London college controversially hit with Ofsted ‘inadequate’ over ‘inappropriate behaviour’

London’s Croydon College has become the first general FE college branded ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted in seven years, after a “significant minority” of students reported instances of homophobic language and “taunting” behaviour.

But the college’s leaders, who secured positive feedback and judgements in other areas, have hit back saying they are “extremely surprised and disappointed” at the overall grading which “does not fairly reflect what inspectors experienced during their visit and the evidence we provided”.

Ofsted downgraded Croydon College to the lowest possible judgement from a previous ‘good’ grade in a report published today following a visit in February.

It makes the college the first general FE college to be given the bottom rating under Ofsted’s education inspection framework since it launched in 2019.

The mixed report issued ‘inadequate’ judgements for behaviours and attitudes and leadership and management, gave ‘requires improvement’ ratings for the quality of education, personal development, education programmes for young people and high needs provision, while apprenticeships and adult learning programmes were judged as ‘good’.

The college confirmed it had challenged several aspects of the report, including submitting additional evidence, but said it was very disappointed the complaint was not upheld.

Inspectors said that “a significant proportion of learners who inspectors spoke with do not feel comfortable at college,” particularly in social and communal spaces.

The report continued that “a significant minority of learners told inspectors they experience homophobic language and taunting and at Coulsdon, female learners do not feel comfortable in areas such as the student common room”.

Despite the discomfort of learners, Ofsted inspectors regarded safeguarding arrangements as “effective”. FE Week has asked Ofsted to clarify its position on safeguarding when learners themselves told inspectors they were not comfortable.

Attendance for young learners was deemed too low, with leaders not setting high enough expectations of young learners’ attendance and behaviour, inspectors said.

Croydon College merged with Coulsdon Sixth Form College in March 2019, but inspectors noted that there was “considerable variation” in the quality of teaching across the two colleges.

Croydon was characterised as a “positive experience” while at Coulsdon too many learners had a poor experience which resulted in a low proportion of students achieving qualifications.

It said that the quality of education at Coulsdon had declined in the last three years, with tutors failing to prepare learners well enough for vocational exams there.

The report also noted the challenges the college had faced that had included staff recruitment problems, the aftermath of a flood, and the issues from Covid-19, but explained that leaders and governors had not been rapid enough in improving the quality of provision and attendance.

Concerns were also raised on the curriculum for personal development, as tutorial lessons were often used as a coursework catch-up opportunity that left learners with “limited” knowledge and skills on making safe and informed decisions on relationships or understanding the dangers of extremism.

A joint statement from the college’s principal, Caireen Mitchell, and the chair of governors, Tony Stevenson, said they were “extremely surprised and disappointed” at the grading.

“While we acknowledge there are improvements to be made at both colleges, we feel strongly that the grade given does not fairly reflect what inspectors experienced during their visit and the evidence we provided,” they said.

“The very mixed profile of the inspection report, with two significant areas rated as ‘good’ and many positive comments about the quality of education and outcomes for all learners, does not align with the final grading delivered. Ofsted’s concerns about the behaviours of a small number of learners are not behaviours we recognise on a day-to-day basis at our colleges. We raised our concerns directly with Ofsted and provided more evidence to address the areas highlighted.”

The college said an improvement plan was already in place and had already been delivering improved attendance, with further improvements expected to be demonstrated to inspectors in a monitoring visit in six months’ time.

Despite inspectors’ concerns, the report also said that adult learners had a positive learning environment featuring “well-planned and taught courses”.

Apprentices also enjoyed a curriculum that enabled them to develop “highly relevant” skills and behaviours for their chosen industries.

On meeting local skills needs, the report said the curriculum is aligned effectively to priority sectors in London, including construction, health and social care and digital, leading to a “reasonable contribution” judgement.

It also found that leaders had a “clear rationale” for the subjects taught and progression pathways offered.

There were 2,585 young learners – around two thirds of whom studied at Croydon with a third at Coulsdon – as well as 2,620 adult learners, 217 apprentices and 200 students with high needs at the college.

Both Croydon and Coulsdon had received ‘good’ ratings during short inspections early in 2018.

The last time a general FE college had a grade four rating was Hereward College in 2016.

Careers guidance is not only for young people – adults benefit too

Think of careers advice and you may be taken back to your school days, sitting outside a commandeered classroom on an uncomfortable plastic chair and waiting to be seen by the careers counsellor. You might even remember the ‘talk about your future’ and the definitive list of the qualifications you would definitely need in order to confidently pursue your chosen occupation.

If you’re of a certain age, you may even have experienced this at a time when it wasn’t unthinkable to imagine your working life stretching out in front of you as a series of well-mapped out progressions along a prescribed path.

Today, working life is rather more uncertain. As a result, it’s not only people just starting out who find themselves wondering about their career direction, what employers want and how they can best equip themselves for the next stage in their working lives.

External forces such as economic crises, technological change, the pandemic and the war in Europe have transformed national and international labour markets. The types and quality of jobs have changed, as have the demands of employers and employees.

Workers are rightly anticipating the need to upskill, reskill and adapt to new roles, but they need a well-connected and established skills system with career guidance support at its heart to help them understand what skills are required now. More than that, they need support to gain and maintain the skills to meet future employer demands.

Recent research on the labour market information system for careers in England found that there are significant gaps in adult career guidance services, such as little detailed information on skills and sectoral information. These gaps were emphasised during the pandemic, when adults were looking to transfer their skills to new roles. Advisers found that there was a lack of current information on the labour market and demands that could be used to help them.

Workers are anticipating the need to upskill, reskill and adapt

It is in this context that ReWAGE has recently published Adult career guidance and its role in skills development, which argues that adult career guidance services should be the foundation of a skills system supporting those in work to remain employable and those out of work to gain employment. This would not only benefit employees, employers and the economy alike, but also ensure that the UK’s workforce of 2030 and beyond is ready and able to meet the challenges ahead.

The paper includes evidence that other countries are using a combination of legislation, strategic leadership, coordination, collaboration and professional standards to offer support for adults to explore career options, return to education, reskill, upskill and attain sustainable work. There is no reason why the UK can’t follow suit, and the paper offers four key recommendations to get started.

First, greater public investment in supporting adults into employment would increase their understanding of available job, education and career opportunities and enable them to access support to make informed work and learning decisions across their life course.

Second, government should provide a transparent and stable career guidance system. This requires legislation, strategic leadership and collaboration with stakeholders including local government, employers, education and training providers, employment services and the National Careers Service.

Third, government should encourage and support employers to invest in careers support and development for employees. This would ensure a skilled and adaptable workforce and benefit individuals, employers and the economy.

Fourth, there needs to be greater investment in labour market information and data, particularly at a sectoral level. This would improve intelligence for those developing and providing services to support adults looking to upskill, reskill and transfer their skills. As part of this, we need better classification of occupations and skills taxonomies to enable better linking of data across services.

There is overwhelming evidence to support the benefits of career guidance. When enriched by employer engagement and work experience, it enables a better understanding of the work environment and raises aspirations.

It’s time we reached a clear agreement on what good careers guidance looks like for adults. Today’s employees need it, and our economy demands it.

AI won’t kill creativity. It can prompt more students to discover theirs

Any English teacher working in FE will understand the trials and tribulations of getting students to complete a piece of creative writing. For our cohort of re-sit students, studying English is the blight on their college experience. Cajoling them into the classroom is a huge challenge in itself; asking them to write a creative piece is like asking them to push a boulder up a mountain using a feather.

When faced with a blank page, the only thing many students who struggle with English can see is a big, blank space. Then the only thing they can think of is the big, blank space, and the more they stare, the scarier and more monstrous it becomes. The physical act of putting pen to paper and starting the story is so overwhelming that they simply can’t make a start. The fear of failure becomes all-consuming, and their well of creativity is just a big, dark void.

Faced with this challenge, teachers are worried that instead of working to overcome this fear, students will simply try to cheat their way out of it with AI. But what if AI was in fact the solution?

Enter The Creative Engine, an AI Chat Bot that is trained to create story prompts based on the archives of Seven Stories. Funded by Newcastle University Humanities Research Institution (NUHRI) in collaboration with The National Centre for Children’s Books and the English Association, a team led by Tiago Sousa Garcia have created an app designed to help students kickstart their writing and boost their creativity.

The Creative Engine, which launches on 23 May, uses the archives from Seven Stories and Inference API (Hugging Face) to generate the opening of a story from a simple prompt. A lot of data gathering, power, expertise, something called ‘Optical Character Recognition’ and technical wizardry has gone into its creation. I don’t understand and won’t attempt to explain the tech behind it, but my students and I were given the opportunity to test it and I am excited by what we experienced.

Something quite beautiful was happening: their faces lit up

As a result off my membership of the English Assocation, I was invited to be involved in teachers’ workshops that gave me and colleagues from around the country the opportunity to talk to Tiago, navigate the first prototype and consider ways in which it could be improved to really enhance student experience and creativity. We suggested that the team include starting prompts, the opportunity to customise the page, and a feature allowing students to interact with web pages. The English Association facilitated many meetings in which our collaborative voices and experience helped Tiago and his team to create an app that was effective, affordable and easy to use.

Next, we got the students involved. Tiago visited several schools and colleges including Calderdale College to begin the testing process with three different models. To test each one’s ease of use, he gave the students no instructions, and to test their robustness and effectiveness, he positively encouraged them to try to ‘break’ the apps. They willingly obliged. (NUHRI had implemented safeguarding profanity filters and toxic material and reporting filters, so the students could navigate the app safely!)

At first, the students were a little hesitant; however, after only a few minutes there was a definite buzz in the air. They were really invested in their roles as testers – but something else was happening, something quite beautiful: their faces lit up with enthusiasm.

More than testing the app, they were invested in their stories. They took pride in their creativity. They became alive with possibilities rather than fixed on that terrifying void. Possibly for the first time in their lives, they experienced autonomy in their work, the right stimulus to ‘get started’ and none of the crippling anxiety of the blank page.

My re-sit English class was joyful and itself became a ‘Creative Engine’.

Yes, AI has nefarious potential. But the solution is writ large in this experience. By bringing teachers and developers together, we can see to it that more students are supported to develop their creativity and fewer are tempted to shortcut the process – a net win for creative writing!

Qube unable to pay £3m to creditors after collapse

Qube Learning has left creditors owed almost £3 million worth of debt following its collapse, new insolvency documents show.

FE Week revealed at the end of March that the company, which was one of the country’s largest training providers, ceased trading without warning, leaving hundreds of staff and thousands of learners in the dark about their future.

Qube’s statement of affairs, published this week by voluntary liquidators Interpath Advisory, outlined the extent of its insolvency. Creditors will be left over £2.95 million out of pocket following the sale of the failed company’s assets.

Owner Claire Whichello told staff in an email when it shut down that there was “too much uncertainty” to continue trading due to “increased competition in the apprenticeship market, challenges regarding stagnant funding bands, uncertainty around adult education budget contracts and the expected expiry of our traineeship contracts”.

The news followed an abrupt withdrawal by the Department for Education of its HGV skills bootcamps contract just days before its sudden closure.

Interpath liquidators identified over £4.2 million worth of assets, including a £1.5 million director loan, but estimated that only £691,273 can be raised to pay off its debts to preferential creditors, namely former employees and tax owed to the government.

The training provider, which made 203 staff redundant, is expected to pay back over £300,000 of wage arrears and holiday accrual to former employees. Liquidators will then realise the debt owed to HMRC to the sum of £303,359.

But Qube’s remaining available assets will not be enough to mitigate its large liabilities from unsecured creditors.

The statement of affairs revealed that Qube owes money to more than 200 trade creditors, the largest being HMRC, the Department for Education, Vodafone. It also owes money to lenders such as National Westminster Bank and IWOCA.

Liquidators have estimated that Qube has accrued an approximate £2.95 million total deficiency that it will not be able to pay back. The company was struggling to make a profit according to its latest accounts for the year ending December 31, 2021. In the year, Qube recorded revenue of £10.9 million but posted a loss of £590,000. It made a £744,000 profit the year before.

If we really want to deliver diversity, we need a Public Services T Level

The government’s reasons for wanting to de-fund dozens of technical qualifications seem reasonable. As the DfE says, the aim is to ‘simplify the system for young people’ and create a ‘ladder up for all’.

An impressive range of T Levels is now available which offer an attractive option for those seeking to mix their studies with industry placements. But while curriculum reforms are welcome, there are some worrying gaps in replacements for all of the NCFE, BTEC and other applied general courses which are set to be phased out by 2025.

This is one of a number of concerns about the proposals that demand urgent action. The challenge is to introduce these reforms in a manner that doesn’t disadvantage any students or cause successful existing pathways into work to disappear.

In this regard, the DfE’s claim that only unpopular or failing applied general courses, or those that overlap with T Levels will be defunded deserves scrutiny.

Uniformed public services courses that are currently offered by FE colleges are a prime example. These help students, often with very few qualifications, to develop the skills they need to progress and pursue a career in the police, fire service, army, prison service or ambulance service. These are all crucial sectors for our society, and all are facing challenges in terms of recruiting or retaining staff and ensuring their workforces are sufficiently diverse.

Undermining social mobility

These courses, running from Level 1 to 3, provide a unique pathway for young people for whom a direct route into A Levels (or indeed T Levels with their five-GCSE entry requirement) is simply not available.

And there is strong demand for them. At Leeds City College, some 350 16- to 18-year-old students want to join a uniformed service. In addition to these, 40 adults have also come to us to acquire the 80 UCAS points they need to acquire through a Level 3 qualification to join the police through Leeds Trinity University’s Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship, which is funded by the West Yorkshire Police apprenticeship levy.

But the government’s planned reforms provide no direct alternative qualification for learners who want to work in the uniformed services. Instead, the DfE has made arrangements for colleges to apply for funding to run a ‘small Alternative Academic Qualification (AAQ)’ in their place from 2026.

The expectation will be for these small AAQs to be studied in combination with two A levels, which will make this new pathway much less attractive (and in some cases inaccessible) to many. This change would restrict choice and, nationally, lead to a significant reduction in the number of people attempting to join our uniformed services.

That would represent a disastrous blow for social mobility.

Delivering a diverse workforce

Our uniformed services still have a long way to go to ensure their workforces reflect our society. The government’s police workforce report for England and Wales, for example, shows that as of March 2022, white officers made up nearly 92 per cent of personnel.

In West Yorkshire, last year’s racial diversity report showed that just 7.4 per cent of the force’s officers were from a ethnic minority backgrounds. Rightly, the region’s deputy mayor for policing and crime, Alison Lowe described this as ‘woeful’.

Our courses are helping to address these shortcomings. Some 20 per cent of our Level 3 public services students in Leeds last year identified as BAME.

The gender split among students is also helping to address the historical imbalance which the police still suffers from. In England and Wales, the workforce is 66.5 per cent male. At Leeds City College, our public services students last year were 60 per cent female.

In addition, 40 per cent of Leeds City College’ public service students in 2022 came from some of the country’s most deprived postcode areas.

FE providers are doing the work to create the diverse workforce our public services are crying out for – through courses that could soon disappear. Gillian Keegan must ensure that a public services T Level is created to continue meeting skills needs in these crucial sectors.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 426

Philippa Pickford

Director of Regulation, Office for Students

Start date: July 2023

Previous Job: Director, Delivery and Schemes, Ofgem

Interesting fact: Philippa enjoys walking in the countryside with her family. A trip up Scafell Pike last summer completed a family challenge of scaling the three peaks (although the challenge was completed over a six-year timescale!)


Robert Herriot

Strategy and New Business Manager, 1st for EPA

Start date: May 2023

Previous Job: Sales Marking Manager, Federation for Industry Sector Skills and Standards

Interesting fact: In a previous role, Robert met with the top 19 entrepreneurs in Scotland to get their signatures for charity. Robert hopes his role at 1st for EPA will involve meeting the same calibre of customers.


Funding obstinacy is killing off apprenticeships that are crucial to our economy

The HGV & Bus and Coach Standards Trailblazer Group has been working with IfATE to rectify a serious funding mishap in 2019 that reduced the funding band from £18,000 to £15,000 for the three-year HGV technician apprenticeship.

Like many other industries, we are operating in a very tight labour market. It takes nearly four years to qualify as an HGV mechanic and the job is not only safety critical but essential to our economy to keep our supply chains moving.

The core issue lies in IfATE erroneously categorising virtually every vehicle component, batteries and training rigs as capital funded items even though our trailblazer group has confirmed that the items do not last longer than the duration of the individual apprenticeship.

Contrary to IfATE’s view, most of the items are destroyed through constant use by the apprenticeship within a couple of years. Common sense says that if you strip down and rebuild something 12 times a day – when it was only designed to be stripped down once in its lifetime – it does not last very long. Yet no amount of evidence, engineering reports, photographs or even repeat invoices seem to be able convince officials.

According to IfATE, the required specialist buildings and training rigs such as engines and gearboxes are all ineligible cost items. Funding rules state that a provider can claim for premises if mandatory to run the course, but IfATE are refusing to add these costs. Instead, they say that the costs are covered by the 20 per cent non-teaching costs, which they themselves calculate. As a result, we are left with insufficient funding to pay for specialist training centres. 

Skimping on kit literally endangers the public. And the fact that the programme is a loss-maker has resulted in most providers exiting this provision altogether.

What is the point of trailblazers if IfATE insists it knows best?

The funding process is supposed to be transparent and fair. Our experience is that it is opaque, bureaucratic, and slow. I would go as far as to say it is not fit for purpose and is not providing good value for the taxpayer’s money.

The question we ask ourselves as a trailblazer group is what happens if the training providers do not want to or cannot provide this eye-wateringly expensive equipment. What happens to the day release local college courses that do not have a manufacturer who is willing or able to fund all the training equipment for their apprentices to learn on the right kit?

If those courses exist, the reality is that learners are more likely shown how to do things on cars only, or taught ‘in theory’ and left to do the practical back at the workplace. This is not good enough. It fails our apprentices, our businesses and our economy.

We have invited IfATE officials to come along to a training centre, but they have declined saying ‘they already know’. We have offered them to come to a meeting of our 50-strong trailblazer group to hear the views of the manufacturers, employers, training providers and EPA organisations, but they don’t feel they need to.

The sector route panel may be well-intentioned, but it has no heavy vehicle experience. More than that, the route is enormous and no one panel can really make good decisions in these circumstances.

This has been a very difficult process since the latest review began in October 2022, when it was supposed to be a simple costing exercise driven by an IfATE error. More than six months on, we are left asking ourselves what the point of a trailblazer/employer lead group is if IfATE do not trust and respect the industry and insists it knows best.  As wealth creators for the economy, we do not feel valued or listened to.

As we stare down the worst shortage of skilled technicians our industry has ever experienced, it is easy to conclude that apprenticeships, led and funded as they are, are no longer our go-to source of high-quality future talent.

After 30 years of supporting apprentices, that makes me extremely sad. Everyone else should be worried about the implications.

Reinvigorating the apprenticeship brand isn’t all about funding – but that would help too

The post-pandemic recovery in apprenticeship starts has stalled during the current academic year with the biggest fall (8.3 per cent) in the first two quarters occurring in the 19-to-24 age group. The fluctuation in start numbers is largely determined by employer demand and there is no doubt that the slowdown in the economy since last summer has had a negative impact on what had been an encouraging post-lockdown recovery for the apprenticeship programme.

So how can we go about reinvigorating the apprenticeship brand? Here’s a summary of the main points I put forward at the recent FE Week Annual Apprenticeship Conference 2023.

Responsiveness and relevance

First, more needs to be done to bring apprenticeships in line with the needs of business. In particular, the employer trailblazer structure under IfATE is not functioning as it should. Employers can make recommendations to make apprenticeships more attractive to other businesses, but too often IfATE won’t accept them, such as allowing flexibility in the off-the-job training rule.

Then, as I wrote in FE Week in March, the apprenticeship requirement for attaining functional skills in maths in its current form is putting off a lot of businesses and would-be apprentices from engaging in the programme.

Remit Training has since conducted an online poll in which household-name employers and many training providers participated. Of these, 88 per cent of participants agreed that the maths aim needs reform. The key objective should be to reduce and achieve contextualisation of the curriculum to be more relevant to the apprenticeship.

Funded for success

The same proportion of respondents agreed that the separate funding rate, unchanged since May 2017, requires a significant uplift.

Our calculation is that the rate needs to be £1,800 to adequately cover monthly taught sessions with each apprentice. Without it, lower functional skills attainment will remain a major factor in the disappointing apprenticeship completion rates overall, which undoubtedly damages the brand.

Apprenticeship funding in general has not increased over the past six years, and in some cases has gone down. Over the same period since March 2017, the rate of inflation (Retail Price Index, RPI) has increased by 36 per cent in absolute terms.  It is hardly surprising therefore that we hear almost weekly stories of providers going bust or withdrawing from apprenticeships.

Some observers may not care about providers, but they should at least care about the futures of thousands of young apprentices who are left in the lurch. An announcement on remedial action since promises on funding were made in early November cannot be delayed any longer.   

The DfE’s apprenticeships director, Peter Mucklow recently visited Remit Training’s automotive apprentice academies in Derby. There, he saw the high level of investment needed to provide good quality training as the UK responds to the surge in new electric vehicle registrations.

We emphasised that we had to generate commercial training income in order to pay for our apprenticeship provision and grow it, adding that inflation has turned our HGV technician apprenticeship programme into a loss-maker. It means that Remit has to find alternative ways to raise funds to establish more academies when the economy needs these vital skills to keep our supply chains moving.

Consistent messaging

Lastly, the mark of any successful brand is its attractiveness to potential consumers. But apprenticeships are still not competing with other sectors on a level playing field. To attract more young people to apprenticeships, we should review how best to work with schools on the Baker Clause requirements for providing information and guidance to pupils.

Instead of potentially lots of providers trying to come into schools carrying different messages, a collaborative approach is needed to agree a manageable programme of visits. The government should also commission some bite-sized videos featuring apprenticeship completers talking about opportunities opened, career progression and increased earnings. 

The key point emanating from independent training providers is that boosting the apprenticeship brand is not just about government funding. There are other changes with the potential to make the programme much more attractive to employers and young people, which all need government vision and leadership.

And of course, funding has to be addressed urgently too.         

14-16 college entry 10 years on: ‘Transformational’ policy plagued with funding and reputation risks

Ten years on from the introduction of direct entry for 14- to 16-year-olds in college, FE Week hears of its transformative impact on learners. But inequitable funding and reputational damage have led to a postcode lottery for the provision and prevented the policy hitting the heights first envisioned

Cath Sezen is unequivocal. “Where it does exist, it offers a great opportunity for young people who really want to study a vocational area and some young people for whom school hasn’t quite worked. Without it, there will be a big gap in provision,” she says.

Sezen, interim director of education policy at the Association of Colleges, is talking about direct entry provision, where colleges enrol and teach students aged 14 to 16 where a mainstream school is not the right answer for them.

Announced back in 2012 by the coalition government, the policy was a response to the Wolf review and aimed to help those for whom a vocational route was more appropriate, and in turn, hoped that would help improve those students’ academic subject performance too.

Sezen says it also provided a replacement for the increased flexibility programme – where key stage 4 students could do one day a week in college – and the similar young apprenticeship programme after funding for those ceased.

In the first year (2013/14) 170 learners took up the offer across five colleges in England.

A decade on, a Freedom of Information request by FE Week can reveal that just 12,860 young students have been taught through direct entry.

Only 27 colleges (either general FE or sixth form) have attempted to offer the provision.

And just 14 colleges are listed as planning to offer provision this year, according to government guidance.

South Gloucestershire and Stroud College is a new name to enter the arena this year, but 14 others over the years have stopped offering the provision. So why has provision that insiders say has such a transformative impact on young learners had so little take-up?

‘Doing more for less’

One answer lies in the funding model. Per-student 14 to 16 funding comes at the same rate as college 16 to 19 students, £4,542 for the basic rate this year. That is despite direct entry provision being for 25 taught hours per week (the same as schools) compared to around 16 or 17 hours usually seen on 16-plus college courses.

Basic per pupil funding for their key stage 4 peers in mainstream schools however is £5,831 – nearly £1,300 more per student.

Coupled with the requirement for colleges to provide a separate space on their campus for teaching direct entry, and difficulties for colleges to access high-needs funding, Sezen says it has left colleges “asked to do more for less”.

Alan McKenna (pictured inset) is deputy director of SEND and inclusive provision at Leeds City College, which is one of just two colleges to offer direct entry every year since its launch. He is also chair of the AoC’s 14 to 16 special interest group.

He says: “Funding is the number one reason why colleges have pulled out because, until you get to a certain size, I don’t think you can do it at a profit, or even break even.

“It’s only in the last couple of years that we actually broke even. Up until that, the first eight years it was costing about 20 per cent more than the money being brought in.

“Unless you have got a very altruistic chief executive who sees the moral compass, who sees the social climbing of these young people and how they can get there… I can see why most colleges would pull out if they are struggling financially in the first place.”

According to the DfE, an implementation group was formed in 2012, chaired by Mike Hopkins, then principal of Middlesbrough College, and Tony Medhurst, who was at the helm at Harrow College, which set out the arrangements for delivery – including funding.

Some colleges, like Accrington and Rossendale and The Oldham College, ceased delivery of the offer after just one year. For others, such as Hereward College of Further Education, low numbers appeared to be behind the decision to quit.

But Tyne Coast College is not listed for this year, despite 600 direct entry students being taught there over the past eight years. Annual overall numbers of direct entry students appear to be falling too – 1,336 were recorded in the 2022/23 academic year compared with a peak of 1,741 in 2019/20, a 23 per cent fall.

FE Week has approached a number of colleges that have ended their provision, but none wished to comment on their reasons why.

For those who do offer the provision though, the clear need in the community appears to be a key driver, rather than income.

Mike Hopkins, principal at South and City College in Birmingham (and not the same Hopkins as at Middlesbrough), says the college opened its direct entry centre in 2017/18 because the local authority was closing down a large school in the city which left year 10 and 11 students displaced.

“We stepped in and set up a centre and it’s really successful,” he says, albeit after a “baptism of fire” in the first year as it got to grips with the provision.

He adds: “If we didn’t do it, there would be a significant number who have a problem.”

Reputational damage

Funding is far from the only problem. With the same accountability regime as schools, progress 8 scores are published for direct entry in colleges.

But, as direct entry students are not taught at college through years 7 to 9, college progress 8 scores are much lower than most schools.

This left Leeds City College (pictured main) in the bizarre situation of having one of the country’s lowest progress 8 scores in England in 2018 despite receiving an ‘outstanding’ rating from Ofsted for its 14 to 16 direct entry provision.

Two colleges – NCG and London South East Colleges – opted to axe their direct entry entirely over the reputational damage they suffered from low progress 8 scores in 2017 and 2018, not helped by national media running stories listing them among the “worst schools in the country”.

Since the outcry, the DfE has added a footnote to its progress 8 releases that explains why the data should not “allow robust conclusions to be drawn about their performance”.

Ironically, experts are agreed that the progression that direct entry students make – usually into 16-plus college courses, apprenticeships or employment – is outstanding.

Those reasons alone have cost some localities their direct entry provision, but the landscape could have been thinner than it already is.

“It has never hit the heights it meant to due to that exact same problem [with funding],” McKenna says. “You will find that some of the colleges that even now are still doing it are only doing it because usually the local authorities are paying top-up fees to try to keep it going, because they know that is successful.

“That becomes a postcode lottery to a certain extent. What it needs is a national funding mechanism that allows for and understands the kind of young people we have got in colleges.”

The DfE told FE Week that targets were never set when the policy was established and confirmed that it was up to individual colleges whether they wanted to offer direct entry or not.

‘I have got my child back’

Leeds is on track for 260 students this year – 130 each in years 10 and 11. But the college’s data reveals the huge demand for places.

McKenna says: “We are the size we are because of the funding model – we can’t go any bigger because of the space it takes and with such an inequitable amount of money that comes in per learner. We turn down approximately 200 learners a year – that’s a lot.”

And, he says, some learners travel 25 or 30 miles just to get to college each morning.

Providers have flexibility over what they deliver, but the personalised approach by staff appears to pay dividends for students who often need additional support. Some may have been at risk of exclusion, others will have special educational needs or anxieties.

At Leeds, learners spend a dedicated one day a week on their vocational programme, a level 1 or 2 in areas such as hair and beauty, digital, childcare, performing arts or engineering, as well as a curriculum of English, maths, science, business studies, PSHE and IT.

Its provision also includes broader support in areas such as anxiety and mental health, as well as life skills such as wiring a plug or opening a bank account.

The college also keeps cohort sizes small – no more than 20. With that support, coupled with progression to vocational programmes or work post-16, it is clear why demand is so high.

As McKenna says, “we have parents who say, ‘I have got my child back’. It’s phenomenal”.

Time will tell if the decline in annual starts, since a high of 1,703 in 2018/19 can be arrested and more colleges can get on board. Sezen (pictured inset) is spearheading research by the AoC and the Institute of Education, to assess all kinds of 14 to 16 provision in colleges (including alternative provision and part-time hours for electively home-educated students).

But experts say it is clear that “the model fits for what young people want to do” and, in the meantime, McKenna and the AoC are lobbying to get the funding changed.

They recognise, however, that it is a “vicious circle”, because “the DfE say you haven’t got that many numbers, so it is not on their agenda”.