As the National Director of Learning and Skills it is my job to report back to Ofsted and government on any issues within the sector. Recently media interest around the quality of apprenticeships has highlighted concern around subcontracting, short programmes and inadequate assessment practices.

That’s why it is so important that we share what is working well so others can learn from it. Ofsted’s report Apprenticeships for young people sets out how to do that by drawing on evidence from 15 of the best providers of apprenticeships in England and more than 100 apprentices, to provide a useful guide for trainers, assessors, employers and educational leaders wishing to improve.

The importance of apprenticeships to the nation’s future workforce and economy cannot be underestimated. Almost 460,000 people in England began apprenticeships in 2010-11, with just over a quarter under the age of 19. And that number is only going to grow as the government prioritises funding of apprenticeships to help more young people into work and training.

While the majority of learners are completing their apprenticeships, around a quarter are dropping out early. Our research showed learners who had completed meaningful work experience, course tasters and vocational study were more likely to make good progress in their apprenticeship and complete their programme compared to those starting straight from school without it.

While underlining the importance of high quality teaching and learning to support the development of English and maths, employers were clear that carefully organised work experience helped to develop the works skills they looked for when recruiting apprentices. The report therefore calls on secondary schools to improve the local co-ordination of work experience so willing employers can engage with more potential apprentices.

The report also provides a number of case studies where providers were further enhancing an apprentice’s main learning programme. This includes examples from the football Premier League helping to keep their apprentices safe and the hairdressing employer Sassoon motivating learners by offering the chance to assist the in-house creative team at shows and competitions at home and abroad.

Apprenticeships bring considerable value to organisations, employers, individuals and the economy. This is why it is concerning to see that some young people in the report felt they were not always being encouraged to embark on an apprenticeship.

Inspectors came across several examples of bright young people feeling they had been derided by their teachers for wanting to progress to work-based learning, rather than stay on at school. One very skilled hairdressing apprentice related how, on excitedly telling her headteacher she had gained an apprenticeship with a national hairdressing employer, she was allegedly told: ‘Why on earth do you want to waste your time doing that?’

Ofsted inspectors continue to be rigorous in their assessment of the quality of the learners’ experience and make clear judgements in published reports on the standards found. But inspection cannot stand still. We are currently working on a new online system to enable learners to feedback views of providers outside inspections, and in doing so, inform the timing of their next inspection.

We are also currently consulting on whether inspections should be unannounced. We currently give between two and three weeks’ notice. Giving no notice at all will help us to see providers as they really are and should reduce stress for providers who will not feel under pressure to prepare for the inspectors’ arrival.

At their last inspection around 70 per cent of all providers of apprenticeship programmes were judged to be good or outstanding. We are determined to continue to raise standards even further.

Matthew Coffey,
National Director of Learning and Skills, Ofsted

Reflecting on the potential challenges facing colleges and providers as a result of changes in funding, I have given much thought as to how providers might respond and how vital it will be that they are able to evaluate the impact on learners of a sector ‘doing more for less’ against the criteria that the new framework methodology proposes.

Every college and provider will respond in different ways according to their vision and curriculum offer and ‘localism’ appears to be a key theme embraced by many. Undoubtedly, some will be affected much more by cuts in funding than others, and all will be considering a number of key questions to explore and evaluate during their self assessment this coming year.

From an inspection perspective, the number one question is always ‘What is the quality of the learner’s experience, how does the provider know, measure and evaluate this and how do they drive further improvements to that experience?’

With the refining of inspection methodology towards teaching, learning and assessment, some providers may be tempted into not evaluating and valuing the ‘wrap around’ aspect of all the contributory elements of good and better learning.

With a reducing budget, and efficiency gains required, it will be interesting to see how each provider has responded with strategies for maintaining, and indeed improving, standards.

I am sure providers must be wondering how will inspectors evaluate, judge and report on a wide range of scenarios? For example with colleges, how is it managing the impact of a reduced entitlement on tutorials, pastoral support, and enrichment?

What has been the impact on learners of the strategies and management decisions made? What impact has the withdrawal of the Educational Maintenance Award [EMA] had on learner enrolments and retention and what action has a college taken?

It will be interesting to see how each provider has responded with strategies for maintaining, and indeed improving, standards”

With regard to employability skills and the increased requirements for more work related programmes and job related outcomes, how will providers respond and what should their expectations be?

Plans are well underway to prepare for the new inspection framework, and the sector is eagerly awaiting the findings and decisions made as a result of the Ofsted pilot inspections if my in box is anything to go on.

Providers and additional inspectors are keen to consider the implications of ‘no notice’ inspections and what the consequences might be for them both as providers, practitioners and inspectors. It is clear that inspection providers will need to review ways of working with their workforce quite significantly if some of the proposals are implemented in September 2012.

Providers and inspectors will need to ensure that they reflect on measuring the positive impact of partnership working, for example, in judging strategies to engage and retain learners who are or were previously not in education and training [NEET] and how that provision is designed effectively to meet local needs.

With government expectations of increased numbers of 16-18 year old learners staying in full time education and training, inspectors will be evaluating what impact this volume of learners will have on maintaining high standards, and where growth has been experienced, how for example, has the provider managed to find additional apprentices?

Is the provision targeted to local needs and national skills shortages and is what is being offered acceptable and to a high standard?

Inspectors are already in a position of evaluating the complex issue of the impact of minimum contract levels on learners, how the subcontracted aspect to the learner experience has evolved to embrace the expansion and how provider’s are refining arrangements to ensure all learners have a positive learning experience.

A nominee commented to me recently and said ‘you know Jules; we wouldn’t stay in FE if we didn’t like continual change’. How true, I thought.

Julie Wootten, Assistant
Director Inspections, Tribal

Last month the National Audit Office (NAO) released a report on student immigration (‘Immigration: The Points Based System – Student Route), which reviewed the actions of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to strengthen controls over student migration through Tier 4 of the Points Based System.

Under Tier 4, each student must be sponsored by educational institutions licensed by the UKBA with strict criteria over eligibility to come to the UK, what they can study, with whom and for how long.

The NAO’s findings are critical of the UKBA’s implementation of Tier 4, concluding that the points based system for students was implemented with predictable and avoidable flaws, with inadequate action taken to remedy the consequences of the lack of sufficiently robust controls. The report also estimates that, in its first year of operation, between 40,000 and 50,000 individuals may have entered the UK through Tier 4 to work rather than to study.

157 Group Colleges are major providers of education internationally, for international students studying in the UK and overseas. Therefore we were dismayed by recent public exchanges which could be interpreted to be suggesting that the problems the NAO highlighted with student visas lay at the door of FE and other colleges.

Although the NAO report does not make any such implication, we are concerned that any potential misperception of colleges are being compounded through the media to the public and other key influencers.

It is vital that all colleges should be not be bundled together and considered as a higher risk than universities with respect to international student enrolments, especially those at higher levels.

There is no doubt that in the past some private colleges have been less than scrupulous with regards to their handling of non-UK/EU students, but it is not and never has been in the interest of FE colleges to offer places other than to genuine students. Publicly funded Colleges have their reputations as educational institutions to preserve and have robust systems in place for inward student recruitment, teaching, assessment and monitoring students.

It is undoubtedly true that the UKBA rules have put significant burdens onto FE colleges, like those in the 157 Group, to track and report international student activity and we are increasingly concerned about the number of Colleges who are having their licences revoked, not due to evidence of intentional abuse of the system, but often due to inevitable clerical administrative errors as the burdens increase.

Between 40,000 and 50,000 individuals may have entered the UK through Tier 4 to work rather than to study”

A tiny number of cases of visa refusals, student non-enrolments or non-completions can put the sponsor beyond the minimum Highly Trusted Status (HTS) criteria, yet sponsors have little real control over students’ decision-making and extraneous factors that may affect their decisions and visa applications. The criteria are too inflexible and HTS licences are being revoked despite sponsors providing evidence that they have acted responsibly.

The toughness of the criteria plus potential long delays in HTS annual licence renewals leads to instability, with sponsors under stress and unable to plan effectively. When HTS is suspended for between 6 to 12 months it is very difficult for any sponsor to re-enter the overseas student recruitment market. In essence, suspension of a licence has a terminal effect on Tier 4 activity due to loss of income and reputational damage and may be completely disproportionate to the causes of suspension which may be due to administrative errors or factors beyond the sponsor’s control.

We are fully aware of and supportive of the fact that student immigration needs to be carefully controlled and that sponsors have a duty to invest in staff and systems to avoid abuse of the immigration system. However, the rationale behind the constraints placed upon FE colleges and their students, in comparison to universities, is not justified as a mandate for the whole sector.

The current Tier 4 policy and in particular the HTS criteria will lead to the shutting down of international departments in good, well-controlled FE colleges. The impact of this will be a wider distrust of the UK as a destination for overseas students and a reduction in income to the UK currently estimated at £8 billion.

We urge the Government to support the FE sector in appropriate ways so that we can continue to offer international students a rich and rewarding UK educational experience.

Written by Kate Green on behalf of
157 Group International Network

The recent decision by the Office of National Statistics to label colleges as being in the private sector doesn’t change things much. Government is no doubt relieved at confirmation that colleges are part of the wealth creating ‘real world’ rather than public sector layabouts, and colleges are relieved not to be dragged back into the rigid constraints of Whitehall accounting, but by itself it has little direct impact on day to day practice.

Suggestions that colleges might take a further step and be fully privatised however are potentially more serious and deserve greater attention.

Some have suggested that the involvement of companies run for profit, perhaps through the involvement of private equity houses might be the next big step in the ‘liberation’ of FE. What might be the costs and benefits?

The first duty of a private company is to its shareholders”

Many of the advantages claimed for privatisation just don’t hold for FE. In the case of public utilities for example it is claimed with some justification that breaking up monopolies and introducing competition sharpened practice and produced a better deal for consumers. Competition however is already pretty fierce in the FE market place and a change of ownership would have little effect. College managers already have to be good to survive.

Another argument, advanced for example in relation to rail or telecommunications is that private ownership brought much needed capital investment that the public purse could not afford. This may be true in other sectors but a lack of capital investment is not top of FE’s problems; much more pressing is the threat to the revenue stream needed to support the capital investment already made. Why would a college want more debt?

Privatisation it is said can transfer risk from the public to the private sector. The theory is elegant but, as the Work Programme is showing, the transfer is hard to effect. If government, as so often, agrees a price that is too generous companies make windfalls; if the price turns out to be tough contractors cry foul or threaten to pull out. Transferring risk means being prepared to let the risk takers fail.

A further reason for privatisation might be to help pay down debt. At first sight selling colleges at a market price sounds rather less daft than giving away schools to cranks and crazies for free. The benefit however would all accrue to the Treasury (apart from the large percentage extracted by the army of consultants needed to set the deals up, and who are probably lobbying feverishly for the change) It is not at all clear what benefit would accrue to the users of FE from such a transfer.
Would there be any downsides of such a move however if colleges are to all intents and purposes already private? There would seem to be two. The first is that while profit should not be a dirty word if it results from making wise investments, taking risks or injecting a new dynamism into an enterprise there seems very little scope for such beneficial actions to take place.

Profit is far more likely to be found, as in many privatisations, from reducing the wages and benefits of the poorest paid and cutting corners on quality. The first duty of a private company is to its shareholders.

The more important concern though is that currently colleges see themselves and are seen as public assets, dedicated (in both senses) to education and training for the long term. A private company simply seeks to maximise shareholder value wherever it can. Because colleges are public assets they enjoy a privileged relationship with government funders, receiving grant in aid.

As private companies this could not continue. All FE would have to be put out to tender with the attendant instability, rigidity, gaming behaviour and threat to quality that the most privatised parts of the system currently exhibit (look for example at prison education) Government would then have to choose between maintaining quality and having light touch regulation since experience shows that in a privatised system it cannot have both.

Mick Fletcher is a Further
Education Consultant