England’s largest apprenticeship provider is planning to cut around 60 jobs – months after the company was taken over by its lenders, FE Week can reveal.
Lifetime Training said the move, which will reduce its workforce of around 1,000 staff by 5 per cent, follows a “strategic review of its cost base”.
FE Week understands the number of learners in some sectors including care is down from where the provider assumed it would be and so now staffing needs to be adjusted.
The redundancy consultation also comes amid an Education and Skills Funding Agency audit that is exploring possible overclaimed funding, such as for additional learner support, which could result in clawback of over £13 million.
It also follows a recent switch in ownership: at the end of last year private equity firm Silverfleet Capital sold Lifetime Training to Alcentra – one of the provider’s lenders which specialises in credit management, private credit and structured credit strategies.
Lifetime Training chief executive Jon Graham told FE Week the provider’s strategic review of staffing costs is not linked to the ongoing ESFA audit, which has not yet concluded, nor does he anticipate any further redundancies going forward.
Graham said: “The review has assessed operational and support roles across the broader business to ensure we are directing our resources towards the areas of highest demand.
“The review will likely see c.5 per cent of roles impacted by redundancy, and staff will be redeployed wherever possible. We remain dedicated to supporting all affected employees during this transition and ensure we provide a seamless process for our valued team members.”
He added that because his provider is in period of collective consultation with those impacted, it would be “unfair to speculate on the exact number of jobs or the roles and sectors affected”.
The company expects “minimal disruption to the experience of our learners and employer partners during this transition”.
Lifetime Training, founded in 1995, has more than doubled its workforce over the past decade as it grew to being the largest provider of apprenticeships in the country, delivering to big-name employers including the NHS, KFC, McDonalds, Wetherspoons, B&Q and David Lloyd, as well as the civil service.
Covid-19 hit the company hard and forced it to make around 300 people redundant in 2020 due to falling apprenticeship starts caused by the pandemic and associated lockdowns.
Starts have been steadily recovering since then. The provider was delivering to around 20,000 apprentices when Ofsted visited in May 2022. But the resulting ‘requires improvement’ report criticised the firm’s focus on financial performance and starts over quality, as well as a lack of off-the-job training and poor achievement rates.
Lifetime Training has made several leadership changes over the past year, including bringing in Geoff Russell, who used to head up the Skills Funding Agency, as chair and Jon Graham as chief executive.
The firm’s latest accounts show that its turnover increased to £71.1 million compared to £59.9 million in 2020. But its EBITDAE (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and exceptional items) fell from £9.391 million in year ended July 31, 2020 to £2.249 million in the 18 month period ended January 31, 2022.
The accounts also reveal the company made a loss for the financial period of £9.2 million, compared to a profit of £6.8 million in 2020.
Graham said: “Lifetime remains a financially stable with a growing learner base. We are committed to delivering high-quality training and we continue to invest in key areas. The strategic review of our cost base ensures that we are directing our resources towards the areas of highest demand unlocking further growth.”
The Education and Training Foundation’s new chief executive Katerina Kolyva has taken the helm at a “pivotal moment”, guiding it to the future from turbulent times of late.
Kolyva, who joined the charity last month, knows it can no longer rely on clinching automatic government contracts. Her mission is not an easy one; she has to ensure it returns to the same “sector-first” roots it had when it was created in 2013, but also needs to seize on new commercial opportunities to secure its survival. And those might be overseas.
The ETF was initially funded by the then Department for Business, Innovation and Skills but “owned” by the Association of Colleges, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) and the adult education provider network HOLEX.
AELP ditched its “ownership” in 2018, claiming it was “no longer an organisation run by the FE sector for the sector”, but has recently re-joined on the understanding that it returns to its original sector-first purpose.
“I think we’re clear now – I am clear, at least – that we are moving to a new era of working in partnership with the sector to deliver,” Kolyva says.
The recalibration comes partly from necessity. The ETF delivered a large surplus on its 2019-22 T Level professional development programme because Covid meant it was mostly delivered online (and therefore cost less), but then faced pressure from DfE officials to pay back up to £7.5 million. Kolyva admits it was a “very difficult discussion.” The contract requirements had already been delivered and the ETF sought legal advice, eventually agreeing to repay £6.2 million.
We have to compete as one of many players
Although she believes the foundation is now on “very good terms” with the DfE, she acknowledges that while the ETF used to get a government grant every year, it now has to shift to competing for contracts as “one of many players”.
Kolyva is new to the UK’s FE sector having spent much of her career working for the EU, mainly in education and research strategy. But what she lacks in FE know-how she makes up for in leadership expertise, having most recently spent six years as chief executive of the Council of Deans of Health, a UK-based membership organisation representing healthcare education and research.
She is currently in “listening mode” as she develops the ETF’s new strategy – and that means talking first and foremost to other organisations representing FE.
“It would be remissive of me to say I shouldn’t be talking to these organisations representing the sector [too]. Quite the opposite, I should be talking to them first.”
So far, she has been told the ETF’s leadership programmes are “very highly regarded”, but when it comes to some “processes” – Kolyva does not elaborate – the feedback is “you could do it better”.
In Paros Greece
We must understand the needs of the sector
Kolyva wants to use “all the mechanisms we have in our hands” to “understand what the needs of the sector are”. “Once we understand that, we deliver that. And if we need to influence government to prioritise what the sector needs, then we have that duty to the sector. That’s the narrative from now on…”
But there is also now a need for “income diversification”.
Quite aptly, the new chief executive – who is very much a citizen of the world – has her sights set on giving a new global outlook to an organisation that has been England-focused.
Kolyva is from Greece, speaks five languages, has lived in six EU countries and worked in more than 25 of them. And she writes travel blogs.
She believes the ETF “hasn’t even touched the surface of [global opportunities] yet . I’d like us to be a lot more outward-facing in terms of what’s happening globally, not just on our doorstep.”
On the doorstep, Kolyva perceives issues in England with “recruitment, retention, austerity – horrible things”. Globally, she sees “metaverse, sustainability and green skills”. She refers to a recent report stating how an individual might have 15 different careers, reflecting how the FE trainers of tomorrow will have to build up a more “agile” workforce.
Kolyva, 50, has had a fair few careers herself, including as a teacher, translator, researcher, evaluator, lecturer and academic, as well as chief executive.
After doing lots of travelling with her family as a child and attending a French private school, she studied languages in Greece but has not lived in her homeland since she was 24. She returns regularly to the “very beautiful” island of Paros where her parents live, and there are also regular holidays to Belgium, her husband’s home country.
EU network of nursing regulators in EU Parliament Brussels (Katerina on the far left)
I appreciate the privilege that I have had
Her multicultural experience and insights means she brings a “big focus on inclusion” to the ETF table.
But she is also quite upfront about her privileged background. While Kolyva often hears people identifying with a particular issue because of their working-class roots, she admits she has “never felt or lived in a state of poverty”, and believes conversely that is why she is “so passionately committed to social mobility in this sector”.
“I don’t have pain, so I suppose I appreciate the privilege that I have had. I almost look to others that I’ve come across in my education journey or my work. I’ve almost always worked in places that were non-elite perhaps because of that.”
Kolyva’s “big dream” as a young student was always to work for the EU, and after studying politics and international relations at the University of Kent she got her big break in Luxembourg, then Brussels. But she hated it.
She loved the “idea” of the EU – “the multicultural side, the vision and how countries together can do so much” – but it was “too bureaucratic” and she felt “part of a machine”. So she returned to Kent, and wrote a PhD about the “anthropology of bureaucrats”.
But her red-tape angst did not put her off from returning to the continent, first to Denmark then Belgium and Lithuania, partly to work on various EU education programmes.
And despite her disdain for EU red tape, she remain an ardent Europhile and hopes for “better collaboration” between the UK and the EU post Brexit, “particularly with education”. She’s also a huge fan of Eurovision (she’s betting on Sweden winning this year, but hurriedly adds that the British entry is “very good”).
Kolyva tells me of her love of France, Italy, Spain and especially Denmark, and when she describes returning to live in the UK in 2007, I can’t help but wonder why she chose our drizzly shores. She says she likes the way the UK does business – its “focus on delivery outcomes” and “not just faffing around”.
“I have been at European meetings where you’ve got people talking forever, going through a lot of context and background and I’m thinking, ‘Oh no, just get to the point!”
Speaking at the Education Select Committee
Her first job back here was for the Nursing and Midwifery Council where she quickly moved up to director level.
Her proudest achievement during her nine years there was helping to introduce revalidation, the process of renewal of professional development in nursing.
Whereas previously nurses were able to stay on their professional register indefinitely without requiring any checks on their expertise, Kolyva and her team introduced new rules requiring them to regularly prove they could still meet standards.
“It was about being proud of your professional development, so it was not a punitive thing, [although] the regulator at the time was seen very much as punitive,” she says. “It was all about sick pay policies, and disciplinary procedures whereas I was coming in from another angle – the improvement side. I’m proud of how we turned around some of the narrative of what the regulator was.”
As chief executive of the Council of the Deans of Health, she gained insights into how FE and FE interact in healthcare.
“I saw it from the other side, now [at ETF] I’m seeing it from this side which is fascinating,” she says.
The ETF has expanded from 75 staff in 2019-20 to 141 in 2020-21, and now to about 200, mainly due to the T Level programme but also to a “move to bring in high-level in-house expertise”.
But in light of changing market circumstances, Kolyva is “not complacent” about its growth.
“We are a charity in a very competitive market, we are in a sector that is depleted of funding. We have to behave smartly.”
A training programme to get prison leavers into work is to be expanded to include at least 17 more prisons in the next four years.
The government has launched a tender for contracts up to £1 million to bolster its ties with employers to deliver HMP Academies in prisons.
HMP Academies are work programmes delivered by employers to provide specialist or vocational training to prisoners with the aim of bolstering employment prospects on release.
A small number of the programmes are already running with employers such as Timpson, Halfords and Max Spiellman.
The Ministry of Justice has identified a further 17 provisional spaces in prisons across the country with hopes of more to follow.
The contract tender, open until the end of the month, has a planned start date of mid June with a four-year duration.
The contract tender said it was seeking partnerships with “a diverse range of businesses from across all sectors that can offer prisoners a second chance” and “smooth the path from prison to employment”.
According to the MoJ, employment leads to a fall in reoffending rates of up to 9 percentage points.
A prison service spokesperson said: “Getting offenders into work is a tried and tested way of cutting crime and protecting the public, while also boosting our economy by helping employers plug vital skills gaps.”
The programme is separate to the Future Skills Programme, which supports prisoners nearing the end of their sentence with bespoke training courses, and the Prisoner Education Service.
The structure of the academies is determined by the needs of the employers who run them and there is no requirement for formal qualifications to be included unless the firms deem it necessary.
The MoJ makes the spaces available in prison, provides some funding and pledges an interview for a vacancy for those who complete an academy for employment.
Jon Collins, chief executive of the Prisoners’ Education Trust, welcomed the plans but said the MoJ must also “radically improve” prison education to provide literacy and numeracy.
Halfords started its first programme, for male prisoners at HMP Onley near Daventry, in 2014. It now runs only one, at the women’s HMP Drake Hall prison near Stafford, which opened in 2017.
It has 12 women at a time in the workshop learning bicycle mechanics for a period of at least six months, working four-and-a-half days a week. When one prisoner completes the programme, another joins.
Those who complete the programme are guaranteed an interview and receive an internal cycle mechanic qualification.
Drake Hall is currently assessing whether a formal qualification can be achieved through the course, Halfords said.
About 100 men completed the programme at Onley and 15 women have so far completed a programme at Drake Hall.
Andy McBride, group head of resourcing and reward at Halfords, told FE Week: “The feedback is that it has been brilliant – they didn’t think they would ever get a job on release, they have learned loads, they feel much more confidence in the workplace. Even if they don’t end up joining us, I feel we have played our part if they then subsequently get a job somewhere else.”
McBride said it can be “a costly model” to set up workshops but added: “I absolutely support other businesses getting involved.
“We could see the business benefits as well as the society benefits. We sell a lot of bikes, we repair a lot of bikes and it’s a skills set that’s hard to find, so it gave us an opportunity to tap into other talent pools.”
Meanwhile, Timpson runs a number of academy programmes in prisons that are designed to mimic its high street stores.
The firm’s website said this enables prisoners to be trained in “all the services we provide” but the “only exception to this is key cutting, for obvious reasons”.
A university technical college in Bolton with a turbulent history has been issued a funding termination warning notice over concerns about the “inadequate standard of education”.
The Department for Education published the notice this morning addressed to board members and trustees of the multi-academy trust Quest, over concerns raised at its University Collegiate School, formerly known as Bolton UTC.
It follows a damning Ofsted report published in February in which inspectors rated the 11 to 18 school ‘inadequate’ in all areas – a fall from its ‘good’ rating in 2019 but the second time in its past it was lumped with the watchdog’s bottom judgement.
The warning notice said leaders, trustees and members of the local advisory committee have “overseen an inadequate standard of education for all pupils, including students in the sixth form,” and had “not demonstrated the capacity to tackle these considerable weaknesses”.
It added that they had “failed in their duties to keep pupils and students safe”.
The letter exposed “tensions” between governors and the board of trustees that was hindering the speed at which leaders could make improvements, and continued that “some pupils and staff feel unsafe” as a result of a lack of coherent oversight on safeguarding.
It described the curriculum as “underdeveloped” and “not suitably broad and balanced”, while concerns were raised around a lack of appropriate assessment systems or measures to identify students’ gaps in learning.
Students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) receive a “poor quality education” as a result of systems not identifying their needs, the notice added.
The Department for Education’s north west regional director Vicky Beer said: “I need to be satisfied that the trust has capacity to deliver rapid and sustainable improvement at the academy. If I am not satisfied that this can be achieved, I will consider whether to terminate the funding agreement in order to transfer the academy to an alternative academy trust.”
Crispin Pailing, chair of the directors at Quest, said a host of changes had already been made, which included appointing an “experienced head with a track record of school improvement” as interim principal and a new vice-principal, as well as suspending the local governing body’s powers.
In addition, Pailing said staff received further training on behaviour and safeguarding while a safeguarding expert has also been working to change some day-to-day procedures.
The trust said an interim executive board was in place chaired by a former principal of an ‘outstanding’ school, assuming responsibility for improvement work and reporting to the main trust board and the DfE.
Pailing added: “We are very sorry for the failures which were identified through the Ofsted inspection. We have taken swift and decisive action to introduce a school improvement plan which will address every point raised by the inspectors. Bolton UCS and Quest will be working with the regional director and the DfE to address the concerns raised in the termination warning notice.
“With new leadership, governance, and procedures in place, I am confident that our school improvement plan will achieve the rapid and effective change necessary to ensure an environment where students and staff at Bolton University Collegiate School can prosper.”
The UTC opened in 2015 for students aged 14 to 19 under the name Bolton UTC, but was stung by an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted report at its first full inspection in February 2017.
Year 11 and 13 students told inspectors at the time they had been “sold a dream”.
Whistleblower reports which emerged a year later then prompted an investigation over the struggling UTC’s finances, which found financial decisions that had gone unchallenged and “inadequate” financial controls in relation to a lack of an audit committee or financial checks.
The establishment received better news in April 2019 when it received a ‘good’ inspection rating following a series of monitoring visits, before the UTC joined Quest on August 1, 2020 and was subsequently renamed.
But a fresh inspection by Ofsted at the end of 2022 found standards had declined once again and an ‘inadequate’ rating was published in February this year.
The UTC has a capacity of 600 students with 394 learners on its roll.
The warning notice has compelled the UTC to provide clear evidence of improvements to safeguarding, leadership and governance, behaviour, curriculum planning and education standards and a school improvement strategy, in order to retain its funding agreement.
The deadline for evidence to be presented was Tuesday this week, with an assessment of that information and a decision on whether the trust can improve the UTC now set to be made.
Since their inception in 2010, 13 UTCs have closed, with the most recently announced being Watford UTC which confirmed it will close its doors at the end of the academic year.
Interesting fact: Audrey’s true passion is music, having started out performing in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. Her favourite treat now is a visit to the Royal Opera House.
Sean Wellington
Trustee, WorldSkills UK
Start date: March 2023
Concurrent job: Provost & Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Middlesex University
Interesting fact: Sean is a music fan and loves reading reviews of home audio gear that he will never own.
Justin Rix
Trustee, WorldSkills UK
Start date: March 2023
Concurrent job: Partner – people advisory practice, Grant Thornton LLP
Interesting fact: Justin is a never more happy than by or indeed on the sea, a keen sailor with a very ancient sailing boat which takes nearly as much time and effort in keeping seaworthy as it does to sail.
Mark Farrar
Trustee, WorldSkills UK
Start date: March 2023
Previous job: Former CEO of the Association of Accounting Technicians and previously CEO of the Construction Industry Training Board
Interesting fact: As well as sailing and racing offshore, Mark once took a yacht through Amsterdam’s central canals early one morning.
Apprentices with an East Sussex provider were so “overwhelmed” and demotivated by a lack of off-the-job training that they quickly dropped out, an Ofsted report has found.
Bestland Solutions Ltd, which has 20 years’ experience and trades as Training Associates, largely delivers adult care apprenticeships and had more than 552 learners on its books at the time of the inspection in mid-December.
Inspectors rated the provider ‘inadequate’ in all areas, finding that too many apprentices were “significantly behind” in their work and teaching was not consistently well-planned or structured.
Ofsted reported that leaders did not ensure apprentices received their off-the-job training entitlement, adding: “As a result, too many apprentices feel overwhelmed, lack motivation and quickly drop out of their apprenticeship.”
Too few apprentices benefitted from developing their wider skills or guidance on possible carer pathways, Ofsted said.
It continued that “too many apprentices lack engagement and do not attend training or reviews well,” while not enough completed the required English and maths standards needed to qualify. It said that in some instances it was a result of pressures in the care sector.
Elsewhere, the report said that quality assurance mechanisms were not used effectively, while leaders didn’t ensure employers were routinely involved in curriculum planning.
Tutors didn’t benefit enough from upskilling or research opportunities and leaders didn’t ensure apprenticeship content was structured appropriately, according to the report.
Inspectors found that most apprentices didn’t benefit from “useful, purposeful target setting” to help them improve, and feedback from tutors didn’t always help apprentices improve their work.
Education and Skills Funding Agency guidelines say that ‘inadequate’ providers will be struck off the register of apprenticeship training providers, putting funding and provision under threat.
Bestland did not respond to requests for comment at the time of going to press.
The government has brought forward by a year the start date for a new fund for skills investment.
The timing of the announcement, made just days ahead of the revised start date, has led to concern that local leaders’ hands will already be tied and providers will be unable to capitalise on the move.
The people and skills element of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund is designed to help economically inactive adults into work through skills interventions.
Spending the cash had been restricted until April 2024, but the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) said on Thursday that it will remove that restriction from April 2023.
DLUHC confirmed that authorities have already been allocated the cash and the start date for it has been moved forward.
However, concerns have been raised that many authorities will have already committed all of their allocation to the previous timeline, leaving them unable to take advantage of the change.
Stephen Evans, chief executive of Learning and Work Institute, said: “This flex is definitely welcome and helps to minimise gaps in support – a temporary reduction in help that never made sense in the first place.
“But the fact that it’s so late in the day means that local areas already have other plans in place, that some existing programmes will already have closed and that putting in place new support will take time.”
Evans said he hoped local areas will “do all they can to make good use of these flexibilities” to ensure “proper investment in people, learning and skills”.
The DLUHC update said the fund is “well-aligned” to meeting the prime minister’s goal of boosting skills capability, and be “the main source of funding to support economically inactive individuals move towards employment”.
It said that the removal of the restriction will “maximise the impact of the fund in this area”.
The UKSPF launched in April last year, with the funding period running from April 2022 to March 2025.
Three priorities are being delivered through the fund – communities and place, supporting local business and people and skills.
The communities and place funding was able to be used from the launch last April, while the other two portions can be spent from this April (year two of the fund).
In addition, ringfenced funding is provided to authorities through the UKSPF to deliver the Multiply programme – the government scheme for adults without a grade C or above in maths to access free courses that will help them gain a maths qualification.
The £1.58 billion fund for England over the three years has been allocated to ten mayoral combined authorities and Greater London, 50 unitary authorities, 165 district and borough councils and 23 upper tier authorities.
Babergh and Mid Suffolk district councils were among those to secure a slice of the cash – just over £1 million for Babergh and around £1.1 million for Mid Suffolk.
But allocations for year two of the fund have already been set.
A spokesperson for the two authorities said: “All of our year two projects have already been identified and projects are in commissioning stage with all funding committed. We will not seek to change the year two funding allocations.
“The outcomes and targets for the whole UKSPF programme have been signed off via our investment plan by DLUHC, there is no current opportunity to change these targets and add additional skills projects to the existing plan.
“We are working with Suffolk County Council [the local education authority] on commissioning skills projects for delivery in year three.”
Others have welcomed the move.
Graham Wood, economic development manager at the unitary authority Durham County Council, which was given £30.8 million in core UKSPF funding, said the council had shared its concern that funding people and skills from 2024 only would “create a real terms gap in provision of employment support programmes and wide-ranging upskilling opportunities”.
He added that the announcement “will allow us to advance our emerging plans for employment and skills activity”.
A spokesperson for the mayor of London said: “It’s vital that Londoners have the right skills to get good jobs in the industries that need them, which is why the mayor has long called for the government to bring forward the people and skills element of its Shared Prosperity Fund.
“City Hall officers will now work to establish when programmes can realistically start, given the late confirmation by government.”
Greater Manchester Combined Authority welcomed the move. Officials had already been working to align its recycled local growth fund cash with the skills and people element of the UKSPF that would effectively have brought forward the UKSPF cash by a year.
A communications expert, a lawyer and a university vice chancellor are among new appointments to the board of WorldSkills UK.
Included among the new trustees, announced today, is Mark Farrar, who has previously led of the Association of Accounting Technicians and the Construction Industry Training Board as chief executive. Farrar is also on the board of exams watchdog Ofqual and was a governor at Barking and Dagenham College until July 2021.
“Raising standards in training through international benchmarking will not only boost productivity and competitiveness, but also help attract the foreign investment the UK needs to create high wage jobs in growth sectors like digital, green tech, advanced manufacturing and life sciences,” he said.
The announcement comes as WorldSkills UK today closes the registration period for providers and employers to register students and apprentices for the UK national skills competitions, which kick off with qualifying rounds from next month and culminate with national finals in November.
The new board members will be joining the organisation at it prepares to improve the UK’s position in the international skills competition medal tables at WorldSkills Lyon next year.
One of the first tasks for the new board members will be to appoint a successor to Neil Bentley-Gockmann, WorldSkills UK’s chief executive, who is stepping down in May after seven years.
Joining Farrar is Audrey Nelson, a strategic communications specialist who has held senior communications roles in organisations such as the CBI and the Home Office. Nelson said she “looks forward to demonstrating how investment in world-class skills boosts economic growth and is a catalyst for innovation and opportunity”.
Also enlisted are new trustees Justin Rix and Sean Wellington. Rix, a partner at professional services firm Grant Thornton UK LLP, said he is “driven by a passion for getting the very best out of people and helping to empower rising stars.”
“I am really pleased to have joined an organisation that thrives on providing opportunities and developing talent,” he said.
And Wellington, a former engineering apprentice and now provost and deputy vice-chancellor of the Middlesex University, said: “The competition-based training programmes run by WorldSkills UK give young people a real opportunity to boost their skills and their career prospects.”
(Feature image L-R: Justin Rix, Sean Wellington, Mark Farrar and Audrey Nelson)
Workers in the West Midlands earning up to £30,000 a year will be in line for free adult education under plans to boost access to level 3 training.
Officials at the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) released a set of proposals in a public consultation last Friday which they hope will help boost employment and earnings.
The combined authority, covering Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton, said their region has fewer residents qualified to level 3 than other parts of the country.
One proposal, to increase eligibility for subsidies currently only available to low earners to middle earners on £30,000, would be the most generous in the country.
WMCA also plans to require its grant-funded providers to ensure at least 20 per cent of their AEB provision is at level 3 and has pledged to review learner support funding in response to “additional cost-related barriers” facing local adults.
Subsidies for middle earners
Across AEB funding bodies, low wage learners typically have access to fully funded courses at levels 2 and 3, and access to courses under the free courses for jobs scheme and other local priority level 3 courses.
The full funding of low earning learners who would otherwise be eligible for co-funding was introduced to the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s AEB funding rules in 2018/19.
The agency defines “low wage” learners in this year’s funding rules as earning less than £18,525, based on the national living wage.
Devolved authorities have all adopted the low wage policy but have been more generous than the ESFA in how they define “low wage” (see table).
Most now use the real living wage (£10.90 per hour) as the basis for their definition, which is higher than the national living wage (£9.50 per hour).
The West Midlands is now proposing to increase their threshold to £30,000, which would be the highest in the country, in a two-year trial beginning in August 2023, subject to the consultation.
They are following in the footsteps of Tees Valley Combined Authority, which this year raised its low wage threshold to £27,040 using local median earnings, rather than the living wage.
“We are proposing to set our low wage threshold at £30,000, just below the median pay for full-time jobs across the WMCA area (£30,634). We believe this would reflect a bold commitment to tackling low pay and supporting in-work progression across the region,” WMCA’s consultation document said.
The consultation states that the WMCA is aware that upping the threshold creates a “risk of deadweight”, targeting specific groups of learners or sectors would “make messaging more complex and would likely reduce overall impact.”
Proposals will be funded from existing AEB and free courses for jobs programme budgets, WMCA confirmed.
Low wage thresholds across adult education funding bodies
New minimum volumes
Just over £100 million of WMCA’s £131 million adult education budget is allocated out to 27 providers through grant funding, 21 of which are colleges, with the rest split between WEA and local authorities.
As part of a push to go “further and faster”, the WMCA wants the grant providers it funds to ensure that at least 20 per cent of their AEB provision is at level 3.
This could prove trickier for some providers, particularly local authorities that offer very little provision at level 3 and instead specialise in non-accredited and lower level courses.
Fiona Adridge, head of insight and intelligence at the WMCA told FE Week: “We believe it is possible for grant providers to both excel in providing pathways up to level 2 as well as to expand delivery at level 3. As part of the consultation, we will be engaging with our local authorities to explore how we can best work together to achieve this.”
Qualifications for FE Workforce
The consultation also proposes to fully fund qualifications for FE staff to support providers to “‘grow their own’ and develop talent in the region”.
It is proposed that the WMCA will fund qualifications for teaching assistants at level 3, advice and guidance professionals at level 4, ESOL teachers at level 5 and aspiring leaders, also at level 5, to help providers with recruitment and retention challenges.
“We recognise that while colleges and training providers have access to support for their own staff development, this is limited and does not usually extend beyond level 3,” the consultation states.
Interested stakeholders have until 10am April 21, 2023 to respond to the consultation which can be found on the WMCA’s website.
