The boss of a 16-year-old independent training provider for vulnerable 14-19-year-olds has said he has no choice but to close the business due to a contract termination following a contested ‘inadequate’ Ofsted outcome.
Derby Skillbuild, an ITP providing vocational training and English and maths to vulnerable learners, lodged numerous complaints with the watchdog over the way its October inspection was conducted.
The provider was downgraded from ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’ in a report published this morning.
This is despite, the provider claims, an Ofsted internal review following several complaints about the inspection process.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) told the provider this morning that it intends to terminate its contract.
Tim Kerry, chief executive of Derby Skillbuild, told FE Week he anticipates the organisation will have to shut down due to costly legal proceedings and the ESFA withdrawing funding.
“We’ve made several complaints about it following the Ofsted process. It was grossly unfair,” he said.
Kerry said the provider “doesn’t have any choice” but to progress to a judicial review, depending on the proceedings the ESFA intend to take.
“At the end of the day, people will suffer because we will close. I can’t see any other outcome. Unless there’s an epiphany moment within Ofsted, then nothing will change and we will close,” Kerry said.
The provider, established in 2007, was inspected in October and had 70 full-time learners studying level 1 to 3 courses mostly in construction and health and social care. Around half of the learners were aged under 16.
Inspectors have ‘no experience’
Derby Skillbuild was downgraded from ‘good’ at its last inspection in 2017 to ‘inadequate’ overall. It was rated ‘inadequate’ across all categories apart from personal development, where it was judged ‘requires improvement’.
Kerry told FE Week that he complained that the inspectors had no experience in the subject content that it taught, such as construction, and its land-based courses.
Kerry’s second complaint was that inspectors did not consider what they were contracted to deliver by the ESFA.
“You cannot inspect an independent learning provider without having regard to their contract, which is exactly what it is that we’re supposed to provide in return for being paid,” he said.
“I’m a bit surprised that they’ve decided to publish the report prior to the internal review that they’re going through on the basis of our request,” he added.
Ofsted’s published complaints procedure says it will withhold publication of contested inspection reports if a formal complaint is lodged within its deadlines.
In the report, inspectors said that learners do not benefit from a “sufficiently ambitious curriculum” and have “poor attitudes” to learning.
“When they talk about the curriculum, we don’t have a curriculum, we have a course that we deliver to a specification. That’s what’s in our contract,” Kerry said. “The entire organisation of Ofsted does not make any provision for the difference between an independent learning provider and a school.”
“If any normal reasonable person came down here and looked at the type of English ability, maths ability that these kids come to us with, they would be astonished,” Kerry added. “I mean, it’s five-to-six-year-old ability.”
Around 80 per cent of learners have been diagnosed with autism, ADHD, or have an education, health and care plan.
Ofsted classroom comments ‘pure fiction’
Ofsted praised the providers’ oversight of learners with special educational needs but said that teachers are not consistent with using information in learners’ support plans across all courses.
“It’s not easy, especially with the behaviours because they are from impoverished areas and are not used to any kind of rules or regulations. That’s why they’re not at school,” Kerry explained.
The watchdog also criticised the provider’s lack of sufficient careers education and advice, which Kerry also took issue with, as Derby Skillbuild schedules this for its learners later in the academic year.
“The problem that I have with that is that although we do it, we don’t do it at the beginning of the term,” he added. “We do it once we’ve got the preparation for the January exams out of the way.”
The report also found that staff do not have the relevant training to address behavioural issues with learners, and not enough time in lessons is spent on teaching.
Inspectors praised leaders’ knowledge of students’ backgrounds and the challenges they face, but criticised them for not placing high enough expectations on learners.
“Too often, for example, they accept learners’ lack of motivation as a reason to not complete assignments. As a result, too few learners pass their vocational courses,” the report said.
Ofsted also said that the provider’s learning environment was “poor” and that classrooms were “unkempt and uninspiring”.
In the construction course, inspectors found insufficient numbers of workbenches for group sizes, and “uneven flooring”, making practical work difficult.
Kerry said he didn’t “acknowledge it at all”. “It’s pure fiction,” he said.
He explained that in construction, this year’s intake was larger than normal, so it built an external shelter area with a concrete floor for students to conduct brickwork.
“It’s a very strange thing to pick up on,” he said.
Disadvantaged students are now three and a half grades behind their peers by the end of the 16-19 phase. This should be a hugely worrying statistic for policy makers and is not a problem we can expect to correct itself; change is needed if we want to see this gap narrow.
This week’s Education Policy Institute publication is the fourth time we’ve published an update on our 16-19 disadvantage measure, but this is not just a routine update. In fact, our new analysis plugs an important gap in our narrative to date.
We’ve previously noted with concern how the 16-19 disadvantage gap widened throughout the pandemic. Disadvantaged students being less likely to enter A levels, for which grades increased the most, was one of the reasons the overall disadvantage gap widened under centre- and teacher-assessed grades (CAGs and TAGs) in 2020 and 2021. What we were unable to disentangle was the extent to which other factors such as learning loss were at play.
The return to exams in 2022 allowed us to understand if the gap was wider than it was pre-pandemic, without the complication of CAGs and TAGs. The answer, to be blunt, is yes.
Grading distributions in 2022 were a halfway house between those of 2019 and those of 2021, so it’s not true that the impact of CAGs and TAGs on the disadvantage gap have been completely stripped out. However, the effect will be diminished. The gap that remains will be more reflective of how school closures, learning loss and the totality of disruption over the past few years may have affected those from different backgrounds unequally. Or in other words, it has become easier to start focusing on important differences in students’ learning and ability again, rather than how the government has been awarding grades.
By comparison to our findings, it is alarming how much of the big picture official measures of attainment gaps miss by not publishing a measure for 16-19 year olds that includes all qualifications. In our analysis, we demonstrate how disadvantaged students are less likely to take A levels, and how rapid the increased take-up of applied general qualifications has been in recent years.
The upshot of this is that the official A level gap measure does not include most disadvantaged students, and changes in the official applied general gap measure largely reflect changes in entry patterns between students from different backgrounds. As such, neither provides a consistent measure of how disadvantaged students’ grades compare to their peers.
Our report also provides an update on gaps between geographic areas. The areas with the narrowest gaps are primarily London boroughs, as has been the case consistently in recent years. In Southwark for example, disadvantaged students were actually 2 grades ahead of the average non-disadvantaged student nationally.
Conversely, there are certain local authorities where the 16-19 disadvantage gap has widened substantially. For example, in Doncaster, Herefordshire and Sunderland the gap was a little over three grades in 2019, widening to around five grades or more by 2022. We don’t yet know what is driving these falls: changes in the characteristics of students, the unequal impact of the pandemic, or changes in provision are all possibilities.
When we published our first report measuring the 16-19 disadvantage gap back in 2019, we called for a student premium fund, in keeping with the focus on disadvantage for school-age students. At the time, this was to tackle a stubbornly wide but nonetheless stable gap. Several years on, and with the gap widening, the challenge feels starker. There is no doubt that more support is needed in this phase, and EPI are one of many organisations calling for a student premium. EPI will be undertaking further work to scope out how such a premium might work in practice.
If we are to see these trends reverse, then serious action will be needed. Whichever government is in power by this time next year, the burgeoning gap in attainment for students in the final stage of their compulsory education can no longer be ignored.
The exams regulator has appointed its deputy chair to lead its board while a permanent chair is found.
Frances Wadsworth, a former teacher and college principal, will become Ofqual’s interim chair on January 1. She will be in post for “up to 12 months” while a successor to Sir Ian Bauckham is found.
Last month it was announced that Bauckham will move from the Ofqual chair role to interim chief regulator, replacing Jo Saxton who becomes chief executive of UCAS next month.
This leaves the permanent roles of both chair and chief regulator at Ofqual vacant.
Wadsworth said she was “delighted to have been invited to serve as the interim chair of Ofqual, particularly at such an important time for the organisation and for the sector.”
“I know from my experience in education how important qualifications, supported by regulation, are and the impact they can have on individuals, employers and organisations,” she added.
Wadsworth joined the board of Ofqual in April 2017. In addition to being its deputy chair, she also chairs the regulator’s audit committee.
According to the Ofqual board’s register of interests, Wadsworth is also a lay advisor to the Thames Valley Magistracy and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
She was appointed a deputy further education commissioner in 2018 following a seven-year stint and principal and CEO of Croydon College. When the then FE commissioner, Richard Atkins, stood down in 2021, Wadsworth served as interim FE commissioner for six months until Shelagh Legrave took over.
She was made a CBE for services to education in the Queen’s 2022 birthday honours.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan said: “Ofqual plays an important role in ensuring our current and future qualifications work effectively, especially as we develop the new Advanced British Standard.
“Frances brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in advancing education and I look forward to working alongside her to ensure students taking qualifications and assessments in 2024 have the best possible chance to succeed.”
The government has published long-awaited draft transgender guidance, which sets out how schools and colleges should respond to gender-questioning students.
The guidance applies to students aged under 18 in further education and sixth-form colleges, as well as schools. However, confusingly, the guidance interchangeably described gender-questioning students in colleges as “students,” “pupils,” and “children.”
It does not apply to independent training providers, even those delivering apprenticeships or study programmes to under-18s.
The Department for Education said it had adopted a “parent-first approach”, and that the guidance would advise colleges to involve parents in decisions affecting their children.
The Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) said there were “omissions from the [earlier] draft guidance published today relating to the college age group” which they said they’d feed back in their consultation response.
Noni Csogor, SFCA’s senior research and policy manager, said the guidance “provides colleges with some much-needed clarity on a complex and sensitive issue.”
“The lengthy delay in publication has resulted in great confusion, with conflicting advice from legal and other sources filling the vacuum. All colleges want to continue providing welcoming, inclusive environments for trans and gender-questioning students, as well as fulfilling their safeguarding obligations, and we’ll highlight how this can best be achieved through our response to the consultation,” Csogor said.
David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said the guidance was “tricky territory” for colleges.
“Colleges are often the first safe place where young people can truly start to work out who they are, and to express themselves freely. We are proud of that and of the brilliant work colleges do in supporting students of all ages. It is important that any guidance therefore has the wellbeing of students at its core, helps colleges in practical ways to support all students, and recognises what students tell staff about their identities,” he said.
AELP declined to comment.
Here’s what the draft guidance states. It won’t come into effect until after the consultation, and may be changed at that point.
1. Five ‘overarching’ principles
The guidance focuses on how colleges should handle requests for “social transitioning”.
The DfE defines this as “actions such as changing names, uniforms, or using different facilities to help a child appear more like the opposite sex, with the expectation that they will be treated as if they are”.
The guidance sets out five “overarching principles” for colleges to frame responses to requests for social transitioning. These are as follows…
Schools and colleges have statutory duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children
Schools and colleges should be respectful and tolerant places where bullying is never tolerated
Parents should not be excluded from decisions taken by a school or college relating to requests for a child to ‘socially transition’
Schools and colleges have specific legal duties that are framed by a child’s biological sex
There is no general duty to allow a child to ‘social transition’
2. When should colleges involve parents?
The guidance states that where a student requests action from a college in relation to “any degree” of social transition, colleges should speak to parents “as a matter of priority” and encourage the student to speak to their parents.
The DfE would “expect parental consent to be required in the vast majority of cases”.
But in “exceptionally rare circumstances”, where a college believes involving parents could put a student at “significant risk” of harm, colleges do not have to inform them.
If no change is being requested, the DfE says teachers can “listen respectfully” to a student’s feelings without automatically telling their parents. But for safeguarding reasons, they cannot “promise confidentiality”.
3. What to do about pronouns
The draft guidance states that primary children “should not have different pronouns to their sex-based pronouns used about them”.
For older children and students, schools and colleges should only agree “if they are confident that the benefit to the individual child outweighs the impact on the school [sic] community”.
As a result, the government says it expects “there will be very few occasions in which a school or college will be able to agree to a change of pronouns”.
4. Don’t ‘compel’ others to use pronouns
In those instances where a change of pronouns is agreed, “no teacher or pupil should be compelled to use these pronouns”.
Colleges should also not prevent teachers from referring to children collectively as ‘girls’ or ‘boys’, even in the presence of a child who has been allowed to change their pronouns.
Colleges are also told they should “exhaust all other options”, such as using first names, “to avoid requiring individuals having to use preferred pronouns”.
The guidance adds that no student should be sanctioned for “honest mistakes” when adapting to preferred names or pronouns.
5. Take a ‘cautious approach’
The guidance warns “a cautious approach” should be taken that complies with legal duties, because there isn’t “definitive evidence” of the long and short-term impact of changes on young people.
The guidance states that colleges must record a student’s sex accurately “wherever it is recorded.”
Government also expects schools to make “all relevant staff” aware of the biological sex of a child questioning their gender. The wording of the guidance does not make it clear whether this also applies to colleges.
6. Wait before considering a request
Colleges are also told to allow for “watchful waiting” before considering a request, “to ensure it is a sustained and properly thought-through decision”.
They should consider if the student has made “similar requests” before, and seek to understand factors that may have influenced the student, such as their “peers or social media”.
The guidance also asks colleges to consider whether a student feels “pressured” to identify differently because they “simply do not align” with stereotypes associated with their sex.
Other factors listed for consideration are whether input from a special educational needs coordinator is “appropriate”, or if there is an “interaction” with the child’s sexual orientation.
7. Factoring in other students and staff
When considering requests for social transitioning, colleges are told to consider the impact on other students, including safeguarding concerns.
Colleges may conclude that the impact on the college community “is such that it may not be possible to agree to support a request”.
If a change has been agreed, colleges should communicate this to other students and staff “where it is necessary and proportionate to do so”.
But the guidance adds that “this should be done sensitively, without implying contested views around gender identity are fact”.
8. What happens with single-sex spaces?
Responding to a request to support any degree of social transition “must not” include allowing access to single-sex spaces, the guidance states.
“All children” should use the toilets, showers and changing facilities designated for their biological sex “unless it will cause them distress to do so”, the DfE said.
If a college wishes to offer a student access to an alternative toilet facility, they should be secured from the inside and for use by one student at a time, including for hand washing.
Alternative changing rooms could include a facility to be used by one student at a time and lockable from the inside.
9. Clear rules needed for sports
Colleges should adopt “clear rules which mandate separate-sex participation” for all sports “where physical differences” between sexes “threatens the safety of children”.
Colleges are advised to consider guidance from each sport’s national governing body when making decisions on fairness and safety, the guidance states.
“It would not be safe for a biological boy to participate in certain sports as part of a teenage girls’ team,” it stated.
And even in sports where “safety is not risked”, such as competitive sports, colleges should be aware that without separate sex participation, “it is unlikely that they will be offering equal opportunities”.
Loughborough College has announced Corrie Harris, currently principal and CEO of Moulton College, as its next leader.
Harris will succeed Jo Maher, who has been appointed Loughborough University’s first pro-vice chancellor for sport and professor of sport, exercise and health sciences.
Current Loughborough College deputy principal, Heather Clarke, will lead the college as acting principal from January until Harris starts in May 2024.
Stuart Lindeman, chair of governors at Loughborough College, said: “We are thrilled to announce Corrie as our new principal and CEO, whose energy, vision and experience make her the ideal person to lead the college and build on our successes.”
“Corrie is joining the College at a truly exciting and ambitious time of growth and development, taking the reigns as we open three new teaching buildings in the coming years.
Harris joined Moulton College in July 2019, just a month after the formerly ‘outstanding’ rated land-based college had received its second consecutive ‘inadequate’ judgement from Ofsted. In just two years, the Northamptonshire college’s fortunes were turned around when it was finally graded ‘good’ in December 2021.
Harris has held a number of college senior leadership positions in the midlands, including executive director for corporate development at Birmingham Metropolitan College in the early 2010s and vice principal at Tresham College, part of The Bedford College Group.
Loughborough College was one of eight that saw teaching staff take three days of strike action this November in a dispute over pay, despite a spate of colleges reaching last minute deals. The college was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education this year for its “unique and world-class” space engineering programme.
Harris said: “I am delighted to be joining Loughborough College as their new principal and CEO at this exciting time. Loughborough have achieved so much, and I look forward to leading the college and to building upon its many successes.”
Ben Rowland has just finished his first week as chief executive of the Association for Employment and Learning Providers. He tells Shane Chowen about his plans to rebuild membership following a turbulent period and get decision-makers face-to-face with private providers
As a child, Ben Rowland remembers one Christmas day when his mother invited three people who had nowhere else to go to his west London home for dinner. Growing up in a church-going household, he credits his “socially aware” mother fondly with early formative memories of helping those in need that would shape his professional interests later in life. Of course, he wasn’t to know that at the time.
It is a journey that would see him ride the, in his words, “conveyor belt from a posh school to posh universities, no credit to me” and ultimately end up this week taking over as chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP).
The “posh school” was the London independent boys’ school St Paul’s, and the “posh universities” were Oxford, where Rowland studied Latin and Greek at the “quite left-wing” Balliol College, and London School of Economics, where he completed a social policy masters degree.
He now leads one of the primary lobbying organisations in the sector, going into a general election year where the stakes for his members could not be higher.
AELP is best known for standing up for private-sector training organisations operating in publicly funded apprenticeships, adult education and other skills programmes. But among their members are also universities, employer providers and FE colleges.
While apprenticeships are enjoying their time in the political spotlight, the same cannot be said for the organisations that deliver the training for the vast majority of them – independent training providers (ITPs), who struggle for visibility in the busy education lobby.
Rowland is hitting the ground running, with a national tour to entice back training providers that he says “can’t quite see” where AELP is going.
He talks from experience having co-founded Arch Apprentices in 2012 until it merged with Avado in 2018, achieving an Ofsted ‘outstanding’ inspection result in between. Earlier this year, Avado became the latest large training provider to leave the apprenticeships market altogether, turning its attention to “more attractive markets” instead.
It is symbolic of the strategic dichotomy facing the independent training sector struggling to turn a profit on flat apprenticeship funding rates, shrinking adult education contracts and soaring business costs.
“The guts they [ITPs] bust to deliver great apprenticeships … I am motivated by a sense of unfairness that that’s not seen,” Rowland said. “I want to make sure the efforts and that hard work is truly visible, because I don’t think it is at the moment.”
Rowland speaks about a “wariness” of independent training providers among public sector officials as a barrier to the visibility and recognition he wants for his members.
“There’s a little bit of ‘they’re different from us’ among some civil servants,” he states, adding that “high-profile scandals” in the past have left “a sense that ‘those bastards have ripped us off’”.
Kirstie Donnelly, Seema Malhotra, Ben Rowland, David Hughes
It is a battle every AELP chief has faced. But Rowland is clear that the best people to dispel any suspicion about the independent sector are the companies themselves. His challenge to aspiring ministers, MPs and education officials is to commit to seeing at least one ITP for every college they visit.
“If you’re up in Preston, say, and you’re seeing a college, then we’ll find you a training provider. You go and see them and get to know them, see what they’re doing and really connect with the day-to-day nuts and bolts of what ITPs up and down the country are.”
Rowland is candid about the changes needed at AELP, which has been without a chief executive since the sudden departure of Jane Hickie in May.
Although he won’t give away the precise numbers, which appear to be a closely guarded secret, “about half” of the 1,200 registered training providers are members of AELP.
He doesn’t just have his eyes on growing AELP’s membership for the sake of it though; it’s central to his strategy to boost the organisation’s influence in the corridors of power. And he wants to engage with non-member training providers directly to get them in the fold.
Rowland hits the road in January on an 18-date tour across England, where he hopes to meet “hundreds” of AELP members. Non-members are invited too.
He is also creating a “mini-panel” of people running organisations that have left AELP, or who have never been members, “to really understand what their viewpoint is”.
But with all the well-publicised issues facing ITPs – well-publicised largely thanks to AELP – why would anyone running one not want to be a member?
“Element by element, members like the different things that we provide,” Rowland asserts, namechecking the work done by Simon Ashworth, AELP’s policy director, who is “one of the best in the business”.
What has been missing though is “that overall sense of what’s the bigger purpose – that’s not been there the last 12 months or so”, he admits.
“I think people have said, ‘well, I’ve got tight budgets, I can’t quite see where this is going, it’s harder to justify internally’. I know what it’s like to run a training provider.
“But I don’t think it’s difficult to address that. You need to see a clear vision, and see an ongoing conversation with you that’s back open again. And I think it’s about being more clear and assertive about the wins we have had.
“Membership subs can’t be unconditional. Someone has to earn it. But I think we’re in a good position to do that.
“I don’t want people to tell me they think their membership fee is about justified. I want it to be, like, ‘wow, absolute bargain’.”
Rowland also wants to resolve “some historic tensions” between AELP and the regional networks of training providers, which he says “are a huge asset”.
The radical centre
Another unresolved tension is the future direction of apprenticeship policy.
Our interview took place on the day the EDSK think-tank published a report calling for some of the most radical controls on apprenticeships made to date, including banning existing graduates from publicly funded apprenticeships in order to protect funding for younger people who don’t follow the academic path through education.
At the opposite end, there are those who argue against controls on apprenticeships on the grounds that it’s an employer-led system.
Rowland won’t be drawn on picking a side – “I’m in the radical centre” – but sets out his stall that a “perfect system is always changing”.
“We’ve always struggled with this in the apprenticeship system. Is it an employment programme? Is it a skills programme? The answer is it’s both, because one leads to another.”
The “purely libertarian view” that apprenticeships should be guided entirely by employer demand “just doesn’t work – because people move jobs”.
“That’s market failure. So we need to have intervention. It’s a constant kind of dance that government has to choreograph with people like me who are talking to the dancers.
Rowland
“A perfect system, to my mind, is always changing. I will find out whether my members agree with me on that.”
Rowland’s desire to return to a debate about “the size of the pot” – the overall amount of funding committed towards skills – is perhaps more radical at a time when economists are forecasting government budget cuts and the Labour party is warning it won’t be “turning on the spending taps” if it wins the next election.
Although enthusiastic, he is hesitant about rushing in to make an all-out case for more money for the sector without first “organising our arguments”.
“We’ve got to show exactly what the system is. So, universities do this, colleges do this. Then there’s us, with our fast-moving cycles, our very close relationships with employers, our national coverage …we all play our role. And that’s where data comes in because it enables us to build a case that is also testable.”
He is convinced that he can tap into wider political narratives too: “We have to argue that we are the solution to big problems – to drive up performance in NHS, better people, better admin, you need better skills, better managers.”
Equipping himself with his members’ data comes across as a major feature in Rowland’s plan to improve AELP’s case for change. For example, he is keen to press the line that “not every [apprenticeship] withdrawal is a failure”, in contrast to education secretary Gillian Keegan’s recent remarks that high drop-out rates are a waste of taxpayers’ money.
‘This is what real poverty looks like’
Rowland refuses to be defined by his own “posh” education. “I’ve learned by doing stuff,” he says. Handy for someone who will spend most of their working life talking up apprenticeships.
But his contempt for an education system which streams by societal advantages also comes from experience. While an undergraduate at Oxford, he was introduced to Toynbee Hall, a charity that provides support services for people in poverty in east London.
His early involvement saw him volunteer every year in a team that took disadvantaged 10 to 16-year-olds on summer camps where they would learn skills like map-reading and cooking. He would eventually chair the organisation, around the time he set up Arch Apprentices.
“My childhood was very comfortable. When I started doing this stuff with Toynbee Hall with these kids I was like, shit, this is what real poverty looks like.
“So, if you went to a posh school with nice middle-class parents, you’re streamed down one route. But, if your mum is a bit unstable, or your dad is in prison, then you are streamed somewhere else. It’s actually not got much to do with the qualities or abilities of each person.”
Helping families to “navigate through the really crap hand they’d been dealt” led Rowland to his first job working as a consultant in regeneration. The role saw him work with government departments and local authorities on, among other things, employment programmes for young people and unemployed adults.
It was at that point he first saw what “private training providers were able to do with the right set up”. He was impressed by “how practical they could be in the way they got people back to work”.
After three years and a move back to London from Cambridge, Rowland set up his own consulting business with a friend. Specialising in data in local government, this took him all over the country, working in “bashed up estates” and in rural and urban areas.
He sold the business after eight years and moved on to co-found Arch with the backing of Blenheim Chalcot, one of the UK’s biggest venture builders and private equity specialists. They wanted someone who could help them access government funding streams – “apprenticeships looked best” – which gave Rowland a crash course in everything SFA, funding contracts, “all of that”.
As Arch grew, Rowland found himself rubbing shoulders with sector figures on the national apprenticeship stakeholder board including the likes of the CBI and, as it happens, fellow Oxbridge graduates and FE leaders Mark Dawe and David Hughes.
Fast forward to 2023, the now published author of Understanding apprenticeships: A student’s guide is in a job at AELP that he says “could not be a better role for me”.
A specialist college in Birmingham is “elated and overwhelmed” following a sweep of top inspection grades from Ofsted.
The education watchdog rated The Hive College ‘outstanding’ today in all areas following a two-day full inspection in November.
College leaders were praised for “detailed processes for quality assurance” which inspectors said allows learners to “progress swiftly” and “achieve their best”.
Learners achieve “significantly beyond” their target outcomes set out in education, health and care plans (EHCPs), helped by ongoing assessments that teachers use to adjust learners’ programmes to make sure they are “consistently demanding”.
Kim Everton, executive principal of The Hive College, told FE Week the college was “confident going into the inspection, but you always have that bit of self-doubt”.
“We were elated, overwhelmed and unbelievably proud to hear from the inspectors that what we do at the Hive is outstanding,” she said.
Progression to employment, apprenticeships and independent living is backed up by an “extensive” post-college support package so the college can continue to support learners once they’ve completed their studies.
High-needs students are “well prepared” for adulthood, according to the report, thanks to the college’s partnerships with employers, who in turn benefit from free disability awareness training enabling them to provide internships.
The college had 120 learners with special educational needs an/or disabilities at the time of the inspection, all aged over 18 years old.
It offers three programmes for students depending on their needs and aspirations: an employment focussed “Live @ The Hive,” volunteering focussed “Thrive @ The Hive” and an individualised course “Strive @ The Hive”.
Everton advises fellow specialist college leaders to “make sure that all decisions regarding the curriculum are based on what is best for the learners”.
“Investment in the quality of education was paramount to outcome. We have invested in recruiting exceptional teachers and support staff and in providing continual professional development,” she added.
Teachers were praised for the ways they support learners with profound and multiple learning disabilities to fully engage in their education, self-regulate their behaviours and develop new skills.
“As a result, learners make extensive progress in developing their confidence and speaking skills, and they progress from being unable to express themselves confidently to delivering presentations and making videos, highlighting issues people with disabilities face when shopping,” the report said.
The education watchdog also highlighted “significant” levels of challenge provided by the college’s “well-balanced” board of trustees in scrutinising subjects like changes to the curriculum and concerns around attendance linked to travel.
One of the most varied roles in any college is that of technician. It is a job I have been fortunate to do for the past 55 years – my entire working life – and one that still motivates me to cycle six miles into college and six miles back each working day.
Supporting the college’s lecturers with teaching and learning in construction and civil engineering is as fulfilling and enjoyable as ever. Practical learning has always been at the heart of training students and apprentices for their future careers in the construction industry, so as a technician the contribution you are making is very direct.
Every brickwork model built by the students has to be set up and taken down by a member of the technician team. Over the years, I must have knocked down a million bricks from the models that students have built! The importance of practical work within our curriculum area creates a strong sense of teamwork between the lecturing staff and technicians. We are all here for the same purpose, and my colleagues are definitely one of the best things about the job.
Working as a technician is far more varied and interesting than you might at first think. I certainly had no idea of the breadth of work I was signing up for when I came here for a job interview soon after finishing my O Levels in the summer of 1968. Technicians get asked to help with anything and everything to support the smooth running of the department, but we are also experts in our field.
Working in the brickwork workshop, the area of I came to specialise in was materials testing. Up until the early 2000s, the college had a materials testing service and local building contractors came to us to have concrete cubes, bricks and other building materials certified. I was responsible for running the testing service for many years and I enjoyed working with employers from the local construction firms. Whenever I walk around the centre of Norwich, I can see numerous buildings I certified the building materials for.
I had no idea of the breadth of work I was signing up for in 1968
The more varied aspects of the technician role have included things like helping with trips to construction sites, providing classroom support with teaching and assessments, driving the college minibus and lending a hand with the enrolment of students. In the days before electronic records, one of the small but crucial jobs at the start of each new academic year was to replace the nibs of the ink pens that students used to fill out their enrolment cards.
The biggest change during my career has undoubtedly been the introduction of computer technology and the central role it now occupies in every area of the curriculum and every part of working life. When the college opened a new Advanced Construction and Engineering Centre last year, the construction lab was designed to integrate practical and digital skills in the same space.
On one side of the workshop, students make and test concrete samples and carry out hydraulics experiments using a water flume; in the same space they have access to interactive whiteboards and desks that a bank of laptops can be plugged into. Today’s students can move easily between carrying out experiments, recording the results and then presenting and discussing their conclusions.
The contribution you are able to make as a technician can be brought home in unexpected ways. A few weeks ago, I was doing the shopping at a local supermarket. A chap came up to me, introduced himself and asked to shake my hand. He was a student from many years ago, on an HNC in construction, and he remembered me. He thanked me for all I’d done in the past, for helping him to get into the position that he is in now as a chief engineer at one of the local airbases.
It is moments like this that remind me that us technicians – often working away ‘behind the scenes’ in colleges – can and do make a very real difference for our students.
Ever since the early days of teaching machines in the 1920s, the PLATO system of the 1960s and the Intelligent Essay Assessor of the 1980s, there’s been an ever-changing landscape in the use of technologies to support formative assessment practices within the education sector.
In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool for enhancing assessment practices, and the FirstPass platform, developed by Bolton College in collaboration with NCFE, is leading the way in leveraging the use of natural language processing to support students and teachers in this exciting space.
FirstPass is an online platform that utilises AI to provide real-time feedback to students as they compose their responses to open-ended questions. The basic premise behind the platform is a simple one: that real-time effective feedback enables learners to develop positive meta-cognition skills as they identify areas for improvement and adjust their work before submitting it to their teachers for commentary and feedback.
The Assessment Innovation Fund, a £1 million initiative launched by NCFE, provided Bolton College with the necessary funding to pilot FirstPass and assess its effectiveness in enhancing formative assessment practices. The pilot involved six further education (FE) colleges across England and Wales, spanning a diverse range of vocational subjects. The results of the pilot were very encouraging, demonstrating that real-time feedback can positively aid students as they author responses to open-ended questions.
Key findings from the pilot
Learners reported feeling more engaged and motivated due to the immediate feedback provided by FirstPass. Real-time feedback gave learners the opportunity to assess their first drafts, enabling them to make changes and edits before submitting. Results showed that nine in 10 learners (92.3 per cent) found that the feedback they received from FirstPass helped them to compose better answers to open-ended questions.
Teachers reported that the FirstPass platform led to improved submissions from learners. Consequently, they spent less time providing remedial feedback and 82 per cent stated that FirstPass would be an effective AI service for supporting them with their formative assessment practice.
One of the unique traits of the FirstPass platform is that it leverages the power of crowdsourcing to support the training of subject topic classifiers that underpin the delivery and assessment of open-ended questions over the platform.
The pilot demonstrated that teachers and other subject specialists can train AI models through a platform like FirstPass. The participatory model lends itself particularly well to the education sector where the larger group are motivated towards shared goals.
Implications for formative assessment
The success of the FirstPass pilot and the advances that we have all witnessed in the past 12 months demonstrate the potential of using AI to support formative assessment practices within the education sector. In some instances, the things we have taken for granted will be displaced. In other cases, AI will open a new vista of opportunities within the formative assessment landscape.
We have come a long way since the advent of the first analogue teaching machines in the 1920s. In 2023, the FirstPass pilot has demonstrated that AI can play a transformative role in enhancing formative assessment practices within the further education sector; especially regarding its ability to deliver immediate real-time feedback, reducing teacher workload around remedial feedback, and improving learning outcomes.
As AI continues to evolve and advance, FirstPass and other emerging services have the potential to transform the way formative assessment is undertaken. Thanks to continued support from NCFE and the Assessment Innovation Fund, we’re able to progress our research into a second phase where we will look to further develop and test the platform.
This research will focus on formative assessment in two specific courses: the Level 2 Diploma in Early Year Practitioner and the Technical Award in Child Development and Care at Levels 1 and 2.
Additionally, we are being funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to undertake a small-scale pilot with 8 to 12 further education colleges. The pilot will assess how FirstPass can support formative assessment practices to aid learners within GCSE English Language resits. If it is successful, the EEF will increase its funding to support a larger scale project during 2024-25.
