The largest and longest-running construction skills competition in the UK returns, with registration now open for SkillBuild 2023..
The SkillBuild competition is delivered by the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and offers an opportunity for talented apprentices and learners of all ages to compete regionally against one another in various trade categories.
Prospective competitors can enter now to compete in one of 13 regional qualifying heats run UK-wide, from April to June. During the one-day event, competitors will be tested not only on their technical abilities, but on their time management, problem solving and skills working under pressure. Those who excel in the qualifiers will be invited to take part in the SkillBuild National Finals, taking place in November 2023.
Apprentices and learners can compete in 10 different trade categories: bricklaying, carpentry, joinery, painting and decorating, plastering, plastering and drywall systems, roof slating and tiling, stonemasonry, wall and floor tiling and furniture and cabinet making. Level 1 competitions are also available in wall and floor tiling and bricklaying.
Zara Dupont from Leeds College of Building won Gold in the plastering and drywall systems category at last year’s SkillBuild National Final.
“I was over the moon when I found out I was a finalist as it gives me so many opportunities to learn and fulfil my career goals.
I would say to anyone thinking about entering SkillBuild to go for it and do your best!”
CITB’s recent Construction Skills Network (CSN) report states that almost 225,000 extra workers will be required to meet UK construction demand by 2027. It also highlights that construction is expected to remain a sector where there is demand for workers, despite the current economic uncertainty. Covering such a huge variety of trades, SkillBuild is a fantastic opportunity to alter perceptions and promote the diverse range of roles available in construction.
Tim Balcon, CITB Chief Executive, said:
“We know the next 18 months won’t be easy with the current skills gap and demand for more workers. As a result, recruitment, training, development, and upskilling remain major priorities for the industry for 2023 and beyond.
“SkillBuild is just one of the many ways CITB is providing support to directly attract a diverse range of recruits for industry. It’s a wonderful initiative that not only helps young people grow personally, increasing their confidence and social skills, but it’s also proven to assist them professionally by developing their technical and employability skills.”
The SkillBuild competition offers colleges the opportunity to empower students to learn new skills and work efficiently under pressure, as well as showcase the quality of training programmes through success in competitions. The competition also provides a unique way of combining teaching, learning and assessment to achieve real results for learners and apprentices of all ages and abilities.
Learners are given the opportunity to improve technical and employability skills, test themselves against others and compete in a friendly, diverse and inspirational environment.
If you have a student or apprentice who would like to participate in this year’s competition, please visit the Go Construct website for more information and to register. Registration is open until 1 April 2023.
Dame Ann Limb has been announced as the inaugural chair of the Lifelong Education Institute when it launches next month.
The institute will succeed the Lifelong Education Commission, which was set up by the MP and former minister Chris Skidmore to come up with policy ideas to “reshape post-18 education” and promote lifelong learning.
The commission has so far published reports on access to ESOL, increasing higher technical qualifications and, last week, recruiting and retaining teachers of technical subjects in colleges.
Its work is led by executive director Dr Marius Ostrowski who is supported by former college principal Andy Forbes, now head of development at think-tank Respublica.
Skidmore is standing down as chair on March 31 to focus more on his work on net zero. Limb takes over on April 1, when the commission is renamed to become the Lifelong Education Institute.
Limb is also currently chair of awarding giant City and Guilds, which is a member of the commission, as well as pro-chancellor of the University of Surrey and chair of the UK Innovation Corridor. She was also the first woman to chair the Scouts.
She was made a dame for services to young people and philanthropy in the Queen’s 2022 birthday honours.
The new institute will “use its convening power to harness the talents of a full spectrum of practitioners from all stages and ages,” Limb told FE Week.
“Our education system is ripe for a top-to-toe strategic overhaul based on evidence and best practice, that places the teacher and the taught at the heart of policy initiatives and implementation at every stage of learning,” she said.
Work placements are the most critical element of a T Level qualification, but employers are put off from offering them by health and safety concerns, time pressures, bureaucratic hurdles and cost fears.
While the mandatory 45-day or 315-hour industry placement is regarded as the main reason why students should sign up for T Levels, colleges are now struggling to persuade enough employers to provide them.
Just over 1,000 students from the first wave of T Levels got their results in August last year. Of those, only 6 per cent did not complete the work placement, although there was some flexibility in place to reflect the impact of Covid 19 on businesses.
So, with eight more T Levels being rolled out by 2025 and learner volumes set to rise significantly, it is unclear whether enough placements will be available to meet the increased demand.
A T Level professional development programme report published last week cited “too few employer placements and insufficient employer engagement” as one of five factors affecting current T Level delivery.
Dr Nuala Burgess, who undertook research on T Level provision for King’s College London, found some colleges “struggling to get work placements” for students. She puts this partly down to the “economy of the place”.
“It’s not the fault of the colleges, the young people or even the employers, there just isn’t the work to give them,” she says.
Dr Burgess believes the first colleges to roll out T Levels had an “ethos and reputation” which meant they would not pass anyone who had not undertaken placements. But she questions whether that will be the case as the roll-out accelerates.
She criticises the “ad hoc and messy” nature of the process involved in setting up work placements which differs for each college, with arrangements sometimes dependent on “a lecturer with a mate”.
“I definitely got the feeling that it was really difficult to find these work placements. You never have that nice joined-up system… something is missing.”
Lack of awareness
One problem is that T Levels are still relatively unknown. Research from earlier in 2022 found that three-quarters of employers had not heard of them.
Steve Joyce, director of human resources for Airedale International Air Conditioning, a manufacturer based in Leeds, was not aware of T Levels despite the company’s local college, Leeds City College, offering T Levels in engineering and manufacturing. But Joyce says the “biggest barrier” to offering placements is their “duration”.
The apprenticeships and year-long placements that Airedale offers degree students work “really well” because students are given “a meaningful piece of work to do”, whereas shorter placements are “more difficult”, he says.
Helen Clements, social value manager at Morgan Sindall Construction, says placement duration is also a problem for the construction industry. T Level placements can only be split across up to two employers and, “unless it’s a large housing estate, none of the building projects last for long enough”.
Furthermore, most site workers are self-employed and paid a day rate, so they “don’t want to give up their time to mentor a young person, even though it is short-sighted of the industry”.
Clements says the challenge is even harder for colleges based in rural locations without public transport links to construction sites.
Tom Smith, Surelec Electrical
Rigid course requirements
Although the construction industry is booming in Southend, employers offering placements for South Essex College’s on-site construction T Level, which includes a specialism in carpentry and joinery, have generally been “one-man bands”, according to course leader Simon Parker.
The five main contractors Parker has approached have been unable to offer “carpentry-specific placements”, instead offering work “predominantly shadowing the site manager, the design team or the corporate social responsibility side of things”.
“Those are all things we teach, but we can’t offer that as a placement. I’m trying to tap into their supply chain, which has its own difficulties because they’ve got a job to get finished. Providing placements is not their focus.”
Tom Smith, who runs Surelec Electrical in Ipswich, had never heard of T Levels but is deterred from offering placements by the “extra time” involved in training someone up. “You might be putting all that effort into them and you’re not going to see anything at the end of it,” he says.
Smith is also put off by fears that his insurance premiums will soar. “For an apprenticeship, the insurance is all fine. But [for work placements] they want a lot more money because it involves someone without any experience, so the risk is higher.”
Parker is urging the government to allow more flexibility by enabling placements to involve other types of experience, rather than “just that specific trade” – in his case carpentry – to encourage more employers to sign up.
“Then, once the student is in place in that system, they could swing towards the carpentry with that supply chain [on site], because you’ve got that link in.”
Although there is still a “lack of clarity about what T Levels are”, Parker believes this is starting to shift three years into the roll-out. The DfE’s portal for businesses to register interest in providing placements has generated “a couple of leads” for him, one of which is leading towards a placement.
Paying for documentation
Another major hurdle is that T Level students are required by the industry – although not by law – to carry a Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) card when they are on a building site for more than 19 days. But colleges are not funded to provide the card, which costs around £110 per student.
Jessica Berry, vice principal for curriculum quality and innovation at the Windsor Forest Colleges Group, says CSCS card provision is “sporadic” among colleges “because it’s not part of the T Level framework” and “some don’t have the capacity to fund it”.
Similarly, health T Levels do not incorporate the Care Certificate – an agreed set of professional standards which anyone working in that sector has to study. Berry says this “should be built in because it is industry recognised”.
Safety training barrier
For construction and engineering companies in safety-critical systems, there are strict safety rules in place which limit their ability to provide placements.
For example, students are required to undergo rigorous safety training before any placements in nuclear power plants, with under-18s banned altogether from many sites.
Franziska von Blumenthal, head of policy and research at the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board, told a session of the all-party parliamentary group for T Levels that colleges should be building more “simulated environments” for this training to take place as part of T Level courses.
Blumenthal says industries such as mining and motorsports face “similar issues”. “There doesn’t seem to be much movement on the potential that simulated environments have to really open up T Levels to an industry that has a huge skill shortage, is trying desperately to attract young people and is facing these hold-ups,” she says.
But Berry points out that colleges have received funding through the DfE’s industry placements capacity and delivery fund which could be used to create such facilities. They “should be working with” employers to resolve these issues.
That funding has been gradually reducing as T Levels are rolled out and will be gone altogether after 2023/24.
In its place, the DfE recently announced a new £12 million placement fund as a sweetener for employers to cover the costs such as set-up expenses and equipment.
However, just £500,000 from a previous £7 million employer support fund was used during its previous run from 2019-2022.
Kirsty, an employee at Kent Scientific Services
Science placement challenges
Funding on its own is not the solution. One FE college cited in the T Level professional development report said science T Level placements had been “difficult to deliver”, and the financial incentives for businesses “did not necessarily mean the provider could secure the number of placements needed”.
Mid Kent College offers T Levels in construction, childcare, health and science, and Nabil Mugharbel, its director of curriculum, says science is the hardest one to source placements for. The college is “making a lot of effort to make it work”, including inviting science employers to a webinar this week.
Mugharbel explains how it has been more challenging getting placements for students aged under 18 in toxicology, because “where there’s confidential information or potential harm to students, companies don’t want to take the risk”.
“I don’t have the big [pharmaceutical] companies, because they are mostly based in London – students will not travel that far,” he explains.
One company that is hosting students for the college is the local council’s in-house science laboratory, Kent Scientific Services. Its head, Mark Rolfe, says there had been “very little bureaucracy” involved in the process of setting up the placements, but his team “had to work” to make the placements “worthwhile”.
“I suspect what might hold companies back is fear of the unknown. But, once they get into it, they may realise it is actually quite easy.
“The staff in the lab really get something out of this, they really enjoy having young people enthusiastic about what they are doing.”
Skye, Ruksha and Kenya, T Level students at Bury College
‘Disgusting and dangerous’ work
Dr Burgess describes work placement quality as “extraordinarily variable”. She recalls one student whose placement involved being sent by a “reputable chain of hotels” to unblock toilets without PPE, which she describes as “disgusting and dangerous” work.
But another construction student got “proper hands-on experience” with a building firm, including using a theodolite and visiting “underwater tunnels”.
She believes that, where placements have worked out, they have been invaluable. “The absolute beauty of this T Level is, when it works well, students come back in the classroom so excited because they have seen it, touched it, felt it. They are incredibly motivated by the experience.”
For Skye, an 18-year-old student at Bury College, it was the hands-on experience which made her opt for a T Level in health: supporting the adult nursing team.
The NHS offered 20 of Bury’s 28 second-year students placements at local hospitals, to shadow staff on the wards, although they are not permitted to undertake clinical work.
Andrea Plimmer, Bury’s assistant director of health and social care, says “it would just be nice in the future if we weren’t just limited to 20 places for our students within the NHS … It’s such a good experience that we’d like to open up as our numbers grow.”
When Skye started her course, she had no idea what area of health she wanted to go into, but it was her industry placement which made her decide to opt for oncology as a career.
“I got to see how cancer can affect not just the person but the family, and how palliative care comes into that,” she says. “It means, when I get into the real world, I’ll understand what I need to do.”
Gillian Keegan will not address the annual conference of school and college leaders’ union ASCL next week, the organisation has announced, the first time an education secretary has missed the event in over 15 years.
The union announced today that Keegan, who was invited to speak at the Birmingham event next Friday, will not attend “because she hopes to be engaged in intensive talks at that time over the pay dispute which has led to industrial action by NEU members”.
However, no talks are currently scheduled, ASCL said.
It also comes following pleas from 360 school and college heads urging Keegan to delay controversial plans to withdraw funding from level 3 BTECs and applied general qualifications.
The last time an education secretary did not attend the conference is understood to be 2006, when schools minister Jacqui Smith appeared instead of her boss, Ruth Kelly.
General secretary Geoff Barton said his organisation was “disappointed that Gillian Keegan has decided not to come to our conference”. He will address the event in her place, the union said.
“We very much hoped she would use this opportunity to thank school and college leaders for everything they are doing in what is proving to be yet another extremely challenging year.”
It comes as school teaching unions remain locked in a bitter dispute with the government over pay and funding, which has so far led to four days of strike action by National Education Union members.
Tensions run high between unions and government
But Barton warned last month that unless there was “tangible progress towards an improved offer” in talks with government, then it will lead to “members of our union, and other education unions, also concluding that industrial action is the only option left”.
With tensions between unions and government still running high, Keegan’s decision not to attend the conference will likely prompt speculation that she fears a confrontation with heads.
ASCL members rarely heckle their guests, but it’s not unheard-of. Delegates shouted at Damian Hinds when he spoke about school funding at the conference in 2018, before they were slapped down by Barton.
The union leader said next week’s event would have given Keegan an opportunity to talk about how she “intends to address the teacher recruitment and retention crisis which is at the heart of the current industrial dispute”.
“But nevertheless we will continue to engage with the secretary of state positively and constructively and look forward to a time when she will feel more able to talk directly to our members.”
Other speakers at the event next week include Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman and shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson.
The Department for Education was approached for comment.
Interesting fact: As an ex-punk rocker and Queen’s Guide, ocean yachtsman and knitter, Jill believes in keeping a variety of interests
Andy Forbes
Chair, Barking and Dagenham College
Start date: January 2023
Concurrent Job: Head of Development, Respublica
Interesting fact: Andy is a part-time poet and recently had a poem published in the autobiography of old schoolmate Lee Child, best selling author of the Jack Reacher novels
Iain Salisbury
Board member, AELP
Start date: February 2023
Concurrent Job: CEO, Aspiration Training Limited
Interesting fact: Iain plays badminton in a local league and usually enjoys going to watch Liverpool play football and Wales play rugby. Though neither of which give him much pleasure recently, he says.
Andy Cole
Interim Principal and Chief Executive, Barking and Dagenham College
Start date: February 2023
Previous Job: Chief Executive, Greater Brighton Metropolitan College
Interesting fact: Andy used to be a practising fine artist and once had a solo exhibition in downtown New York
Education chiefs will reconsider failed bids to join the register of flexi-job apprenticeship agencies in an attempt to bolster its numbers.
The register was updated last month with 16 new names – but this was just over half the number of organisations that had applied to join.
In an update this week, the Department for Education said that any organisation which applied in September 2022 but was rejected solely on financial health grounds would be reconsidered against “an additional test of sustainability”.
The department will contact organisations directly and there will be no need for the submission of additional information.
The DfE’s offer is open only to applicants in the last window and not those who failed with original bids at its launch in February 2022.
The department explained that its existing financial health assessment will remain in place, but a new sustainability assessment will also be carried out.
Organisations that failed to meet the financial health assessment criteria in their application but passed all other aspects – and can demonstrate they pass the new sustainability criteria – will be able to join the register.
The current financial health assessments require the submission of statements such as full accounts, end of period profit and loss accounts and balance sheet and a breakdown of sums with creditors.
A financial health grade is then issued based on profitability, solvency and debt ratio, with one of four grades given – outstanding, good, satisfactory or inadequate.
The guidance does not yet make clear what the new sustainability criteria will contain.
However, the DfE confirmed that providers accepted based on the sustainability measure will be subject to “a higher degree of oversight by the DfE”.
Flexi-job apprenticeship agencies aim to support apprenticeship delivery in sectors with shorter-term working models, such as construction or the creative arts, where employment for a year is not possible and project-based employment is the norm.
The agencies act as an anchor for those apprentices and the administration work needed for them, but apprentices move among employers through the course of their apprenticeship.
The DfE said it had received around 30 applications for its latest window, confirming in January that 16 new names have joined the register. All joined without grant funding.
The DfE committed £5 million in grant funding to those 10 agencies at the original launch in 2021/22 and 2022/23, with a target of 1,500 apprentices recruited in the initial roll-out.
The department said it was continuing to see demand from employers that wished to join the register in sectors which face barriers to traditional apprenticeship models. Target numbers for the register are not set.
In the last application window, the DfE said it was keen to try the flexi-job apprenticeship model in sectors not previously included. Among the additions were organisations in the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries.
The DfE added that the new sustainability assessment will be incorporated into the evaluation checks for future application windows to join the register.
Concern has previously been raised over whether organisations which received grant funding would be able to remain on the register once their grant deals expire at the end of this month.
One of those to raise questions, ScreenSkills, explained that film and TV firms already paid the apprenticeship levy, apprentice wages and associated on-costs. It would therefore not be realistic to expect them to provide funding for a support service for flexi-job apprenticeships once government grants cease, it said.
One of the two organisations to drop out early told FE Week that a lack of take-up was behind its decision to come off the register.
A renowned entrepreneur has left the taxpayer at least £10 million out of pocket after she closed her chain of training providers amid a government investigation.
But FE Week understands the decision came after the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s counter-fraud and investigation team probed how multiple contracts were used across the firms.
After two years of investigating, the ESFA has now submitted a £10.1 million clawback claim to the liquidators of Middleton’s biggest provider, Astute Minds Ltd, according to a new statement of affairs document.
The agency is also seeking £63,000 from another one of her firms, FNTC Training and Consultancy Limited.
Investigations continue into her best-known provider, MiddletonMurray, where the total claim from the agency remains “uncertain”, according to liquidators at FRP Advisory Trading Ltd. No claim has been made to date to Middleton’s other provider, The Teaching and Learning Group.
However, the liquidators’ report states there “will not be sufficient funds available” to pay unsecured creditors, which the ESFA is classed as. It means the government will never receive the funding back from Middleton’s providers.
The agency’s investigation is only mentioned briefly in the statement of affairs. The report said the liquidators were in discussions with company directors about the OneFile apprenticeship database that held learner records, which the ESFA “required access to so that they could continue their investigations”.
The ESFA declined to comment on its investigation findings.
Middleton has not responded to requests for comment but, at the point of closure in 2020, a spokesperson for her told FE Week that the ESFA’s investigation was a “standard audit looking at qualification achievement rates”.
The Insolvency Service, which investigates the behaviour of directors if their company becomes insolvent, has concluded its investigation into Middleton and decided there will be no disqualification proceedings.
Middleton’s four companies delivered a mix of FE loan-funded provision, non-levy apprenticeships, adult education budget courses, traineeships and 16 to 18 study programmes.
Astute Minds was judged as ‘good’ by Ofsted in 2017. It was one of the government’s biggest traineeship providers, delivering 2,660 starts on the pre-employability programme between 2014/15 and 2019/20.
MiddletonMurray was last inspected by Ofsted in 2016 and was graded as ‘good’ for its provision to around 287 learners, while FNTC Training and Consultancy received the same grade in the same year.
In a new provider monitoring report published in May 2019, the Teaching and Learning Group, was found to be making ‘insufficient progress’ in its provision to 24 apprentices.
Middleton states on her website that she appears on big-name media outlets like Sky News and in the Daily Telegraph, and has links to several high-profile politicians.
Skills minister Robert Halfon wrote the foreword to her book, Bridge That Gap!: How Schools Can Help Students Get Their First Job and Build The Career They Want, while former Home Office minister James Brokenshire’s favourable review of her earlier book, How To Get Your First Job And Get The Career You Want, is featured on its Amazon page.
Middleton is also a fitness guru who founded a company called YourBodyMeansBusiness and The Limitless Group, the latter of which provides corporate solutions for a “healthier, age-agnostic, more resilient workforce as a business asset”.
A businessman has vowed never to re-enter the FE training market if his apprenticeship provider’s contract is terminated following an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted assessment that left him “stunned”.
Wildes Education has operated as a subcontractor for over a decade and began direct delivery in 2018, training apprentices in adult care, hospitality and catering, hairdressing and administration.
The private provider now faces being kicked out of the apprenticeships market, under Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) rules, after Ofsted gave it a grade four report this week following the firm’s first full inspection visit in December.
The watchdog’s report included some positives but delivered the lowest possible judgment overall mainly due to “limited” training. “Too many apprentices do not receive enough time at work to complete their studies,” Ofsted reported. “As a result, they study in their own time, balancing their personal commitments with the completion of their apprenticeship.”
Owner Paul Wildes, who also runs hotels, restaurants, spas and is a racehorse owner and breeder, said he was shocked at the inspectorate’s approach considering the challenges the sector has faced with Covid-19 lockdowns.
“In adult care and hospitality to a similar degree, providing training during the pandemic was difficult because obviously we weren’t allowed in to visit the students,” he told FE Week.
“It just seemed like inspectors believe the pandemic never happened. And, if it did happen, it certainly shouldn’t have impacted training, which was just a very difficult position for us to come back from because it did happen.”
Wildes admitted that some of his 200 apprentices were behind on their training but were due to have caught up in three months’ time.
He claimed inspectors told him that, if they had visited three months later, his provider’s grade would have been higher. He also claimed that Ofsted’s team told him they feel his provider should not lose its apprenticeships contract over this judgment.
Wildes Education is the latest in a string of providers to complain that Ofsted has failed to take into consideration the impact of the pandemic when delivering ‘inadequate’ reports. Some have tried and failed to challenge the grades and subsequent contract termination legally.
Wildes told FE Week he did seek legal advice but decided against formal action considering the cost involvement and unlikelihood of success. He hit out at the “autocratic” system in which private training providers have to work.
“The ESFA have the ability to take your contract away no matter what happens, which is an unusual state for any business to operate in when you actually understand somebody has the ultimate power to take all your business away without even giving you a reason to do that.”
Wildes said he had not received any communication from the ESFA following Ofsted’s judgment, but he was expecting contract termination.
If this does happen, it would “certainly stop me from coming into this sector again, because you can’t run a business when somebody has the ultimate authority to take something away from you”.
He added: “This business, unusually I suppose, was never about making money for me. It was about trying to make a difference. I feel like I’m not going to be able to deliver that anymore, which is sad.”
Wildes Education has around 15 staff whose jobs would be at risk if the company is wound down. The ESFA does not comment on individual cases.
An awarding organisation for British Sign Language (BSL) courses is to cease trading after more than a decade because of a shortage of money due to falling student numbers post-Covid. Up to 150 students could be affected by the closure.
The Institute for British Sign Language (IBSL) will lose its Ofqual recognition on Friday, March 3 and told FE Week that it is due to close its business at the end of the month.
Ofqual said it was informed by IBSL in January that the charity planned to surrender its status as a recognised awarding organisation. A letter sent from the institute to centres on Tuesday said the decision was made on financial grounds.
It was “with great sadness” that the charity had decided to wind up, the letter said, adding: “As trustees, we have had to make some very hard decisions about our future and ability to continue. Our conclusion has been that IBSL is not financially viable, and we will be closing the organisation in the next couple of months.”
The awarding organisation (AO), which is led and managed by deaf people, currently has nine qualifications on Ofqual’s register, ranging from level 1 BSL and deaf awareness courses through to level 6 diplomas in sign language interpretation.
It stressed there was “no issue with the quality or validity of IBSL qualifications or assessments”.
The organisation told FE Week that it currently has around 150 learners taking its qualifications who could be affected.
Results and certificates issued to students beyond Friday will remain Ofqual-regulated, it has been confirmed.
Heather Venis, acting responsible officer for IBSL since mid-January, said: “We hope and intend until the end of March to continue with our marking and awarding, which means we can continue to issue certificates. Any learners that are continuing and have got assessments and marking booked for March will be able to complete their qualification.”
Learners that do not complete their qualification with IBSL after the end of March should contact awarding bodies Signature or SEG [Skills and Education Group Awards]. These offer similar qualifications and will “be able to make an assessment of progress so far through the qualification and what they have achieved as individual learners”.
The bodies can then put learners “on the right track in terms of the appropriate qualification and any additional assessment or anything that they might need to complete that qualification”.
The charity would not disclose its 2021/22 financial position, accounts for which have not yet been published, but figures for 2020/21 showed a £51,832 deficit following a £93,253 deficit in 2020.
Its 2020/21 income was £150,183, which included around £26,000 from two government grants, compared with more than £250,000 of income recorded pre-Covid.
IBSL confirmed it was financially stable before the Covid-19 crisis, but student numbers declined during the pandemic as learners were unable to attend and centres delivering courses closed. It also cited rising costs, but would not be drawn on the extent to which student numbers had fallen.
Venis said the organisation “did make some noises with various MPs and tried to lobby”, but “didn’t get very far unfortunately”.
Its letter to centres this week said IBSL had been “ground-breaking, as the only deaf-led AO” and expressed its pride at its learners who remain the charity’s legacy.
A statement issued before Christmas explained it was under new management in a bid to steady the ship, but was issued with special conditions from Ofqual in late November instructing the charity not to enrol new learners until further notice.
The organisation was originally established by the British Deaf Association in 2004 but needed to become an independent organisation to achieve awarding body status, according to IBSL’s website. It was incorporated as a community interest company in April 2007, before registering as a charity in September 2015. It gained Ofqual recognition in June 2009, with its first results issued in April the following year.
