Independent review launched to check efficiency and governance of Office for Students

An independent review to examine the efficiency and governance of the Office for Students (OfS) is underway, the government has announced.

Sir David Behan (pictured), former chief executive of the Care Quality Commission, will lead the review of the higher education regulator with the aim of concluding it in early summer 2024.

The inquiry is part of the government’s wider public bodies review programme, which examines the effectiveness of arms-length bodies. The Education and Skills Funding Agency was subject to its own independent review in 2021-22, which resulted in the body being stripped of its policy role.

However, the announcement of the OfS review comes months after a House of Lords committee criticised the regulator for a lack of independence from the government and for losing trust with “many of its providers”.

The OfS was set up in 2018 to be an independent body reporting to the Department for  Education and parliament, with a brief to work with higher education providers to make sure that students succeed. It regulates more than 400 providers, including 153 colleges.

The House of Lords’ industry and regulators committee said the actions of the regulator “often appear driven by the ebb and flow of short-term political priorities and media headlines”. It added that it was “failing to deliver and does not command the trust or respect of either providers, or students, the very people whose interests it is supposed to defend”.

The committee also called the OfS out for “widespread concern that it simply does the government of the day’s bidding”, a perception not helped by the fact that Lord Wharton, the OfS chair, continues to take the whip of the governing party in the House of Lords, while simultaneously claiming that the organisation, as a regulator, is independent of the government.

Sir David Behan’s review will focus on how the OfS meets the requirements of the following four quadrants: efficacy, governance, accountability and efficiency.

He will be responsible for ensuring a “proportionate, rigorous and fair review that offers recommendations to facilitate continuous improvement”, the government’s announcement said.

A “challenge panel” will also be established to “hear from the lead reviewer, understand the evidence base and challenge emerging thoughts and recommendations in a rigorous and constructive manner”.

This was the year politicians finally realised the value of our sector

I’m ending 2023 far more optimistic than I started.  

In January we were still reeling a little from an autumn statement in which the chancellor had talked a good game on skills but instead invested in schools. It felt like a kick in the teeth and an ominous sign for the future. 

Fast forward 12 months, however, and there is much more to suggest that both colleges and post-16 education are viewed as investible propositions across the political parties.

The positive signs started in July with the additional funding announced by Gillian Keegan, which has already started to support better pay in many colleges. We cannot underestimate the significance of this: for the first time college pay was addressed by DfE alongside schoolteacher pay. This shows a recognition of how important pay is in both settings.

The focus on colleges continued in the prime minister’s speech at the Conservative Party conference when he backed a 10-year programme to transform the 16-to-19 education phase.

This is, of course, easily dismissed as a long-term plan that will not last the imminent general election. But that would be wrong given that the Advanced British Standard (not a great name, but that will not last) is based on principles we have been campaigning on for years. It includes more hours of contact time for every young person, at all levels, and a simpler menu of options across the so-called academic and technical divide to allow more breadth. Importantly, it signals a strong desire to open up technical learning to more young people, of all abilities and backgrounds.

The ABS consultation and developments also give us a prime opportunity to address other longstanding campaign ambitions: pay and recruitment, workload, capital investment, moving from competition to collaboration and better linking apprenticeships with what happens inside colleges and schools.

That ABS announcement was followed by Keir Starmer’s plan to support colleges to take on a new enhanced role as Technical Excellence Colleges, presumably with the investment to match. It built on Labour’s strong focus on increasing awareness of the importance of skills across all of their ‘missions’.  

It’s a nice place to be after too many years of neglect

This theme of stronger recognition continued in October with our Colleges Week parliamentary reception, which felt different to previous years. Alongside Gillian Keegan, we also heard speeches from shadow skills minister, Seema Malhotra, and Lib Dem education spokesperson, Munira Wilson. That’s not particularly remarkable, but their words and clear desire to show how much they recognise, respect and endorse colleges almost felt as if they were competing to prove they were the college sector’s biggest supporter.

It’s a nice place for us to be after too many years of neglect. 

There are plenty of other indications of a stronger understanding of colleges’ vital role and the importance of investment in post-16 education. Take, for example, the engagement we now have at national policy level with universities on developing a reformed tertiary approach. We’ve always believed that the education system needs thriving schools, colleges and universities as anchor institutions, working to their strengths and collaborating to help people navigate to what they want and need. My optimism is that we are starting to see wider agreement on how that might be achieved. 

However, we cannot be complacent; there are still enormous challenges. Funding is still way below 2010 levels, pay lags too far behind schools and industry, qualifications reform could risk the education of tens of thousands, reclassification has brought unwelcome restrictions that hamper colleges’ ability to deliver and public finances look extremely tight for years to come.  

All of that will keep us busy in 2024, but it is a relief to no longer need to keep fighting for a seat at the table; we are now engaged much more closely in policy formulation and implementation.  

That brings its own challenges of course, because none of this is easy and there are rarely clear-cut obvious right (or wrong) policies. Compromise, scarce resources and competing views will always dominate education policy.  

For me, it’s clear the college sector is now a force to be reckoned with in Whitehall. We need to use that influence wisely and carefully, but it’s a much better end to this year than last.

SEND apprenticeship mentor pilot planned by DfE

The government is planning to run a mentoring support pilot for apprentices who have learning difficulties and disabilities (LDD).

Training providers are now being invited to submit an expression of interest to take part in the trial that will be led by the Department for Education.

The DfE said it will test whether offering “targeted expert support, advice and training to the people providing mentoring to LDD apprentices results in a positive impact on the cohort, both in terms of satisfaction, as well as broader areas such as retention and achievement for these apprentices”.

Providers and prospective mentors will be offered a package of bespoke training, advice, and support in how to support people with LDD throughout the pilot, the DfE added.

It comes amid the early success of another pilot for LDD people, which aims to make apprenticeships more accessible through an English and maths exemption.

This one-year trial, launched in May 2023, allows people with a learning difficulty but without a pre-existing education health and care plan (EHCP) or statement of learning difficulties assessment (LDA) to work towards a lower level of functional skills than current policy requires.

Around 20 providers have been trialling a change to the rules that allows special educational needs and/or disabilities coordinators (SENDCOs) to conduct additional assessments and judge whether a learner without an EHCP or LDA – but with equivalent needs – can be approved for this flexibility.

Providers that spoke with FE Week about the pilot last month labelled the rule change as a “game-changer” as hundreds of people who found themselves blocked from apprenticeship opportunities were now enrolling on programmes thanks to the exemption.

The DfE hasn’t provided a timeline for the launch of the LDD apprenticeship mentor pilot, but interested parties have been told to contact lddmentoring.pilot@education.gov.uk for more information.

Advanced British Standard consultation: What you need to know

The government has this morning published its consultation on the Advanced British Standard, which runs until mid-March.

It doesn’t seem to have many more details of how it would all work than what was published when the plans were first announced (you can read our previous round-up here).

The plan to ditch A-levels and T Levels for new “major” and “minor” subjects, including compulsory English and maths, would take TEN YEARS to introduce (which is also ignoring a potential change of government).

Unions said it was “difficult to imagine a more pointless waste of energy and time”. Geoff Barton, leader of ASCL, added it was “headless chicken policymaking”.

Nonetheless, the government has published a 80-page consultation and is encouraging the sector to take part. So what do you need to know?

1. Remind us: what is the ABS again?

It’s worth reading our full explainer here as to the broad aims around the new qualification, which the government says will replace A-level and T Levels.

Instead, the ABS will “create a simpler menu of high-quality options and expectations, for the first time breaking down the divide between ‘academic’ and ‘technical’ study”.

The main aims are clearer post-16 options, more teaching time and a core of maths and English but ensuring students study a wider range of subjects.  

2. There will be two ABS qualifications…

There will be the ABS and the ABS (occupational). Confused yet? 

The first will be for the majority of students working at level 3. It will entail a minimum of three “majors” (academic and technical subjects that directly support progression into employment or further study).

There will also be a minimum of two ‘minors’, with maths and English at either of these levels and some EEP activities (but not much more details on the latter).

The ABS (occupational) is for level 3 students who “are clear they want to specialist in one subject area”, but they may have to do 1,725 hours because of industry placements.

They would study one “major” and one ‘double major’ – both of which are subjects likely to be covered by the current T-levels or alternative academic qualifications (AAQs) – and do two ‘minors’ in maths and English.

3. Industry placements for ‘some’ students

Previous proposals on the ABS were clear that it would mean the end of T Levels and A-levels. 

Writing for FE Week shortly after the prime minister announced the ABS, skills minister Robert Halfon said that T Levels will “be the backbone” of the new qualification, which will “build on the success of A-levels and T Levels.”

All 16 to 19-year-old students would take the ABS, studying a mixture of ‘major’, ‘minor’ and employability, enrichment and pastoral (EEP) activities.

Some, but not all, students following the occupational route (see above) will do an industry placement as part of their ABS programme. 

DfE “envisages” that students who double major in subjects with “occupational entry competence” will take an industry placement. 

The consultation proposes the placements will be “based on the same principles” as the requirements for current T Level students, such as taking place in a workplace relevant to the training and be at least 315 hours.

All ABS students would have 1,475 guided learning hours, more than the current 1,280, over the two-year programme. Programmes could be around 1,725 hours including an industry placement.

4. Level 2 version and more English and maths for apprentices

A level 2 version of the ABS, which doesn’t have its own name yet, will have the same number of teaching hours as the level 3, but officials aren’t sure how to fill the time.

The consultation promises students an “appropriate breadth” of subjects, but they won’t be structured as ‘major’ and ‘minors’ like the level 3 equivalent.

Officials say it will be up to schools and colleges to decide how best to fill the 1,475 learning hours, such as by spending extra time on English and maths.

Students aiming for work or an apprenticeship can take the ‘level 2 occupational programme’ which would last 1-2 years. Or there will be a ‘one-year transition programme,’ similar to the T Level transition year, to progress to the full ABS.

Level 1 and entry-level programmes will not be included.

Young people on apprenticeships are also out of scope of the ABS, but the consultation suggests that officials are looking at extending the number of English and maths teaching hours for 16-19 year-old apprentices to match their classroom counterparts, ie 150-175 guided learning hours per subject. 

5. What would the subjects look like?

There’s not much more apart from broad principles here, but the government says there will be no more “different qualifications offering similar version of the same subject with overlapping content”, for example a subject being offered both as an A-level and AAQ.

Level 3 subjects should “provide stretch and challenge”, be “suitably knowledge-rich”, provided “levels of specialisation” appropriate for 16 to 19-year-olds and have “clearly distinct titles and content”.

Majors will cover at least 90 per cent of the content covered by A-levels with between 300 to 350 guided learning hours (A-levels have 360 hours). Minors will have between 150 to 175 learning hours. Students will also do “at least 150 hours” of employability, enrichment and pastoral (EEP).

Meanwhile, they will also get more time with a teacher “to improve outcomes”. Currently “we expect students to undertake a large amount of independent study, and also offer less time with a teacher”, the consultation adds.

6. ‘Difficult’ for providers to offer ‘full ABS suite’

A bigger breadth of 16 to 19 subjects means “it may be difficult for all providers to offer the full range of ABS subjects”, the consultation adds.

But it adds “as a minimum, our aim is for all young people to be able to access any of the ABS subjects at a provider within a reasonable travel distance of where they live.”

However this will “pose greater challenges in rural areas and other areas with fewer accessible providers” – a problem that has beset the roll-out of T Levels, too.

The consultation only says they will “continue to engage the sector” on the “best ways to overcome these barriers”.

7. Students to get ABS ‘certificate of achievement’

There would still be specific grades for each major and minor. 

But the current favoured option is to have a “certificate or statement of achievement recognising a student has completed their ABS programme and met the minimum attainment conditions to receive an overall award”.

This would “demonstrate to employers and post-18 providers student performance across the full programme. 

“A certificate would note the marks or grade received in individual components, but there would not be an overall aggregate score or grade that sits above these marks.”

Alternative options include a certificate without any minimum conditions required to receive it, or an aggregate ABS score.

8. How to find more teachers? A question for another day…

Education secretary Gillian Keegan in her foreword admits “we will need to support the system to prepare for this change, taking time to build the workforce and provision essential to delivery”. Quite.

DfE has just missed its secondary school recruitment target for the tenth time in 11 years and a £7,000 pay gap between school and college teachers is exacerbating an FE teacher recruitment and retention crisis.

More teaching hours and compulsory maths and English will have “significant workforce implications for providers of 16-19 education, who already face teacher shortages, particularly in STEM subjects”, the consultation states.

So what’s the plan? Alas, not a question for today it seems. Consultation responses “will help us refine the design of the ABS, and in parallel, we will consider how best to step up recruitment and retention of our workforce”.

“We will further develop our plans for the workforce through the ABS White Paper”, which is promised “next year”.

P.S. What about adults?

Nearly a million adult learners take classroom-based qualifications that could be replaced by the ABS, but officials haven’t yet worked out how the new system would work for them. 

One of the 58 consultation questions asks about potential impacts on other groups that take post-16 qualifications, such as adult learners and those in custody. 

An interim equalities impact assessment, also published today, said: “further policy development should take adult learners into account.”

Unique student identifiers should be compulsory across awarding bodies, say researchers

Unique learner numbers (ULNs) should be mandatory and used across all awarding organisations to make it easier for student results to be issued, researchers have suggested.

Ofqual chief regulator Jo Saxton has backed the idea and claimed that if ULNs had been universally used in the summer of 2022 the number of delayed BTEC results would have been reduced.

The Department for Education is understood to be considering how to extend the use of ULNs in the face of long-held barriers that get in the way of a system-wide roll-out, such as cost and data protection.

Sector-wide use of ULNs was called for in a research report published today by ImpactEd Consulting, which investigated steps that “might help to secure parity of treatment for students taking different types of qualification, and to streamline the workload for schools and colleges”.

The research is part of Ofqual’s action plan to support the “safe and timely” delivery of awarding organisations’ results for vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs) after last year’s results debacle that saw around 21,000 BTEC and Cambridge Technical results issued late, leaving students in limbo.

The ULN, launched in 2008, is issued and administered by the Learning Record Service (LRS) and is designed to collate data for students’ personal learning records (PLR), an online record of qualifications and achievements obtained from the age of 13 or 14. It is often compared to the education equivalent of the National Insurance number.

Despite being around for 15 years and the fact that schools and colleges are mandated to use the ULN for individualised learner record (ILR) submissions for all publicly funded qualifications, not all awarding organisations require schools and colleges to provide the number. Instead, some AOs prefer to use their own candidate ID numbers.

Various challenges make using the ULN difficult, the researchers explain, such as students not being aware of their number, learners being assigned more than one number, and students sharing the same number – common for people with shared or similar names and addresses.

According to UCAS, fewer than 17 per cent of higher education applicants currently include their ULN in their applications.

‘Systemic use of ULN benefits all actors in the system’

ImpactEd Consulting proposed an “ideal scenario” where the LRS would record all general and vocational qualifications for all students aged 13 and above and the data exchange between schools, colleges, awarding bodies and the LRS would be based on the ULN. This “one portal” idea would “require collaboration between the DfE, Ofqual and IfATE to ensure alignment over purpose, use cases and data-sharing agreements”.

Such a system would improve the student “experience” for results releases and enrolment periods, reduce risks of human error, provide quick access to previous achievements for colleges, reduce risk around data duplication and fraud for awarding bodies and offer reassurance that student data is matched correctly.

Saxton, who wrote a preface for ImpactEd Consulting’s report, supports the proposal. She said: “Ofqual sees real potential for students, and for all parts of the qualifications ecosystem, including policy makers, in the full use by the whole system of a unique student identifier.

“Had this been fully used in the summer of 2022, it would have been significantly easier to work out which students needed results. As it was, the same student could be identified under different references across awarding organisations and UCAS, making it challenging to identify which results were still needed.”

She added that apart from the “operational clarity” this could help provide, it could also “support the regulator in better understanding awarding organisations’ progress in safe delivery of results, as well as to evaluate qualification choices and use”.

The key, however, is incentivising how awarding bodies can “best be incentivised to support the system-wide adoption”, according to ImpactEd Consulting.

Researchers said there was a big push from the DfE between 2010 and 2012 to make the ULN mandatory for AOs and enforce result uploads to the LRS using the ULN. 

However, use of the ULN could only be mandated for publicly funded qualifications. Adoption of the policy was then “slow” and benefits of a more systemic use “were not communicated sufficiently”.

Additionally, from October 2015, awarding bodies developed their qualifications more independently, without the need to incorporate required units or credits following the switch from the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) to the Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF).

ImpactEd Consulting said the “removal of set deadlines for qualifications under QCF and the move towards a system that allows students to set the pace of their learning” also meant that “co-ordination across AOs became less of a priority and that the roll-out of the ULN lost traction”.

Researchers found current issues facing awarding bodies to adopt ULNs include the cost of updating awarding body software systems, a lack of clarity about who is best placed to drive the effort – Ofqual or DfE, GDPR, and completeness of the data.

Awarding bodies are also concerned about their commercial interests. ImpactEd Consulting explained that the “benefits to any individual AO of rolling out the ULN do not outweigh the cost of making changes to their MI systems and training staff which is why this initiative requires government leadership”.

The researchers concluded: “Our conversations underline that increased systemic use of the ULN benefits all actors in the system, even if it does require some upfront investment and potential change of processes. At the same time, it is also apparent that the current approach, whereby it is up to AOs to decide whether or not they use the ULN for VTQs, is not working.

“To break out of this spiral and move the roll-out of the ULN forward, there is a need for different government agencies to come together to align on key priorities.”

Saxton suggested the DfE has started work in this area. She said: “Ofqual welcomes the Department for Education’s work considering the existing ULN.”

The DfE told FE Week it is making no changes to the ULN, but it is looking to make the ULN “more visible to students and easier to access going forward”.

Skills devolution: Five ways to ensure communities are in the driving seat

As the biggest single capital project in the history of the FE sector, it should be no surprise that The Manchester College’s stunning new City Campus has attracted a steady stream of visitors since it opened.

In October, hundreds of the UK’s most talented young apprentices in fields such as digital construction, cyber security and culinary arts gathered for the WorldSkills UK national finals, taking place in the city for the first time.

Seven months before this, the campus hosted Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, and national levelling up minister, Dehenna Davison for the signing of the City Region’s trailblazer devolution deal. As Mr Burnham told guests: “[We] have achieved a significant breakthrough by gaining greater control over post-16 technical education, setting us firmly on the path to become the UK’s first technical education city region.”

If the UK is to achieve its ambition of building a high-skill, high-wage economy, these two events show us what we need to achieve – international standards of excellence in technical education – and how to achieve it – through skills devolution.

In the autumn statement, chancellor, Jeremy Hunt announced plans for four new deals which will result in some 57 per cent of England’s population living under devolution by 2025. Labour, too, has pledged to offer further powers to current and future combined authorities, with Sir Keir Starmer vowing to “give power back and put communities in control”.

In our own back yard, LTE Group is proud to be at the forefront of Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s exciting plans to develop the country’s first fully integrated technical education system. And as a national group of skills providers operating across England and Wales, we have a unique insight into the differences in how skills policy operates under different combined authorities.

A new report by the LTE Group centre for policy and research, which draws on insight and intelligence from across the group to support and shape the development of innovative education, skills and employment policy, offers five recommendations for how devolution and skills policy should evolve to enable colleges and providers to flourish.

1. Prioritise commissioning, not control

A framework to bring commissioners together in a coordinated way, while retaining colleges’ autonomy to balance the demands of national and regional funders as well as their own stakeholders, would enable colleges to flourish as anchor institutions at the heart of their communities.

2. Facilitate coordinated post-16 capacity planning

In each combined authority region, a strategic capacity planning process that brings together FE providers, schools and national and regional commissioners should take place annually to ensure two key objectives are met: that capacity can meet current and future demand, and that no student misses out on a post-16 place whether they wish to pursue an academic or technical pathway.

3. Ensure funding stability while enabling innovation

Guaranteed inflation-based annual funding uplifts for all apprenticeships and AEB-funded provision, alongside the protection of combined authorities’ ability to adapt their own funding rates and rules to respond to regional need, would provide a sustainable framework for high-quality provision.

4. Guarantee fair, sustainable pay

Colleges, representative bodies and unions should form a working group to develop a new approach to pay and conditions to allow the sector to attract the high-skilled professional specialists it needs. The next government should commit to closing the gap in average teacher pay between schools and colleges within five years.

5. Ensure the employer-led system takes a broader view

As well as exploring growth areas and skills gaps, LSIPs should draw on a broader range of evidence when making recommendations for future skills provision. This should include migration trends, physical and mental health in the wider community and the need to address in-work poverty and support over-50s back into the workforce.

The tension lying behind the devolution process is the need to allow combined authorities to innovate and respond to their own unique economic circumstances, while ensuring that no parts of the country are left behind as a result of the atomisation of skills policy. I hope this report offers a blueprint how the next government can strike this balance.

The full report, Skills devolution: Putting communities in control? is available here

ETF pledges whole-sector movement to professionalise FE staff

The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) has pledged to better service independent and adult training organisations, as part of a new strategy.

The sector body also wants to boost its commercial and philanthropic income amid declining contracts from the Department for Education and work more closely with chartered bodies to award professional status to FE teachers.

“We recognised that we have struggled in the past to service the entire [FE and skills] sector well. But we are committed in this strategy to working across the sector and are clear that we need to adapt our language, programmes and thought leadership activity to facilitate this,” ETF chief executive Katerina Kolyva told FE Week.

The strategy, called Together We Transform, commits ETF to four overall goals: to drive professionalism, improve teaching and learning, champion inclusion, and enable sector change.

The strategy was launched on Monday with a video and a series of case studies on the ETF’s website but without a detailed official document.

Its headline aim, “to support everyone working in the sector by championing the vital role of educators and leaders in transforming the lives of learners aged 14 and over,” might already sound familiar to the sector.

“The core purpose of ETF as a charity has not changed. What is changing is the approach we are taking in engaging with all parts of the sector, ensuring we enable sector change while being inclusive,” Kolyva said.

The organisation’s relaunch comes after a turbulent few years involving a multi-million DfE clawback from its T Level professional development contract and declining income from government contracts.

It was first launched and funded by the then Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in 2013 but is co-owned by sector representative bodies the Association of Colleges (AoC), Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), and adult education network HOLEX.

In 2018, AELP ditched its ownership claiming ETF was not doing enough to support staff involved in delivering apprenticeships. AELP rejoined as co-owners in January. 

Starting a movement

Poor teacher recruitment and retention is weighing heavily on the FE and skills sector, with the FE Commissioner and Ofsted both recently saying the issue is causing some courses to close and damage the quality of others.

The 2019 Augar review of post-18 education and training called for a “greatly enlarged and professionalised FE workforce.” But while much of the attention since has been on attracting skilled industry professionals into teaching roles, ETF is making plans for those already working in the sector. 

Kolyva wants her new strategy to trigger a debate about professionalism in the sector, but is clear she doesn’t want to see a return to the past where teacher registration and CPD were regulated by law.

“I want this to be a movement that the entire sector talks about”

“What we are saying in the strategy is that being a professional is about being clear about a set of professional standards that the profession sets for itself. It’s not for us at ETF to dictate this, but to facilitate and encourage a debate around professionalism,” she said.

“I want this to be a movement. I want this to be a movement that the entire sector talks about.”

It’s been ten years since professionalising the FE workforce was last seriously put under the microscope. An independent review by Lord Lingfield, who now chairs the Chartered Institution for Further Education (CIFE), first proposed an “FE Guild” to lead on professionalism in the sector. The body was established and eventually became ETF. 

Around that time, the coalition government removed regulations requiring FE teachers to complete a set number of hours of CPD and join a compulsory professional body, the Institute for Learning. 

IfL eventually folded following major controversy over its membership fees. Its functions transferred to what is now the ETF’s Society for Education and Training (SET).

Kolyva wants to avoid a repeat of the “transactional” approach to professionalism.

“I recognise that perhaps in the past we may have gone down that transactional route, which hasn’t helped us. I want to flip that. I don’t want to call it membership. You don’t just pay a fee to get services. It’s not transactional in that way. It’s about ownership of your professional standards.

“I want people to be queuing up to be part of this professionalism journey with us rather than being forced to come to the party if you see what I mean. I want people to say, ‘I am part of this and this is how I have progressed as a result’.”

ETF already holds professional standards for teaching staff and leaders in the sector. Kolyva, who joined ETF in February, said she has heard “different ways” about how they’ve been used in colleges, “from building strategies and values to using the standards in appraisals and job descriptions”.

The new strategy commits ETF to “develop and enhance” those standards alongside a new CPD framework and new practitioner networks across the wider sector.

Kolyva said: “ITPs love it because they feel it’s what’s going to drive a community, to have something in common. I think this is something across adult, charity and local authority organisations. So we have to start rallying for that movement of professionalism.”

The sell

Kolyva admits her new strategy will require ETF to change “a lot,” helped by receiving less money from the government.

“There may be a shift in the type of CPD we focus on, but it will be sector-led and evidence-based. I would expect this shift to be about government continuing to support, but perhaps not fully.

“We expect our income to be more diversified including government funding but also through commercial and philanthropic activity.”

ETF’s “behaviour needs to change” too. Rather than telling the sector what it needs, Kolyva wants her organisation to “be very humble and very facilitative” with “a lot more engagement with the sector.”

According to the body, they have already begun talking to representative bodies in the ITP and adult learning sector to develop specific engagement action plans to improve its offer and take-up.

“It will be for those colleagues working in ITPs and adult education that ultimately will judge whether we deliver for them, and I am committed to working with them directly.”

One idea is to use other professional bodies to grant status to FE teaching and training professionals. 

Currently, teachers who achieve advanced teacher status (ATS) through ETF automatically also receive chartered teacher status from the Chartered College of Teaching.

“We will be developing communities of practice on a thematic basis. So, once you get to a point of excellence, we’ll collaborate with other bodies and the chartered organisations to support that. We can work a lot more towards that collaborative model in the future.”

FE must play its part in tackling engineering’s costly image problem

As I had the chance to tell Robert Halfon and Keighley and Ilkley MP, Robbie Moore at an event at Keighley College recently, outdated stereotypes and a lack of visible role models are preventing women from entering the engineering sector. I know this from my own experience as a woman working in the industry, which is still far too often seen as a ‘male’ career choice.

That should concern everyone, because this exciting, innovative and ever-evolving sector is crying out for talented people – whatever their gender. Yet a 2022 report found that only 16.5 per cent of engineers in the UK were female – better than the 10.5 per cent level of 2010, but slow progress indeed.

Keighley College is home to an industrial centre of excellence for advanced manufacturing and engineering. I studied there, and I know the valuable work it and other further education providers like it around the country are doing to attract young people into the sector. But nationally we have a real problem with encouraging girls and women to consider engineering as a viable career choice.

More than machining

Our education system exacerbates this by often only offering very limited routes in, mostly focusing on areas like tooling or machining. But engineering in the 21st Century is so much more. It spans everything from designing cars, aeroplanes and railway networks to clothing, telecommunications, food science and all kinds of consumer goods.

We need to do much better to showcase the wealth of opportunities on offer. The impression that engineering is all about hands-on work or structural design is long outmoded and really unhelpful.

Woman in the mirror

Another vitally needed change is to get more role models in the public eye to act as ambassadors and inspire our young women. Right now, there are very few well-known female engineers, which presents a huge barrier – as Nobel laureate Professor Frances Arnold recently highlighted.

Speaking to the press, Arnold, an American chemical engineer and the only woman so far to have won the Millennium Technology Prize stressed the importance of making the sector more diverse in terms of plugging skills gaps and boosting innovation.

To this end, the government needs to lead a national outreach drive where successful female engineers visit educational and other settings to talk to young people about their career options. That would be a really practical way of demonstrating that this profession has no intrinsic dependency on any one gender: a powerful message for young minds to hear. This should also be a key aspect of how apprenticeships are promoted.

 Widening the view

It goes without saying that engineers need to have strong STEM skills, which in itself should not be a barrier to women. This summer’s GCSE and A level results showed that, while the trend for more boys studying STEM subjects is continuing, girls perform better in them.

What is less appreciated is that a whole range of ‘softer’ skills, particularly linked to communication, are vital to the industry too. Engineering projects are, after all, all about teamwork – whether they involve huge river bridges or the latest hair dryer.

I have been involved in engineering for just over five years. My current role involves everything from designing products for manufacturing and leading prototype builds to reviewing specifications and leading the change management system. It is a challenging, dynamic and exciting position that I relish.

More than machines

But it’s important for me to always remember the reason I got involved in this industry in the first place: wonder. It all started while watching Robot Wars, and to this day I still aspire to create an all-conquering fighting robot!

Robots are actually a perfect symbol for engineering. They currently play a key role in all kinds of areas including construction, hospital equipment and manufacturing. Their technical wizardry is underpinned by mechanics, material composition and electrical communication systems, which all have professional roles within engineering. The wonder they inspire, meanwhile, is based as much on aesthetics and artistry as it is on the underlying tech, which demonstrates the power of good design.

Their potential is limitless. And, of course, they have no gender.

Literacy is for life, not just the classroom

The majority of my teaching career has been within a mainstream secondary setting as an English teacher and Head of Department. Two years ago, I was lucky enough to join Harrison College, a college which supports students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) –  mainly, but not exclusively, for students who have an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis.

It soon became apparent to me that developing literacy skills was going to be key to support our students to succeed.

For my first day teaching, I was fully prepared to deliver a ‘mainstream’ lesson to students; quickly I became aware that that was not going to work. Delivering English functional skills would provide our students with a valuable qualification, but that alone would not help them in the world of work.

For some, school had been a challenge, and, for a few, school had not been an option! We had students who had spent several years out of the classroom, and they required more than an examination to make them ‘employable’.

As part of the core study programme, the college introduced two new strands to the English/employability curriculum: ‘literacy in the workplace’ and ‘effective communication’.

All students access ‘literacy in the workplace’. This subject takes English skills (writing, reading, speaking, and listening) and transfers the application of those skills to a work-based focus. Working cross-curricula, ‘literacy in the workplace’ is able to support all students on their journey into work by delivering examples of real-life scenarios and responding appropriately.

One project that we are currently covering with our year 1 students is the ability to identify key information and prepare an email, report, and/or a presentation for an employer. Even though some students have their English grade 4+ or equivalent, they are required to take part in this lesson; Skills can become rusty, and for some of our students whose lessons were affected by Covid, their centre-assessed grades do not fully reflect their knowledge.

Our course is very much focused on life after college

When the employability team are exploring internships for our students, we found that employers positively responded to the fact that literacy hadn’t ended just because school had and that by increasing the length of time studied and focusing on the employability benefits, we are helping students make the leap from classroom to employment.

Within our college, we have a small group of students who struggle with their literacy more profoundly than others. Their needs are more complex, and their attendance may have been more sporadic. For one reason or another, these students require something more to help them bridge the gap and prepare for work. ‘Effective communication’ is a method for us to work with the students and not only improve their communication but also their confidence.

The course is very much focused on life after college and employment; all lessons aim to provide students with the skills they need. At the beginning of the year, we began by looking at bias and fake news – some of our students are quite naïve and believed everything they heard or read.

We unpicked several news articles and identified the impartiality/partiality of each whilst discussing the purpose. But why did we do this? The link was once again made to the workplace. Imagine if you are asked to identify information for your line manager, or you need feedback from your colleagues. Is everything you are told always accurate? What could influence responses?

After the Christmas break, we are moving on to appropriate workplace conversations. Although this will be challenging for some (they don’t always like to speak), we will reinforce the importance of this skill and how beneficial it will be when they leave college and enter the world of work.

Literacy is not just an issue for small pockets of students. Nationally, we are facing a literacy crisis. To make a difference, we need to collectively ensure that literacy isn’t something that just belongs in a classroom.