My first day at Wat Tyler Country Park doing work experience was back in September 2019. I instantly felt freer; I hated being stuck indoors and I loved working within a group, getting tasks done.
Even as a small child I just loved playing with bugs and dirt. I remember getting told off for diving into puddles with my brother, but no scolding ever made me feel less happy about being covered in mud.
So I was hugely grateful when Wat Tyler gave me the opportunity to work for them. A traditional classroom isn’t for everyone, and I learned over time that I struggle to work in enclosed areas. I love the fresh air, the space. Being indoors to me is suffocating.
Working in the education area at the park gave me the chance to be part of a team that made an area safe and user-friendly for local schools. I had the opportunity to cut down the reeds in the ponds, cut back all the overhanging trees and discover creatures every day, knowing I was doing something for the environment, that I was making a difference.
With my apprenticeship, I can learn while doing something I feel passionate about – looking after our planet and being a guardian of the environment. Every week, after working with different volunteer groups, I can look back on our completed work and see tangible progress. I have also been able to plant new trees, and I think about this a lot; it’s crazy to know that through my work, tall trees will be here in years to come. It is a very satisfying feeling.
I knew a ‘traditional’ education pathway wasn’t for me so I was so happy and excited to get an apprenticeship, where I could learn on the job. I get to work with so many great people, experience the woods, meadows and community spaces and maintain these spaces for everyone to enjoy. I even get to talk to the public and educate them on what we are doing.
All my friends could have done what I have achieved
I feel like I’m part of the team, I blend in and it doesn’t feel as if my learning needs are important. I like being different and unique, but I feel normal here because I can just be myself and that is enough.
I feel I am more mature too. The apprenticeship gave me the chance to drive the all-terrain vehicle off-road and now I want to learn to drive, which I didn’t think I would do. This apprenticeship hasn’t just given me an education; it has developed me as a person.
My employers say I am an inspiration, which is a crazy feeling because I think all my friends could have done what I have achieved. They just weren’t as lucky as I have been in getting the opportunity.
That’s why I want more employers to look at supported apprenticeships. Young people with SEND can work hard, we can achieve and we do have bright futures. We might just need some extra help. I tell my work friends the things I find difficult and they help me. I get the job done, and it means I can have the life I always wanted.
I have been able achieve things that I didn’t think I ever would. Winning the nasen award for young person aged 16-25 being one of them. Writing this article for you to read is another.
I have learned so much through my apprenticeship that I hope I can become a fully employed and permanent part of the team one day. I tell the Castledon School students who come here now that I didn’t always want to do work placements, but now I love it. My school, and Basildon Council through my land management apprenticeship, gave me a route into work. I want to see more schools and employers doing the same.
Recently, ChatGPT and I wrote in these pages about the incredible benefits of online learning in driving up efficiency, quality and success in education. We were finally on the cusp of understanding how technology can enhance learning and skills!
My optimism came crashing down just a week later when the DfE increased the requirement for face-to-face teaching to 85 per cent of learning in their latest bootcamp tender.
Online learning helps positively transform lives. I have had the privilege of seeing it over and over again. It is therefore deeply worrying that in the face of a general upturn in embracing technology, the DfE and its regulators seem to be set on returning to ‘old trusted ways of working’, limiting opportunities for many of our communities.
At times, it feels like those making the decisions are doing everything they can to stifle innovation in the delivery of education and skills. I am sure this can’t be their deliberate intention, but if we are not careful the government will inadvertently create a learning agenda where online learning is throttled at birth – making us less competitive in the long run.
When I was at Cambridge University three decades ago, we had 85 per cent face-to- face learning time: 15 hours of lectures per week with 200+ students and virtually no interaction. Most times, a professor read a chapter from a book they’d written ten years previously – if they bothered to turn up at all! Genuine live interactive learning took place the other 15 per cent of the time, in our tutorials. We can do much better than this through a sensible blend of resources and live interaction.
So let’s get interactive with a little quiz. Which would you prefer?
A. Being taught by someone who could vary daily from ‘Requires Improvement’ to ‘Outstanding’ depending on the kind of week they’re having or the lottery of what teacher you get.
Or
B. Being taught by the outstanding teacher in the country or a genuine expert in the subject who you’d never find (or afford) in the classroom
A. Having to attend a session at a fixed time with no option to catch up or repeat.
Or
B. Attending a session at a time that is convenient to you, chunking it up, repeating it and revisiting it throughout your course.
A. Someone teaching you online with a PowerPoint and their face in the bottom left corner.
Or
B. World-class resources delivered by world-class teachers every single lesson, developed by education experts who are continually reviewing their relevance and constantly tweaking based on student feedback and performance.
A. Sitting through a lecture and not knowing whether one piece of information has lodged in your brain.
Or
B. Having a carefully crafted set of live formative assessments embedded in your lecture to ensure that you have understood what you are being taught and can apply it.
A. A manually maintained record of your progress and understanding.
Or
B. A live record of your learning, understanding and progress, available to you and those supporting you.
It’s B all the way, of course. Sure, there are difficulties to overcome such as the very real challenge of digital exclusion. But sitting in a classroom or on-screen at a set time every week also excludes millions with complex lives from learning new skills.
It’s time for the DfE to accept that and to change their attitude; online delivery is as good as, if not better than, much face-to-face delivery and they should be encouraging development of online resource development, not reducing it.
More importantly, the whole FE regulatory system needs to get round a table and set out what good looks like in the online world, so that they can have confidence in commissioning online delivery.
The DfE claim to care about outcomes, but obsess about inputs. Ofsted care about intent, implement and impact, so let’s allow them to focus on that and nothing else. The Treasury want more skills and more efficiency, so allow us to offer them solutions that give them that.
The potential is there, and we can’t afford for ministers to keep chickening out of the big calls to make education more effective and inclusive.
My career to date has been largely unplanned, hugely fulfilling, and has brought fantastic opportunities I could never have imagined. I’m a dual professional who entered further education as a hospitality lecturer 16 years ago after a career in industry and who remains a passionate advocate for continuous lifelong learning through CPD, expecially when it comes to technology.
From a food and wine pairing app in 2012 (one of the first smartphone apps to be produced in education with over 30,000 downloads) to student analytic dashboards, and from the ‘Listening Project’ student voice conference to a teaching and learning strategy underpinned by digital development, my focus has always been on supporting quality improvement in technical teaching and training.
I now manage the national Blended Learning Consortium of 164 colleges, co-creating contextualised digital learning resources with teachers, trainers and employers to support flexible modes of delivery. I was fortunate to lead the DfE EdTech Demonstrator Programme on behalf of my college during the pandemic, and, though I am now a leader, a member of the BETT UK advisory board and the DfE digital technology and standards working group for the FE sector, I am still very much a teacher with the same focus on classroom practice I had 16 years ago.
So it was a huge honour to have recently been awarded an ETF and Royal Commission Technical Teaching Fellowship for my work in technical teaching. Through it, I aim to keep that focus by supporting teachers and trainers locally, regionally and nationally to raise their awareness of new and emerging technologies that are shaping industry practices, give them confidence to use these technologies and help them to consider how they can be used in their settings.
Challenges ahead
Often, vocational teachers do not have remission to research how technology shapes current working practices, and this Fellowship will enable me to research specific sectors to identify these new technologies, such as wearable tech in health or thermal imaging drones in construction, and how to deploy them in education.
It’s also the case that technological changes often advance more rapidly than curriculum development. It is therefore vital for teachers to be upskilled and utilising the most advanced practices in their industry sector to lead curricular development.
The use of virtual reality in subjects such as science, health and social care and public services is already allowing learners to experience real-life scenarios they wouldn’t normally be exposed to. Such scenario-based learning develops learners’ wider skills and improves knowledge retention. More than that, it prepares them for a rapidly evolving workplace. It is vital that the benefits of relevant technologies are shared with all learners across every sector.
Getting started
My project will include gathering information and consolidating it into material that can be shared widely across FE. Its dissemination will support the inclusion of the most current and emerging technologies, professional standards and practices.
The key to its success will be to get educators excited about how their industry is evolving and ensure that they are well placed to share that excitement with an emerging technical workforce.
But there’s no need to wait. There are great educators already sharing best practice and innovation in using digital tools online. These range from simple ideas like asking learners who struggle with writing to take pictures of what inspires them to more complex solutions like Dan Fitzpatrick’s ‘PREP’ approach to using AI tools. A teacher with Education Partnership North East, Fitzpatrick’s generously shared and innovative model aims to help teachers get the best results when using AI to lessen their workload.
Professional social media networks can also helpful. We got involved in a Bodyswaps pilot which has provided us with Meta Quest VR headsets and a licence to trial scenario-based learning software that builds interview and public speaking skills. Our learners love it.
With so many developments, we must grow our profession’s confidence to experiment with digital tools to enhance teaching and learning. The key to staying ahead of the curve on edtech is to share our challenges as well as our solutions.
Amid gloomy national news about apprenticeship starts, especially at level 2, Norfolk is bucking the trend. Last year, starts across the county increased by 18 per cent.
Despite a slight decline in the overall number of starts in the first three months of 2022/23 – three interesting stats remain: the increase in our apprenticeship starts for those aged 16 to 18 continued, as did the increase in those starting level 2 apprenticeships, and we’ve seen the best figures in 3 years on newly recruited apprentices (those employed less than 3 months).
Promoting the benefits
This is the result of a lot of hard work. Six local providers hold the ‘top spots’ in the leader board for the numbers of apprentices they’ve started so far this year. And while the most recent Q1 numbers had just 13 fewer apprenticeship starts than the same period in the previous year (2021/22), Norfolk SMEs started almost 80 more apprenticeships than they did in the pre-pandemic Q1 of 2019/20.
Many businesses benefited from the post-pandemic national incentives available last year. However, primary and secondary research conducted by Apprenticeships Norfolk – a hub run by Norfolk County Council providing impartial guidance for businesses and individuals – highlighted the practical and financial support particularly needed to help more SMES and apprentices access programmes.
After securing almost £2m of external funding, Apprenticeships Norfolk have been able to deliver an exciting range of initiatives. An ongoing #MadeInNorfolk TV marketing campaign has helped to inspire SMEs, raising awareness of apprenticeships with unscripted messages from real, local SMEs that had taken on an apprentice about the benefits it had brought them. A dedicated website explains the range of grants, bursaries and support on offer.
The combination of promotional activity and carefully planned interventions (additional financial and practical support) may be the catalyst for growth rates in Norfolk which exceed national figures. Indeed, evaluations indicate that the financial support made a significant difference with local business owners.
Kickstarting the provision
Meanwhile, a pilot scheme to progress Kickstarters onto apprenticeships provided an innovative combination of upfront financial incentive, a 6-month wage contribution (based on NMW at 37 hours a week), up to five hours of individualised wrap-around practical support (including an interactive employer ‘induction’ session) and a £300 training budget for the employers/apprentices to enhance their skills.
Employers developed their mentoring skills and apprentices accessed added-value training designed to support them to engage in the apprenticeship more effectively; with the aim to increase the likelihood of completion and achievement of the apprenticeship.
Evaluation feedback indicated that the 42 participating businesses would have been unable to offer a full-time apprenticeship without the scheme, and that the apprenticeships may not have led to so many job offers.
By the end of the pilot, seven apprentices had withdrawn, three of them citing family moving out of county as the cause. Early indications suggest a retention rate of 83 per cent, far exceeding national figures.
Learning the lessons
We have drawn five key conclusions from our efforts.
First, success is a collective partnership effort across the system. It requires input and commitment from all stakeholders, including providers, employers and individuals with supplementary brokerage of financial and practical support.
Next, it’s crucial to keep raising awareness of apprenticeships so that SMEs really understand the benefits and the impact an apprentice can have on their business. Many simply do not.
But success hinges on a balance of financial and practical support. This combination of approaches was verified by the independent evaluation of our pilot scheme. Its key findings indicate that financial stimulus was critical to supporting the viability of starting the apprenticeship for the businesses, and that individualised, wrap-around support was equally important to see it through to completion.
SMEs are often time-poor and also value free, impartial and timely information, advice and administration prompts. Apprenticeship Hubs are well-placed to deliver this.
Finally, SMEs also benefit from learning how to mentor apprentices and better manage their apprenticeship programmes. Doing so supports retention and offers a higher return on investment for the apprentice, the business and the economy.
The problems with apprenticeships are national, but as Norfolk is showing, some of the most effective solutions can be found locally.
Colleges up and down the country report record staffing vacancy levels. This isn’t because of an explosion in student numbers; it just reflects a growing inability to attract skilled people with so many other options to choose from. When it comes to competing for talent, the further education sector is the underdog. And while we might love an underdog, we should remember the term is defined as a competitor with little chance of winning, or someone with little status in society.
The problem will only get worse if we show our desperation. We must resist employing unsuitable people simply because students would otherwise have no teacher. If we play that game, things won’t improve.
We now have a smorgasbord of initiatives aimed at bringing in new blood. No one is against such campaigns but we must avoid undermining our profession and services. At times, it feels like we communicate that anyone from industry or commerce can simply waltz in and save us.
What we surely want is high-quality people with strong and successful technical backgrounds. Just as there is a small minority of poor teachers, there are poor plumbers, engineers, care workers, chefs and accountants. We don’t want to be the refuge of the dual-unprofessional. We don’t want to become a sector with the strapline ‘We buy any carpenter’.
While many of the initiatives have merit, they are not a coherent whole, a point well made in the recent report of the Lifelong Learning Commission. Sadly, they also tinker at the edges. The reason for our underdog status is absolutely obvious: pay.
Research on why people leave their jobs is consistent; The most common reason is to earn more. Every study shows this is true for between 50 and 70 per cent of movers. There is a reason Manchester City attracts an abundance of world-class talent and Rochdale doesn’t.
World-class technical education cannot be delivered on the cheap
Research on people’s reasons to stay is consistent too. Number one is inertia. We are fortunate that our staff feel such a sense of mission that they stay with us even when they could earn more elsewhere – in industry, schools or universities. But this commitment is being stretched to its limits. Labour markets reach an equilibrium and, once inertia and loyalty are exhausted, you get what you pay for. This is a warning we must heed now.
The latest data from HMRC shows the typical school teacher earns £39,000 – at the upper quartile for income, as you would expect for a graduate professional. In contrast, the equivalent college teacher is paid just above the median. Loyalty extracts a high price in terms of our people’s general standard of living.
Here are five suggestions for how we might respond to the staffing challenges we face.
First, make it a specific objective to improve pay in real terms. Too often, we use cuts in real-terms funding rates as a ‘computer says no’ starting point on pay negotiations. Our college has set itself this objective and made pay awards every year since incorporation.
Second, recruit newly-technically-qualified, non-experienced people. While students should enjoy learning from dual-professionals, a fair amount can be taught by those who simply know their subject. We should mirror the Teach First model.
Third, reclaim the title lecturer. Further education is not a graduate teaching profession, so we compare badly with schools if we describe ourselves as teachers. Lecturer denotes specialist experience and expertise, and is where staff derive their economic value.
Fourth, exploit the funding methodology which requires planned learning activity, not taught hours. It could help us afford to pay more if more learning was done without teacher contact.
Finally, look to bolshy sectors that stop doing things when funding isn’t fair. Farmers leave crops in the ground. Local governments close libraries. Health services let waiting lists rise. Rail operators cancel trains. We soldier on, keeping everything going. If employers and government want us to meet need but won’t pay the price, then let’s stop providing the service until they do. World-class technical education cannot be delivered on the cheap.
We can choose a better strapline. I suggest the one that served Stella Artois so well for 25 years: ‘Reassuringly expensive’.
A training provider in the north of England has been forced to close some of its centres as a result of an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted report published today.
Aspire-Igen Group Ltd, which to date has run six training centres across Bradford, Leeds, York, Hull and Scarborough, told FE Week that it had closed “some” of its centres and transferred provision to others where “the achievement of learners’ aims can be better supported”.
It is not clear at this stage which centres have shut their doors and whether any staff jobs have been lost.
Ofsted downgraded the provider to the bottom rating following a visit in December and a report published today, reporting issues such as poor attendance, behaviour and teaching. It had previously been rated ‘requires improvement’ in February last year.
The provider said nearly half of its learners had no prior qualifications and multiple barriers to learning, explaining that “it should come as a surprise to no one that some have struggled to re-engage with formal, face-to-face education”.
Aspire-Igen Group confirmed that it had “also struggled to recruit suitably qualified teaching staff of the past year, and have, at times, been forced to rely on temporary staff from employment agencies to maintain face-to-face lessons”.
A spokesperson said leaders had requested an internal review of the report.
“All that said, although we do not agree with some of Ofsted’s comments, we have taken them on board and reshaped our provision, closing some of our centres and transferring provision to one of our other centres where the achievement of learners’ aims can be better supported,” the spokesperson said.
“In future, we aim to focus our delivery in West Yorkshire around our well-equipped Bradford centres, alongside smaller centres in North and East Yorkshire.”
According to inspectors, Aspire-Igen provides education for young people – many of whom have no prior qualifications or who have high needs, with 575 learners on its books at the time of the visit.
Just under half of those were on health and social care and child development programmes, largely at levels 2 and 3.
Others are on entry level, level 1 and level 2 programmes in areas such as construction, motor vehicle, public services, business administration, hair and beauty, learning support, IT, and hospitality and catering.
Inspectors found that “too many learners do not attend their classes frequently enough,” which resulted in gaps in learning or were “not well-enough prepared” for employment or further training or education.
Inspectors reported poor behaviours and attitudes with disruption in lessons.
The report said that learners on health and social care and child development courses benefitted from work placements and useful careers guidance but too many learners in other programmes did not get the same.
Leaders were “too slow to act” on poor teaching, the report said, adding that efforts to improvement quality are “not effective enough”.
Elsewhere, assessments were not used by teachers to identify gaps in students’ knowledge, which resulted in learners not having a good enough understanding of how to improve or falling behind.
The report continued that “teachers do not adequately support learners to improve their English skills,” and added that “while most learners with high needs make progress towards their individual learning goals, too often this is not rapid enough”.
Ofsted said that workshop space at the firm’s Leeds site was not suitable for the construction programmes, as bays were too cramped, and some online teaching resources on the childcare courses were not appropriate for the age of the learners.
It added that while directors had supported leaders’ work to improve attendance, they “do not do enough to tackle the poor quality of education”.
T Level students will be able to sit their core exams and employer-set project in two different assessment windows from September 2023, under new government plans.
Currently students must undertake their core exams, an employer-set project and an occupational specialism assessment to complete a two-year T Level. The first time students sit their core exams, they must do so in the same assessment period as their employer set project, for instance in the summer of their first year, but for retakes for those elements can be done separately.
Ofqual has today launched a consultation on T Level assessments in which it proposes awarding organisations allow students flexibility to sit their core exams and employer set projects separately. For example, students could sit one element in the summer and the other in the autumn.
It said that decision was taken by ministers following feedback from providers, and plans to introduce the new proposals for new starters from September 2023.
Cath Sezen, interim director of education policy at the Association of Colleges, said the move was “sensible” as it “allows greater flexibility for colleges to manage teaching and learning to suit the needs of students and the varied demands of the T Level”.
She added: “In practice, most colleges deliver core in the first year and occupational specialism in the second. Greater flexibility in when students can sit the core assessments makes it possible to deliver some of the occupational specialism material alongside the core in the first year if that works better for the students and the college.
“It also allows students more time to prepare for the core assessment.”
Ofqual’s consultation document said the move “will offer more flexibility for education and training providers and for students, as providers will be able to tailor the sequencing of assessments to their course, and reduce the assessment burden on students”.
The consultation confirmed that students would need to complete all the individual elements of that component at once, for example core exams where there are more than one paper to sit would need to be completed in the same assessment period.
According to Ofqual, if the plans are introduced it will effectively require each of the awarding bodies to offer core assessments twice in each academic year, although this already happens in practice because of re-sits.
Changes will not affect the way core assessments are graded, Ofqual said, which will remain a grade from A* to E.
The document said the current rules requiring the core exams and employer set project to be sat in the same assessment window “reflected the DfE policy that awarding organisations should not break the core into smaller separately assessed and graded units or sub-components,” which was “intended to help support the maintenance of standards”.
But the consultation continued that Ofqual believes the proposed changes “do not materially increase any current risks in relation to the maintenance of standards”.
The proposed change is the latest tweak to the flagship qualifications, which are designed to be the technical equivalents of A-levels.
Earlier this month education secretary Gillian Keegan pushed back the start of four T Levels due to launch this September amid fears they were not yet ready to roll out.
And earlier this year the government changed the work placement rules for T Levels by allowing up to a fifth of hours to be delivered remotely in certain subjects.
Ofqual’s latest consultation is open until 11.45pm on May 15.
Chair, National Association for Managers of Student Services
Start date: March 2023
Concurrent job: Assistant Principal: Students/Customers, Chichester College Group
Interesting fact: Lisa returned to work at Chichester College 20 years after her time there as a student and student president. For the last 10 years, she has spent two weeks every summer volunteering in Kenya with staff and students on education projects
Ciaran Roche
Public Affairs Manager, AELP
Start date: March 2023
Previous job: Public Affairs and Prospect Research Officer, University of Salford
Interesting fact: Ciaran is fascinated by all things history, the older the better. If you want to get him talking ask him about Herodotus or Roman coins; if you want him to keep quiet, give him a book.
Chris Rose
Marketing Director, HIT Training
Start date: March 2023
Previous job: Head of Marketing, HIT Training
Interesting fact: Before working in marketing Chris had a career working and managing in pubs and hotels where he also trained as a barista.
Josh was a talented bricklaying student with dreams of running his own building firm. Then his mother lost one of her part-time jobs, forcing them to request financial support from his school, Hartlepool College of Further Education. Josh – not his real name – got a part-time cash-in-hand job and, after his attendance started waning and he struggled to focus at college, he dropped out altogether.
Hartlepool’s principal, Darren Hankey, says colleges across the country are dealing with students like Josh daily, a claim backed up by our investigation showing how more students have quit college since the cost of living crisis began, with support staff feeling “overwhelmed” amid spiralling demand for their services.
Soaring demand for support
Every one of the 18 colleges responding to a survey for FE Week by the National Association for Managers of Students Services saw demand for their support services rise in the last year, with half seeing demand increase by more than 20 per cent.
Growing demand is piling more pressure on overstretched staff and student welfare budgets. Only 2 of the 63 colleges (3 per cent) that responded to an FE Week freedom of information request saidthey were planning to increase their student services budgets this financial year, with the same percentage cutting the resource and the rest maintaining it for now.
Eddie Playfair, senior policy manager at the Association of Colleges, says colleges are reporting a “massive growth in demand” for support which they are “struggling to keep up with”.
“Whether it’s mental health or financial support, they haven’t been able to grow their support in proportion to rising need,” Playfair said.
Lisa Humphries, the new chair of the National Association for Managers of Student Services (NAMSS), says support services are overwhelmed and believes demand has “tripled, if not more” over the past four years at her members’ colleges.
She points out that the cost of living crisis is just one of several calamities to hit this generation of young people.
“It is the year-on-year build-up of the impacts of the pandemic and mental health issues. We literally have to ask ourselves each day, what support can we put in place that is going to have the most impact?”
How colleges are helping students cope
Rise in drop-outs
More students have dropped out of college since the cost of living crisis began, with five times more students blaming the decision to quit on money worries, our FOI responses show. So far in this academic year, 7 per cent of students have withdrawn. The overall figure was 9 percent last year, and 7 per cent in both 2020-21 and 2019-20.
But 5 per cent of students quitting this year said that they left for financial reasons, compared with 1 per cent in 2021-22 and 2 per cent in 2020-21.
A higher share of those quitting their courses cite getting a job as their main reason: 12 per cent since September and 14 per cent last academic year, compared with 10 per cent in 2020-21 and the preceding year.
Weston College noted some learners withdrawing from its trade provisions because of the “lure of high hourly wages and the increased demand for low-skilled labour”, while Blackpool and The Fylde College told FE Week that many of its students were missing classes due to second jobs.
Hankey is concerned that the rise in students dropping out to work “bakes in inequality”. He says: “It is nearly always in precarious work – zero-hour contracts with no guaranteed income from one week to the next. Ultimately, this is a waste of talent and, I’d imagine, a practice solely taken up by those from poorer backgrounds.”
Universal Credit and Child Benefit rates rise by just over 10 per cent from April, providing some reprieve for cash-strapped families. But it will be too late for Josh.
“The current circumstances have deprived the economy of someone who has had the opportunity to make a greater impact snatched away,” Hankey says.
Darren Hankey, principal of Hartlepool College of Further Education
More bursaries for struggling families
The impact of the cost of living is also evident when it comes to demand for bursaries, with all of NAMSS’s survey respondents seeing a rise in uptake in the past year, and 61 per cent calling the increase “significant”.
Amid soaring inflation, some commented that they were having to increase the household income eligibility threshold to support struggling students and families.
Whereas usually about 60 per cent of Hartlepool’s students apply for funding in any academic year, this year 95 per cent applied, with extra demand coming from students in households where parents are working, Hankey says.
This places “extra burdens” on the college in supporting students and processing bursary applications.
Humphries, who is also associate principal for students at the Chichester College Group of seven colleges, says that normally their students would apply for financial support at the start of their course. This year they have seen around a 10 per cent increase in students “suddenly in financial hardship” applying for bursaries mid-year.
Hartlepool usually uses the government bursary funding for the essentials such as students’ travel to and from college, food, and key curriculum kit, while trying to keep some back for “enrichment activities” for poorer students such as visits to businesses which “can be invaluable”.
But the escalating demand means Hartlepool might have to limit these activities, or not offer them at all.
Playfair says the £90 million government funding that colleges receive for bursaries is insufficient. “Colleges are spending their bursary fund and having to make difficult decisions. Some colleges talk about using other funds to shore up hardship – they’re spending more on transport or food than the allocation they get from government,” he says.
Filling the food gap
Although some students’ families receive Universal Credit, they are often below the threshold for free meals. But colleges are stepping in to fill the gap.
Thirty-nine per cent of NAMSS respondents now provide a foodbank within their college, all of which have seen increased demand, and half of which have seen a significant increase.
Others have established strong links with local foodbanks.
Playfair says that “many, many more cases of students are relying on colleges for all their main meals, and coming into college even if they haven’t got classes because of that”.
Colleges providing foodbanks on campus include City College Plymouth, Abingdon & Witney College and Newark College, which has seen a 60 per cent rise in usage in the past year. Newark also provides free breakfasts every day for students and staff, and food bags of ingredients to take home and cook.
One student there described how she usually only eats when she is at college three days a week, and the food bags, which each contain a recipe card for students to learn how to cook healthy meals, is “something to look forward to and [a chance] to eat properly”.
Newark College student Jake Crane and head Penny Taylor participating in the food waste project
How councils are helping – or not
In some cases, local authorities have stepped in to provide extra support.
Tower Hamlets has been the most generous, earmarking £500,000 this year to re-introduce a version of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), scrapped in England in 2011, to support poorer 16-19-year-old students from its borough.
The council received 1,921 eligible applications for the £400 payment this year.
Playfair believes now would be a good moment for the government to revisit the idea of reintroducing the EMA in England, which is the only part of the UK not to have it.
“As an anti-poverty strategy, it would pump some money into very hard-pressed local economies,” he says.
Some councils have used the household support funding from government, designed to support vulnerable households, to provide meals for college students during the holidays.
But Playfair describes provision as a “postcode lottery”, with some learners receiving food vouchers while others attending the same college but from a different council area go without.
With fuel costs rising, Playfair says some councils are struggling to subsidise students’ public transport fares, so some colleges have stepped in to run them instead.
Weston College offers all learners “50 per cent plus” subsidised bus travel via First Bus, as well as providing its own “bespoke transport services”. But it has still seen some learners quitting “due to the removal of a small number of local bus services by the local authority”.
South Essex College has made Friday a self-directed study day, so that learners can save on transport costs.
Lisa Humphries, chair of the National Association for Managers of Students Services
How the crisis is affecting attendance
For those students who do make it to class, some colleges are finding they are staying on campus for longer because of the free food and warmth on offer.
The NAMSS survey shows that 44 per cent of colleges provide a warm space or open existing heated facilities for longer hours to help students. Even among those colleges who do not, several said that they had accommodated students on non-timetabled days, and that they had generally seen students generally staying at college longer than in the past.
Penny Taylor, head of Newark College, says that since introducing a daily free breakfast club for students and staff, the college has seen a rise in “attendance, retention and punctuality”.
But it’s a mixed picture. Humphries says Chichester’s seven colleges are all seeing drops in attendance as students are forced to work to support their families or take on more caring responsibilities for younger siblings to allow parents to work more.
Like many colleges, Chichester has extended its opening hours for its warm spaces, after seeing more students “hanging around in canteens and common rooms for longer”, says Humphries. “Part of that is because maybe they’re not getting heating at home, or parents are working longer hours and they don’t want to be on their own at home.”
But she warns of the difficulty in paying for staffing costs to cover extended hours, and of colleges’ own rising energy bills.
Of all the colleges that responded to our FOI, the City of Liverpool College reported the highest proportion of drop-outs this year at 17.5 per cent. But it is also taking concerted action to support learners.
Its head of student services. Amanda Parker, says that as “more and more students are working part or even full-time jobs alongside their studies”, the college has adapted timetables as well as keeping its nursery provision and libraries open later. It provides free breakfasts and has expanded free meals to its adult cohort across the week.
Basingstoke College of Technology is responding to rising demand by organising more food parcels, helping students apply to charitable organisations and accompanying them to citizens’ advice meetings.
Playfair believes that going to college is seen as “part of the solution” to the crisis for many learners. “The college becomes more important in their lives because of the support it offers.”
