The dramatic increase in apprentices aged above 25, reported by FE Week back in June, has been picked up by The Guardian newspaper today.
Page 10 (also online) of the national newspaper expanded on the issueusing research published by the House of the Commons. Click here to download.
Jeevan Vasagar and Jessica Shepherd, writing for The Guardian said: “The number of apprentices aged over 25 nearly quadrupled, from 36,300 to 121,100. Youth unemployment hit record levels earlier this year, and latest figures show around 917,000 people aged 16-24 are out of work.”
The piece originated from a news article in FE Week, which highlighted that the rise in new apprenticeships isn’t necessarily helping to tackle youth unemployment.
Professor Alison Wolf, an advisor to Government on 14-19 vocational learning told FE Week: “Providers have been saying for some time that, if they are going to make their apprenticeship targets fast, it will be by targeting adults. The recent figures bear this out, which is bad news for youth unemployment.”
FE Week analysed provisional data published by the BIS Data Service, which showed that 37 per cent of all apprenticeship starts were for the 25+ age group, up from 17 per cent for the same period last year.
Gordon Marsden MP, Shadow Minister for FE and skills said he was concerned that many of the new apprenticeships were from employees swapping over from Train to Gain; a government funded initative that delivers vocational training to employed individuals aged over 25.
He told FE Week: “These figures show the largest increase coming in the post 25 category – most dramatically in 35-59. This must raise questions of how much that increase is simply transfers from Train to Gain, or people already in employment.”
The Guardian also interviewed Gordon Marsden MP for their recent article alongside Nick Linford, managing director of Lsect and Managing Editor of FE Week.
An advisory group set up by government to manage the new National Careers Service has publically denounced the reduction in services for young people.
In a press release published this week, the Group expressed many of their concerns and said that they had considered resigning at a pre-meeting.
They said: “At a time when young people are facing massive changes in further and higher education, and new apprenticeships – as well as high youth unemployment – stripping out the professional help available to them is not only foolhardy: it is potentially damaging to young people’s lives and ultimately to the economy.”
The new National Careers Service, formerly known as the Advisory Group on the All-Age Careers Service, will be restricted to telephone and web-based services for young people.
Schools have been told to take responsibility for providing face-to-face support, although so far there has been no funding to help them with this.
The previous provision for these services, around £200 million per year, is believed to have disappeared entirely.
The face-to-face services available for adults are so far unaffected.
The Group say that they are also concerned with the Government’s “inadequate quality assurance and accountability measures announced to date”.
The National Careers Service Advisory Group is continuing to work with government and say that they welcome the promise of fresh involvement by the Department for Education.
The Artsmark award will be opened up to include Further Education instutions in September.
The programme, set up by Arts Council England, will work in partnership with The National Skills Academy for Creative & Cultural to monitor and award ‘Artsmarked’ colleges.
Pauline Tambling, Managing Director of the Skills Academy said: “Introducing Artsmark to the Further Education sector will allow training provision and arts activity in colleges to be audited, celebrated and improved.
“By encouraging collaborations with professional artists and practitioners, Artsmark rewards creative collaborations, industry engagement and links with the creative industries.”
Artsmark will offer free training to Further Education colleges in October, instructing them on practical ways to complete the application form and recommending the best practice for improving provision once they’ve received the award.
The scheme is said to tie in with Goal 5 of Arts Council England’s ten-year strategic framework, which aims to ensure that ‘every child and young person has the opportunity to experience the richness of the arts’.
The Artsmark programme has helped schools to evaluate, celebrate and strengthen a quality arts offer for more than 10 years.
To date over 11,400 schools (approximately 30% of schools in England) have received an Artsmark award.
FE Week will be cycling hard next Tuesday in order to welcome back South Birmingham College Principal Mike Hopkins and local blind man Dave Heeley as they complete the Birmingham leg of their charity challenge.
We’ll interview the pair and travel alongside them in order to create exclusive video reports on their progress.
As reported by FE Week, Mike and Dave are currently riding tandem as part of a gruelling 10 day charity bike ride, completing a total of 1,000 miles from John O’Groats to Land’s End.
South Birmingham College Principal Mike Hopkins said during a pitstop today: “The challenge is going well so far, we’ve covered a third of the distance already.
“The weather has been typical of a great british summer and it has rained for two days solid, which is making it a bit more difficult. However the support we get along the way from people who have heard what we are doing really helps us along.”
‘Blind Dave’ is hoping to raise £100,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support by completing a marathon each morning before continuing on the tandem bicycle with Mike.
Mike Hopkins added: “Dave is doing fantastically well, although his legs are a bit sore from yesterday. Today has been tough and the hills yesterday have taken their toll, but he is very determined and just keeps going.
Six members of the college staff will be running the Birmingham marathon-leg along side the cyclists and have been individually raising money to help Dave reach his goal.
The Challenge is taking place between 10-19 August and you can follow Mike and Dave’s progress via these links:
A technical consultation paper from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is proposing that FE colleges have more opportunities to provide degree qualifications.
The paper published on August 3rd calls for legislative changes to Degree Awarding Powers, removing the barrier to non-teaching bodies and making them more widely available for FE colleges.
The Association of Colleges is cautious however about the changes outlined in both the technical consultation paper and white paper published previously.
Joy Mercer, AoC’s Director of Education Policy said: “We welcome the desire to streamline the ability of colleges to become awarding organisations for degrees, but we don’t think that there’s enough detail yet even in the technical consultation to see how that will pan out.”
One of the aims of the technical consultation paper is to create a more diverse higher education market and encourage competition between providers.
Mercer said: “At the moment there’s a huge range of different charges that universities make to colleges in order to award their degrees. It can range from 10% of the fees which are charged, up to 30% or 40%.”
we don’t think that there’s enough detail yet even in the technical consultation to see how that will pan out.”
“With competition, it’s opening the market by the providers, it’s opening the market for private providers by awarding degrees, and we think that choice will allow colleges to perhaps be more choosey and to be more competitive.”
The paper also recommends that new powers and influence be given to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).
Under the new proposals, FE colleges would have to enter a legally binding agreement with HEFCE in order to receive funding from the council.
In order to maintain this funding, each college would then need to match a set of unique requirements drawn up by HEFCE.
Joy Mercer said: “We’re a little concerned that there will be increased costs of this regulation, but we do also see opportunity.”
“We’re keeping a close eye on the implications for colleges and the trust in Higher Education institutions is something we would like to see replicated in colleges delivering HE.”
A spokesperson from 157 Group, a membership body representing some of the largest colleges in England, said: “We support the government’s move to make Degree Awarding Powers and the university title more widely available to appropriate institutions.
“We hope a fairer and more flexible system will enable more FE colleges to be given such powers. Overall we think it is encouraging that the government is exploring how student support is designated and seeking feedback on lighter touch regulation.”
You can read the BIS Technical Consultation: A new, fit-for-purpose regulatory framework for the Higher Education sectorhere.
In recent days there have been some positive developments in the area of the fees policy, potentially assisting a number of prospective students who might have found the need to pay a fee a major barrier to learning. However, whilst these last minute changes are very welcome, what is far less welcome is the timing and methods of communications of such changes. Up and down the country college’s will now be hastily re-writing their fees policy and struggling to get clear and definitive information to students. At best prospective students will be grateful for the new information and simply think that the College staff have not known what they have been doing when they advised them “incorrectly” weeks ago about their fees. At worst, some students will have already decided college is too expensive for them, months before these late announcements which are intended to help them and no last minute change to the fee policy will get them back.
Writing a fee policy for a College is a difficult task. The key challenge comes from having to produce a definitive guide, which can accurately and effectively inform prospective students, college staff and key stakeholders about what the fees will be and who they apply to, months before the policy makers have published the rules you have to adhere to.
For those of us who have been doing this for some time, producing this information within such an environment of uncertainly is nothing new. Each year we eagerly await the publication of the funding bodies guidance documents to add “tweaks” to the policy, many weeks after it has been released to the public.
However, I think the “tweaks” this year are more extensive and later than any of us have experienced before. First, there was the lack of any definitive funding guidance documents from the key agency, the Skills Funding Agency (SFA). The publications arrived on July 29th, right in the middle of the period many college staff would be taking leave and on the final working day before the new funding year commenced.
Once received, the unexpected changes to national fee policy became apparent. There was the expectation that colleges should not charge exam and registration fees to students being fee remitted due to them studying courses such as their first full level 2 or 3. The implication of this change was the potential loss of income to colleges. Whilst it appears that there maybe some softening of this line, colleges still await anything definitive from the SFA to know whether to charge our learners or not.
Then there was the new requirement to fee remit 19-24 year olds studying GCSE Maths or English. Whilst all can see the positive in this move, especially for some on programmes such as ‘Access to HE’ where students often do these GCSEs alongside their main programme to help with entry to HE, it undermined the IAG we had provided prospective students over the past 6 months and prompted another “tweak” to the fees policy.
colleges still await anything definitive from the SFA to know whether to charge our learners or not.”
Then just as I’d finished digesting the guidance document, out comes an announcement from BIS that colleges are to be given “local discretion” to fee remit unemployed learners on benefits doing courses that will lead to employment. For months, my information, advice and guidance (IAG) colleagues have been working with prospective learners on benefits such as Income Support, to help them understand that despite the fact that they were not working they would have to pay for their course in 2011/12 because of the change in fee remission rules. Now, with our enrolment period starting in only 5 working days, after we advised hundreds of learners about the fees they will have to pay and after we have trained all of our enrolment staff about the new fee remission rules, what was black and white has gone a shade of grey and up and down the country colleges await another “update” from the SFA before our policies can be finalised.
In all these frustrations, I do not forget that a majority of the changes are potentially helpful to our students and therefore are welcome. But next year, for the sake of our prospective students, IAG staff and those of us who write fees policies, can we have them a bit earlier please?
Jerry White is the Head of Planning and Performance at City College Norwich
Update:
Jennie Turner, Head of ESOL at Greenwich Community College explains how the changes in fee policy has affected her classes.
The Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) has published a press release this week which says that within current budgets, colleges will be able to offer free, fully-subsidised training to learners that under existing policies would have been charged a fee.
Policy changes announced in November 2010 stated that only learners on particular ‘active’ benefits, such as Job Seekers Allowance, would be eligible for fully-subsidised courses.
However the BIS statement this week reads: “FE providers will also be given some local discretion to provide fully subsidised courses for people on a wider range of benefits – provided the training is to help them enter employment”.
Skills Minister John Hayes said: “Today’s announcement marks a new phase in this process. It is good news for people who are currently reliant on benefits but want to get into work, and good news for employers looking for a local supply of the right skills to help their businesses to grow.”
Geoff Russell, Chief Executive of the Skills Funding Agency said: “This decision is another example of putting freedom and flexibility into practice. We will now make this explicit in our funding rules.”
Martin Doel, Association of Colleges Chief Executive, said: “We are grateful that Government has listened to AoC and member concerns relating to this issue, and for the trust they have placed in Colleges in granting them the freedoms to allow students on inactive benefits to progress into employment. We await further clarification in the guidance notes due to be published by the Department.
“We are pleased that this announcement recognises the pivotal role Colleges have in economic growth and jobs – the distinction being made between funding courses for individuals receiving inactive and active benefits was threatening to compromise their ability to perform that role. College courses are an important route into employment for many people on benefits, irrespective of the type of benefit.”
FE Week will be contacting colleges to get their reaction to this, the second late change to fees policy for the 2011/12 academic year.
Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below, and read our FE Week expert’s view by clicking here.
