Registration opens for UK’s biggest national skills competition

Apprentices and students can now register to take part in this year’s national WorldSkills UK competitions, with new green skills areas making their debut this year. 

Training providers, employers, students and apprentices have until March 24 to apply to take part in the seven-month long process which will include regional heats and intensive training in 50 different skills areas before the national finals in November. 

Finalists will also have the chance to be selected to compete against their international peers at WorldSkills Lyon 2024.

Designed by industry experts, the competitions develop participants’ technical and employability skills and taking part could even lead to increased earnings.

Research by Frontier Economics found that young people who have been involved with WorldSkills UK competitions earn around 60 per cent more than their peers who have not taken part.

Minister for skills, Robert Halfon, said: “Demonstrating high-quality skills to employers is the key to unlocking your career potential, and what better way to showcase your talent than by competing against the best of the best?

“With competitions across different skills disciplines in everything from manufacturing to health and social care, WorldSkills UK offers a unique opportunity to hone your skills and climb the ladder of opportunity.”

REVEALED: WorldSkills UK’s 2022 national finals results

Last year’s national competitions saw over 200 bronze, silver and gold medals awarded, with Southern Regional College topping the medal table.

The range of skills competitions now open for registrations is enormous. They include heavy vehicle engineering, commercial make-up, cyber security and the newly added skills competitions for Industry 4.0, additive manufacturing and renewable energy. 

Following registration, competitors will go through a remote or online entry competition in April which is then followed by national qualifier competitions between April and June. From there, the national finalists are chosen and will be announced in July. 

WorldSkills UK deputy CEO, Ben Blackledge, said:

“Taking part in WorldSkills UK competitions can be a life-changing experience that develops crucial skills and boosts future earnings. Our competition-based development programmes offer students and apprentices the opportunity to pit their skills against the best of the best across the UK.

“I would encourage everyone to have a look at the many options available and sign up to compete. We are particularly excited to launch the renewable energy and additive manufacturing competitions this year as we strive to deliver the skills the UK will need in the future.”

AELP board election results revealed

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) has announced changes to its board following the trade body’s annual general meeting this afternoon. 

Three well-known figures from the training sector were re-elected by AELP’s membership. They are Brenda McLeish, chief executive of Learning Curve Group, Ian Bamford, chief operating officer at Paragon Skills and the former AELP chief executive, who now leads The Skills Network, Mark Dawe. 

However David Marsh, chief executive of Babington and co-chair of St Martin’s Group – another membership body for training providers – was not re-elected and stands down from the AELP board today after three years.

Joining the board as new non-exec directors of AELP are Jill Whittaker, managing director of HIT Training, and Iain Salisbury, chief executive of Aspiration Training. 

All five elected and re-elected members will each serve a four-year term. 

Hyde

Veteran training leader John Hyde, the founder and executive chairman of HIT Training will end his 13-year stint on the AELP board today. 

Hyde retires following 20 years of involvement with the trade body having first joined the board when the then Association of Learning Providers (ALP) was established in 2002. He left the ALP board a year later, but re-joined in November 2010. 

Also leaving the AELP board is Alan Ovenden from Babcock International Group, who served for four years.

AELP’s annual general meeting took place in London today. 

The association also confirmed that board member Rob Foulston is its vice chair, succeeding Alex Khan who stepped down last year.

Jane Hickie, AELP chief executive, welcomed new members of the board and paid tribute to those stepping down:

“I would like to congratulate Iain and Jill on their election. The new board members take up their positions at a time when the strongest voices of the sector are crucial for progress. I am looking forward to working closely with them. 

“I’d like to say a huge thank you to the outgoing board members for their hard work in recent years. They have been a great source of knowledge and have helped us to lobby for employers and training providers effectively and consistently. 

“I’d like to pay a special tribute to John Hyde whose retirement from the board comes after 20 years of involvement with AELP. As a founding member, he shared a vision with a small group who built AELP from a group of ten providers in 2002 to today with just under 800.”

Prior to leading Aspiration Training, Salisbury held a number of roles in the employment and skills space. He spent two years on the board of the Employment Related Services Association (ERSA) and held senior roles at Intraining and Learndirect. 

Whittaker has been at the helm of HIT Training for over 10 years, and was the companies finance director for six year before becoming managing director. She was made an OBE for services to training in hospitality, care and management in the 2022 Queen’s birthday honours. 

Feature image: Left – Jill Whittaker, Right – Iain Salisbury

T Level students were ‘let down’ last year – but lessons have been learnt

Following the fallout from the first-year health and science T Level results last summer, awarding body NCFE has been on a drive to ensure problems aren’t repeated in 2023. Jason Noble spoke to chief David Gallagher to find out what happened behind the scenes and whether the problems were avoidable.

“There was a lot of pressure,” says David Gallagher, chief executive of awarding body NCFE.

“As a parent, if my boys had been in this cohort and got poor grades, whatever the reasons, I would have felt the system had let me down. I would have felt that, so I’m not going to shy away from that at all.”

But he stressed that T Levels – designed by the DfE to be the flagship technical equivalents of A-levels – are “broader, deeper, more rigorous, more challenging, more aligned to employers’ needs,” than qualifications that have gone before and are “significantly harder”.

While eyes were on the first full results for T Levels in the first three courses – construction, digital, and education and childcare – first year results for the second wave of T Levels were also released to students.

Those first-year results for the health and science T Levels soon came under the spotlight as scores of disheartened students received lower than predicted grades, and social media exploded with angry learners trying to piece together what had happened.

It appears that the problems could have been avoided.

The primary issue was the amount of science content in the core papers, although other concerns such as the availability of the course textbook and uploading elements of the employer-set project also caused concern.

The issues meant NCFE had to regrade students after an Ofqual review determined that the 2022 core assessment papers “do not secure a sufficiently valid or reliable measure of student performance”. The Ofqual review found “question errors, inadequate mark schemes and questions covering areas not explicitly in the specification”.

According to Gallagher, NCFE itself had questions about the outline common core science content, which is designed by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education’s (IfATE) route panel, from as early as January 2020 and querying the breadth and depth of the technical annex.

“We raised that question on a number of instances in the design and development process,” he said.

“In the lead into ultimately designing the assessments, the exams, the questions within, there were questions and concerns raised about the core – centres, those involved in design and development, and NCFE raised those questions and those concerns.”

Gallagher said the concerns were fed back through the “usual contract management processes” and added: “We felt that they were highlighted in a way that gave the institute enough information to assess whether there was a risk, whether there was an issue from their perspective. But we absolutely have to take responsibility that we took forward the development of the papers based on the spec that had been agreed.”

However, Gallagher says it was only when looking at the grade boundaries and profiles after the assessments had been marked that it became clear there may be an issue with results.

According to NCFE, the distribution curve of grades was what they would expect to see, but the curve itself was lower. The lines were further blurred by the fact that the courses were designed to be more rigorous than the BTEC and level 3 equivalents they were replacing.

NCFE was initially unsure whether exam preparedness was the issue, with the Covid-19 pandemic meaning students had not sat exams for a couple of years.

There were 1,115 results issued across the three pathways – health, science and healthcare science – and while exact numbers affected were never revealed (Gallagher says the nature of the contracts meant some details couldn’t be revealed) an FE Week investigation in the autumn found a third had either switched to alternative courses or dropped out of college entirely as a result.

Since then, the IfATE has confirmed it is working with NCFE to reduce pure science content in the health core papers, while a separate investigation by Ofqual resulted in an enforced undertaking being signed by NCFE to deliver an action plan of improvements, offering assurances that those issues will not recur in 2023.

The organisation was understandably in the spotlight, but a web of input during development of the courses – including the DfE and IfATE, with oversight by Ofqual – has created a murky landscape which makes it difficult to pinpoint responsibility.

The journey began with IfATE’s route panel creating the outline content, which was used as the basis for development.

NCFE added detail, which was built into a qualification specification with work alongside industry experts, providers and employers. That work was subsequently validated by panels of experts and IfATE’s route panel prior to approval to ensure it met the original outline content.

Gallagher is clear that “the nature of the design and development of T Levels means that the institute and Ofqual are very intimately involved at every stage of design, development, scrutiny, approval”.

“When things are going well, in the design, development and delivery side of things, particularly pre-this issue, where things are going well on paper it is clear and it works,” he said.

“When there is a particular issue, an issue that needs addressing urgently such as this did, it put a significant amount of stress into that sort of structure between the respective stakeholders that I’m not sure is optimal.”

Gallagher said it could involve “hundreds of individuals” as respective organisations have to take account of implications for students, colleges, and the T Level brand, as well as contractual and regulatory considerations.

He questioned the unique model of a single awarding body per T Level. “In the event that something hasn’t gone right – and this could be in design and development, it could be delivery – with one awarding organisation, all of the eggs are in that basket. Is that sort of licencing model right? That for me, there’s a question mark there.

“That’s not me saying it’s not right, that’s me saying, is that right? Is that going to give us what we need?

“The capacity that is required in the system to deliver this reform, right from assessment design, assessment development, qualification development, provider development where we set centres up for success, quality assurance that wraps around that, there is insufficient capacity in the system to do everything that the policy is driving towards.”

It leads neatly to a looming question for the future. Awarding organisations will have to decide on whether to re-procure to continue delivering the first T Level courses, a process expected to launch in the next couple of months.

Gallagher said NCFE is “really focusing on what we’ve got now” and has not yet made a decision on whether to re-procure, but suggested that “investing really heavily” in resources and industry partnerships was “a sign of our intent”.

NCFE has bagged more T Level contracts than any other awarding body. Alongside the health and science courses, NCFE also has contracts for the T Levels in education and childcare, digital business services, and digital support and services. It has also won the tender for three of the five launching this September: hair and beauty, craft and design, and media and broadcast.

Contract values for all of NCFE’s T Levels, including the new ones for this year, total nearly £35 million, with the health, science and healthcare science T Levels alone accounting for more than £10 million.

But can NCFE reassure students that there won’t be a repeat of the issues this summer?

Gallagher concludes: “I am very confident that we’ve done everything that we possibly can to prepare centres, to prepare educators and to make sure that we’ve got robust, reliable and valid assessments to support all of these T Level learners.”

MOVERS & SHAKERS: EDITION 416

Kelle McQuade

Chief Operating Officer, Training Qualifications UK

Start date: February 2023

Previous Job: Head of End Point
Assessment, Training Qualifications UK

Interesting fact: In equal measure, Kelle loves the entire back catalogue of Cher, running and her miniature dachshund Eric

Andy Brown

Interim chief executive, Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB)

Start date: February 2023

Previous Job: Operations Director,
ECITB

Interesting fact: During Andy’s time in the Royal Air Force, he had the honour of leading a troop of airmen on parade at the Queen Mother’s funeral

No10 seeks senior delivery adviser for skills

Number 10 is looking for a new senior delivery adviser to lead on skills and post-18 education.

The role is part of the “delivery unit”, which was re-established last year to deliver on the prime minister’s top priorities which include education, jobs, and skills.

The person selected will be responsible for ensuring the government hits their commitments to quadruple the number of skills bootcamps, improve adult numeracy, and deliver reform to student finance in 2025, the lifelong loan entitlement.

A job advert for the position states that it requires the selected candidate to build relationships with FE colleges and continuously monitor delivery performance and identify when Number 10 support is needed.

According to the Centre for Public Impact, the prime ministers delivery unit was set up in 2001 after Tony Blair was elected to a second term.

Michael Barber was instructed to set up the unit to implement the government’s domestic policy priorities.

The unit was resurrected by Boris Johnson following Sir Michael Barber’s review into the
how the government can be more “focussed, effective and efficient” at delivering its priorities, according to the Institute for Government.


Applications for the skills and post-18 education senior delivery adviser role close on February 28, 2023.

Nescot’s Julie Kapsalis, the rebel with a big heart

FE has been a sideways move for Julie Kapsalis. But after a career in business development and PR – most notably for the darts industry – the acting principal and chief executive of North East Surrey College of Technology (Nescot) now has her target set on putting FE at the heart of the local skills ecosystem.

The day after my interview, she is presenting 150 people with their HE degrees and tells how her mother would never have believed that her daughter would end up in a job where she would be awarding degrees. For in her formative years, Kapsalis was – and still is, she confesses – “a bit of a rebel. Maybe the hair gives it away.”

She lists the loves of her life as “ferrets, cats, darts, my children, clay pigeon shooting, the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, Japanese fashion – the more outrageous the better – and travel”.

Kapsalis’s office very much reflects her passions. It has a darts board signed by the sport’s legends, Japanese ornaments, pictures of her with royalty and others drawn by students – including one of a ferret.

Nescot has its own family of ferrets (its animal studies students look after them), as well as a therapy dog, Rhubarb (a Labrador-cross), who she tells me is the main reason some students come into college.

While Kapsalis has spent the past ten years in FE and is clearly relishing becoming Nescot principal last November, she still has one foot firmly in the corporate business world as chair of the Coast to Capital local enterprise partnership (LEP).

It is a long way from the rebellious teenager who quit her fashion degree early and moved to Paris. She later applied to study English literature at the University of Exeter where she became “fascinated” by the work by feminist poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.

She also developed a curiosity for witchcraft and how “strong women who challenged convention could be socially persecuted” – a theme that still intrigues her.

Julie Kapsalis

From witchcraft to Bullseye

Kapsalis’s career began with a job at Jackie Cooper PR. On day two she was at the launch of Beck’s Futures Art Prize rubbing shoulders with her idol, Tracey Emin, but her “favourite campaign” was for Old Spice.

“We worked with huge global brands, but I most liked the ones where you had the opportunity to challenge people’s perceptions.”

She went from highbrow art and fashion campaigns to darts promotion when she moved over to Craigie Taylor International, whose clients included the darts industry –  a perfect fit for Kapsalis who had fond memories of being glued to Bullseye as a kid and still goes to watch darts “at any opportunity”.

“Unlike a lot of other sports, it’s really grounded,” she says. “The players just sit at the bar afterwards. There’s no snobbery – just great fun.

“And I will argue with anyone that it absolutely is a sport.”

Championing women in business

After a brief stint as marketing and PR manager at the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA), Kapsalis was asked to direct a team supporting local start-ups where her proudest achievement in her nine-year stint was championing women in business.

This was in the days of the Blair and Brown governments, when there was lots of money swishing around for new initiatives. Kapsalis recalls coming into the office one Monday and being told she would now be leading on women’s enterprise, after data showed not enough women owned businesses in the region.

She attended a meeting in Westminster four days later, and was promptly handed a budget to employ a team. She later became the national lead, and was made an adviser to Gordon Brown’s Women’s Enterprise Taskforce.

Brown’s gratitude

Kapsalis was also part of a team that helped to host one of Brown’s cabinet meetings in Southampton.

As the then prime minister’s security team was escorting him out, she recalls that he “stopped and went back to find those of us that had helped organise it to say thank you”.

“It only took him 10 seconds. Whatever I might think politically about anyone, that meant a lot to that group of 20 people who had given up their weekend to organise it.”

The experience made Kapsalis more mindful to be grateful in her own life. Recently, Nescot’s foundation learning students baked cakes for an event celebrating students making it to the final of WorldSkills UK, and Kapsalis spontaneously invited them into her office to show her thanks.

“It took four minutes. I’m told it meant a lot to them, and actually it meant a lot to me as well.”

Through SEEDA, Kapsalis was involved in the bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games and then bagged a job for the London organising committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG).

However, she was then pregnant with her son Hektor, who was born just before the games began. But when he was three weeks old and the Olympics were in full swing, he became ill and mum and baby were rushed to hospital.

Kapsalis remembers the night that Usain Bolt won gold in the men’s 100m. She made a deal with her Jamaican nurses to watch the final with her. “You could have offered me front row seats in the main stadium, I wouldn’t have swapped it for the atmosphere in the room at that moment.”

Hektor made a full recovery, and last year, Kapsalis took him and her other son, Felix, to the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. “I managed to blag my way in at the athletics to have my photo taken with the athletes. I think the kids were just really embarrassed.”

 

Julie Kapsalis with a Nescot ferret

Moving into FE

After a few months of consultancy work, Kapsalis landed a role as director of employer engagement at Guildford College Group. It was, she is “ashamed to say”, the first time she had ever stepped foot in a college, but she soon became “hooked” on FE.

“It made me think, wow, if I don’t know about [colleges] as being a potential option for my kids, we need to do more to shout about the importance of further education to change people’s lives. That’s when I realised I wanted to stay in the sector.”

LEP roles

It was around this time that LEPs were being set up, and Kapsalis was invited to become a board director for her local LEP, Coast to Capital. She had to overcome her “imposter syndrome” to accept, but clearly thrived on the board as she was made chair two years ago and elected chair of Catalyst South Group of six regional LEPs when they decided “one voice was stronger than six”.

Although Kapsalis has her eye “very very firmly” on her FE day job, her LEP roles give her a joined-up perspective of “the business community, infrastructure, housing, and health” – which is “hugely important” in light of current devolution discussions in Surrey. She recently accepted an invitation from the council to chair a conference on housing, and sees the link between housing and education as “pretty big”.

But Kapsalis has promised me a visit to Nescot’s ferrets: “We may never have time for ferrets if we talk about devolution,” she says, and we swiftly move on to other matters. 

Her next role, as vice-principal of Chichester College, brought with it the opportunity for extensive overseas travel and during her eight years there she grew and nurtured long established links with universities and schools in Japan, and with the Falkland Islands. As the islands do not have their own FE provision, many of its young people study at Chichester.

Area-based reviews had also just come in and Kapsalis played a key role in mergers with Crawley ,Worthing and Greater Brighton Metropolitan College.

When the first wave of bids was invited to form institutes of technology (IoTs), Chichester was too busy merging to apply. But when another window opened, Kapsalis was “clear I wanted us to do it”.

It’d be rather boring if we always did the same things

She galvanised the local education sector, including the universities of Brighton and Sussex, to form a consortium and led the bid process.

The Sussex & Surrey IoT is now set to launch this September. Will it be a success? “It has to be. Doing something new is always difficult, but it’d be rather boring if we just always did the same things. We’ve got some amazing employer partners – Gatwick Airport, Roche diagnostics, Southern Water, NatWest. We’ve all put our reputations on the line because we believe in it.” 

Julie Kapsalis with Nescot students

Nestcot’s move to its leafy Epsom campus is a return to her roots. She grew up five minutes away and as an adult drove past the college “almost every single day” but “never really knew what went on here”.

This year is Nescot’s 70th anniversary and, like Kapsalis, it is coming full circle. The college started out with a specialism in virology and pharmaceuticals, and some of that is now coming back – it has just launched a level six apprenticeship in lab technicians.

“I love that sense of history coming full circle,” she says. “Change can bring good things. I’m ever the optimist.”

Interview: Michael Barber on delivering skills reform

Sir Michael Barber was announced as a government adviser on skills reform implementation by the chancellor in November, but little is known about what his work involves. He talks to Shane Chowen about why he’s taken on the unpaid role and what he hopes to achieve when it ends next month.

When the chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced in his autumn statement that he had appointed Sir Michael Barber to advise “on the implementation of our skills reform programme”, the sector held its breath to once again be under the spotlight of yet another major review.

He was brought on to, in the Treasury’s words, “help maximise the impact” of the government’s various skills reform policies; namely T Levels, higher technical qualifications, the lifelong loan entitlement and skills bootcamps.

Little else was said. In fact Barber’s appointment was the only thing November’s autumn statement had to say about the FE and skills system at all.

And it didn’t take long for sector lobbyists to begin to make their case for what “the Barber review” should say.

Was his appointment a smokescreen?

Barber’s appointment raised a few eyebrows. It was nothing personal, but next to a boost to the schools budget that restored real terms funding to 2010 levels, some saw the appointment of a new skills adviser as a smokescreen to hide the lack of a similar funding settlement for FE.

But Barber is clear – the sector doesn’t need another review, as he told the chancellor when he was asked for his advice on skills reform just before the November autumn statement.

“I said I was happy, very happy, to do that. But I didn’t want to write another report because we’ve had reports every few years.”

He’s not wrong. A list of familiar names follows: Auger, Sainsbury, Wolf, Richard, Foster, Leitch.

“I said, what you need is advice on how to make happen all the agenda that is already in the pipeline.”

So there will be no “Barber Review of Skills Reform” to add to the collection. He isn’t even being paid for his advice and confirms that he has only agreed to advise until the end of March.

“This is only a small part of my work at the moment. I’m doing it voluntarily, so haven’t got endless hours, but I really want to help get this right.”

Putting right historic wrongs

Barber’s expertise lies in “deliverology”. He’s published several books on how governments get good policy done successfully, and why they don’t.

He’s credited with setting up the first prime minister’s delivery unit at Number 10 in Tony Blair’s second term to track progress towards policy objectives.

Even after leaving government, his phone number never seems to be far away from the desks of the government of the day looking for advice.

Barber

In 2017 he wrote a report for the Treasury on achieving value money in public services and in 2021 was asked for his advice on delivery of government services in the aftermath of the pandemic.

So why he did say yes when the chancellor called asking him to advise two cabinet ministers on a voluntary basis?

Barber reveals that he views the skills agenda as more than simply implementing some topical policy reforms, but putting right some historic wrongs.

“I know that for 150 years, we’ve not focused as we should have done on skills. I know that in the Blair years, we didn’t get as far as we should have got on the skills agenda.”

A chance to do something ‘dramatic’

That sentiment will be familiar for those working in the sector. Barber’s experience on implementation has told him that we have – right now – a unique opportunity to get reform done properly.

“For the first time in history we have a prime minister, a chancellor of the exchequer, a secretary of state for education, and a skills minister, all of whom want to prioritise skills within the education area, and even across government. That’s an alignment that’s never happened before.”

This “vertical alignment” is complemented by a “horizontal alignment” of officials across Number 10, the Treasury and DfE, as well as an “exciting” policy agenda.

Throw all that together, Barber says, and “that gives you the opportunity to do something dramatic”.

His sights are set long-term, but there’s an immediacy to his sentiment. “If we want to catch up as a country with the leading providers of skills around the world… that is probably a 10-year challenge. But you’ve got to get started and this is the time to get started.”

Barber draws a parallel with the “transformation” of pre-school education under Blair in the late 90s. “In 1995 Britain was one of the worst performers in Europe. By 2007, when Blair stepped down, it was one of the European leaders. So we can definitely do this with skills.

“It’s about creating not just a government implementation agenda, it’s about creating a movement with people from across this field believing they are part of a movement for change.

Barber is now three months in, and has potentially only five more weeks left .

He steers away from questions on structures, referring instead to “refinements to the delivery mechanisms” – making what we have now work better.

It’s a useful insight to understand the angle of the advice he is giving to ministers and officials.

DfE needs better (and readily available) data

He recognises that provider leaders have been exhausted by debilitating cuts in their resources, but argues that’s not a good enough reason to get behind reform.

“It’s been a tough decade for FE. I see this all over the world. The barrier to successful delivery of some ambitious goal is often in people’s heads. They’re not quite sure they can do it. One of the things I want to do is inject belief and ambition and for that we need a movement, something that people can get behind and are excited about.”

Funding, specifically lack of, has dominated the FE and skills sector’s narrative for more than a decade. I ask how leaders can be expected to be excited about a vision for ten years’ time, when they can’t find teachers for courses today.

“We can’t stop thinking about how to change the system over a five-to-ten-year period because there are pressures on expenditure.

“I’m not saying we don’t need more money to do a ten-year strategy. I’m saying, let’s get on with the job.”

Data seems to play a big role in Barber’s thinking. The Department for Education publishes a lot of data, but he questions whether it’s “good data” and argues that much it isn’t made available fast enough.

“Until recently I cycled quite a lot. As I’m cycling I can see my heart rate, my cadence, my speed, my power output. All of that I can measure in real time.

“After somebody finishes a [skills] bootcamp, it’s weeks before somebody at the Department for Education knows about it. Why can’t they know on the day they finish? It’s not that hard. I’m pushing them [DfE and Treasury] – they’re getting some good data. But they need to get more and get it faster.”

There’s already some element of in- year performance tracking – but that’s mostly checking up on providers’ contract performance for funding purposes. “

One of the problems in big government systems is that if you don’t know, in detail, what’s happening at the frontline, you tend to do blanket policy. Once you’ve got good real time data, you can be more precise and tailored,” he says.

“If you’re learning fast enough at the centre then you can make minor tweaks that improve implementation.”

‘I want us to say: we’ve got it right’

With Barber’s brains and experience in public service reform, some may be disappointed that a more substantial or tangible piece of work wasn’t offered to him. Advice is, after all, only advice.

He ends with an ask on those he is advising: “I would like to see this year and next real progress towards a ten-year strategy, at the end of which we would have a workforce whose skills we were proud of. We could hold our heads high in the world and say, we may not have got this right in the 19th or 20th century, but we’ve got it right now.”

With a focus on implementation, milestones, measuring inputs and outputs, a “movement” and “tweaks and refinements”, Barber’s made it clear that dramatic changes to skills policy and structures are not in his brief.

Optimistically, this could open the door for a cross-government shift in pace and phasing as it takes stock of what it knows is really working, what isn’t, and what it just doesn’t know enough about.

Advice from an expert such as Barber is great cover to delay things, drop things or to “tweak and refine”.

But there will undoubtedly be those who take a more cynical view; that next to a relatively whopping boost in school funding and coming up to a likely change in government, something had to be said about skills so people still believe the government thinks it important.

College group disputes £8m ESFA clawback demand

One of England’s largest college groups is locked in an £8 million clawback dispute with the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

NCG has instructed its lawyers to challenge the agency’s attempt to reclaim funding for historic delivery across the group between 2018/19 and 2020/21.

FE Week understands the claim relates to the application of funding rules in 16 to 19 and adult education budget funding streams, although it is unclear which rules were allegedly broken.

NCG, which has been chaired by former ESFA chief executive Peter Lauener since 2018, coughed up an undisclosed amount of funding to the agency in 2019 when it closed its two training providers, Rathbone and Intraining, after an audit found “significant data anomalies” in apprenticeship funding claims.

Lisa Sproats, chief finance officer at NCG, confirmed that the latest clawback claim relates to a data audit of historic delivery across the group and is “not connected to Intraining or Rathbone in any way”.

She added: “After seeking legal advice, we are disputing certain elements of the clawback, including the application of current and historic funding rules. We hope that this will be concluded this financial year, but whilst it is ongoing we are unable to provide further comment.”

NCG’s recently published accounts for 2021/22 state that the group’s financial health has deteriorated from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’ due to the “additional, exceptional provision for potential funding clawback” of £5,836,000 in the year.

The financial statements show additional clawback of £3,035,000 in the previous year.

The reclaim is, however, considered to be “prudent given the level of challenge NCG is undertaking in relation to this”, the accounts added.

NCG faced turbulence between 2018 and 2019, when it was downgraded to ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted, achievement rates fell, staff went on strike, and its training providers and a free school it sponsored closed. The group also dropped a bid to open an Institute of Technology.

NCG’s former boss Joe Docherty resigned in 2018 and was replaced by Liz Bromley.

The group, which runs seven colleges, has since regained its ‘good’ rating from Ofsted and is in a very strong financial position.

The accounts state that excluding the clawback claim, NCG would improve its EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) percentage of turnover to a healthy 7 per cent. This would return the group to financial health ‘good’ which is “significant given the operational challenges the sector has faced, specifically, political and economic uncertainty, significant inflationary pressures and the legacy impact of the Covid -19 pandemic”.

The group’s turnover from continuing operations increased from £132,639,000 in 2021 to £136,563,000 in 2022 primarily due to growth in its 16 to 19 contract, apprenticeships and other commercial income, but was partially offset by reduced adult income.

While NCG has a deficit of £14,628,000, this is due primarily to depreciation charge concerning its large asset base, plus its pension service charge. None of these are cash-related and the pension item fluctuates depending on external factors, so is not a measure of operational performance or financial strength.

NCG’s primary performance measure is EBITDA, which is the most relevant when assessing current and future sustainability and the ability to generate cash.

The ESFA declined to comment on the clawback dispute.

The Marples lawsuit: How ‘malicious’ DfE ‘targeted successful entrepreneur’

England’s former largest apprenticeship provider, 3aaa, hit the headlines in 2018 after a government investigation into alleged manipulation of achievement rates paused an Ofsted inspection, resulted in contract termination, administration, and a referral to the police.

A key figure behind the company, Peter Marples, a self-declared “successful entrepreneur” who previously owned Derby County Football Club, has since maintained the company’s innocence and pledged to have his day in court over the alleged scandal.

He has stuck to his word.

Marples and three other members of his family who had shares in the company recently filed a lawsuit against the Department for Education in the high court seeking damages of at least £37 million.

But the case has nothing to do with the decision to terminate 3aaa’s funding contracts, collapse or referral to the police in 2018. Rather, it centres on the DfE’s Education and Skills Funding Agency’s refusal to sign off on the sale of the company back in 2016.

Court documents seen by FE Week claim that ESFA chiefs unlawfully exercised their power to deny the change in ownership which amounted to “negligent misstatement, negligence, and/or misfeasance in public office”.

The documents paint a picture of a personal vendetta against Marples that led to the decision, including claims that he was subject to “animosity”, “disdain” and “distrust” by those at the helm of the funding agency who saw him as a “necessary evil”.

 FE Week can now provide a full account of the claim.

The birth of 3aaa

Marples was a senior partner at KPMG in the early part of his career but moved into the training sector in 2003 when he acquired Assa Training and Learning Limited.

Two years later he sold the shares in Assa to Carter & Carter for around £27 million. Carter & Carter then grew to become the largest training provider in England, valued on the London stock exchange at over £500 million before its collapse in 2008.

 Marples states that he left the company in June 2007 due to a “lack of faith” in the senior management after founder Phillip Carter died in a helicopter crash the previous month. It later came to light, as reported by The Guardian, that the then Learning and Skills Council audited Carter & Carter in 2007 and found what the company’s chair Rodney Westhead said was “falsification of records, and record-keeping was very poor”. He told The Guardian the problems were confined to the business carried out by Assa.

Marples founded 3aaa in 2009 alongside Diane McEvoy-Robinson and initially focussed on delivering the Train 2 Gain programme.

He claims, in his legal documents, that it was during this early period that he became “aware that a hostile sentiment had developed, on the part of or within the senior leadership of the ESFA, toward him personally, and toward the company”.

This allegedly manifested itself in telephone calls being made by ESFA leaders to the directors of some of 3aaa’s college partners, to “warn them off” working with the company.

3aaa initially acted as a subcontractor to deliver apprenticeships and was “highly successful” in attracting small and medium-sized employers.

Due to this “success”, the ESFA launched its first investigation into the company in 2012. The probe looked into the “employer relationship” of apprentices. Marples claims that “no adverse findings were made” and almost immediately after the conclusion of the investigation, the ESFA gave 3aaa its own direct apprenticeships contract worth an initial £300,000 for 2012/13.

On receipt of this funding the provider entered a period of rapid growth. But Marples complains that the funding on offer was insufficient to meet the costs of training the learners – a deficit which became a “source of continual discussion” with the ESFA.

Marples says that in 2015, the ESFA agreed to enter a unique “value for money” arrangement with 3aaa, whereby the provider agreed to a lower level of funding per learner, in exchange for a guaranteed growth of the funding contract. From this point 3aaa was awarded apprenticeship contracts worth tens of millions of pounds every year.

Proposed sale

In 2015, after building the value of the company, Marples looked to exit by way of management buyout worth around £50 million with the involvement of Inflexion Private Equity Partners.

The court documents state that the ESFA approved this acquisition, and “recognised that it did not have the power not to do so”.

However, Marples aborted the sale because he “did not consider that the structure of the acquisition, so far as it related to the future management of the company, would have suited the needs of the business”.

Private equity firm Trilantic Capital Partners LLP (TLP), which listed former education secretary Lord Baker as a senior non-executive, then approached 3aaa in May 2016.

The proposed acquisition would involve Marples and McEvoy-Robinson retaining their management functions, as well as approximately 40 percent of the issued share capital. The court documents describe this as an “attractive proposition, as TLP enjoyed influence in the sector, a solid financial grounding, and was offering a debt-free purchase which retained existing (and successful) management and therefore stability”.

Whistleblower triggers second ESFA investigation

During the abortive Inflexion acquisition 3aaa commissioned a mock funding audit. A whistleblower reported the findings to the ESFA and alleged incorrect start dates for learners, artificially inflated success rates by failing to report breaks in learning, and insufficient evidence of apprentices making progress.

The agency then commissioned KPMG, where Marples used to work, to investigate the company in February 2016.

The court documents state that the then ESFA chief executive Peter Lauener had identified the whistleblower to be former FE Week editor Nick Linford.

KPMG’s unannounced external audit of 3aaa is described in the court documents as a “dawn raid”.

The KPMG report, codenamed “project vanilla” and seen by FE Week, found dozens of funding “overclaims”.

But the ESFA confirmed that “there was no evidence found of deliberate circumvention of funding rules by 3aaa”, according to Marples.

Following this investigation, the ESFA continued to increase funding to 3aaa, by over 25 per cent for 2016/17. The provider secured over £45 million of funding for the following 24 months, and was the largest holder of a 16- to 19-year-old apprenticeship contract in the country by a considerable margin.

Marples states that he was “increasingly concerned” about the alleged influence that Linford “seemed to exercise over the ESFA”.

He added that the KPMG investigation caused “significant harm” to his company, namely by the agency’s decision to freeze funding during the inquiry. The cashflow position quickly became critical, so much so that 3aaa’s directors took the decision in March 2016 to place the company into administration, and appointed PwC.

But within two hours of PwC contacting Lauener, £3.5 million of withheld funding was released to the company by the ESFA, according to the documents.

 Proposed non-levy cap

Also in May 2016, amid the planned introduction of the apprenticeship levy, 3aaa became aware of an apparent plan by the DfE to introduce a “non-levy cap”, beginning in or around May 2017. The proposed cap would limit the amount of non-levy funding contract-holders could obtain in relation to new starters to £5 million.

At this point, the ESFA encouraged 3aaa to refocus its business plan towards the levy market, according to Marples’ court documents. By November 2016 the provider had attracted around £20 million in levy funding.

However, the cap was ultimately never adopted. Marples says the policy was formally withdrawn in May 2017 but he understands that, by December 2016, it was “widely known within the ESFA that the cap would not be implemented”.

ESFA refuses to sign off on 3aaa sale

3aaa’s funding agreement with the ESFA included the following clause (5.10): “The contractor must notify the chief executive if there is a change in its name and/or ownership. The chief executive reserves the right to terminate the contract if they consider in their absolute discretion that the change in ownership would prejudice the contractor’s ability to deliver the services.”

The court documents state that the “principal factors” which ought to have been considered by the ESFA when considering whether a change of control would prejudice the delivery of 3aaa’s publicly funded contracts were whether there would be a decrease in the quality of management of the company, its facilities, and a “degradation” in the financial standing of the firm.

In Marples’ eyes, there was no proper basis the ESFA could disapprove the proposed change of control because 3aaa held an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted rating, had shown itself to be “well-prepared” to deal with the funding changes incoming from the levy, TLP was “reputable and financially sound”, and the structure of the deal would bring additional funding through an equity injection and was not reliant on debt.

Marples claims no concerns over the sale were expressed to him, and alleges he was told that a letter consenting to the change of control had been placed on Lauener’s desk by his ESFA colleagues.

However on December 23, 2016, the ESFA sent a refusal letter to 3aaa that stated the agency was “not able to agree to this change in ownership in the context of current and future contracts”. The sale was aborted.

Reasons for refusal included that the company’s new business plan was premised on continued delivery, and growth of, non-levy activity, which the ESFA feared “may not be achieved” and cited the plan to introduce a £5 million non-levy starts cap.

Marples claims the refusal was a “negligent misstatement” and was inconsistent with the previous decision to sign off on the sale of 3aaa to Inflexion as well agreeing to changes of control for several other training providers around the same time.

His court documents state that the ESFA had approached the refusal decision “in the wrong way” and therefore acted “unlawfully”.

“It was not sufficient, under clause 5.8, for there to be ‘a risk that a change of control will prejudice delivery of our contracts both now and in the future’; instead, the test was whether, in the view of the chief executive, such a change ‘would prejudice THE CONTRACTOR’S ability to deliver the services’.

“The terms of the refusal letter indicate that the ESFA considered and relied upon factors that were not relevant to the clause 5.8 test. Whereas the refusal letter cited the business plans that had been disclosed to it, and suggested that these were inadequate to meet the introduction of the non-levy cap, that was irrelevant to the test.”

Marples claims the ESFA’s refusal constituted “misfeasance in public office” and its officials acted with “targeted malice”.

The court documents claim there was a “degree of hostility” from the ESFA towards private providers, and in particular towards 3aaa and Marples who was seen as a “necessary evil”.

They add that Marples was subject to “particular animosity” due to his historic association with Carter & Carter and because of a “widely held view that those behind large private providers were making excessive profits at the expense of the public”.

Lauener held “significant disdain and distrust for large private providers”, according to Marples, who claimed senior ESFA leaders held regular meetings with Linford of FE Week who “undoubtedly used his access to the ESFA’s staff to promote and foster [hostile] views” within the agency.

Marples alleges that top ESFA officials warned their colleagues not to support 3aaa’s growth plans and that, instead, the agency should be “watching the company very carefully”.

Loss and damage

Marples claims that the change of control refusal was “unjustified”. If the acquisition completed, the Marples family would have immediately received the sum of £26,752,979 as well as “deferred consideration” in the form of “roll over loan notes” to the value of £10,271,389, the documents state.

The Marples family therefore “expect to recover the principle (sic) sum of £37,024,368” in damages, plus interest and costs. There are four claimants in the case: Peter, Sarah, Lee and Thomas Marples.

The court documents show the claimants are pursuing interest at the rate of 8 percent per year on the £37 million, which would add another £21 million to their claim.

No claim has been put forward by 3aaa co-founder McEvoy-Robinson, who declined to comment when approached by FE Week.

Next steps

The Marples family lawsuit was submitted by lawyers from DWF Law LLP to the high court on February 3, 2023. From this date the DfE has 14 days to acknowledge and then 28 days to file its defence.

The ESFA said it could not comment on ongoing litigation.