Seven more colleges have called off strikes due to begin tomorrow – leaving eight set to go ahead with three days of action.
City of Liverpool College, Runshaw College, Hugh Baird College, Heart of Yorkshire Education Trust and Warrington & Vale Royal College have all abandoned strike action after settling pay disputes with bosses.
Weymouth College and Bath College has meanwhile suspended the action while staff consult on a new offer.
All of those colleges have pay awards of at least 6.5 per cent, except Runshaw College which reached a deal worth 7.52 per cent.
The University and College Union balloted nearly 90 colleges for strikes earlier this term, but just 30 voted for the action. Since results were announced in October, 22 of those proposed strikes have been called off.
Staff at the remaining eight colleges will strike from Tuesday November 14 to Thursday November 16 – which is during the Association of Colleges annual conference.
Members of the University and College Union (UCU) will be holding a rally tomorrow afternoon in London.
The colleges due to strike are as follows:
Bolton College
Capital City College Group
Craven College
Croydon College
Farnborough College of Technology
Loughborough College
Myerscough College
Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group
UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “Our members are being forced to take three days of strike action because some college bosses would rather see their staff use foodbanks than give them a cost of living pay rise. New money from government has now arrived and many colleges have done the right thing and raised pay by at least 6.5 per cent. The funding is there, where employers can pay more, they should pay more.
“Members have voted to stand down action at colleges that have acted reasonably and tabled a decent pay offer. But where bosses are hoarding money, instead of investing it in staff, we will not shy away from striking.”
The AoC recommended its members make pay awards of 6.5 per cent this year, in line with what is being offered to school teachers.
Below are the pay deals where UCU says it has now settled its disputes.
Abingdon & Witney College – 6.5%
Bournemouth & Poole College – 6.5%
Brockenhurst College – 6.5%
Burton and South Derbyshire College – 6.6%
Bury College – 8.5%
Calderdale College – 6.5%
Cambridge Regional College (Camre) – 7%
Cheshire College – 6.5%
City of Bristol College – 6.5%
City of Liverpool College – 6.5%
City of Wolverhampton College, – 6.5%
Dudley College -6.5%
Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College – 7.1% (up to £43k) to 6.7% (£43k-60k) London
East Durham College – 6.5%
Exeter College – 6.5%
Furness College – 6.5%
Gloucestershire College – 6.5%
Heart of Yorkshire Education Trust – 6.5%
Hugh Baird College – 6.5%
Isle of Wight College – 6.5%
Leeds College of Building – 7%
Middlesborough College – 6.5%
New College Swindon – 6.5% + 2% non-consolidated
Nottingham College – an award worth 6.5%-7.36% for typical UCU members
Petroc – 6.5%
Plymouth College – 6.5%
Runshaw College – 7.52%
South Thames Colleges Group – an award worth 7.09% for the typical UCU member
If you enter Derwentside College after 2pm on a Friday, you’ll find it empty. The principal, Chris Todd, will be on his way to pick his seven-year-old son up from school and take him to the beach.
That’s because Todd, who is determined to prioritise well-being among his staff, allows them to finish early on Fridays. Employees also get a day off for their birthday and he’s “flirting with the idea” of employing a wellness coach to incentivise his leadership team to embrace a healthy lifestyle – the “secret to a happy workforce”.
With his bulging muscles, he’s the perfect healthy role model; Todd used to take part in powerlifting competitions and still “likes to beat the young guys in the gym”.
His wellbeing focus seems to be working.
Derwentside boasts a staff sickness rate of just 1 per cent and the college has come top out of 46 colleges for the past two years in staff survey benchmarking done by York College.
However, Todd is “very open” that staff satisfaction wasn’t always his priority. The 43-year-old has led Derwentside since he was 38, which might seem young for someone in such a senior position. But his first taste of the top job was as acting principal at Northumberland College at the tender age of 28.
“I don’t wear that as a badge of pride… I was definitely too young,” he says.
Todd is nowadays “very, very open” [“openness builds trust with staff”] to having been “ruthless” and made “mistakes” at Northumberland. But more on that later.
Chris Todd in the gym
Sweet-talking the boss
That former ruthlessness perhaps came from being incredibly ambitious as a youngster, after digesting numerous self-help books by entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson. Being a devout atheist, Todd hated his catholic schooling in North Shields, where he was a “real little monkey” who “didn’t like being told what to do”. For that reason, after finishing his accountancy degree he only lasted three days training to be a police officer before quitting.
However, while temping at the local hospital in a role that involved leasing cars to doctors, he manoeuvred an opportunity for half an hour in a lease car with then-chief executive of the Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust, Jim Mackey. His tactic of cornering and sweet-talking the boss worked; the next day, Mackey created a graduate role for Todd.
“I had a bit of a spark – you make your own opportunities, I always think”, he says.
He spent four years in the NHS and qualified as an accountant, but did not feel he could “make much of a difference” in such a “big and unwieldy” organisation.
The college buzz
It was in his next role at KPMG, which included auditing colleges, that he got his “first taste of FE”.
Colleges “had a buzz” when he stepped through the doors that other organisations lacked. “They have the best of the commercial world – it’s quite cutthroat, you’ve got to chase the income and student numbers,” Todd says. “But they also have a lovely moral purpose.”
Three years later, in 2007, a job came up at the Learning and Skills Council, which involved supporting colleges in financial difficulty.
The job gave Todd a “good overview” of the college finance landscape. He believes FE finance is “a simple business”, although “some people make it complicated”. “You need a fully costed curriculum plan and don’t get into too much debt. It’s not rocket science.”
Chris Todd and former colleagues
Northumberland woes
One cash-strapped college Todd worked with was Northumberland, which asked him to become their finance director. The then-interim finance director, whom he replaced in 2009, told him the college would make a £900,000 loss at the end of that financial year. Todd concluded within weeks it was “more like £3.4 million”.
“The board was full of quite high calibre people, but they didn’t have a budget approved – just one page, ‘back of a fag packet’,” he says.
Todd had his work cut out. The college had “no curriculum plan”, “didn’t have a handle on income and had unrealistic targets”. He questioned the expenditure that had been signed off, which included funding research in the European wind industry for which Northumberland had already spent £300,000 with another £242,000 earmarked to pay that year.
“There were no discernible benefits to be derived from it,” he says. “We didn’t deliver any provision in the wind industry. Even if we did, nothing would have warranted a near-£600,000 investment.”
A year later, Todd was asked to step into the principal/chief executive role in a job share with former principal of Gateshead College David Cheatham. Unlike Todd, Cheatham (who was then in his sixties) had decades of FE experience. He worked two days a week and Todd the other three.
Merger misery
Todd says Cheatham was keen to embark on a merger with Newcastle College Group (NCG), but that “nobody in [Northumberland] wanted the merger” – including himself. “We got pushed down that route because of the position we were in.”
But the leadership team by then were starting to “turn the business around. So my view was it was big enough to be independent, we just needed more time. But it’s very hard to justify that to the funding agency when you’re a 28-year-old and the experienced guy is advocating the merger.”
After the initial merger round, Cheatham left and Todd made a U-turn on merging. NCG was apparently “not too happy” about Northumberland pulling out, but its then-chief was “not one for dwelling” on things.
Six months later, Northumberland’s permanent principal role was offered to someone else, much to Todd’s disappointment: “I thought it was mine. I felt like I’d done a great job.”
The ordeal took its toll on Todd, who recalls his time there as “really stressful. I was on my own a lot. I made loads of mistakes, which I learned from.”
Most of all, Todd regrets going “really hard on staff contracts”, which resulted in “lots of industrial unrest” and about 100 redundancies.
“Really, I’m a caring people-person and that was quite brutal,” he reflects. “I was ruthless at the time. I handle staff very differently now – with care and attention. I’ll make the hard decisions, but people shake my hand when they leave the business, whereas before they wouldn’t.”
Chris Todd at Derwentside College
Move to Derwentside
Todd “found” himself again in his next role as finance director of The Excel Academy Partnership, a multi-academy trust in Durham. That was thanks to its “lovely” chief executive Joan Sjøvoll, who sadly died a year later. But Todd found colleges “more interesting” than schools and was “hungry” to get “another bite of the cherry” in FE.
When he got an interview for the finance director position at Derwentside, he got cold feet because he thought the college, which has a £9 million turnover, was “too small”. He had to be “forced” to attend the interview by his wife.
“It turned out to be the best thing I ever did,” he says. Four years later he was back in the principal’s seat.
Just before Todd joined, the college closed its sixth form after competition from local academies made it unviable, and instead “threw everything into apprenticeships”.
With its large portfolio of apprenticeships, Derwentside is “the flip of a traditional FE college” and resembles more of an independent training provider. But although it has previously been an AELP member and has a “flight of foot commercial mindset”, Todd is proud of its college culture.
“The governance is professional, we’re not for profit and we reinvest in the college,” he says. “Some of the ITPs [independent training providers] tend to work where the margins are bigger, whereas we run some courses at a loss because it’s good for the community.”
Apprenticeships model
Because of Derwentside’s “small catchment for traditional FE activity”, it’s had to “adapt by being really good on the employer-facing work”.
But their model, which delivers most apprenticeships “fully in the workplace” rather than on “day release”, is “tough” – with “complex finance and delivery”.
Having training consultants working remotely means quality assurance systems “need to be really robust” and “you’ve got to make sure learners are being seen regularly”.
Whereas nationally, apprenticeship starts for 2022/23 fell by 3 per cent on the previous academic year, Derwentside has grown its by 10-15 per cent in the past two years. But it has also narrowed its offer from 80 standards to 38. The college’s large health and social care provision was “hammered in the pandemic”. Derwentside has “hung in there”, but doing so has affected its achievement rate.
Nationally, the drop-out rate for adult care apprenticeships last year was about 60 per cent and Todd believes it is impossible for any provider to get over 70 per cent achievement rates.
“A lot of people don’t finish those courses, and they’re low-funded so a lot of colleges have pulled out,” he says. “We’ve continued because there’s good local skills needs for it.”
College culture
When Todd stepped into the chief role five years ago, staff surveys were “not great”. He was keen to change that. His team came up with new values: trust, respect, excellence, innovation, and enjoyment. The latter was his idea, because “enjoyment is my mantra”. He meets every new staff member for an hour when they start, telling them: “I don’t ever want you to come to work and feel miserable.”
The college’s culture was praised by Ofsted when it inspected last October, rating it good. It said leaders “promote positive values and a supportive and inclusive culture”, and highlighted “low staff attrition”.
Chris Todd while renovating his house, which he and his wife bought as a “complete wreck”
Fridays fundays
Todd believes it’s easier for smaller colleges like his to nurture a tightknit community feel.
But creating that culture was made harder because all his training consultants delivering apprenticeships in workplaces work remotely. Staff surveys showed they were the least satisfied cohort.
Todd’s team tackled this by creating a base room for them in the college, because “the more time they spend there, the more satisfied they are”. They’re also invited along with other staff to regular staff social events.
The most common way to keep staff happy is through a large pay rise, but in that respect, Todd has been thwarted. The government promised in July to pump nearly £500 million into colleges over the next two years towards pay rises, but Derwentside lost out because this came through the 16–19 funding formula.
The college has about 2,000 adults and 600 16- to 18-year-olds, which means while most colleges can now offer 6.5 per cent pay rises, Derwentside’s is 2 per cent.
Which comes back to Friday afternoons. Todd worked “really hard with the trade unions and staff to figure out other ways to make things better for them, instead of money”.
He believes having that time off has made staff more productive, including himself: “I work like a demon on Fridays until 2pm.”
Then it’s off to the beach in his hometown of Whitley Bay with his son, for ice cream (presumably of the healthy kind).
Corrienne Peasgood is preparing for her mainstage address for this year’s Association of Colleges (AoC) annual conference.
This will be the second time she has addressed college leaders as the thirteenth president of the membership body.
But taking on the presidency last year very nearly didn’t happen at all.
“This wasn’t the plan, Shane. I’ll be honest.”
Peasgood’s journey from plumbing apprentice to principal, and then to president, hasn’t featured in one of this publication’s famous profile interviews, despite our best efforts.
What I’m getting on an individual level is a feeling it’s never been as tough
“I explained right from when FE Week first started, [profiles] was the one lot of articles I never really liked. To be honest, I have read other people’s but … it’s never been about me as a person.”
However, approaching retirement after nearly 30 years at City College Norwich, the last ten as principal, the spotlight finally beckoned. At her final meeting as a member of the AoC board last year, the president role, shortly to be vacated by Dame Sally Dicketts, came up and Peasgood’s interest was piqued.
“I started to think about all the skills that I’ve developed and the experiences I’ve had during my time in FE, going right back to being an apprentice in further education. So, learning in FE, teaching and being a leader in FE: what am I going to do with all of that?”
Peasgood admits she didn’t know too much about what the role involved, other than a mainstage keynote speech at the AoC conference. “That was definitely something I thought I didn’t want to do,” she confesses.
Chats with fellow principals convinced her to take the leap.
Now, re-appointed unopposed for a second term, she has no regrets about taking on the role and is preparing for what could be a momentous year for colleges.
Finding her ‘sector voice’
Peasgood could be the first AoC president to work with a Labour government since the former St Helens College principal Dame Pat Bacon held the post in 2009/10.
While Dicketts’ term in office was dominated by supporting the sector through the pandemic, Peasgood’s attention is on politics.
With extensive college experience in the bag, representing the whole sector on a national stage requires the president to quickly pick up a whole new set of skills. Early in her term, Peasgood describes how “finding my sector voice” took time.
“When you’re on panels or in meetings representing the sector, you truly have to have a broad sector voice, rather than before it would have been my college voice.”
Research, experience, and exposure to different college contexts through AoC’s regional principals’ groups helped.
And it was at this summer’s political party conferences – which saw Peasgood speaking from panels and answering live Q&As alongside ministers and shadow ministers – that she says she came to realise she had found her sector voice.
“I could not have done that as effectively at the beginning of the year,” she says.
Which is good for colleges.
Peasgood says “there can’t be anything more important than finding every opportunity to influence, to advocate and lobby for the sector in the build-up to this election. It just must be that single focus.”
Another upcoming change in education is the appointment of the new Ofsted chief inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, who takes over from Amanda Spielman on January 1. Peasgood has some advice for him.
“I listened to his select committee hearing … I didn’t hear any reference to the broader [post-16] sector. You would think that anyone going into a new role, if they’ve got an area that they are not as familiar with it’ll be the first area that you’ve reached out to. I really hope he does that.”
Peasgood at AoC conference 2022
Level three fears worsening
This time last year, in her first speech as AoC president, Peasgood announced her three priorities in post: “system leadership” within the sector, broadening the FE voice, and protecting student opportunities, particularly at level three.
“We need to leave as many doors open to students as possible,” she said from the stage.
Fast forward 12 months, Peasgood has stories to tell about how she’s worked on system-level policy with AoC officials and members, and on encouraging more and different principals to take to the airwaves to represent the sector.
Peasgood chairs AoC’s 2030 strategy group which guides AoC policy on “what’s the system we want to see in 2030, and what are the steps that we need to take to get there.”
Wins on the system leadership side include AoC’s ‘Opportunity England’ document earlier this year which proposed a single “tertiary” funder and regulator for all of further and higher education, and preserving apprenticeships for new employees.
But on qualifications reform, Peasgood says the outlook is looking worse.
I think we’re probably in a more challenging position than we were at this point last year
The first trench of level 3 qualifications deemed to overlap with T Levels will lose access to public funding in August 2024.
So, students that have just started in year 11 will have fewer post-16 options to choose from if they want to go on to study a subject where there’s a wave 1 or 2 T Level.
“We’ve done a lot of work [on qualifications reform] over the year. Lots of letters, lots of lobbying. I think we’re probably in a more challenging position on that than we were at this point last year.”
Peasgood says this year’s increased intake of 16-year-olds enrolling at colleges, particularly with GCSE retake requirements, makes defunding T Level alternatives even harder to swallow.
“When we look at the GCSE grade profiles of this year’s year 11s and what that’s done for the enrolments we’re seeing in colleges, the huge amount of extra students needing to re-take English and maths … I don’t think I’ve spoken to a college leader that hasn’t had to put on more level one and two provision at the expense of level three provision.”
Peasgood’s hypothesis is that declining entry-grade profiles coming through the system means the leap to a rigorous T Level could be too much for a growing cohort of young people, with colleges unable to offer level three alternatives.
Peasgood
“You can almost see the unintended consequences of lots of young people being channelled into provision that’s not in their best interests,” she warns.
As colleges delete swathes of BTECs and other level 3 qualifications from their websites for 2024 entrants, Peasgood feels for the parents and careers advisers guiding young people nearing the end of their school journey.
“You’ve got the tried and tested A-level route that everybody knows about. Then you’ve got a T Level route, and I’m a great advocate of T Levels for the right students in the right areas, that is still untested. We haven’t had enough cohorts of students go through all of the T Levels.”
The AoC is not a member of the Protect Student Choice campaign, a coalition of organisations, spearheaded by the Sixth Form Colleges Association, lobbying against the government’s defunding plans.
Instead, it has lobbied on this independently.
But neither has been successful in securing a government U-turn.
Indeed, the government is pressing ahead with defunding even though they’ve announced they now want to overhaul the system again by replacing A-levels and T Levels with the Advanced British Standard.
Light at the end of the tunnel
Peasgood ponders her response carefully when I ask her about her interactions with ministers and civil servants when making the case for colleges.
Decision makers are “in listening mode” she has found but admits “a skill I need to get better at” is pushing back when politicians dodge questions. When pressed, she wouldn’t name names.
Meetings with skills minister Robert Halfon have “in most instances” reflected his public passion and enthusiasm for FE. And in early discussions, his new Labour shadow, Seema Malhotra, has been asking AoC for “very sensible” requests for information.
Politics aside, Peasgood says she is interested in testing the mood of college leaders at this year’s conference.
This year’s student over-recruitment challenges come on top of existing pressures on staff retention and recruitment and continuing rising costs.
“What I’m getting on an individual level is … a feeling it’s never been as tough on a day-to-day basis.” And being a principal is still “the best job in the world” though “can be lonely.”
Though new funding for staff pay awards and hearing colleges feature in the keynote party conference speeches by the prime minister and leader of the opposition this year, Peasgood thinks there is a, “very, very initial sense of optimism, that maybe there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
The year ahead
Talking about legacy when you’ve just been reappointed might feel premature. Recent AoC presidents have all made their mark on the role. People remember Ian Ashman’s focus on mental health, Sally Dicketts’ interest in the future of learning, and Steve Frampton bringing sustainability in colleges to the fore.
Despite having spent the year rubbing shoulders with the movers and shakers of education policy, Peasgood retains her earlier humility.
“If people know that I really helped to lobby and advocate for the sector in the run- up to what’s going to be one of the most important general elections for a generation, I’ll be pleased. I’ll have done what I can do.”
The Education and Training Foundation has appointed Sir Frank McLoughlin as its next chair.
McLoughlin will return to the FE sector body in January having previously been its associate director for leadership where he spearheaded the launch of its training programme for principals and CEOs in 2017.
The former City and Islington College principal’s association with the foundation goes even further back.
McLoughlin chaired the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning, which launched a report in March 2013. The then-fledgling Education and Training Foundation was tasked with seeing through some of McLoughlin’s recommendations.
He re-joins ETF as the organisation plans to launch a new strategy and mark it’s 10-year anniversary, which he described as its “second phase of development.”
“I am delighted to have been appointed as the new chair of the ETF to help steer the organisation through its second phase of development. The ETF has a critical role in supporting the FE and Skills workforce to strengthen the UK in facing the challenges of an increasingly complex and volatile global economy,” McLoughlin said.
Knighted in the late Queen’s 2015 birthday honours list for services to further education, McLoughlin currently sits on the advisory board of the Education Endowment Foundation, is an associate fellow at Saïd Business School and is a companion of the Chartered Management Institute.
He succeeds Peter Latchford who is stepping down at the end of December after four years in the chair.
“Our focus with recruiting a new chair was on placing the further education and skills sector at the heart of the organisation, with someone who understands first-hand the challenges and opportunities within this vibrant ecosystem, who is a role model for professionalism, who champions inclusion and who can authentically engage with stakeholders at all levels to enable sector change. I am confident that Sir Frank will make a huge contribution to the future success of the organisation,” Latchford said.
The ETF said their upcoming strategy will “set a bold new ambition for the charity to drive professionalism” and “set out how the charity will continue 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.”
Katerina Kolyva, chief executive of the ETF, said she was “thrilled with Sir Frank’s appointment.”
“His passion for a professional and inclusive FE and skills sector, and the transformational opportunities it offers to all who work and learn within it, combined with his extensive experience, knowledge and understanding of the sector will be a great asset in steering the ETF so it can continue to successfully support the sector,” she said.
Concurrent Job: Chief Executive, Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education
Interesting fact: Jennifer has a particular talent for coming up with ideas that cost her husband money
Jatinder Sharma
Board Member, WorldSkills UK
Start date: November 2023
Concurrent Job: Principal & Chief Executive, Walsall College
Interesting fact: Jatinder has a Black Belt in karate
Kenneth Avery Clark
Owner and Principal, SLP College, Leeds
Start date: October 2023
Concurrent Job: Co-founder and Principal at The International College of Musical Theatre
Interesting fact: Kenneth has performed for royalty twice – once in the Royal Variety Performance along with Elton John, Liza Minnelli, Olivia Newton-John and Cliff Richard to name a few.
Colleges are taking on trainee teachers from universities, expanding class sizes and hiring additional invigilators to manage an influx of GCSE resit students this year, which are set to dent their finances.
But other areas of recruitment, such as higher education and adult courses, have taken a hit.
FE Week looks at the latest data on college enrolment, after 95 – nearly half of all FE colleges in England – responded to a survey run by the Association of Colleges (AoC).
English and maths resit boom costs colleges £24m
FE Week reported in August that there would be around 60,000 more students needing to retake English and/or maths compared to last year, after they failed to achieve a grade 4 or above.
The AoC estimates this flood of resitters will cost the sector around £24 million, including £21 million for additional teaching time and an additional £3 million in exam registration fees.
Colleges speaking to FE Week cited instances of 50 per cent increases in the number of resit students, but with little in the way of financial support to meet those demands.
Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group is expecting to spend north of £500,000 this year due to an extra 770 resitters – to be spent on hiring five extra teachers, holding extra online tuition, exam registration fees and more invigilators for the November and May resits.
For Craig Hodgson, principal of NSCG, teacher recruitment poses the biggest challenge.
“Everything is a challenge, but the recruitment and retention of good English and maths staff is the biggest,” he said.
To cope with that, NSCG partnered with Keele University so that trainee teachers from the university could work part time at the college. They will not be running their own courses, but will work alongside teachers in larger classes.
At City College Norwich, which has an extra 1,000 resitters, class sizes have risen from around 16 to 28, while they are expecting to fork out £100,000 on extra exam entry fees alone. The college also expects up to half of its exam entrants to have special educational needs.
That means more of them will be spread across different rooms, and that more staff will be needed to invigilate all the exams and to assess the students for their exam needs.
16-18s on the rise
Most colleges saw an increase in 16- to- 18-year-old enrolments, compared to 2022/23.
But while there was a similar trend last year, the level of growth was much greater in 2023/24, with 38 per cent of leaders who responded to the survey saying their college had seen a growth of 10 per cent or more. Last year, just seven per cent reported the same.
In total, 85 per cent of colleges said they recruited more than they had targeted for, compared to 58 per cent in 2022/23.
The proportion of colleges which took fewer 16 to 18 enrolments than they had targeted did drop as a result, at six per cent in 2023/24. Last year, 24 per cent recruited fewer 16-18 learners than they had targeted.
ESOL recruitment booms, waiting lists creep up
Colleges have also been coping with an uptick in ESOL learners, or English for Speakers of Other Languages.
Nearly half of all the colleges recruited more than their target, with 18 per cent of that amount taking on a fifth more than they had planned.
The AoC said “by far the biggest reason” for the increase was an increase in demand due to “displacement, refugee status, and asylum seeking”.
Many colleges also increased their waiting lists after they realised they could not meet the high demand.
The number of adult Ukrainians enrolling for ESOL courses also stayed high, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year. More than a fifth recruited between 51 and 200 Ukrainians this year, up from four per cent last year.
Around four in ten colleges took on up to 50 Ukrainians for ESOL courses, which was similar to last year. But the data also shows a quarter of colleges did not take on any Ukrainians, up from 16 per cent last year.
HE numbers slip
Fewer colleges are meeting their targets when it comes to higher education enrolments. The survey data shows that just 31 per cent successfully met their targets in 2023/34, in comparison to 42 per cent the year before.
Nearly a fifth missed their targets by between 10 and 19.9 per cent.
Those who are managing to grow their higher education enrolments also remain few and far between. Just nine per cent grew their enrolment numbers compared to 2022/23 – the same proportion as last year.
Adult education numbers improve, but continue to miss the mark
Two in five colleges recruited their target number of adult learners this year – more than the third that did so in 2022/23. Over a third had more adults enrol on courses than their target number – with the remaining portion seeing a small decrease, in all but one cases, of below 14.9 per cent.
AoC’s survey showed that six per cent of colleges saw increased recruitment of over 20 per cent beyond their target recruitment number.
The Department for Education is recruiting a videographer to film regular content of the education secretary for her social media channels.
An advert for a senior digital videographer on an annual salary of nearly £50,000 went live earlier this week. The “social media native” would “primarily work” with Gillian Keegan to capture “high-profile engagements across the country”, as well as in the department’s own studio.
They will “lead” on videography for Keegan’s social media channels and capture “high-quality and engaging” content. This will help develop “a regular drumbeat” of videos for channels such as X – formerly known as Twitter.
Pay is advertised at £48,701 a year, although the role is for six months.
The education secretary is a keen user of social media, regularly posting face-to-camera videos. One of her special advisers is also a social media expert who previously produced content for Matt Hancock and Rishi Sunak’s leadership campaign.
The recruit would join the department’s social media team and work with ministers and special advisers, the advert states.
Other departments have advertised for similar roles, although they were not specifically for a secretary of state.
Last November, The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities advertised a senior videographer role in London on £40,390 a year.
A Ministry of Justice social media videographer job, which closed in February, was advertised with a London salary range of between £35,405 to £39,000.
A DfE spokesperson said: “This is an existing post in the department’s social media team, with responsibility to deliver communications in line with the department’s priorities, helping us communicate and inform people about key policies that impact their daily lives.”
Private providers and colleges could be further driven away from subcontracting by the government’s new Procurement Act as it risks more litigation, experts have warned.
The act, which got royal assent last month and will come into force from next October, will also “create additional bureaucracy” across the board in further education, lawyers and sector leaders have told FE Week.
It covers procurement across all industries, but FE bigwigs say it could have far-reaching consequences for the sector. The Department for Education has itself been on a mission to significantly reduce the amount of subcontracting in FE, in a crackdown prompted by concerns about poor oversight and fraud.
The Procurement Act means that anyone tendering across the public sector, and failing to win a tender, will receive a breakdown of the individual scores awarded to the winning bid and their own, which they can then compare.
Chris Murray, legal director at Eversheds Sutherland, said the risk is some colleges do not know they are implicated in the Procurement Act.
“A lot of them do, but there are quite complicated definitions as to which contracting authorities are implicated here for the purposes of procurement law,” he added. For instance, independent training providers are subject to these rules too if they are competing for public money.
“One of the government’s key objectives with the change in rules is to ensure greater transparency in public procurement,” he said.
Currently, when any public organisation finishes its procurement process, it must send letters to each losing bidder with some detail on why it has lost a procurement procedure. But this change will mean they receive “assessment summaries” for their own bid and the winning bid. That will include the individual scores for each criteria, and feedback on each score.
“They will just give you both assessments and you can look at it you can say: ‘Wait a minute, I’ve been given a one out of 10 for question one and the winner has been given an eight out of 10 for the same question, and yet the feedback is quite similar’,” Murray said.
That means an “increased likelihood of [legal] challenge”, he said. However, he stressed any challenges will need to be made within 30 days of the receipt of the “assessment summaries”.
There are also concerns around an “administrative burden” for contracting authorities and ITPs. More notices around procurement will be legal requirements – such as “pipeline notices” which will give all bidders extra time to prepare for tenders, and abandonment notices, which show when a contracting organisation has decided to cancel its procurement procedure.
That will add, Murray said, to the already high amount of paperwork needs around procurement.
But there is more positivity around the Act’s new “debarment list” – a Cabinet Office list of firms that are disqualified from procurement, such as those who have committed corporate manslaughter or fraud.
Businesses which are bankrupt or have been flagged for their “poor performance” on other contracts will also be on the list. Those, however, will be “discretionary” disqualification grounds, meaning the procuring body will need to decide if they should be allowed to tender.
It will include any example when a minister has determined any supplier is “an excluded or excludable supplier”, or if an investigation has taken place into them, according to the Procurement Act itself. Businesses will need to apply to the cabinet office to be struck off the list.
That will mean procuring organisations such as colleges will not need to approach individual subcontractors to check if they are allowed to procure for work.
Simon Ashworth, director of policy at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, welcomed the move to “improve procurement rules” including the requirement to include a “provider’s track record”.
But, he said the act could be a “double edged sword” for providers.
“There is a real concern that new procedures will create additional bureaucracy that may end up discouraging subcontracting opportunities due to the risk of new litigation. AELP is calling for a minimum value exemption threshold to be introduced into procurement rounds below which additional bureaucracies wouldn’t apply.”
Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive of the AoC said the reforms “may provide some benefits in terms of transparency but there are risk and costs at a time when college capacity is already really stretched”.
A spokesperson for the Cabinet Office said the new act “slashes red tape and introduces one single set of simple, flexible rules, removing more than 350 complicated and bureaucratic rules as a result of Britain leaving the EU, opening up competition for new suppliers, especially SMEs”.
“It will also create a more open and transparent system, stimulating competition and ensuring procurement teams have the flexibility to design a tendering process to their needs.”
Five FE providers managed to secure an Ofsted grade increase last year after initially being handed the wrong judgement, FE Week can reveal.
Complaints from the further education sector about inspections conducted by the watchdog have also almost doubled since 2018 – although they remain well below the level in schools.
It comes against a backdrop of increasing legal challenges against Ofsted ratings from FE providers, while the inspectorate also rolls out changes to its complaints procedure – after admitting it is “not fit for purpose”.
Data obtained by FE Week through a Freedom of Information request revealed there have been eight changes to FE providers’ Ofsted grade since 2018. Two were in 2019/20, one was in 2021/22, and five were in 2022/23 (see table
Ofsted refused to specify the names of providers, or provide a breakdown of provider types nor did it specify what the grades were changed from and to.
FE Week did however reveal one case last year. In December 2022, the watchdog took the unprecedented step of unpublishing an ‘inadequate’ report for UK Training & Development Limited (UKTD) and carried out a reinspection following an appeal which resulted in a ‘good’ judgement.
Several other independent training providers have tried and failed to challenge Ofsted grades since the pandemic, with most alleging the inspectorate is not taking into consideration the impact of Covid on their delivery.
FE representatives said judgement changes entail a lot of stress, anxiety and workload on staff and leaders.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We’re pleased that Ofsted has been responsive in these instances, and has been prepared to review and change judgements, but we are obviously concerned that these providers were not given the correct rating in the first place.
“The current system is so blunt and reductive that negative grades act as a cliff-edge and are very likely to feel unrepresentative of what a provider actually does across all its provision and services.”
FE Week’s FOI data also shows the number of complaints Ofsted received from FE providers has grown in recent years, albeit with an expected drop during the Covid years when inspections were suspended.
There were 22 in 2018/19, 13 in 2019/20, nine in 2020/21, 31 in 2021/22 and 40 in 2022/23.
Paul Joyce, Ofsted’s deputy director for further education and skills, at last week’s Association of Employment and Learning Providers conference
Paul Joyce, Ofsted’s deputy director for further education and skills, told last week’s Association of Employment and Learning Providers conference that the figures are low.
“Let me assure you for the FE and skills, we get very few complaints,” he told delegates.
The inspectorate said in its latest annual report that “unsurprisingly” most of the complaints were from providers that have received the lowest grades. In 2022/23, over half of which were judged as ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement’.
“Many of these also include concerns about inspectors’ conduct or how the inspection was carried out, for example about the opportunity for a provider to present evidence, meetings as part of the inspection visit, or inspectors giving on-site feedback,” the report said.
“Some also feel that we did not fully consider the comments they gave on their draft inspection report.”
Compared to the school’s sector, complaints from FE providers are small. In 2022/23, Ofsted received 40 complaints from FE and 247 from schools.
However, Ofsted does not provide schools complaint data prior to 2022/23.
It’s important to note the number of inspections in FE has shot up post-pandemic. There were 237 FE inspections in 2018/19, compared to 486 in 2022/23.
An Ofsted spokesperson said: “Even considering the disruption to our inspections between 2019/20- 2020/21 due to Covid, you’ll be able to see that the number of changes to overall effectiveness grades are very small when considering the number of inspections. The number of complaints is still also very low when set in context.”
However, Ofsted is making several changes to its complaints procedure after admitting it was not up to scratch earlier this year.
From January 2024 there will be enhanced on-site professional dialogue during inspections to help resolve any matters, and there will be a new opportunity for providers to contact Ofsted the day after an inspection visit if they have any unresolved concerns.
FE Week’s FOI data comes weeks after former chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw told MPs that the watchdog’s remit was “far too big” and should have just stuck to inspecting schools.
Ofsted’s capacity also may be stretching further than it can handle. According to Ofsted’s annual reports, the average number of staff employed has only grown just five per cent since 2018/19 to 1,893 in 2022/23, despite a huge increase in inspections.
