The supermarket chain Asda is owned by Walmart, which for fiscal year ending January 31, 2011 (according to Wikipedia), “reported a net income of $15.4 billion on $422 billion of revenue with a 24.7 per cent gross profit margin”, making it “the world’s 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000 list, and the largest public corporation when ranked by revenue.”

I therefore nearly choked on my Morrisons cornflakes when I read that the UK government will be covering all the costs of the Walmart Apprenticeship programme. As reported last week in this newspaper, the Skills Funding Agency have handed City & Guilds their first apprenticeship training contract, and all £8 million of it will be spent on Asda employees. Walmart, nor their supermarket Asda, will be paying City & Guilds anything. How do we know this? Well, because that is what they told FE Week.

Wait, really? That can’t be right can it? But public sector funding is being slashed, ESOL course cuts, and so on. Why would our beloved Minister, John Hayes, one of the biggest critics of free workplace training (under Train to Gain) when in opposition, allow this? If Walmart and Asda really wanted this training for their staff they should spend a small fraction (about 0.08 per cent) of their $15.4 billion net income, right?

This expensive and lazy approach to spending scarce skills funding resource makes me so angry.”

It’s total utter madness, and I can think of four reasons as to why it’s been allowed to happen:

1. The National Apprenticeship [sales] Service are still paranoid they won’t achieve the increased apprenticeship recruitment targets, so are being lazy.

2. It’s a quick and cheap way for the government to buy a rise up the international league tables for first full level 2s in the workplace (the reason Train to Gain was invented by Gorden Brown when in the Treasury).

3. Maybe Asda have pointed out that the competition (Morrisions) have had money thrown at them, so it is only fair they get a similar slice of the apprenticeship big give away.

4. Apprenticeships are such a complex yet sexy policy area Asda and BIS ‘investment’ press releases remain good for business.

There are so many questions. Here are four:

1. Did the Skills Funding Agency put this £8 million contract with City & Guilds to tender to secure best value for money? If not, why not?

2. Does a contract of this size with a single employer, who is not making a cash contribution, break EU competition law (State Aid)?

3. Why is the contract not with the National Employer Service, who can negotiate rates?

4. How many of the planned 25,000 Asda apprentices are already adult employees?

This expensive and lazy approach to spending scarce skills funding resource makes me so angry. Let us not forget the ESOL discretionary Learner Support Fund has been scrapped, and it was worth just half the City & Guilds Asda contract.

Could the Asda motto: ‘saving you money every day’, be any less appropriate? Minister Hayes, you have some explaining to do.

Related FE Week articles:

City and Guilds allocated more than £8m for 25,000 Asda Apprentices

Morrisons, Elmfied and the over 25 Apprentices

External related links:

BBC Radio 4 In Business programme on supermarket apprentices

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FE Week held an evidence gathering session at the House of Commons on Tuesday to allow college principals, agency officials and front and back bench MPs to discuss the Government’s most recent policy U-turn.

The ‘clarification’, which covers all 19+ Skills Funding Agency funded learners, including those seeking fully funded English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) courses, has caused widespread confusion for further education (FE) providers during enrolment. The session was an opportunity to discuss the impact of the sudden changes and what could be done to improve funding regulation in the future.

It’s ridiculous that people don’t know if they are charging for fee remittance or not. We need to get some clarity on the situation.”

Many speakers argued that the Government announcement was ‘dripped out’ and inconsistant. The clarification, which was released discreetly on the Skills Funding Agency website in August, was poorly publicised and left many FE colleges confused going into the peak enrolment period.

Heidi Alexander, Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: It’s ridiculous that people don’t know if they are charging for fee remittance or not. “We need to get some clarity on the situation.”

Although the government U-turn has been welcomed by most FE colleges, some of the witnesses at the session emphasised that the ‘rescue’ of ESOL courses could be short lived.

Sue Rimmer OBE, Principal and Chief Executive of South Thames College said: “We need to know what’s happening next year.”

Dan Taubman, Senior National Education Official for Further Education and Lifelong Learning and lso involved with the Action for ESOL campaign added: “Nobody knows what the financial situation will be next year. “We have only won the battle, we haven’t won the war.”

Much of the discourse fell back to the issue of clarity within the funding policy. Stephen Hewitt, Strategic Funding, Information and Enrolment Manager at Morley College said: “There are lots of things that we are not quite sure about. “It’s the most ramshackle thing that I’ve had to work with in the last 15 years in the sector.

“Saying it will be all okay is something I find very hard to believe.”

As an example Susie Kusnierz, Head of ESOL at Lewisham College, added that although the situation with course fees had been remedied, there was no clarification on how the policy would affect other learner costs, such as examination fees.

Both clarity and flexibility are needed to develop successful Esol courses. During the session many of the speakers seemed to be at odds with one another about which ideal should be prioritised in the future.

Sue Rimmer argued that each local community is unique, and that FE providers couldn’t help or empower communities without certain freedoms.

Andy Wilson, Principal of Westminster Kingsway College added that the sector had experienced tighter regulation whilst Labour was in power. This resulted in “huge rulebooks” and a tendency to prioritise performance targets; a landscape which many FE providers would probably wish to avoid in the future.

Toni Pearce, Vice President for FE at the National Union of Students was keen to bring the focus of the talks back to the impact and needs of students. She said: “We’ve talked about what’s best for colleges, but what about what’s best for students?”

If this had happened to schools or universities there would be flaming pitchforks

Toni said that she was concerned that the FE sector was being directed and driven by the private sector, and not the needs of local people.

Joy Mercer, AoC’s Director of Education Policy said that the current level of funding provides an insufficient number of hours needed to learn the English language. She said that “way more than 72 hours” were required, and asked how attendees would feel about trying to learn Japanese in a similar time frame.

The latter part of the event topic touched upon the role of large corporations, asking why they weren’t being forced to provide some sort of cash contribution to the delivery.

Sue Rimmer added that big businesses were ‘taking money for what they should be doing anyway.’

Stephen Hewitt suggested that help should be prioritised for small and medium sized corporations. He said: “If this had happened to schools or universities there would be flaming pitchforks. It’s always FE that gets messed around.”

Gordon Marsden, MP for Blackpool South and Shadow Minister for Further Education and Skills was present for the opening remarks of the debate.

He said that there was “a very broad philosophical debate to be won here”, and that he would continue to press the government on the issue. At the end of the session John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington asked for suggestions on how these issues could be discussed further, putting forward the idea of an early day motion as an example.

David Hughes, the new Chief Executive of NIACE responded by asking that John Hayes, Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning conduct a lessons learnt investigation into how the original policy change was introduced and why it took so long to undo.

See more photos, by Laura Braun, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/feweek