England’s largest apprenticeship provider has returned to a ‘good’ Ofsted rating after a turbulent period.
Lifetime Training was praised by the watchdog in a report published today that revealed achievement rates are up 15 percentage points in just a year amid “substantial” improvements in apprentices’ learning experiences.
The provider has stopped working with multiple national employers that were refusing to release apprentices for off-the-job training, worked “more effectively” with employers to ensure apprentices study the right qualifications, and overseen a “careful” redesign of the curriculum for each apprenticeship.
David Smith, who became chief executive of Lifetime in July 2023, said: “We’ve made significant investments in quality, technology, and most importantly our people since our last inspection and have ambitious plans for the future. This rating, for us, is validation of that work and the progress we have made to date.”
Lifetime, which offers over 40 different apprenticeships to around 20,000 people, had long-held a ‘good’ Ofsted grade but was dropped to ‘requires improvement’ in 2022.
It trains apprentices in industries that historically have had a high attrition rate and have been particularly affected by the recent pandemic, such as hospitality, retail, care, business admin, public services, leisure, and early years.
The previous inspection criticised the provider for a focus on financial performance and starts over quality, as well as a lack of face-to-face teaching, off-the-job training and poor achievement rates.
It is currently engaged in a major clawback dispute worth millions with the Department for Education about overclaimed additional learner support funding, which FE Week understands is nearing its conclusion.
Today’s Ofsted report was full of compliments about Lifetime’s focus on quality improvements since the previous inspection.
It said Lifetime has increased the proportion of training it delivers face-to-face, which was previously mostly online, and pulled away from some employers who were unable to release apprentices for their training.
FE Week understands the firm has exited partnerships with less than 15 businesses (which is less than 5 per cent of its partnership base) but Lifetime wouldn’t name who they were.
The provider was also delivering advanced learner loans to a few hundred adults at the point of their last inspection but has since forfeited that contract to consolidate the business.
One key area of improvement related to Lifetime’s qualification achievement rates, which sat at 35 per cent in 2022/23. Ofsted’s report said the proportion of the provider’s apprenticeship completing and achieving their programme has now increased to half – around the same level as 2018/19.
Inspectors said: “The new leadership team has taken swift and effective actions to improve the quality of apprentices’ education and training. This includes a considerable investment in the development of the learning coaches’ teaching skills. Because of these decisive actions, apprentices’ learning experiences have improved substantially.”
Leaders have also worked more effectively with employers to ensure that apprentices “study the right qualifications, receive timely support, and take part in good quality training during their working hours”.
This has helped to reduce the proportion of apprentices who are taking a break from learning or studying beyond their planned end date by about half, the report said.
Lifetime has also “carefully redesigned the curriculum for each apprenticeship” since the last inspection.
Inspectors found: “They have identified clearly what they want apprentices to know and be able to do when they complete the training. As a result of leaders working more closely with employers, apprentices study content that is current and relevant to their industry.”
There has also been “substantial improvements” to the design and teaching of the English and mathematics functional skills, Ofsted said.
Lucy Auchincloss, partnership development director at Lifetime, said: “We are pleased the inspection team recognised the considerable amount of effort which has been focused on improving learning experiences over the last few years.”
A private equity firm is looking to sell training giant BPP for a reported £2.5 billion.
TDR Capital bought the professional training business for less than £700 million three years ago and has since bolstered the group by acquiring digital apprenticeship providers Estio Training and Firebrand.
London-based TDR, which also backs companies like Asda and David Lloyd, has now appointed bankers from Houlihan Lokey and Morgan Stanley to auction off BPP, FE Week understands.
The Sunday Times, which first reported the plan and quoted the £2.5 billion price tag, said the sale is expected to start after the summer.
BPP trains tens of thousands of people in the UK and abroad each year in a mix of commercial and publicly-funded training courses in areas such as law, accountancy and digital marketing.
It is one of England’s largest apprenticeship providers, ranking in the top five companies that earned the most from the levy in 2021/22 when it received more than £36 million.
Last year, in 2022/23, the BPP group recorded almost 10,000 apprenticeship starts. Most apprentices are on the level 7 accountancy and taxation professional programme.
After taking over Estio Training, BPP appointed current Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ chair Nichola Hay as its director of apprenticeship strategy and policy.
BPP, which also runs a law school called BPP University, was founded in 1976. It was bought by Vanta Education in 2009 until TDR acquired the business in 2021.
Last year, BPP also acquired the Digital Marketing Institute training company, and this year it bought Buttercups Training, which offers programmes for pharmacists and hospital support staff.
A new combined authority has bowed to pressure from the WEA and its learners by continuing an adult education grant it initially planned to scrap.
Earlier this year the adult education charity threatened legal action, and mobilised its learners in protest, against the “shocking and devastating” decision by the North East Combined Authority (NECA) to refuse a guaranteed annual adult education budget (AEB) contract.
Despite its long-standing grant-funded provision in the area, the fledgling combined authority initially told the WEA it would have to bid for a contract alongside private sector providers, placing 70 jobs and 1,600 learning places at risk.
WEA’s campaign appears to have paid off, with NECA now providing WEA with a one-year extension to “minimise disruption for our communities,” according to reports.
Simon Parkinson, general secretary and CEO of WEA, hopes he can convince NECA to accept his organisation as eligible for grant funding for future years, as is the case in other combined authority areas.
“We recognise that no funding is guaranteed beyond the end of the [transition] year, nevertheless we also understand that the situation will be kept under review,” he said.
NECA was officially formed in May with the election of its first mayor, Labour’s Kim McGuinness.
McGuinness’ cabinet met on June 11 and agreed to a £2.5 million transition fund to continue grant funding five providers that “currently operate in the region” but did not meet all the grant criteria, for one year.
Cabinet papers did not name the WEA but stated: “A specific representation from a specialist designated institution who operate [sic] in the region has been received, highlighting a potential reduction in community learning provision.
“A number of residents have also submitted representations expressing concern over potentially losing provision that is currently delivered by the institution and a petition has been submitted to the mayor. The institution have [sic] put forward a case to be recommended as an ‘in scope’ grant-funded provider.”
The papers confirm the representations “informed the recommendation” for the transition deal.
A combined authority spokesperson told BBC North East it had “listened to the views of learners, providers and stakeholders”.
WEA is legally a designated institution, a specific category of further education institutions defined in law. The designated institutions were reclassified as public sector organisations alongside colleges by the Office for National Statistics in November 2022. Other designated institutions include London’s City Lit, The Mary Ward Centre and Fircroft College in Birmingham.
Qasim Hussain begins a two-year term as NUS’ vice president (further education) today. He tells Shane Chowen that supporting his peers ignited a passion for student politics
With much of the country alight with anticipation of a new government, Qasim Hussain has been far more concerned with the day-to-day issues his fellow students at Leeds City College face.
But today, the 19-year-old will swap campaigning on local issues such as college mental health services and creating societies for non-English speaking students, to get ready to face off against ministers in a brand new government.
If this week’s general election goes as expected, an incoming Labour government will be faced with a softly-spoken new NUS vice president for further education who is on top of his brief and on top of his arguments to win for students.
His two-year term in post begins on Monday, taking over from Bernie Savage who is off to train as a primary school teacher.
Our interview takes place in the canteen at Leeds City College’s Printworks campus, one of many sites frequented by Hussain in his current role as students’ union (SU) president.
Amid the hustle and bustle of, mostly staff at this point, preparing to end the college year, our chat comes to a brief pause when he reveals he was starting primary school in 2009 when I was elected to the NUS office he’s about to take. (Reader – I needed a minute).
Education long-Covid
Hussain is among the so-called ‘Covid-generation’ of young people whose formative secondary education years were thrown into the organised chaos that was last-minute online learning and teacher-assessed exams.
Some of that, although not obvious to him at the time, worked in his favour.
When his 2021 teacher-assessed GCSE results were released, grade inflation meant his first-choice sixth-form college was oversubscribed. By the time the college told him, the day before enrolment, he had already rejected an offer to stay on at his school’s sixth form, so was left with his final choice of leaving his hometown of Bradford for Leeds City College.
But even contemplating those post-school education options was nearly off the table altogether as Hussain was suspended twice in secondary school and at times struggled to balance his education with caring for his disabled father.
He openly admits to “very nearly becoming one of the rising number of NEET (not in education, employment or training) young people”.
Hussain’s first few years at secondary school were a struggle. He recalls being bullied on the council estate where he lived from age 11 and lashed out at school, where he was first placed in the bottom set, and had “no clear plan” for his future.
An illness on a visit over one Christmas to Pakistan, where he was born, delayed his return to his year 8 studies and his school kicked him out for several months. Later he was placed in the school’s exclusion unit for getting into a fight.
It was being faced with “primary school maths work” in the exclusion unit where “something clicked”.
“I thought, what am I doing? This isn’t me. Clearly, I’ve messed up. I acknowledged what went wrong and how I could improve. And honestly from there, for the rest of year 8 and going into year 9, I was improving my behaviour, improving the people I’m with and then improving my grades.”
In year 9 he was in “mid-table” sets for his classes. Maths, to his surprise, became his strongest subject, which he says was because “it was a subject I hated the most but got to understand how important it is in day-to-day life”. History and geography also helped him to “become invested in my curriculum”.
A lot of learners now in their first or second years are quite constrained and keep themselves to themselves
Getting his place at Leeds City College was an opportunity for even more reinvention. There were closer FE colleges he could have chosen, but he wanted out of Bradford where he felt there was a risk of “being around the wrong people again”.
“I knew, I’m going to go to college in Leeds and I’m going to become someone different. Fresh start. New book. Probably the best decision I’ve ever made, really.”
Hussain at Leeds City College Printworks campus
As head of the students’ union at Luminate Education Group (which runs Leeds City College), Hussain sees the impact of “traumatic Covid experiences” among students he represents, with details that were easy to overlook amid the noise at the time around exams and grading algorithms.
“People lost interaction with their teachers and their peers…people lost loved ones. It’s evident if you ask colleges; a lot of learners now in their first or second years are quite constrained and keep themselves to themselves. That’s probably because they’ve lost that period where they would have socially thrived.”
He tells how the college has put in place services for younger students presenting more severe behaviour issues, which he knows, as a governor alongside his role as president, “isn’t always financially positive for the college”.
Stepping up to lead
It was partly seeing the impact of Covid on his peers that put him on the path to student leadership. His first step was becoming a course rep, where issues included long queues in the canteen (“everyone’s lunch hours were timetabled at the same time”).
But it was “giving something back for students having a rough time” and wanting to “get involved in something outside of the curriculum” that inspired him to take the next step and stand for election with the students’ union.
“I wanted to learn more about the college, the processes, how it worked. Plus handling local college issues like wi-fi and canteen prices. But a lot of students felt like they didn’t have a voice. I wanted to be that voice.”
Hussain recalls being encouraged by teachers and support staff at the college, and hesitantly admits that his passion for representing students overtook his interest in his A Levels.
The gearshift from first to second-year student, the SU role and caring for his father at home took its toll, to the point where Hussain began to “fear” for his mental health.
“I got a bit behind on coursework deadlines, lost motivation and didn’t feel like attending any more.”
A sociology lecturer intervened, and Hussain again tried to knuckle down. It was the realisation that university could wait, if he really wanted to go, and that he was “probably more interested in student politics” that helped him regain his focus, but perhaps not in the direction his teachers were expecting.
“I understood what went wrong for me and I just wouldn’t want that to happen for others. I knew that further education is so broad, and students are ambitious, but they might fall into the same traps where they get demotivated, lose focus and feel like it’s over for them. But it isn’t.”
Leeds City College is one of just a handful of colleges in England where the role of students’ union president is a full-time paid sabbatical post.
He won the election, seeing off six other candidates, winning over 3,000 votes, and took office after passing his A Levels.
Tackling loneliness
Hussain honed in on student loneliness as one of his priorities and sought to bolster the SU’s student societies offer. He knew mental health and loneliness were particular issues among the college’s ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) community, so set up dedicated groups for Arabic and French-speaking students with limited budgets to organise trips and activities.
“We wanted to make sure our SU team is accessible to those least likely to come and talk to us. We’re not going to offer mental health support ourselves because we’re not qualified, but we can make sure that enrichment is taking place.”
There was “only one case” in his presidential term where he recalls his SU team falling out with college management.
As the death toll in Gaza started to rapidly escalate following Israel’s response to the attacks on October 7, Hussain found himself between the college “having to stay in the middle” and students demanding a more pro-Palestine stance.
“The situation in Gaza is affecting so many young people right now. Social media is so accessible so it’s constantly on young people’s phones.
“When things were getting worse, we felt that we had to put up a statement in solidarity with our students; that we understand how they’re feeling and to make sure there was support and space for them.”
Hussain says the college made its own statement, but it was criticised by some learners for being “too neutral”.
“As you can imagine, like loads of businesses, colleges, obviously, for reasons, have to kind of stay in the middle. So they can’t say ‘we support Palestine’ because it seems there can be consequences of that if it’s taken the wrong way. And in a college you really need to make sure you’re representing the views of everyone because there’s going to be different feelings about it.”
His SU set up a Students United for Palestine Society, which is now their biggest student-led society by far with 225 members.
“When we opened that space, students felt like they could talk about the issue safely. At first we had to kind of understand the college’s position a bit more; they explained it to us and we understood. I wouldn’t say we were in disagreement. We issued our own statement, which was a slightly different view.”
Reconnecting NUS with FE
Hussain speaking at NUS’ liberation conference
Going to college board meetings was “one of the scariest things I went into” but now he’s coming to the end of his term as a student governor, Hussain’s grasp of college finances puts him in good stead in his upcoming campaigns on education funding.
Hussain decided to stand for NUS vice president after getting “really excited” spending a day at an event with other FE student leaders last year. At one time, it would have been an NUS event that brought them together, but NUS’ presence in the FE sector has gradually dwindled in the last few years as it wrestles with its own financial issues.
The event was the Festival of Student Governance, organised by youth leadership charity Unloc and hosted by the Association of Colleges.
When the Conservatives dramatically cut ties with NUS in 2022 over antisemitism allegations, an FE Week investigation found there already wasn’t any meaningful engagement between them on FE issues.
NUS’ abandonment of the student leadership space in FE has left the union “disconnected” and “inaccessible”, Hussain’s manifesto said. He wants to “rebuild confidence and trust” in NUS among its FE members when he takes office on Monday.
Part of that will be a seat at the table in discussion about the sector’s future. Hussain says he’s “inspired” by the idea of working with organisations such as the Association of Colleges “to bring college leaders, staff and students together to talk about what FE might look like in years to come”.
‘No to more austerity’
Hussain is not a fan of Rishi Sunak’s idea for a modern form of national service, compelling 18 year olds to take part in community volunteering or military service.
Youth services have had funding taken away, teachers are losing their jobs
Hussain says if Sunak had consulted with young people before announcing the policy, the prime minister would have had better ideas to get his desired outcome.
“You need to understand what students want. Yes there’s a huge lack of skills in the UK. That’s your fault! Apprenticeships are not funded properly, FE is not funded properly. Youth services have had funding taken away, teachers are losing their jobs.”
Labour leader Keir Starmer also shouldn’t expect an easy ride if he moves into Number 10 on Friday.
“Young people tend to vote Labour, and young people’s voices need to be central to Labour’s plans for further education, whether that’s on the curriculum or what to do about the Advanced British Standard. And we need to be there to say no to more austerity.
“What students need, and I’m talking about further education specifically, they want to be confident in their leaders, they want to come to college, to learn the course, have enrichment, and have an enjoyable time. It’s not too much to ask, is it?”
Former Conservative strongholds hang in the balance asLabour’s lead in the polls holds. But what does this mean for former MPs who have made names for themselves in further education and skills?
FE Week has delved into YouGov’s most recent MRP model to find out…
Potential wipeout for Tory education MPs
Education secretary Gillian Keegan is facing a tough battle against the Liberal Democrats in her Chichester constituency where she is defending a 21,490 majority. YouGov’s latest MRP poll predicts Keegan’s vote share could fall from 58 per cent to 27 per cent, leading to a likely Lib Dem win.
Current skills minister Luke Hall, who was hurriedly appointed this March after the sudden resignation of Robert Halfon, is also predicted to lose his Thornbury and Yate seat to the Lib Dems. Hall had a 12,369 majority at the 2019 general election, but the poll currently puts the Lib Dems eight points ahead on vote share.
Meanwhile, bad news too for children and SEND minister David Johnston whose Didcot and Wantage seat is also currently leaning Lib Dem.
Another MP to have only briefly served in office was Andrea Jenkyns, who is facing a likely loss to Labour in the newly formed Leeds South West and Morley constituency. The sweary skills minister (infamous for putting her middle finger up to a crowd outside Downing Street as she was appointed) has been taking to social media to plead with Nigel Farage not to stand a Reform candidate against her because “we’re singing from the same hymn sheet”.
Labour is polling with a predicted 47 per cent of the vote share in the constituency, with Jenkyns on 25 per cent and Reform on 19.
Other former education secretaries face battles too
Kit Malthouse is the only former education secretary since the last general election who looks set to be re-elected, YouGov’s model shows.
The Tories are 13 points ahead in his North West Hampshire seat. Malthouse served for just over a month in 2022 under the Liz Truss premiership.
James Cleverly, who served as education secretary for two months before Malthouse, and Gavin Williamson, education secretary during the Covid years, are both classed as “toss-ups”, meaning too close to call.
Williamson, standing in the new seat of Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge, is polling three points behind Labour, while Cleverly is just three points ahead in Braintree, Essex..
Michelle Donelan, the education secretary for 35 hours, is also fighting for her seat, with just one point in it between the Tories and Lib Dems in Melksham and Devizes.
Others have jumped before they were booted.
Nadhim Zahawi has stood down as the MP for Stratford-on-Avon. He was sacked as Tory party chairman after failing to disclose that HMRC was investigating his tax affairs. His former constituency is currently considered a “toss-up” with just three points between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems.
Even Michael Gove’s once-safe Surrey Heath seat is now polling towards the Lib Dems.
Robert Halfon,who was skills minister twice under the Tories, suddenly stood down earlier this year. His Harlow constituency is a close race but is currently “leaning Labour.”
Robin Walker, chair of the education select committee and a former schools minister, is also not standing. The poll gives Labour a comfortable lead in his former Worcester constituency.
All smiles for Labour education team
Given the Labour party’s storming lead in the polls, it is no surprise that its shadow education team members are all in seats now classed as “safe” Labour wins.
Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson is 31 points ahead in Houghton and Sunderland South, while her shadow skills minister Seema Malhotra is ahead by 36 points in Feltham and Heston.
Blast from the past
Tory stalwart John Hayes, the first FE and skills minister after the 2010 election, is facing a struggle. His South Holland and The Deepings seat was the second-safest Conservative constituency after the last election, but YouGov places his race against Labour as too close to call.
Apprenticeships APPG chair Jonathan Gullis is polling third in Stoke-on-Trent North behind Labour and Reform.
It’s better news for Alex Burghart (skills minister Sept 2021 – July 2022) who should retain his Brentwood and Ongar seat.
NERD NOTE:
We used YouGov’s second MRP, published last week. MRP stands for multilevel regression with post-stratification models. They are based on aggregating online opinion polling data to work out how different groups of people might vote, and then applying that to the make-up of local areas to estimate the voting intention in each constituency.
YouGov says its results are an estimate of the range of possible results if the election took place today, as opposed to a prediction for July 4.
With the main parties’ manifestos published, it’s clear the early years is a battleground issue. Whoever wins power, the resulting reform in that sector will not be without consequence for further education.
So far, much of the rhetoric remains on ‘childcare’ as a driver for getting people back to work. However, access to early education also has a profound impact on a child’s development and their life chances.
Getting this right has a direct impact on further education – albeit a delayed one. Likewise, skills policy has a direct bearing on the quality of early years education.
So when pledges come to being delivered, it’s vital that any plans for the early years not only include long-term funding which reflects delivery costs, but that they are underpinned by a robust workforce training and development agenda.
This will have to mean tackling some significant, long-standing issues.
Gaps within the sector’s training and development framework were brought into sharp focus by a 2012 review chaired by Professor Cathy Nutbrown. Her report commended the drive, commitment, knowledge and skills of the workforce but characterised a training landscape which perpetuated low aspiration, low pay and low status.
A clear example of this was the bewildering number of qualifications on offer, which in 2012 had soared to several hundred from just three in the 1980s. Worse still, many of these failed to meet the criteria for inclusion on the Department for Education’s approved list, further exacerbating confusion.
In the decade since, changes have brought some clarity. However, uncertainty over qualification and progression routes remain a barrier. We continue to receive calls from educators who have just been told that their qualification is not accepted by the DfE, meaning that they cannot be counted in adult:child ratios.
Nutbrown also concluded that the quality of training varied significantly, leading employers to question which qualifications would properly equip staff to work effectively with children. This lack of trust discouraged experienced educators from becoming tutors, so the next generation were all too often not taught by subject specialists with recent vocational experience.
Learners often question the rationale behind further qualifications
Considerable progress has been made over the past decade on the supply side thanks to an increased focus on the qualifications framework and improved clarity over the career map for those joining the sector.
In addition, the introduction of apprenticeship standards and the education and early years T Level represent significant progress with potential to drive up recruitment of a younger generation of early educators.
However, for any policy to expand access to quality early years education, it must address the issues outlined in Ofsted’s thematic review. These include improving the initial assessment of learners’ abilities, and difficulties recruiting staff who have the relevant knowledge and experience to match course content.
Perhaps the greatest gap in the sector’s existing early years training and development policy is the lack of an early years route to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). The fact that this status has not been granted to early years graduates who have studied as hard and at as much expense as their maintained teacher colleagues can only be explained as institutional snobbery.
Denial of QTS epitomises broader challenges facing the sector’s training landscape. Learners often question the rationale behind further qualifications given that the sector’s struggling economic status means completing training rarely translates into a pay rise or promotion.
Encouraging educators to train solely to improve their skills, knowledge and experience only cuts so far. It is this wider context that ultimately leaves committed early years educators feeling undervalued and unappreciated.
So, as the nation heads to the polls in a few weeks, it’s imperative that the next government acknowledges the value and professionalism of the early years workforce, not just by implementing a route to QTS but addressing longstanding issues with regards to access to and quality of courses.
Failure to do so will leave further education caught between pressure to train more educators for the sector on one hand and potential recruits’ understandable reluctance to engage on the other.
And that would be to undervalue further education too.
As a teacher in the further education and skills sector, I firmly believe that it is our shared responsibility to cultivate the next generation of amazing teachers. And as a mentor with the support of an excellent provider, my own practice continually benefits too.
My experience of initial teacher education mentoring started nine years ago when I was a student at The University of Derby studying my PGCE in Further Education and Skills.
At that time, I was the trainee. The course was challenging, but it was transformational at the same time. Because of this, I jumped at the chance to be a mentor for the programme in September last year.
Reaping the benefits
Trainees bring a new outlook. The fresh perspective, the most up-to-date subject knowledge, the enthusiastic lens through which they see our subjects – we can use these skills too.
The University of Derby send us weekly ‘Curriculum Conversation’ prompts, allowing mentors to create the valuable link between theory and practice through open conversation with the trainee. Not only does this help me reflect and update the way I approach my own subject teaching, but it gives my trainee the confidence to present other ideas to me, too. I value her opinion, and as a result we have become a team, updating and improving delivery together at every opportunity.
Looking back on when you were a trainee, you will probably remember a few things; that nerve-wracking first lesson, spending days meticulously planning for every eventuality and agonising over the fact that you weren’t yet able to communicate your knowledge effectively to others. We must keep all of this in mind if we are to do a good job of supporting a trainee.
Regularly sharing our own experiences inevitably encourages open conversations. My trainee has been confident discussing when lessons have gone wrong because I have been open with her about my experiences – last week, let alone during my training!
After all, we’re all human, we all make mistakes and we’re all still learning.
Debunking the workload myth
There is a myth that mentoring a trainee will be time-consuming, adding to our already heavy workload. This doesn’t have to be the case. With the support of my initial teacher education (ITE} provider, I’ve been able to effectively mentor a trainee who started out nervous without feeling like it had a detrimental impact on my own practice.
As someone with dyspraxia, organisation has often been a barrier. This regularly leads to vast overcompensation on my part, inevitably increasing my workload. However, my desire to pre-emptively log and plan was immediately quashed by University of Derby with a wealth of readily available and easily accessible supporting documents to help the mentor journey.
The year is mapped out, the expectations are clear and the relevant forms are stored neatly in a named file. The logistics of the mentoring role were already worked out for me, leaving time to concentrate on what I believe to be the fun part: enhancing a trainee’s subject knowledge and supporting them to flourish in the classroom setting.
Contributing to the sector
While pushing student teachers to transfer their university knowledge into pedagogical practice, it’s key that we mentors also offer other opportunities. Invite them to professional development. Involve them in parent’s evening. Ask them to join with marking and standardisation. These opportunities will assist them in becoming a confident practitioner, while encouraging you to reflect on your practice.
Ultimately, it is our duty to invest in the future of education while investing in our own practice. Mentoring allows us to do both.
Supporting trainees is not just an add-on for established teachers; it is critical – albeit non-essential – for the continuous development of our own skills. This experience has provided me with the freedom of reflection that we so seldom grant ourselves as practitioners, and for me, it has been a particularly rewarding year.
I cannot wait to start again with another excellent teacher of tomorrow in September.
Bursary payments for vulnerable students are falling as the government tightens rules around their use, an FE Week investigation has found.
Analysis of never-before published Department for Education data on 16-19 bursary payments to “vulnerable” groups show learners received a record low average payment of £877 last year, despite the cost of living crisis.
Now in its tenth year, eligible learners could initially claim a maximum of £1,200 to pay for transport and course equipment such as books.
But from 2019-20, the “tone” in the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s (ESFA) guidance changed to stipulate that colleges should not automatically hand out the full payment and should only claim what students needed. Evidence also had to be provided for the claim.
Audit guidance says the ESFA will “recover funds” if providers cannot prove students met the eligibility criteria.
Internal auditors told FE Week they’ve seen an uptick in bursary audits as colleges have recognised the rules have made it a “more challenging area”.
Defined vulnerable groups
This branch of the 16-19 bursary was introduced in 2013 to support those unlikely to receive assistance from parents or carers, such as young people living away from home, to enable them to continue full or part-time college study.
Eligible students are those in care, care leavers and young people receiving benefits such as Universal Credit.
Unlike other bursaries available to FE providers, the vulnerable bursary is not handed out through allocations based on student numbers.
To apply for a payment, students must submit a claim to the college, which will then assess their eligibility and submit a claim with evidence to the DfE’s Student Bursary Support Service.
Not enough for travel
The total amount colleges have claimed has been on a gradual decline.
In 2013-14, £23.6 million was handed out, falling slightly to £21.8 million in 2017-18 and then to £19.3 million last year.
The average payment for each student has fallen from a high of £1,037 in 2018-19 to £877 in 2022-23.
Lisa Humphries, the associate principal of students at Chichester College and chair of the National Association for Managers of Student Services, told FE Week the averages were a surprise “because lots of colleges would say that money isn’t enough to support those students needing to travel”.
ESFA guidance highlights that colleges can use the discretionary 16-19 bursary pot to top up payments to individuals.
The DfE did not provide a breakdown of the participation of each defined vulnerable group, so FE Week obtained the data through a freedom of information request (see table).
Comparing the figures with official government data going back to 2019, 67 per cent of the 22,019 over-16s in care in England received a payment in 2022-23. That proportion has stayed the same since 2019, apart from 2020-21 when 69 per cent received a payment, likely due to the pandemic.
Tone ‘changed’ over the last decade
Humphries said many colleges handed out the full payment of £1,200 in the early years, but the ESFA had become “more rigid” with asking for evidence on how the vulnerable bursary would be spent.
“That tone changed over the last decade.”
In 2014-15, the guide directly stated: “[Education Funding Agency] would not usually expect students in the vulnerable groups to be awarded less than £1,200, if they are on a course lasting 30 weeks or more and are participating full-time.”
The following year, the guidance wording changed to “vulnerable bursary of up to £1,200”.
Then from 2019-20, the ESFA said students should only receive the amount they needed and not automatically be awarded £1,200.
Colleges are increasingly under strain to keep an audit trail of each claim and what students will use it for or the ESFA can claw back the funds.
Auditors told FE Week that when they examined bursary audits, they looked for “evidence to support the payments made, how these are agreed, and we’d be auditing against the ESFA guidance”.
Humphries said: “For example, I would have to record in my system that if we’ve spent £1,200, £850 was their travel ticket for the year and £350 was their course cost.
“Whatever it may be, you would have to be specific.”
Julian Gravatt, the deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, added: “The changes to allocation rules over the past couple of years is a result of colleges now being required to carry out documented assessment of need for each individual, when by definition these young people are the most in need of money to support their continued engagement in education.
“AoC has challenged this approach and will continue to do so.”
FE leaders and experts gathered in Hammersmith this week for the 2024 Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ (AELP) national conference, a week before the general election. Here are the key takeaways from some of the speeches…
I’d up the apprenticeship levy, says Halfon in parting salvo
Former skills minister Robert Halfon would have “no problem” increasing the apprenticeship levy if he were in charge, and “absolutely would” review and improve functional skills.
In a wide-ranging “in conversation” session at this year’s AELP annual conference in London, Halfon said he was “depressed” that apprenticeships and skills were not featuring prominently in the Conservative party’s election campaign.
“I’m glad the Conservatives have said we would have 100,000 more apprenticeships. I actually wish that apprenticeships and skills featured more in the campaign. That has depressed me a bit.”
Halfon shocked the sector and the Westminster establishment in March by suddenly resigning as minister for skills and announcing he would stand down as an MP. He told FE Week at the time he felt he had “done all I could” for apprenticeships and wanted to spend his remaining time in parliament working for his Harlow constituents.
Robert Halfon
While welcomed by delegates as a champion for apprenticeships, Halfon was challenged on stage about restrictive English and maths rules that training providers say holds back achievement – a topic that has featured heavily at successive AELP conferences.
Apprentices must pass English and maths qualifications if they fail at GCSE to achieve their apprenticeship. Providers have long argued qualifications’ curriculum, assessment and funding are not fit for purpose.
Learners with English and maths passes earn higher wages, Halfon told the audience, and he didn’t want “to create a kind of ghetto system where you say because someone has a disadvantage, they do a lesser qualification”.
But asked what he would do if he were to become the minister again, he would “absolutely look at functional skills and review it and make it more practical”.
On apprenticeship funding, he claimed he had “no problem, personally” with asking employers to pay more in to the levy as long as it was done “carefully”. But he wouldn’t be drawn on why the Treasury top slices almost £800 million from levy receipts each year.
The apprenticeship levy has been described by AELP as a “cash cow for the Treasury” because of the growing gap between what employers pay in and what they allocate to the DfE and devolved UK administrations.
“I always lobbied for more funding,” Halfon said, “but I also had the argument thrown at me all the that the levy’s not being used by businesses.”
He is worried that apprenticeship numbers will fall under a Labour government and warned that employers could game their new funding system.
Labour’s plans for a “skills and growth” levy would allow businesses to spend their funds on wider skills training, as well as apprenticeships.
“I want it to remain an apprenticeship levy, not be a skills levy. What it has done is raise funds to pay the costs for SMEs to train apprentices. If you dilute it, you’ll have gaming of the system potentially, but also lots of people doing skills courses rather than hiring apprentices.”
Rather than use the levy to fund other skills courses, Halfon backed a skills tax credit. Learning and Work Institute and Holex have put forward tax credit models that would give businesses tax benefits if they invested in particular types of training, such as level 2 and below qualifications, for certain workers.
On his next steps, Halfon said he would be “honored” to join the Lords, but quipped: “There’ll be a bigger queue for the House of Lords than the Selfridge’s sale, especially if the [general election] polls are correct.”
His advice for new MPs entering parliament next week is to “evangelise about apprenticeships and skills”.
“My hope and aim is that I will move on from Westminster life championing apprenticeships to championing apprenticeships and skills working somewhere.”
ITPs help ‘make magic happen’ in trying times, says AELP boss
Private training providers are still battling against “institutional suspicion”, the chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ chief executive has warned.
Ben Rowland (pictured) told delegates at the association’s annual conference in London that he was working to create better working conditions for them to “thrive”.
He used his speech on day one of this week’s event as an opportunity to run through what he has learned over his first six months in post.
Following a roadshow in which he met more than 200 members face-to-face, Rowland said he heard how ITPs “make magic happen” by injecting productivity into employers and how they contribute to the nation’s prosperity through their training offer.
But tight funding and regulatory markets meant they had to do this “with one arm tied behind your back” and with “very little appreciation”.
“There still, unfortunately, is institutional suspicion of independent providers”.
He told delegates this was triggered by “previous episodes” in which civil servants “have felt they have had rings run around them by unscrupulous providers”.
“I’m not talking about the officials necessarily that we work with personally, but the teams underneath them who operationalise policy, funding and rules.”
He said his interactions with government had also shown him how policymaking was “light on data and strong on anecdote”. He told members that funding decisions were often made based on isolated snippets of data out of context and/or on the basis of a handful of conversations. This was something that “had to change”.
The way government assesses risk was also “odd”, he said. In the case of ITPs, the risk of “not equipping people with the skills the country desperately needs carries very little weight, whereas they obsess about the risk that money does not flow in exactly the way they want their ideal programmes to work”.
He said that if AELP and its members could “present our case in the right way” then the sector would “slowly but surely get them to create the conditions in which we can flourish – because if we flourish, then so do they. We just need to show them this”.
He revealed that the association was launching a series of “mini-commissions” and a “regulatory burden project” to boost evidence for conversations with incoming ministers on the most pressing issues facing the skills sector.
The commissions will last eight to 12 weeks. The first will focus on whether the existing English and maths functional skills exit requirements are holding back apprenticeship progression and outcomes.
Devolved AEB ‘difficult to navigate’
A “postcode lottery” of adult education funding and policies created by devolution should be simplified by the next government, training providers have urged.
The devolution of England’s £1.5 billion adult education budget to regional mayors – now accounting for about 60 per cent of spending – was discussed at a workshop at the conference on Tuesday.
A hands-up survey suggested that about half viewed devolution of adult skills as a negative.
While devolution allowed mayors to leverage their local knowledge and could encourage innovation, it also risked creating a “postcode lottery” for learners, training providers and employers, panellists agreed.
Labour has pledged a “presumption towards” increasing local spending if it wins the election, suggesting it is unlikely to reverse the Conservative’s decision to hand skills budgets to nine mayoral combined authorities (MCAs) and local authorities by 2026-27.
Lucy Hunte, the senior apprenticeship development manager at NHS England, said devolution could be “quite challenging” for trusts that straddled more than skills area because of differing policies and bidding rules set by mayoral combined authorities (MCAs) and the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
“Some authorities are really, really engaged … you know, what do you need? What are your skill requirements?
“Others, they dictate and say, ‘this is what you need,’ and that’s not necessarily fit for purpose.
“It’s a really mixed bag and it’s a shame, because I think if handled properly, it is really, really beneficial – but the feedback I get from my employers is it’s just a minefield. It’s really difficult for them to navigate.”
Examples of “different” approaches MCAs took included the sectors they prioritised and what level of earnings qualified learners for free or discounted learning.
Fellow panellist Steve Morris, the commercial director of Learning Curve, said his team was “heavily involved” in devolution because it regularly bid for training across the country, His commissioning team and grown from two to nine in the past five years.
Turning to solutions, he encouraged providers to collaborate on MCA contracts and with authorities to ensure mutual understanding.
Hunte said rules needed to be “simplified and standardised” across England, to ensure contract-awarding timescales and bidding systems were carried out in the same way.
Earlier in the day, Stephen Evans, the chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute, said MCAs should focus on outcomes and be held to account on “broad targets” such as employment and apprenticeships.
He suggested that some spending, such as careers guidance and skills bootcamps, should be commissioned by the government rather than regional mayoral authorities.
