Vocational skills celebrated on VQ Day

This year’s VQ Day was a chance to celebrate technical, practical and vocational learning. But it was also a chance day for business secretary Vince Cable to remember the difference that further education made to his parents’ lives.

“My mother and father both left school at 15 to work in factories and they progressed in life through further and adult education,” he said.

“My dad became eventually a lecturer in a technology college, teaching building trades, everything from brick layers to surveyors.

“That’s what I was brought up with; a belief in that world of real skill, real vocational qualifications and the value it had to society.”

The gathering of students, teachers, friends and family at London’s Bafta Theatre watched Walsall College perform an adaptation of Matthew Bourne’s The Nutcracker and Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College demonstrate how to make macaroons. They also had the chance to try their hand at finger printing and bone identification at City and Islington College’s interactive crime scene.

Will Torrent, an award winning pastry chef and WorldSkills alumni, hosted the Learner of the Year ceremony. “It’s an honour to really celebrate vocational education,” he said.

Dr Cable said that he feared the value of vocational learning was becoming lost. “In my generation the idea got around that if you were good at school you went off to university and that was up here, and if you didn’t, and were lucky, you went off and got a vocational qualification, and that was down there.”

He called it an “apartheid system” that was “extremely unhealthy” and which had done “enormous harm”. The country was now “desperately short” of highly trained people with a good vocational background.

“We’re beginning to realise, well hopefully it’s now absorbed, that vocational training is as or more important than the academic route. At the very least we should think of them as equals.”

We’ve let a lot of vocational skills go and we’re paying the price for it”

He said that a change in attitude was “beginning to happen” and sensed that the younger generation better understood the value of a vocational education.

In an interview with FE Week, Dr Cable said that he agreed with Ed Miliband’s comment that there was “snobbery” towards vocational learning. In a speech to a Sutton Trust conference in May, the Labour leader said that we “should reject the snobbery that assumes the only route to social mobility runs through university”.

Dr Cable said last week: “We’ve let a lot of vocational skills go and we’re paying the price for it. With events like this, you’re seeing the process being put into reverse and proper valuation put on vocational training.”

Several of the award winners had gone on to university. That’s the kind of lowering of the boundary we need to have.”

Lord Baker, a former Tory education secretary, and now largely responsible for the introduction of university technical colleges, echoed the Business Secretary’s concern that vocational qualifications had not been properly valued.

 Dave Hughes, National VQ Learner of the Year, James Giblin, North West Learner of the Year and Margaret Green, Yorkshire and Humber Learner of the Year

“There are 4 million vocational qualifications granted every year. Infinitely more than GCSE, infinitely more than A-Level, and yet they get very much more attention.

“There’s no doubt that the vocational qualifications are immensely popular with the students who take them and the teachers who teach them. And they’re very important,” he said.

Dr Cable and Lord Baker presented awards to the nine winners. Dave Hughes, 24, from Newcastle-under-Lyme, was named the National VQ Learner of the Year, as well as the regional award for the West Midlands.

After achieving a triple distinction in his national diploma in art and design, Dave completed an HND in graphic design and set-up his own marketing and design agency. His company, elloDave, employs a number of former creative students from Newcastle-under-Lyme College, where he studied.

“To leave school and to go to a course that you know it’s something you want to do, it’s great,” he said. “It’s good you don’t have to be in such an academic environment and you can do hands on training for the field you want to go into.”
Also presented with an award was Margaret Green, 48, from Bradford. She said that she was “absolutely blown away” when she won VQ Learner of the Year for Yorkshire and the Humber.

Vocational training is as or more important than the academic route”

Speaking about her apprenticeship in pharmacy services, Ms Green said: “It’s given me a lot of confidence, and I’ve learnt to love me for who I am, not who I’d like to be,” she said.

When she was 14 she was told that she wasn’t worth teaching and wouldn’t amount to anything.

“From that day my self-esteem went down. I hit low. I stopped putting my hand up for questions, because I stopped believing in myself. You start doubting yourself. After a lot of years you actually truly believe it.”

She was very nervous about embarking on the apprenticeship. “It’s been 30-plus years since I’ve been at school and it wasn’t a decision I took lightly,” she said.

“There were a lot of demons, a lot of baggage, and I thought, I’ve got to get rid of these demons, I’ve got to bury them. I can do this. I bit the bullet and I went for it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

“And I’m not stopping here. There’s no way I’m stopping. I’m going to go forward.

This is it. It’s opened a whole lot of doors for me.”

Havering College students shine at showcase

Graduating students from Havering College have showcased an amazing diversity of talent at this year’s Free Range exhibition in London’s Brick Lane.

The show at the Old Truman Brewery provides a platform where emerging artists and designers from colleges and universities can gain exposure to thousands of visitors. Lucy Dodds, a graphic design student, was thrilled to get her work noticed by reviewers from Digital Arts. The online magazine referred to the “great work of Havering College” and singled out Lucy as an example.

Lucy, who took her inspiration for her final project from her love of travel, said: “Travel can teach much broader things in life and my collection shows what can be gained from a personal travel experience.”

Mark Owers, a 3D design craft student, displayed furniture. His designs involved combining the old and the new and using techniques such as digital laser etching and traditional steam bending. His pieces attracted interest from a buyer in Korea.

Skills provision for the unemployed

Skills provision for unemployed adults has never been more important. Skills allow people to escape the low pay, no pay cycle in which those with low skills can all too often find themselves trapped.

They also allow them to work in a new occupation if poor health or changing economic demand means that they cannot return to a former job.

However skills provision for unemployed adults is complex territory. It requires providers to work with Jobcentre Plus to engage and often support employers to recruit, to align provision with local labour market-relevant skills, and to effectively engage the unemployed and then support them through the provision of flexible, short courses that will lead to jobs..

The recent Skills Funding Agency announcement of Job Outcome Payments will require providers to gather evidence of learners remaining in work for four weeks if they leave their course for a job without obtaining a qualification.

Providers are making good progress. Statistics covering August 2011 to January this year shows that 123,000 learners have benefited from support for the unemployed.

Get Britain Working and statistics for mandatory programmes show that up to February 2012, 7,390 learners had taken part in sector-based work academies and 25,570 had begun training under skills conditionality arrangements.

The next release of statistics at the end of June will surely show increasing momentum and a developing market as more referrals are made and more providers get involved.

For many providers, their increased capacity from investing 2.5 per cent of their 2011/12 Adult Skills Budget in developing infrastructure is only just beginning to reap rewards.
The full impact will be seen in 2012/13 as more vacancies come up through talking to employers and supporting learners in their applications. The full impact of the increased flexibility that Jobcentre Plus district managers will have to commission providers to deliver innovative solutions for employers and learners will also have an impact.

Jobseekers – and young jobseekers in particular – sometimes have a bad attitude to work”

FE colleges, independent training providers (ITPs) and adult and community learning providers also are making an important contribution.

ITPs are in a prime position as they can engage employers that they know within the business community. They can also draw on their long-standing experience in providing sector-specific and vacancy-specific pre-employment training..

Two guides published by NIACE this week can also help. The first, on managing challenging behaviour, and will help providers support unemployed learners who show inappropriate or non-participative behaviour; the second (and an important one ) looks at working with micro-businesses.

Twenty-four per cent of UK job vacancies are within businesses that have between one and four employees. Micro-business ITPs are often part of micro business networks and therefore are in a good position to help their learners secure more of these jobs. Large FE colleges also could work with these micro-business ITPs to enable their learners to access these vacancies.

A number of recently published reports point to employers’ concerns that jobseekers – and young jobseekers in particular – sometimes have a bad attitude to work. This has raised questionsas to whether we should focus on developing helpful attitudes and timekeeping rather than on qualifications.

We have to help learners acquire both. A bad attitude is clearly a deal breaker but qualifications as get the learner an interview. This is why the combination of training, work experience and a guaranteed interview through the sector-based work academy model is proving so effective.

Rob Gray,
senior project officer, NIACE

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Sweet taste of victory for squad UK

Forget the Olympics, this summer’s top event is learners, apprentices and employees competing for a place in Squad UK for WorldSkills Leipzig 2013.

WorldSkills, the biggest international skills competition, is held every two years in one of 61 member countries. About 1,000 young people aged 18 to 23 compete for medals in more than 40 different skills, from floristry to bricklaying.

Students at Westminster Kingsway College kicked off squad selection last week by battling it out to make the most elaborate gastronomic dishes for a place in the team. Confectionery and pastry cooks created a variety of delicious dishes, from decorated cakes, pastries, biscuits, chocolates, modelled marzipan and edible table centrepieces.

The first phase of selection continues this week, with students at Stephenson College in Leicestershire showcasing their skills, including bricklaying, electrical installations and stonemasonry. Pupils at North Warwickshire and Hinckley College will also compete in a range of areas, from floristry to hairdressing and web design. Look out for coverage of these events in the next issue of FE Week.

Young people were invited to take part in squad selection after excelling in national WorldSkills competitions and other industry events.

Competitors who secure a place in Squad UK will undergo specialised training, supported by a dedicated manager for each skill.

They will then take part in events in March next year to compete for a place in Team UK.

Most competitors who make it into Squad UK will also take part at EuroSkills in Belguim in October this year.

Jaine Bolton, the UK’s delegate to WorldSkills International and director at the National Apprenticeship Service, which helps manage the competition programme, said: “This provides the inspiration for young people and adults to be ambitious in their pursuit of skills to the highest level.”

Sara Mogel, principal, West Cheshire College

“I did it for all the wrong reasons,” says Sara Mogel of her decision to go into education.

After a degree in economic and social history at Kent University, she did a teacher training course in the mid 1970s, purely because it came with a full grant, and having just married an American who didn’t qualify for a work permit at the time, she needed a source of income.

As it happened, she fell in love with teaching the moment she set foot in the classroom. “I just remember thinking that you could actually use your brain power to spark something in somebody else,” says Mogel, now principal of West Cheshire College.

Her training placements – at an independent boys school and a girls’ secondary modern in Kent – could not have been more different, she says. “The career aspiration at the girls’ school was to be a gooseberry shaver at the Smedley’s plant because they got a higher rate of pay than in the canning factory. Then I went to the private boys’ school where the staff had high tea in the staff room at 4pm. It was like a different world.”

But career aspirations at the girls’ grammar school that she attended were also limited – albeit in a different way. “The first option was to go to your local college and take a secretarial course, meet a nice man and get married; the second was to train as a nurse, meet a nice doctor and get married; the third was to go to university, meet a nice man and get married,” she says.

Born in Milford on Sea in Hampshire, Mogel says she had a “rather peripatetic childhood”, moving house and school numerous times, which left her with the feeling of “not having roots anywhere”. The death of her father from cancer, when she was 14, had a major impact on her life, emotionally and financially. Her parents had managed a golf club together, with accommodation on site, but after her father’s death, her mother found herself out of a job and a home. “People talk to me about students who can’t afford things…I know that inside out and upside down,” she says. “My mother did her best to make sure that I did get what she thought was the same as everybody else, but I was very aware how difficult that was.”

Mogel spent the first ten years of her teaching career working in Kent schools and, after a break to have children in the late 1980s, started teaching part-time in further and adult education, where she began to get involved in the TVEI (Technical and Vocational Education Initiative).

In the early 1990s, she moved to Cheshire County Council, where she took on an advisory role, specialising in curriculum development and TVEI for 14 to 19-year-olds. In 1993, she became an inspector for the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC), which she describes as “the best management training in FE you could possibly get”.

It was then that she started to consider the idea of becoming a college leader, and when the role of deputy principal came up at West Cheshire in 2000, she decided to go for it. While she knew the college had “financial, quality and property issues”, she relished the idea of a challenge. But a day before she was due to start, she received a phone call that changed everything.

“The chair and vice-chair of governors invited me to a hotel in Chester for a cup of coffee and sat me down and told me that the principal and the college had parted company. And therefore I was to go in on Monday and to start work as acting principal.”

When Mogel went in the following day, it was clear what had gone wrong: “I went into the principal’s office and discovered a desk piled high – literally, physically piled high – with things that had not been dealt with, and I asked to see the director of finance, because the college was about to go bankrupt. I spent most of that day dealing with emergencies because somebody had to deal with them and nobody else was there.”

Mogel soon found herself with a long list of emergencies to deal with – the most pressing being the fact that the college didn’t have a strategic plan.

I went into the principal’s office and discovered a desk piled high – literally, physically piled high – with things that had not been dealt with”

There was also a botched building programme to contend with; a site had recently being sold off to raise funds for a new building, and although the college had planning permission, no progress had been made. “This was December…and there were students and staff with nowhere to go the following September.”

In those early days she recalls asking a colleague to give her feedback on her performance. “He said: ‘One of the things you are doing right is your car is parked at the front of the building from early in the morning until the evening’. It’s a good lesson I think, that actually being there is quite an important thing, particularly if times are tough.”

One of the biggest – and most controversial – changes Mogel introduced at the college was dropping A-Levels to concentrate on delivering vocational courses, something that she identified early on as one of the college’s obvious strengths. “Some staff were up in arms and some staff did leave because they wanted to teach academic, and that’s fine. But we were really appalling at it [A-Levels] and the schools were really quite good at it, so why would you do it?”

And this wasn’t the only thorny issue she had to deal with. While West Cheshire was “one of the lucky 13” colleges not to lose out in the capital building programme fiasco, Mogel met with strong opposition from locals and politicians to plans to build a new college in the city centre. “They didn’t want, and I quote, ‘more dirty students in Chester’,” she recalls.

She recalls one public meeting, when an opponent of the building programme gave out her home address. “I still had two sons living at home. That was the point where you think, ‘Why am I doing this?’”

While the college now has a “fantastic building” in Ellesmere Port, a few miles away from the city centre, a more central location would have been much better- both for students (many of whom have long journeys to college each day) and the local economy, she says.

Despite her disappointment over the building programme, since Mogel joined the college 12 years ago, success and employability rates have soared.

“We set out to deliver a revolution in vocational education and training. I don’t think you will ever say we have fully achieved that…there are always challenges and new opportunities and some of those I still want to do. Young people understanding all the opportunities that are available to them, not limited by where they live, what colour their skin is, what gender they are or who their parents are is what matters to me. Those are the things I am fighting for.”

New apprenticeships are flying high

When Vince Cable and John Hayes announced the second list of successful higher apprenticeship bids last week, everyone should have taken note and appreciated the real transformation that is taking place.

It is not simply the growing list of occupations likely to attract the attention of young people and their parents. It is also the new and impressive employers who see higher apprenticeships as right for their business.
When speaking with employers over recent months, it is the expansion of the higher apprenticeship programme that is exciting them the most.

Employers see higher apprenticeships as a route that enables them to recruit and develop people who will have the skills to progress to senior management level. Too often this has been restricted to graduates.

Employers are now establishing two recruitment pathways – one for graduates and one for non-graduates. It’s an approach that is being adopted by some of the most impressive companies in this country.

They say that they want to attract the most talented people – and that this is the best way of doing so. Companies who will only put their names to high quality, now want to put their names to apprenticeships.

In the announcement on higher apprenticeships, ministers confirmed that nine partnerships comprising of employers and training providers will receive a total of £6m.

This will result in the development of more than 4,200 new higher apprenticeships. The funding is part of a £25m fund for higher apprenticeships announced by the government. The first round was announced in December last year.

The expansion of the higher apprenticeship programme is allowing the introduction of apprenticeships into new sectors, including industries where skills shortages are threatening to stop growth.

The first apprentices have started in Life Sciences, for instance. After the rapid expansion of jobs and apprenticeships in the service sector, it is great to see apprenticeships emerging to support the new sciences.

I imagine that if I asked many of you to name the career pathway to becoming a commercial airline pilot, completing an apprenticeship may not be your first answer.

However, it is now possible as City & Guilds was awarded funding to develop a higher apprenticeship pathway for commercial airline pilots. This project will help employers, including Jet2, to address the predicted shortfall in pilots over the next 20 years.

 Companies who will only put their names to high quality, now want to put their names to apprenticeships.”

Just as ground breaking is PwC’s proposal to develop apprenticeships at Level 6 and 7. It will establish a true alternative route to high skills careers in Accounting and Professional Services.

Higher apprenticeships have also been introduced in low carbon engineering, legal services and space engineering.

Higher apprenticeships also present a new challenge to the sector. Enabling employers to expand their apprenticeship offer and set new, higher standards will require a provider network that can work with higher level skills. This will be an opportunity that I am sure the sector will relish.

One of our objectives for some time has been to increase progression. The higher apprenticeship offer sets out clear ladders of progression for candidates. Importantly, this will help attract far more young people with the capability of progressing.

This is an attractive offer for many young people who are now looking at the different career options available to them. Increasingly parents will see that completing an apprenticeship is as attractive an offer as going to university and will suit many people better. It is great to be able to present this choice to young people.

This is a vital part of changing mindsets of more people to put practical learning on a level footing with academic study. We all need to see what a fantastic opportunity
this presents to change the face of  vocational learning.

David Way,
chief executive, NAS

More than £20 million spent on Framework for Excellence

The government has spent more than £22 million producing the Framework for Excellence and  FE Choices websites.

A letter sent by skills minister John Hayes to Lynne Featherstone MP, says that more than £20 million was spent on “the development and operation” of the Framework for Excellence site  – which allows the public to compare the performance of providers – between 2007 and the end of last year.

But key figures in FE are disappointed with the numbers visiting FE Choices, the successor to Framework for Excellence.  A freedom of information request reveals only 6,230 people had viewed the site since its launch in January.

Joy Mercer, director of policy at the Association of Colleges (AoC), told FE Week: “FE Choices has been a costly development. Unfortunately, having reached a point where it was ready to go live there was no marketing budget to inform either individuals or employers.

“While we support the concept of transparent services for young people and adults, who are able to make informed choices on where to study, we know that they can’t take make these decisions if they don’t know where to find the information. The site is no good if no one knows that it is there.”

In his letter to Ms Featherstone, Mr Hayes wrote that the bulk of the spend on Framework for Excellence was on defining the indicators, establishing methods of collection and developing and testing the website.

He also revealed that last year there were 15,222 visits to the site.

Mr Hayes said: “All new things take time to embed and reach their full potential, but I am sure you will agree that it is important for the government to take steps to increase openness and transparency in public services.”

A spokesperson for the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) told FE Week that the Framework for Excellence site “was a success” and “worth the investment”.

“It was the first time that a website such as this had been established, and information of this kind gathered and published for public consumption to assist the sector in its own quality assurance, and provide a basis for colleges and providers to evaluate and improve their activities,” the spokesperson said.

It is disappointing that the FE Choices website is not used widely but it is perhaps not very surprising given the lack of marketing.”

Framework for Excellence was relaunched in January as FE Choices.

The response from the SFA to a freedom of information request showed that the new website has cost the taxpayer £2.3 million to date.

Joy Mercer said that it had cost a lot of money to gather the same information from schools and HE institutions.

“The costs of such exercises must be looked at in the round, which means including information about how it is used and whether it proves to be value for money in driving up quality,” she said.

The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) told FE Week that it had always been a challenge to provide learners with “accessible, relevant, consistent and comprehensive information”.

The FE Choices website holds success rates data for each provider, as well as two scores based on whether learners progressed to a new course or job. It also holds data that shows how satisfied learners and employers were with providers in 2010/11.

David Hughes, chief executive of NIACE, said: “It is disappointing that the FE Choices website is not used widely but it is perhaps not very surprising given the lack of marketing.

“We would like to ensure that adults know about this information as well as the new Careers Service. Both can help them to make better choices about the learning they want
and need.”

Staff and students lobby MPs over FE loans scheme

Staff and students are campaigning against the introduction of FE loans today.

Protestors have written to the skills minister John Hayes asking for “urgent clarification” on whether the scheme will result in fewer places at FE colleges and independent training providers.

They will also be lobbying MPs in their local constituency.

Toni Pearce, vice president for further education at the National Union of Students (NUS) said: “The government’s own official prediction is that 100,000 learners will no longer be learning if this scheme goes ahead, and nearly two-thirds of those are set to be women.

“Ministers are slamming the door in the faces of adults who want to return to learning and gain basic skills, despite the evidence showing that it would put off many of those who want to study A-levels, apprenticeships or access courses to higher education.

“In the midst of a double-dip recession and with the spectre of unemployment, we need opportunities to develop skills and find jobs rather than attempts to throw people on the scrap heap.”

FE loans will be introduced next year for all learners aged 24 and above wishing to study at level 3 or higher.

However, the final Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) and Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) reports, published last week, show that adult learners studying at level 3 and 4 could drop from 359,000 to about 247,000 once the loans are introduced.

The national day of action has been organised by the NUS, Unison, University and College Union (UCU) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the UCU said: “The minister urgently needs to clarify just how damaging these controversial plans will be.

“At a time of record levels of unemployment it is simply not acceptable to slash opportunity for 100,000 people.”

She said the projections in the final equality impact assessment and regulatory impact assessment were “quite staggering”.

“Colleges simply cannot absorb a 45 per cent cut in student numbers for people aged 24 and over,” she said.

“This would result in course closures, job losses and vastly diminished opportunities for adults and young people who need a second chance in education.”

(You can follow the day of action on Twitter using the hash tag #No2FEFees)