects up to the age of 18, although functional skills are allowed as a means to support the learner to progress towards this goal. But how often do students who resit their GCSEs show significant improvement, and how disheartening is it to resit time and time again?

Analysis of our results shows that the older the student, the better their results in functional skills. This may be due to their life experiences; functional skills rely on the student’s ability to solve problems and these are skills that we learn through experience.

These are the skills employers really want, but are providers ready to deliver? We’re already working with a number of apprenticeship providers as they transfer from key to functional skills, including centres that deliver apprenticeships for the Army and Royal Navy, large training providers that deliver across the country and small training providers who need significant support.

Change for change sake in the FE sector is something that we’ve all grappled with, and it could be easy to see functional skills as just another “change”. But they are here to stay and we can help.

We have recently developed new qualifications that will enable providers to concentrate on filling gaps in knowledge in maths or English skills; these will be available shortly.

Functional skills are a big change, but the way I see it they bring three major benefits:

1. Functional skills will improve the quality of teaching, they will have to, otherwise students will not pass.
2. They will help to improve the reputation of the FE sector; it will be seen as providing the qualifications that employers are really looking for – qualifications that prove a student has the English and maths skills for the workplace.
3. Learners from the FE sector will be better prepared for the world of work.

 

Graham Hasting-Evans, chief executive of NOCN

What next for great teaching and learning?

Great teaching and learning, the third in a series of publications commissioned by the 157 Group and the Institute for Learning (IfL), has captured the mood of the sector to focus on high-quality teaching and learning and, we hope, steered a stimulating sector-wide debate.

The first, Leading learning in further education, found that providers should allow space for reflective practice and enter into a debate about great teaching and learning.

Leading learning and letting go, the second, suggested that great teaching and learning comes from innovation and from the creation of what Professor Lorna Unwin describes as ”expansive learning environments”, with enough space and time for teaching professionals to share and learn. It suggested that cultural change would be necessary, nurtured and supported by good leadership.

Now, Great teaching and learning, our latest piece of practitioner-based evidence and action research, adds another dimension to understanding the features that assist or hinder greatness in teaching.

It suggests that teacher professionalism is crucially about broader relationships, respect and networks, as well as the teaching and learning expertise directly used with learners in the classroom or workshop and workplace settings. The continuing development of these “soft” and critical skills requires nurturing – and recognising – by college and sector leaders.

As the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning continues its work, and as Ofsted continues to have an increased focus on the quality of teaching and learning in colleges, this thought piece is timely. It provides, we believe, a picture of what those who matter the most – teachers and learners – believe great teaching and learning is about and how best it is nurtured.

The paper does not set out to consider any particular type of learning – “vocational” or “academic”, for example. Indeed, it would tend to suggest that there are many similarities in the fundamental elements involved, whatever the setting or focus. It does, however, establish and examine the distinctiveness of great teaching and learning in a vocational context and we will share this with the Commission, which is chaired by Frank McLoughlin.

We hope that college leaders will arrange similar “great teaching and learning” events in their own organisations, and have written the report to help them do this. We hope they will take the overarching threads from our publications and synchronise them with their own strategies. We know that many leaders and practitioners have already acted on our recommendations and found that they work, which we are delighted about.

The 157 Group and IfL will continue to lead thought in this vital area, in partnership with other sector membership bodies and with the support of the LSIS. Here is a flavour of what we have planned:

• Replication of the event in organisations around the country – feedback from the day suggests that it has already been a powerful motivator for change in a number of settings
• A follow-up seminar with the Institute of Education to examine specifically the leadership of vocational learning
• Embarking upon work with respected research and policy organisations to look further at the role played by effective continuing professional development, the development of innovative curriculum planning skills and the involvement of learners in curricular debates

The coming year will see more activities in these areas, so do watch out for them. If your organisation would like to run an event similar to the one described in the report, please contact andy.gannon@157group.co.uk or rachel.cooke@ifl.ac.uk. Even better, if you have a suggestion for something we should be doing or looking at in more depth, then let us know.

One thing is clear in the report; teaching and learning becomes truly outstanding when we share our knowledge and expertise in a professional way and truly serve the needs of our learners to benefit from excellent teaching and to succeed.

 

By Lynne Sedgmore and Toni Fazaeli

Holt Review of Apprenticeships for SMEs

Jason Holt’s review sets out what we can do to encourage many more smaller businesses to become involved with apprenticeships; it is a chance to refresh and streamline the service that we provide. In particular, the report has highlighted that we need to make businesses more aware of the support that the National Apprenticeship Service and others can give to make taking on apprentices much easier.

Eighty per cent of apprentices in the UK are currently employed by businesses with fewer than 200 employees. These businesses are great advocates and deliverers of skills training and have given many young people life-changing experiences as they enter work.

They recognise that apprenticeships are an extremely effective way for employers to tap into raw talent, up-skill their staff and grow their business, as well as offering young people high skills levels and life-changing career opportunities.

However, many smaller businesses are missing out on these opportunities: 99 per cent of businesses in the UK are small and medium sized (SMEs) but only about 10 per cent currently employ apprentices.

The Holt review gives us the opportunity to match a new cohort of businesses and apprentices by bringing them together on our free apprenticeship vacancies online system.

Too few businesses know about NAS and the excellent work that we do. This was a decision taken at our launch three years ago; that we would promote the apprenticeship brand itself, rather than NAS, the organisation behind the brand. We recognise that now is the time to promote our services too, so that businesses of all sizes have a better understanding of where they need to go for information.

We plan to enhance our marketing activity aimed at smaller businesses, including publishing a simple guide to show exactly what help is available to access apprenticeships.

We have already started to implement changes, such as making it easier for more SMEs that recruit young apprentices to access the £1,500 apprenticeship grant (AGE 16-24). This incentive scheme is designed to help up to 40,000 more SMEs to employ apprentices aged 16 to 24; we are expanding the scheme and simplifying the payment process. There will now be a single (rather than staged) payment and the grant will now be available for up to 10 apprentices per employer.

Although smaller businesses are still the priority, the grant will also be extended to businesses with up to 1,000 employees and businesses that have not employed an apprentice in the past 12 months.

We also recently established a dedicated small business team. We try to respond to every enquiry within two days, with many employers being called back the same day. However, this is only a small part of the equation. The wider FE sector – apprenticeship training providers and colleges – also has a vital role to play.

The review is part of the bigger apprenticeship picture. We also need to consider extending Group Training Agencies (GTA) and Apprenticeship Training Agencies (ATA).

GTAs are employers who work together to organise their apprenticeships, sharing training processes, facilities and costs. Some smaller businesses can be deterred from taking on apprentices because they are not confident that they will have enough work or resources to support the apprentice for the whole of their apprenticeship. The key feature of the ATA approach is that apprentices are recruited and employed by the agency, but then work in host businesses where they can achieve the work-related elements of their apprenticeship.

The Holt review helps us to ensure that apprenticeships are widely recognised as the gold standard of vocational learning and to effectively fulfil the needs of businesses and young people.

 

David Way, chief executive, National Apprenticeship Service

 

SFA funding research fails to attract any bids

The Skills Funding Agency has failed to attract a single bid on its tender for research into a new payments regime for adult learning, FE Week can exclusively reveal.

Fourteen research firms had been invited to bid for the work, but not one had gone for it as the deadline ticked by at noon on Monday last week.

The agency had been looking to go back to the drawing board following its own investigation into uniform funding for functional skills English and maths earlier this year.

But with less than a year to go before the new system is in place, an agency spokesperson said they would “continue to undertake the necessary analysis and research”.

Bidding contractors had been set a 33-day timescale in which to carry out at least 70 interviews with industry insiders, including college heads and teachers and stakeholder organisations.

The report was also to have been produced – with conclusions and recommendations.

The tender invite itself read: “Please be clear of any significant milestones in the project and how long the project would take from commissioning to completion.”

The move to commission a report on the new funding system comes less than three months after the agency announced the payment rates following its own investigation with the Funding External Technical Advisory Group.

The agency said English and maths qualifications would be funded at a base rate of £336, with a 1.3 Programme Weighting Factor boosting the amount for entry level maths to £437.

However, an agency spokesperson said at the time the figures could be “revisited”.

That “revisit” looked to be taking place with the research tender in which the winning contractor would have expected to be notified they had got the job by Wednesday, September 10.

The tender called for the successful bidder to have identified people to interview by September 24 before handing in the final report on October 26.

But, said an agency spokesperson: “No bids were received for this project.

“The agency is working to ensure that funding rates set, as part of its new simplified approach, is representative of the delivery requirements for functional skills and will continue to undertake the necessary analysis and research to inform these decisions.”

They added: “The agency and its advisory group confirmed in June that it would continue to explore whether the current cohort data is representative of the delivery requirements for functional skills.

“The research tendered, as agreed by BIS, the agency and its technical advisory group, is part of this further work.

“It was tendered to a range of specialist research organisations through the BIS research and evaluation framework agreement.

“This project was released through the framework on 16 August to all framework contractors in category two: economic and econometric forecasting analysis, of which there are 14.”

‘Worrying’ 40% of providers miss apprenticeship data target

Hundreds of providers are failing to hit a government target for keeping a check on whether new apprentices have got jobs.

Learner records for an estimated 30,000 students were returned to the Information Authority (IA) with “not known”, “not provided” or “missing” in the employment status box last academic year.

The National Union of Students (NUS) has called for “urgent action” to make providers complete individual learner records (ILR) with the information.

Its president, Liam Burns, described the failure by nearly 40 per cent of providers to get the detail as “deeply worrying”.

And the call for action was backed by shadow FE minister Gordon Marsden, who described the job status information as a “safeguard for learners” and pledged to raise the issue with the National Apprentice Service (NAS), the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and the government.

An agency spokesperson said they had been in contact with the NAS over the issue of employment status record-keeping.

The data differentiates between apprenticeships with training providers, such as Zenos, where students would be registered as unemployed, and ones where students have a job.

It is deeply worrying that targets for collecting basic data have been missed and as a result the employment statuses of tens of thousands of apprentices now appear unaccounted for.”

Zenos, now owned by Pearson and operating under the name Pearson in Practice, came under fire this year when it emerged not one apprentice was guaranteed a job at the end of their 39-week course. Students also spent fewer  than six months with an employer.

A spokesperson for Zenos, which got £45.5 million  of taxpayers’ money in 2011-12 for running apprentice schemes, said at the time its  “long-term commitment is to equip young people with the skills and ability … to compete in a highly competitive marketplace”.

The failure of 340 providers to meet the target was affecting the government’s ability to check the performance of training providers, according to Liam Burns.

He said: “It is deeply worrying that targets for collecting basic data have been missed and as a result the employment statuses of tens of thousands of apprentices now appear unaccounted for.

“The government must urgently take action to ensure public money spent on training providers who make claims about getting students into work is checked against hard evidence.”

The government’s target is for more than 99 per cent of providers’ ILRs to be filled in with apprentices’ employment status.

The IA website specifies that apprenticeship providers must aim to have less than 0.3 per cent unknown on the first day of learning.

Providers with more than 0.5 per cent unknown in-year would be “asked to ensure this improves by the end of year return”, according to the website.

But the job status of 4.5 per cent of the overall number of apprentices is not known. This means the government did not know if, FE Week estimates, 30,000 students had a job.

Labour’s Mr Marsden said: “It’s very important that all providers keep accurate statistics on this issue for two reasons.

“It’s a check on concerns about deadweight learning and money being spent on courses with a view to employment. It’s also a safeguard for learners in ensuring due diligence with taxpayers’ money.

“I’ll write to the NAS and ask them to look carefully at these statistics and find out what they and the SFA and the Government can do.”

A spokesperson for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers added: “Our longstanding view is that all apprentices should be employed and that’s why we were pleased to see the 2009 Act spell it out.

“As Jason Holt said, an apprenticeship is a job with training. Therefore we feel that the issue is worth exploring further, even it is just some sort of hangover from PLA provision.”

The agency spokesperson said an official statement on the data records situation was expected to be released soon.