Bicton florist wins South West UK Skills competition

Bicton College floristry student Sachiko Smale has won through to the national final of the UK Skills Advanced Floristry competition.

Sachiko, who is studying for her Level 5 Master Diploma of Professional Floristry [NDSF], created a stunning bridal bouquet. Sachi said, ‘Winning this competition has proved that I am doing fine and has given me more confidence for my exams, I’m looking forward to the final.’

As the highest scoring competitor in the South West heat, Sachiko has been invited to compete in the UK final to be held at the Royal Horticultural Society show at Tatton Park in July 2011. The winner at that event will represent the UK at the World Skills final in London this October.

Central Sussex College: Rome wasn’t built in a day – it took a month!

Roman architecture came to Crawley after a legion of students from Central Sussex College completed their very own, miniature version of the Colosseum!

The fifteen students, all aged 16-19, are studying Building Craft Occupations (BCO) at the Crawley campus, and were inspired to recreate the world famous structure after looking at construction techniques throughout the ages.

Tutor Mark Blake said: “I wanted the group use their imaginations, and see the potential of bricks and mortar. I was keen that they used their imaginations, and wanted them to see the potential of bricks and mortar – to realise that they could do much more with it than building flat walls and uninspiring structures.”

The Colosseum has now been demolished, and the materials re-cycled for new projects, but it has been such a success that it will be repeated next year. The faculty are also keen to incorporate a trip to Fishbourne Roman Palace in Chichester or even to the Colosseum itself in Rome, for students to experience the scale of the structure first-hand.

Ex Grimbsby student, actor John Hurt wins Gold Award

Award-winning actor John Hurt CBE, famous for films such as The Elephant Man and The Naked Civil Servant, has won an Association of Colleges’ Gold Award. He was nominated by The Grimsby Institute for continuing to inspire generations of art and drama students.

John said he is “forever grateful” for the time he spent at Grimsby Art School, now the Grimsby Institute, where he studied Fine Art from 1956-1958. He was presented with his award by Lord Willis of Knaresborough, President of the AoC Charitable Trust, at a ceremony at the House of Commons earlier this month.

NUS VP advice to FE post-EMA

In the past few weeks, we have heard final details about the Discretionary Learner Support Fund that is to replace the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA). Managers in Further Education won’t be strangers to the idea of Learner Support Funds, but there are some distinct differences that make this one much more difficult to distribute.

Providing an unidentified number of students who are in receipt of income support, in care, are care leavers and / or are in receipt of Disability Living Allowance with a bursary of £1200; and then trying to negotiate a fair way of distributing what is left (with no guidelines to follow) to allow students to attend college and succeed. It’s not the easiest task, and it’s been made much more difficult by the government’s lack of communication and last-minute, slap-dash approach to funding formulae and allocations to colleges.

We are right to be angry at the last minute reduction in the funding multiplier, ultimately reduced to just £190 per maximum EMA recipient. We should also all be very aware that the final sum of 16-19 Bursary support is nowhere near the final £180million students were promised as it has now been deemed an “aspiration”.

Although the loss of EMA is not something that NUS intends to stop campaigning on, we need to get on with ensuring that students get the best possible deal from the new Discretionary Learner Support Fund while we continue to campaign against cuts to student support.

The first step is to review current methods of distributing Learner Support Funds that are already available, because the new system needs to be much further reaching to make up for the students who won’t be able to claim EMA.

We know the priority groups for the government do not provide holistic coverage of all the students at need in colleges.  We need to take in to consideration:

1. Students who would have been in the £10-£20 EMA brackets who now will not be automatically receiving any grant funding.

2. students who live in local authorities without sufficiently subsidised transport schemes

3. students on courses with high course costs (i.e. equipment for vocational courses and textbooks for academic subjects).

The most important thing colleges can do when reviewing their current systems is to involve students as much as possible in producing a set of fair, accessible and responsible policies around the new scheme. Invite student representatives to meetings where these review processes will be taking place, ask the Students’ Union to feed in to a consultation on the changes the college is having to make, and communicate all of these changes effectively to the student population at large.

There are other areas where colleges can help to reduce hidden costs in Further Education (and thereby reduce numbers of students who require access to the Learner Support Fund), work with local authorities to save and increase transport subsidies, and reduce equipment and college-incurred costs as much as possible (enrolment fees, application fees, materials fees and ID card charges).

NUS fully acknowledges that tough decisions have to be made by managers in FE. Where resource can be utilized elsewhere; it must, where the 5 per cent allowance for admin can be waved; it must too – our task, together, is to do everything to ensure no student drops out due to financial hardship, whilst also hammering the government on what is an inefficient and ineffective policy.

Toni Pearce, Vice President (FE), NUS Tweeting as @toni_pearce

Comedian returns to Filton for Prize Day

Bristol comedian, Justin Lee Collins is taking time out of his busy schedule to congratulate local students at Filton’s Award Ceremony.

Justin will return to his roots to host Prize Day at his former college.

The college is awarding students with cash prizes to assist with their education or career paths. Prizes include over 40 £50 prizes as well as a special prize draw, which all students in attendance can enter to be in with a chance to win one of three cash prizes, with a top prize of £1500 towards their next step on their educational journey.

Justin said: “I can’t wait to return to my old college. I learnt a lot whilst studying there and I’m looking forward to giving something back. The students will have a great time at their Prize Day. I recommend Filton College to anyone in the area.”

Peter Jones Academy hitting the headlines

BBC Dragon, entrepreneur and now further education celebrity, Peter Jones has been bringing FE into the nationals this week – kicking and screaming.

Now I know that FE Week has called FE the invisible sector, (see article below) but Peter Jones has proved us wrong.

The Daily Mail ran two stories, suggesting Peter might be pulling a ‘fast one’… the newspaper detailed allegations from Tom Bewick former National Enterprise Academy CEO, that Mr Jones had financially mismanaged the government-funded training academy he founded for young entrepreneurs.

Both The Telegraph and The Daily Mail said that Mr Bewick had written to Mr Jones and to Vince Cable MP, Secretary of State for Business, alleging financial mismanagement.

According to the two papers, the Skills Funding Agency investigation found “no evidence to substantiate these allegations”.

Mr Bewick had apparently claimed that the £9million government funding of the NEA was “hard to justify” because the academy wasn’t producing its predicted results. Mr Bewick claimed that the NEA was in danger of running out of money and also accused Mr Jones of being “disingenuous” about the amount of his personal fortune that he was contributing to the initiative.

But Mr Jones hit back at these allegations and The Telegraph reported that the multimillionaire businessman had said that the number of students who had passed through the NEA was exactly on track with the business plan.

Mr Bewick had claimed that only 260 students had so far graduated from the academy, compared to 2,715 predicted in the NEA’s business plan. Mr Jones said the 2,715 target was “across all customer groups” and that they had met this target through 745 direct BTEC students, and 1,970 students on other services.

The Telegraph reported that Mr Jones had dismissed suggestions that the NEA was struggling financially. “How could anyone question the viability of a charitable foundation owned by me?” he said. “If next month it needs millions, I’ll put it in.”

 

The National Enterprise Academy was launched in September 2009 and is billed as the UK’s first non-profit educational institution dedicated to teaching enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Simplify the funding formula? Heard that before!

Both the Young People’s Learning Agency (YPLA) and the Skills Funding Agency are beavering away, independent of each other, on two brand new ‘simpler’ funding formulae for the 2012/13 academic year.

The YPLA (soon to be Education Funding Agency) will attempt funding rates based on 16-18 year-old learner programmes (as opposed to individual enrolments) and the Skills Funding Agency will try to rationalise Qualification and Credit Framework funding rates whilst also introducing non-qualification outcome payments (such as the learner getting a sustainable job).

Let’s start with a simple fact. The FE funding formula has been through two major overhalls in the last ten years, the last time was for 2008/09. Each time ‘simplification’ was the prize, and it alluded the then Learning and Skills Council on both occasions.

The immediate obstacle now, beyond the winners and losers requiring complex transitional arrangements (which on past form would last longer than the new methodology), is that there will be two very different approaches, one for 16-18 and another for 19+.

Each time ‘simplification’ was the prize, and it alluded the then Learning and Skills Council on both occasions.”

So perhaps in isolation the 16-18 formula may become simpler, but, with the exception of a few sixth form colleges the rest of the college sector will now also have to operate a completely different 19+ formula (along with the data related processes).

So, let’s start by pointing out the obvious. Until the sector returns to one education department operating a single method of paying colleges, the way post-16 funding is earned by colleges will only become more, not less, complex.

Then there is the question: who is calling for simplification? Do they know enough about the current system, and previous ones, to be a voice worth listening too? Sure funding is complicated, but that is because it needs to cope with FE, the one bit of the education sector which innovates and operates such a wonderful variety of delivery models to a wide rage of learner need.

Let’s keep things simple and stop changing it.

Justifying the subcontracting top-slice

Colleges are increasingly at risk of being percieved to be ripping off partners by “top-slicing” 30 per cent or more in subcontracting agreements.

Although the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) does not impose a maximum percentage charged by colleges under subcontracting arrangements – its guidance states this should not exceed 15 per cent without a detailed explanation. Yet colleges including Barking and Dagenham, Blackburn, Craven College and Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education are listed in publically available SFA records as charging far more.

A consultant working with a training provider, who wishes to remain anonymous, told FE Week that the contracting college has informed them that they will double their management fee from 15 per cent to 30 per cent in the next academic year with no explanation as to why.

Blackburn College claims its 30 per cent fee is reflective of its costs in terms of quality assurance, provider support and calculated risks to its students, as well as the college’s risk of meeting its student number and funding targets. “Our intention in all partnership work is to build partner capacity and widen participation and we have a very good relationship with our six subcontractors,” says a spokesperson.

Other colleges contacted by FE Week that are publically listed as charging 30 per cent – and in some cases over 50 per cent – in one or more of their subcontracting arrangements either declined to comment or even denied the percentage. Hull College told FE Week that they would not release the information unless we went through the Freedom of Information act process.

Several circumstances have led to the recent increase in subcontracting. Most significant is the introduction of the £500k Minimum Contract Levels for 2011/12, meaning that several hundred providers (even after exemptions) will need to subcontract their funding or lose the ability to continue providing courses. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has also been encouraging colleges to subcontract, whilst officials have been promoting it in newspapers, “in order to maximise the funding which reaches the front line.”

But there is widespread concern that the move will see a return to the stories of fraud and scandal that were rife during the 1990s. During that era, inadequate funding led many colleges – with the encouragement of their funding body, the then Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) – to enter into franchising agreements. This involved colleges subcontracting out the teaching, training and assessment of students, claiming the public funding and passing on a portion to the subcontractors.

Whilst the trend was justified as a means of widening participation and providing them with much-needed funds, the Serious Fraud Office was called in to investigate misuse of what turned out to be millions of pounds of public money. Mindful of this scandal – and that  (as stated on the front page) £11m was lost to fraud or misuse in 2010-11, of which only £3m is so far accounted for – the SFA currently has plans to crack down on misuse of public money, which it admits is likely to get worse under the government’s new subcontracting arrangements.

“Levels of management fee, predominantly levelled by colleges, have often – but not always – been scandalous giving rise to its more common description of ‘top slicing’,” says Graham Hoyle, AELP’s chief executive, who says the term franchising has never recovered any positive credibility within the FE system. “The key is to approach subcontracting as a positive business mechanism, negotiated properly and thoughtfully between partners enjoying a reasonably balanced level of relative ‘power.’ It is only when one player is in an overtly more powerful position than the other that unhelpful, indeed damaging, exploitation can ensue.”

Toni Fazaeli, CEO, Institute for Learning

Friday has become Toni Fazaeli’s least favourite day of the week. Before boarding the train into London – where she commutes to the office from Leicester each day – she buys a strong coffee to help “brace herself” for opening the trade industry paper, the TES.

It has been a bumpy few years for the Institute for Learning, which has attracted a lot of press and social media coverage – and not all of it accurate – claims Fazaeli.

“Personally, it is tough,” she says. “There’s a sense of injustice when comments aren’t accurate and might be influencing others, but my belief is that there will always be a reason why people are angry and we respect that right to freedom of speech.”

It all started back in 2009, when the professional body for FE lecturers heard it was to likely lose its government subsidy, totalling around £5m a year.  As chief executive of the troubled organisation, Fazaeli had to take the difficult decision to set annual fees from £30 to £68 for 18 months.

This angered some members, who felt it was unfair to be asked to pay higher fees for an organisation with compulsory membership, particularly when school teachers were only paying £33 a year to belong to the General Teaching Council (which later became a casualty of the Coalition government’s quango bonfire).

Members also pointed out that many FE lecturers (many of whom also practise another skill, trade or profession) work on an occasional or part-time basis. Why should a practising plumber teaching a day a week at the local college or a dancer, teaching just a few classes in adult education, have to stump up the annual fee, they argued.

There is no reason for a member of the public or anyone else to insult colleagues in a personal way, individuals who are just doing their job.”

Since then, there have been boycotts and wrangles with unions to contend with. After the department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) stepped in last month and agreed to provide transitional funding for two years (funds were cut off as part of the last government’s Skills for Growth strategy, with the aim of the Ifl becoming self-funding in three years) an agreement was reached with trade unions, the Association of Colleges and employers.It stipulated that those who had already paid their £68 would get two years’ membership. Additionally, there would be an annual fee of £38 for everyone else and reduced fee levels for those earning £16,000 or less. But in a ballot held last month, UCU members voted overwhelmingly to reject the proposals.

Fazaeli’s 33-year career in the FE sector includes teaching in prisons, colleges and adult education, college inspection – and 4 years as a senior civil servant at BIS (then known as DIUS). Her move to Ifl in June 2008, was motivated by a desire to “start working more closely with teachers again,” she says. But she readily admits that this is her toughest career challenge to date.

“You develop the skin of a rhinocerous. Questions, criticism about the organisation, the service we offer to members, ideas and suggestions on what we can do better…that’s all legitimate and proper and we want to hear these.”

But not all of the feedback has been constructive, she says and what has really hurt has been the personal attacks on herself and colleagues on website, blogs and other forms of social media.

Fazaeli is characteristically careful and measured, with a tendency to lapse into jargon and management speak, but on this issue she is impassioned.

She recalls a cartoon of a naked body, with her head stuck on top that was posted on the internet and there have been hurtful nicknames, too, like ‘Toni Fazbelly.’

  “My name is Iranian, so playing light with that name sounds a bit different, inappropriate,” she says, angrily. “In the same way that people who work in public services – in hospitals or on trains or tubes – should be treated with respect, so should staff working for Ifl. There is no reason for a member of the public or anyone else to insult colleagues in a personal way, individuals who are just doing their job.”

What has kept her going during the last year or so is her unfailing passion for teaching. “I love the difference that teaching can make to young people and adults. I see it week in, week out with our members. Those small kindnesses, the positive words from teachers about the difference we are making can really give me the strength to carry on.”

Fazaeli identifies strongly with learners, because she knows what a struggle getting educated can be. After ‘A’ levels and a year out in Amsterdam, she started a degree in English and Sociology at Kent University, but left a year into the course, after falling pregnant unexpectedly, she ended up starting again at Leicester University, and while her eldest daughter was small she combined part-time study with teaching in a prison and waiting on tables in a restaurant in the evenings. “My experience mirrors the challenges facing many in the sector, many of whom have financial pressures and are having to juggle other jobs,” she says.

But when – as Fazaeli herself has pointed out on numerous occasions – other professions like nursing or midwifery have to pay hundreds of pounds per year out of their own pocket for membership of their professional bodies, why are lecturers so cheesed off about having to pay £68?

For some, it may simply be about principles. Because the fees have indirectly been paid by the government in the past, some members feel strongly that they shouldn’t have to foot the bill.

Timing also has a part to play, says Fazaeli who is keen to point out that “some, not all members” are upset about the hike in fees. With many in the public sector already concerned about budget cuts, pay freezes and pension changes – on top of the recent increase in VAT and rising cost of living – this may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. “I felt to an extent that it (the rise if Ifl fees) was a bit of a lightning rod, attracting frustration and anger about much bigger things that are happening.”

What also needs bearing in mind, she says, is that the Ifl is a relatively young organisation. “As a professional body it is quite new, compared with say the Law Society, which has centuries behind it, or the Royal Society of Midwives, which has decades. But in this sector, we have people who have only been members of a professional body for three years or so – so there is also the getting used to it (Ifl) being part of the fabric of the sector.”

As a result, some people – even its own members – can be unaware of the breadth of support the Ifl offers. And one of the most powerful aspects of the organisation’s role is influencing policy, says Fazaeli. The views of Ifl members contributed to the government’s agreement – following the recent Wolf review of further education – to introduce legislation that puts QTLS (the professional teacher status for FE lecturers that the ifl confers) on an equal footing with PGCEs and other qualifications held by school teachers. This means FE lecturers with QTLS should soon be able to teach in schools – something they have hankered after for years.

Fazaeli admits she has made mistakes during her time at Ifl, the biggest being not to offer professional development services and training directly to its members. But over the coming months, she is keen to develop some of the support services the organisation offers its members, particularly the thriving online communities for teachers in different subject areas. The Ifl has also asked the government to carry out an independent enquiry into what makes quality teaching and learning in vocational subject areas – an area that very little is known about at the moment. She is keen to point out that it is “some, not all” of members that are unhappy about the changes at Ifl, pointing out that of the 140,000 members estimated for the coming year, 54,000 have already renewed their subscriptions (the renewal deadline is 3 weeks away).

If she could achieve just one thing during her time at Ifl, it would be to see the first FE lecturer with QTLS get a job at a school. “When that finally happens, it will be of such great personal and professional satisfaction – a real day of celebration.”