The government has scrapped its flagship pre-employment skills programme following years of low starts, it has been confirmed.
Reports that emerged over the weekend were confirmed by skills minister Robert Halfon in a written ministerial statement in the House of Commons this morning.
Halfon said: “The traineeship programme has been running for nearly 10 years and the number of starts has remained relatively low.
“It is right, therefore, that we focus our offer on our mainstream provision. This change will make it easier for young people and employers to navigate our skills offer and will enable providers to better tailor their programmes to deliver the key skills needed to drive growth in local communities.”
From August 1, 2023, provision previously delivered through the traineeships programme will be “integrated” in to 16-19 study programmes for young people and the non-devolved adult education budget for adults. Mayors with devolved skills powers will decide what’s best for their areas, the statement says.
Official figures published last month showed there were 15,500 traineeship starts recorded in 2021/21 – just 36 per cent of the 43,000 target. It comes despite the Treasury investing £126 million in traineeships in 2021/22 and £111 million being pumped into the pre-employment programme the year before, when 17,400 starts were recorded against a target of 36,700.
Halfon points to “great alternatives” to traineeships, “such as T Levels and the T Level transition programme, bootcamps, apprenticeships, and sector-based work academies.”
However the body representing training providers as slammed the government’s decision as “an unmitigated disaster for social mobility.”
Hickie
Jane Hickie, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said:
“Axing traineeships would be incredibly short-sighted. The government’s own research on traineeships shows their effectiveness. Around three-quarters of all trainees have successful outcomes – either taking on work, starting an apprenticeship or further study – within 12 months.”
AELP has warned that the government’s plans to end funding for those currently with a 16-18 traineeships contract, but not a wider 16-19 study programmes contract “could be the final nail in the coffin for many” providers in light of rising costs of delivery in the training market.
Of the 136 providers with 16-18 traineeship contract allocation in 2021/22, only one, South West Regional Assessment Centre Limited received a wider 16-19 contract as a designated special post-16 institution.
“To announce this decision, without any form of consultation – and right before Christmas – is incredibly poor form,” Hickie said, adding: “Coupled with the planned level 2 and below reforms, this could be an unmitigated disaster for social mobility, by limiting access to skills training at entry level.”
Earlier this year FE Week revealed that more than half – £65 million – of the 2020/21 traineeships budget had to be handed back to the Treasury. A bigger underspend is now expected for 2021/22.
Some 290 training providers and colleges currently receive procured or allocated budgets for traineeships, ranging from £3.2 million at Strode College for 19-24 traineeships (procured) to Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which was allocated £5,500 for 19-24 traineeships.
Introduced as a flagship pre-employability programme in 2013, eligible 16 to 24-year-olds were funded by the Education and Skills Funding Agency for pre-employment training and unpaid work placements from six weeks to one year, although most last for less than six months.
But traineeship starts have been on a rapid decline, from a high of 24,100 in 2015/16 down to just 12,100 in 2019/20.
Ministers saw traineeships as a good route to help get young people back into training and work after the Covid-19 pandemic and decided to back the programme with more funding.
But providers have often warned that the lack of learner incentive means that traineeships are currently limited to those willing and able to take on a placement without getting paid.
Others have argued that other government programmes that do offer payment, like Kickstart and apprenticeships, have systematically displaced traineeships.
From PA to chief executive, Brenda McLeish has risen through the ranks to run one of the country’s largest and most successful training companies, grabbing numerous awards and accolades in the process. Trading conditions in the training sector are tougher than ever, but that won’t stop the ‘purple people’ from going for growth, she tells Jessica Hill.
With over 1,000 employees and 4,500 employer clients on her books, Brenda McLeish is the chief executive of one of the country’s largest training providers.
But this month, she’s relying on trains and taxis to get around Teesside after leaving her car in the garage before builders started digging up the foundations of her driveway. The car is now it’s stuck there until the work is done.
“How can you run a £75 million business and not think about these things?” she recalls her husband chiding her.
And what a month it’s been. Just a few weeks ago, McLeish was being invested with her OBE by the Prince of Wales for services to further education. “The dedication and hard work of our purple people made this happen,” McLeish said at the time.
Far from transport woes being the top concern of the day, McLeish is very much focused on LCG’s employees – or the “purple people”, as they describe themselves.
The term was coined by staff after a company rebrand changed the colour of the logo from orange to purple in 2012. And it’s everywhere at LCG’s offices in County Durham, from festive decorations to the fresh flowers on reception and a large screen above it showing LCG learners against a purple background, sharing life-affirming messages.
McLeish’s taxi driver this morning remarked as they arrived that “I don’t know what the boss is doing, but every time I pick somebody up from here, they’re always happy” she tells me.
While it would be easy to fob the comment off as a clever piece of PR, there is a chipperness in the purple people I meet. Some of that is driven by McLeish’s own effervescent demeanour and the way she cares for her staff.
Remembering roots
“There’s no switch you can turn off to take that Northern girl out of out of me and make me forget where I’ve come from,” she says.
The office is only a half hour drive away from the Stockton council housing estate where McLeish grew up, in a region with the highest rate in England (8.4 per cent) of economically inactive adults due to ill health.
Helping those people grasp opportunities is something McLeish cares deeply about. She recalls one LCG learner – an alcoholic in an abusive relationship who had had her children taken off her – who is now training to be a midwife.
“Slowly changing the world, that’s what makes these purple people here buzz. They can genuinely see they’ve changed people’s lives every day.”
Post-pandemic lull
The offices are also buzzing because of the sheer number of staff there – McLeish told them all to return to the office as soon as they could post-pandemic, and believes the work from home culture “isn’t good for society or business”.
But LCG’s face-to-face businesses are still “nowhere near” pre-Covid levels. Attendance at physical academies and community-based provision is down in volume by at least a third, with people “genuinely not re-presenting into venues” because “they’ve got used to being at home, whether it’s because they’re scared or have underlying health conditions”.
The pandemic has also been damaging for the apprenticeships side of the business: government data shows apprenticeship starts in 2021-22 were 11 per cent down on 2018-19 nationally.
“How can a company take on young school leavers in an office where nobody’s working consistently? That’s a real challenge for us,” says McLeish.
But at least that’s been offset by LCG’s booming online learning business, which doubled in volume during the pandemic, buoyed by the company’s ‘educate whilst you isolate’ campaign.
Also noticeable is that all those purple people wandering about smiling are women. In fact, 80 per cent of McLeish’s senior team is female. She denies “trying to create a female bias”, stressing “it’s because they’re great at what they do”.
Interesting career path
McLeish always had a natural leaning towards education. In one school report, her teacher remarked on her career path that “I’ll see you in the classroom”.
“I didn’t have the greatest of upbringings. I was quite gifted academically but couldn’t afford university because I needed to earn money,” she says.
After a short stint as a medical secretary, McLeish got a job as a college PA at Eastern College and rose through the ranks to become a senior manager at 28.
While coordinating teachers there, McLeish got her adult teaching certificate and taught night classes in basic IT skills so she could “fully understand what I was asking other people to do”.
LCG has grown rapidly since McLeish joined as business development director in 2008, when as a team of 40 “everybody was expected to pitch in”. In 2015, the year McLeish became chief executive, LCG’s founders sold it in a deal backed by private equity, and it has since bought up eight other businesses.
Broadening the reach
McLeish credits its growth choices for the company’s survival in a notoriously tough training provider market. “Without quantity of scale and investment, it’s often really difficult to financially manage all those different audits, funding and Ofsted requirements,” she says.
The new businesses have broadened LCG’s offer. Its 2015 purchase of Hartlepool-based Workwise, a call centre of 30 staff, meant the company became “less dependent on external companies” to find new learners.
But there have been bumps in the road. Last year, LCG bought training provider Antrec Limited, which, among other things, provided taxi driver preparation courses in the Liverpool City Region. But in May the combined authority did not give LCG a contract in its latest adult education budget bidding round – despite an outcry from a local council LCG was working with – and McLeish had to shut the Liverpool office down.
McLeish with Prince William collecting her OBE
Bringing London Hairdressing Apprenticeship Academy into the fold in 2020 gave LCG a foothold in the hair and beauty training market in the capital, and its most recent acquisition this summer, of Yorkshire-based White Rose Beauty Colleges, makes it now one of the biggest beauty trainers in the country.
In an adjoining office room, purple people are liaising with representatives from the awarding body VTCT about “being the biggest [in that market] and how we can strengthen that relationship,” McLeish explains.
But while White Rose are rated outstanding by Ofsted and are “absolutely fantastic at what they do in the classroom”, McLeish admits when LCG took them on they were “really struggling without that bigger piece around funding, administration and marketing … they were drowning in all the other challenges that sit outside the classroom”.
She explains: “We often find when we bring in new businesses that the provision is brilliant, but all the external factors are suffocating the business.”
Getting back to work
McLeish is scathing of some back-to-work programmes.
She recalls in her college days English and maths lessons were “like a social clubs” and claims most unemployed people LCG works with “could teach you how to write a CV – you don’t need to teach them – because every bloody job centre programme is just regurgitating that stuff”.
“We truly believe in giving people skills they can use to transform their lives, whether that’s just being able to help their children with their homework or to break that [unemployment] cycle,” she says.
But reversing a culture of entrenched unemployment is tough. LCG has a construction academy in Middlesborough, but McLeish admits after learning those skills many trainees will “earn a little bit of money on the black market and continue to draw down benefits”.
“A lot of people say to us that to come off of benefits they’d need to be earning £25,000 pounds a year. They say, ‘I’ve never worked all my life. Where am I going to get a job earning that?’ That’s the cycle, isn’t it? It’s not their fault.”
But there are some bucking that trend. McLeish recalls one former student, a man on benefits who had never worked. His two school leaver sons were destined for the same fate when McLeish says he told LCG he wanted to “do something with my sons because I don’t want them sitting on their asses like I did”.
All three entered a plastering course, and although one son fell by the wayside the other two qualified and eventually set up their own company.
Expanding apprenticeships
McLeish has ambitions to expand LCG’s apprenticeships portfolio, which means “engaging with those people still scared to leave the house”.
LCG practises what it preaches to businesses through its Purple People Academy, which in 2018 took on 30 school leaver apprentices, and McLeish claims “many employers have taken on that blueprint in their own businesses”.
It is also exploring what McLeish believes are “massive opportunities” working with offenders in prison and when they’re being rehabilitated, following a recent law change enabling some prisoners to undertake apprenticeship programmes.
The company is also a publisher, and currently develops and sells 200,000 learning resources a year in England. LCG has eight PRNs and is inspected and audited on each, which McLeish admits “keeps us on our toes”. Thankfully, five Ofsted inspections in the last 12 months all came out ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’.
But some competitors have buckled under market pressures. HGV training provider Systems Group Ltd last month called in administrators. Lifetime Training was bought by one of its lenders as an audit investigation by the Education and Skills Funding Agency into its use of additional learning support funding was about to commence.
Now, of LCG’s 60 online qualifications, the five mental health programmes are the best performing, seeing a third of its online programme registrations. It will come as no surprise that the most popular course is mental health in young people. McLeish expects demand for mental health courses to remain high as the recession bites, with “the world at the minute demanding it”.
‘Massive opportunities’
McLeish collecting award
The recession is causing employers to pull back on paying for training, but McLeish believes many companies remain ignorant of the “massive opportunities” offered by government funded training programmes.
“We’re trying to say to employees ‘don’t write us off, use the apprenticeship levy, the adult education budget or one of the boot camps to fund your training requirements, rather than your cold, hard cash’. To this day, even [apprenticeship] levy paying employers tell us they didn’t know they could do it all for free.”
The downturn is also affecting LCG’s staff, despite their buoyant appearance. Instead of throwing the usual Christmas office party, staff are getting a voucher for £30 – the equivalent per head cost of the party – and an advent calendar.
Furthermore, McLeish is determined “nobody is ever going to go hungry in this business,” with free breakfasts for students in the academies and free fruit for all staff.
Ofsted’s enhanced inspections which assess how well colleges are meeting local skills needs were introduced at the start of the term. Jason Noble spoke to leaders of the first handful to be rated to find out their experience
Back in May, Ofsted published its latest five-year strategy, which made it clear that all colleges in England will be paid a visit by inspectors within a four-year time frame under new “enhanced inspections”.
Those visits, introduced in September, continue to feature the usual inspection criteria, such as quality of teaching, leadership, high needs and safeguarding, but this time with the added assessment of how well a college is meeting the skills needs in its local area too.
It comes amid a drive to introduce new local skills improvement plans, which are designed to identify local employers’ skills needs so that colleges and training providers can align the courses they offer accordingly.
Ofsted’s visits to colleges now feature an additional dedicated inspector or inspectors, and allow colleges to put forward a second nominee to be a point of liaison specifically on those skills elements.
But unlike the other criteria, which go by the well-established ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ grades, skills inspections feature one of three ratings – ‘significant’, ‘reasonable’ or ‘limited’ contribution to skills needs.
Not subject to a separate report, the skills inspections feature as a sub-judgement and a paragraph in the main report, and so far, at least, do not appear to be actively influencing a change in an overall inspection grade.
Progress so far
At the time of going to press, six colleges have had published reports containing the new skills section. So how did the first batch fare?
One ‘significant’, four ‘reasonable’ and one ‘limited’ would suggest a broad experience of findings already, as those at the front of the line attempt to navigate their way through new criteria with little precedent to draw on. As such, views on those visits differ.
Newham College of Further Education in London secured the top ‘significant’ rating, with deputy principal Jamie Purser saying: “Inspectors saw a lot of people and a lot of touchpoints, we felt it was representative.
“There was a lot of work went into it, they asked for position papers and skills statements, so we felt it was representative of what we do.”
Graham Pennington
But Graham Pennington, principal and chief executive at Sandwell College in the West Midlands, which achieved a ‘reasonable’, pointed to a lack of clarity in several areas.
He said the skills judgement doesn’t neatly fit with a lot of his college’s work, such as ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) courses which was more of a foundation or “stepping stone” qualification rather than working towards a specific skills gap, or, as the West Midlands’ largest 16-18 provider, how skills contribution is assessed when so many students go to university or leave the area rather than enter the local labour market.
He added: “There is a bit of a question about local – do you mean Sandwell in our case, do you mean the region? What does you take as meeting local needs? What is local? I didn’t really feel that was fully explored with us before the inspection – what is the context and range that they wanted to look at?”
A spokesperson at Strode College meanwhile – the first to be given a ‘limited’ rating – said “failure to meet one of the criteria sufficiently is effectively a limited grade”.
Local meetings needed
As part of its evidence gathering, inspectors looked at colleges’ strategic plans, skills statements, and conducted surveys with employers they worked with.
But colleges were also expected to set up meetings for inspectors with key stakeholders they felt could explain the college’s work on meeting skills provision.
Colleges were given around six days’ notice to prepare those – a piece of work all the colleges agreed was “intense” and one “not to be underestimated,” according to Pennington.
Smaller colleges like Derwentside were required to set up 12 meetings, but larger ones like Newham and Sandwell had 30-40 meetings – a mix of video calls, telephone chats and face to-face meetings over just a couple of days.
Those meetings were picked by colleges and featured a diverse mix of voices, including local or mayoral combined authorities, business groups such as local enterprise partnerships and chambers of commerce, employers both large and small, NHS trusts, local schools, and job centres.
In addition, Purser said: “They went into quite a lot of lessons and said ‘tell us what you know about skills, tell us what you know about local jobs, do you know how much you might get if you are going to go into these sectors, what sort of jobs are available.’
Stakeholder ‘triangulations’
Purser continued: “They did quite a lot of triangulations between our external stakeholders, our strategy documents, what governors knew, and how much they supported and promoted what we were doing, so it was quite a detailed, quite a forensic examination of our skills policies.”
And from speaking to the first four, it becomes clear that the differentiator between a ‘significant’ and a ‘reasonable’ is around how well embedded employers are in curriculum planning.
Purser said it is weaved into all aspects of Newham’s business, from strategic plans to resources and estates documents, and right through to on-the-ground teaching – even in ESOL courses where CVs, job boards and newspaper adverts are fed into the curriculum.
Jamie Purser
Chris Todd, principal and chief executive at Derwentside in the north east, which secured a ‘reasonable’ rating, added: “We came very close to a strong, but one of our strands, a small point, that pulled us away really, it was just around the way we engage with employers to design our study programmes. We do it in bits but there is not a strategic approach.”
Todd said following the visit the college is now working on sector-specific employer focus linked to its programmes to test out changes to the curriculum with employers on board.
Ofsted’s handbook says ‘limited’ sub-judgements will be instances where leaders “do not engage effectively enough with employers and other relevant stakeholders”, “do not ensure that the curriculum is planned and/or taught effectively”, and “are not sufficiently clear how they are contributing to skills needs”.
Growing in experience
Undoubtedly, as more reports are published colleges further down the line for inspection will be able to learn from the experience of others. But leaders having already gone through the process have already shared their tips.
Purser said feedback from the pilots held in the summer term earlier this year found that it wasn’t always best to get senior leaders for the stakeholder meetings, but people like training managers could sometimes provide more insight.
Chris Todd
Todd, meanwhile, pointed to having things like destination data of college leavers.
Pennington said: “To prepare for this properly you need to develop your own skills narrative separate from just your strategic plan so it is clear how the two things fit together.”
All agreed that having the dedicated skills nominee was vital to co-ordinate the stakeholder meetings.
Possible improvements
So, what do the quartet think could be improved? “It was quite difficult to get the right people within the organisations to talk to the inspectors at the right time, even given a weeks’ notice,” Strode’s spokesperson said.
“The overlap between what was additionally required within the extended EIF and the previous EIF caused some confusion in the early days,” they added.
Todd said he would rather Ofsted used its four-point grading system as it does for all other areas of the inspections, while Pennington wanted more understanding of colleges’ individual circumstances like student make-up and deprivation.
Derwentside’s deputy principal for strategic partnerships, Susan Errington, concluded: “The skills element is an opportunity for colleges to showcase what is good about FE. What you are seeing within the sixth form college sector is 100 per cent are now ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ and general FE colleges are going in that direction. But for a ‘good’ college this is a great opportunity to showcase it.”
Interesting fact: Helen has a broad HR and coaching career in retail, financial services, and local government. Her ongoing voluntary work in the education sector includes career mentoring for young people and helping to shape career strategies in local schools.
Rachel Curry
Principal and Deputy Chief Executive, The Manchester College and LTE Group
Start date: December 2022
Previous job: Deputy Principal & Estates Strategy Lead, The Manchester College
Interesting fact: When Rachel was growing up in Bridlington, she and her family used to look after a beach donkey called Starsky during the low season.
Trevor Hewlett
Head of Community Led Learning, WEA
Start date: November 2022
Previous job: Interim Leader, College of West Anglia
Interesting fact: In 2008 Trevor completed a trek in the Sahara Desert, which included a wild desert camp under the stars, in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support.
Leaders of smaller colleges have been left feeling out in the cold after the government released capital funding allocations for energy projects based on student numbers, rather than need.
Colleges are set to receive a £53 million chunk of a £500 million fund that was announced on Tuesday to help “futureproof” the estates of schools and colleges.
According to the Department for Education, this will work out, on average, as £42,000 per secondary school, £16,000 for a primary school, and £290,000 for a further education college.
But, because allocations were calculated based on ESFA revenue receipts for 2021/22, the range around that average is massive, from £10,000 to £1.3 million, and the efficiency of recipient colleges’ buildings hasn’t been taken into account.
FE Week understands that the funding isn’t new but instead comes from underspends across DfE’s other capital budgets.
NCG, Capital City College Group and New City College will each receive over £1 million. At the other end, colleges such as Northern College have only received £62,000.
Colleges have been given discretion to spend the funding on “other capital projects” if they deem efficiency projects to be “not appropriate based on local circumstances”.
Northern’s principal and chief executive, Yultan Mellor, told FE Week that the energy efficiency plans her college has developed will need much more than the £62,000 the institution has been allocated.
Mellor believes DfE should have taken on board the state of college buildings when putting the allocations together, rather than use student numbers as a baseline. This methodology allows for “some cash rich colleges and those with efficient building already” to receive larger allocations, she said.
“We’ve got a capital plan to make our buildings more efficient and projects waiting for the green light on our windows, on insulation, there’s loads we’d like to do … but it’s going to need more than the £62,000 we’ve been allocated,” Mellor told FE Week.
On a webinar organised by the Association of Colleges on Monday, DfE officials told college leaders that the same methodology – using student numbers as a baseline – was the current preferred option for the £150 million injection to the FE capital transformation fund in the spring.
‘Blunt tool’ for energy allocations
Another principal described this methodology as a “blunt tool” that won’t benefit the colleges that need the most help.
According to Luke Rake, principal and chief executive of Kingston Maurward College in Dorset, any capital investment from the government “is of course welcome” but the methodology “should consider the needs of colleges with large estates, especially in rural areas” which often come with higher energy costs.
FE Week contacted LANDEX, the representative body for land-based colleges, but they did not respond to requests for comment.
One suggestion for a fairer approach was for a “sensible, guaranteed minimum” for future capital funding allocations.
Paul Deane, principal and chief executive of Grantham College in Lincolnshire, told FE Week that receiving capital funding without complicated match-funding rules was welcome but suggested that there should be a “sensible minimum” in place in order to meet need.
“I’m pleased to get something without match, but the amount is disappointing. One idea is for a higher minimum, perhaps around £250,000. We also need some certainty on revenue funding for energy costs post-April,” he said.
Benefiting better off?
Several principals suggested that DfE should have taken into account previous capital grants so that better off colleges weren’t automatically entitled to more funding.
Since colleges were reclassified as public sector institutions last week, they must use proceeds from asset sales for their own capital investment.
The Department for Education said funding will be paid to colleges in January and can be spent over the next two financial years.
Improvements could include “installing better heating controls, insulation to reduce heat loss from pipes or switching to energy efficient lighting”, the government said.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan said: “We’re putting this cash in the hands of school and college leaders quickly, so they can decide what work is needed and so that our brilliant teachers can focus on teaching in a warm and safe environment.
“Education is rightly a top priority for this government, and we will continue to strive to provide every child with a world-class education.”
New legislation that would make registered higher education providers, including colleges, liable to civil claims under the government’s incoming freedom of speech rules has seemingly been ditched.
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which has been making its way through parliament since May 2021, had its report stage debate in the House of Lords on Wednesday night.
One intention behind the bill was to allow people to sue a registered higher education provider if they believed the provider has breached its freedom of speech duties.
Those duties, detailed within the bill, will mandate all providers registered with the Office for Students, and their students’ unions, to “take steps” to “secure the freedom of speech” of its staff, students, “members” and visiting speakers.
If any of those individuals felt that a provider had restricted their freedom of speech, the bill had provisions enabling them to take legal action against the provider or students’ union.
However, that provision was removed by an amendment tabled by Lord David Willetts, the former universities minister, who argued that the risk of getting sued could instead reduce freedom of speech in universities.
“We already face a very worrying trend of a decline in the number of external speakers going to universities because people think it is just more trouble, too risky and too dangerous. The risk with these provisions is that they make that trend worse,” he said during the debate.
Willetts’ amendment, opposed by the government, was the only one pushed to a formal vote that night. The government was defeated by 43 votes.
Provisions for legal action were in part introduced to address concerns that cancelled speakers would suffer financial losses, Willetts said in the debate. These concerns, he argued, should be satisfied by provisions elsewhere in the bill allowing HE regulators to impose fines in cases of freedom of speech breaches.
The need for legal redress
Other peers resisted Willetts’ efforts, albeit unsuccessfully. One of them, the non-affiliated peer Baroness Claire Fox, explained why she thought the ability to take legal action was necessary: “The very driver of the bill is that there are real-life, concrete trouble-makers, here and now, in universities, who are targeting closing down free speech and declaring that certain views are verboten… For me, I wanted this law to frighten university authorities – a little bit.”
Much like the bill itself, there was no mention in the debate of the impacts of its provisions on other types of higher education providers. It’s not clear whether the government with re-introduce the clause when the bill returns to the House of Commons.
Further education leaders have criticised the bill for “accidentally” including FE colleges, providers, and their students’ unions in the legislation, which is predominantly, if not exclusively, designed for universities.
Or, is it even needed?
Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said it was good news that the legal threat was gone, and reiterated his frustration that his member colleges are treated in the bill in the same way as universities.
In a blog for Wonkhe, Gravatt wrote: “The debate in Parliament on the need for the legislation has focused mainly on older universities, a few high-profile cases and issues relating to full-time residential degree-level students. Whatever your views on the need for these changes, I challenge you to find a single piece of evidence that it’s needed in colleges.”
Of the 409 institutions on the Office for Students’ register of higher education providers, 285 are not universities. Of those, 135 are further education colleges.
Another of the amendments passed, this time supported by the government, would outlaw providers’ use of non-disclosure agreements with people who have made complaints about bullying, harassment, and sexual misconduct.
NDAs pledge
This follows high-profile campaigns from MPs and lobbying groups who have accused universities of using non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of sexual abuse and bullying.
The former further and higher education minister, Michelle Donelan, introduced a voluntary pledge for HE providers to commit to end the use of NDAs in sexual harassment cases.
However, the government’s education minister, Baroness Barran, said in the debate that it was “telling” that so few institutions had signed up, and so legislation became necessary.
“While the very existence of NDAs makes it difficult to understand the full extent of the practice, a 2020 BBC investigation found that nearly one-third of universities had used NDAs to resolve student complaints,” she said.
“It has been encouraging to see that many institutions have signed up to a voluntary pledge rejecting the use of NDAs in such circumstances. However, it is telling that many institutions have not done so, despite strong encouragement from the government. I am pleased to support this amendment on behalf of the government.”
England’s largest community education college City Lit has cancelled online lessons until the new year due to serious “IT disruption”.
London’s City Lit is also currently unable to process enrolments online or by phone.
Investigators have been drafted in by the college to assess what happened and bring systems back online in time for an anticipated post-Christmas rush of enrolments as adults plan their new year’s resolutions.
The college’s website has been down now for a week. It’s been replaced by a holding page which states: “We are experiencing some disruption to our IT services. As a result, face-to-face classes are continuing as scheduled wherever possible, while online classes are temporarily suspended. At the moment, we are not able to process enrolments online or over the phone.
“We would like to apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience. Further updates will be provided as appropriate.”
Mark Malcomson, City Lit’s principal and chief executive, told FE Week that until an investigation is complete, he can’t confirm the cause of the disruption, such as a cyber-attack, for example.
The college had initially hoped to be able to resume online classes from last Sunday, three days after the systems went down, but has now decided to cancel online classes for the rest of the term.
“Luckily, the majority of them are at the end of term anyway, but we’ll make sure that students can finish their classes in the new year,” Malcomson said.
He was first alerted to the problem last Thursday morning when staff and students had lost access to systems.
During the pandemic, when all learning had to be delivered online, the college had worked to fully integrate its systems. Since then, the majority of students, between two-thirds and 70 per cent according to Malcomson, learn face-to-face in classrooms. For the rest, their courses have been paused until the new year.
Malcomson said: “The overwhelming majority of in-person courses were minimally affected, if at all. What was affected, because the [IT] systems are quite interlinked, was our ability to deliver online classes.”
The college is yet to release any further information on the cause of the disruption while a team of experts investigate, and can’t yet say when systems will be back online.
Cyber security experts JISC said “various parts” of DfE and the college’s “very good” tech staff are part of the college’s recovery team, Malcomson confirmed.
“We’ve got a very good team that was recommended to us. They are looking at two things; they’re looking at what happened, and sustainably bringing it all back to normal operating function.”
Until those investigations have concluded, Malcomson can’t say what damage has been done or whether any data has been compromised.
Another priority for the college is to re-establish online enrolment as quickly as possible in the run up to an expected rush of interest in courses after Christmas. This was “absolutely critical for us” Malcomson said, adding: “Last year we saw it [enrolments] really pick up around the 28th and 29th December as people focus on coming back after the holiday period.”
A significant proportion of City Lit’s income comes from its course fees.
The college saw a 27 per cent drop due to pandemic lockdowns which resulted in a financial ‘notice to improve’ from the Education and Skills Funding Agency. A FE Commissioner report praised the college’s recovery efforts at the time.
Ofsted has taken the unprecedented step of unpublishing an ‘inadequate’ report for a training provider – and now plans to carry out a reinspection following an appeal.
UK Training & Development Limited (UKTD), based in Hemel Hampstead, was handed the lowest possible judgement in a report published in October. The outcome opened up the provider to contract termination from the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
The company’s owner threatened the inspectorate with legal action after saying she was “shocked” with the damaging report, which failed to consider the impact of Covid-19 on the hairdressing industry that her provider delivers apprenticeships to.
UKTD had its original appeal rejected and Ofsted proceeded to publish the grade four report.
But, in an extraordinary move, the watchdog has removed the report more than a month after its publication.
Ofsted told FE Week that UKTD has continued to appeal against the judgement “through the complaints process and we have upheld aspects of their appeal”.
“We have removed the report from our website and will reinspect UKTD in due course,” a spokesperson added.
It is unclear what UKTD argued in its appeal to force Ofsted to remove the report and decide that a reinspection was required.
UKTD’s managing director, Theresa Wisniewski, said she could not comment on the case at this stage other than to say: “We welcome Ofsted’s decision.”
Training providers and colleges have been successful in getting their judgements upgraded prior to inspection reports being published in the past, but it is unheard of for Ofsted to remove a report after publication and decide to carry out a reinspection.
Several other providers have complained this year that Ofsted is handing out grade fours without considering the part the pandemic has played on apprenticeship delivery – and in some cases followed it up with legal action.
Two providers launched high court bids to get their grades overturned in recent months, but both were unsuccessful.
This isn’t the first time UKTD has battled ‘inadequate’ Ofsted grades. The provider was given the judgement twice in 2017.
The two inspections were based on safeguarding failings. It is not clear why the Education and Skills Funding Agency did not terminate the provider’s contracts following the previous grade four judgements, as is usual practice for independent training providers. The agency can, however, decide not to terminate contracts in exceptional circumstances. UKTD, which was set up in 1998, was also judged ‘inadequate’ in 2006 by the Adult Learning Inspectorate – Ofsted’s predecessor.
Ofsted’s latest inspection of UKTD took place in July when the provider had almost 200 apprentices.
Wisniewski previously told FE Week it was “very frustrating for any provider when outcomes lack consistency and seem to be dependent on which inspection team arrives on the day”.
The managing director instructed Angela Sandhal of Duncan Lewis Solicitors to assist the provider with their appeal.
At the time of the publication of the grade four report Sandhal said: “My client is concerned that the current inspection findings are part of a pattern of grade four inspections at a time when providers are still in the Covid recovery phase.
“We have asked Ofsted to provide us with the raw data gathered during the inspection process.”
UKTD is still listed on the government’s register of apprenticeship training providers and is not listed as having a suspension on new starts.
The first inspection of a training provider that solely delivers skills bootcamps has resulted in a glowing report.
Birmingham-based School of Code received two ‘significant’ and one ‘reasonable’ progress score in an early monitoring visit of its provision in a report published today.
Inspectors hailed the provider for implementing a “highly effective curriculum” for computing coding skills that “encourages the development of knowledge and skills in a creative and controlled online environment”.
The provider was one of the inspirations behind skill bootcamps, having offered the model for years before the government decided to fund them nationally from 2020.
Skills bootcamps have been out of Ofsted’s remit since their launch, but the watchdog was given powers to inspect them last month after a thematic review of their provision raised quality concerns. These inspections are not supposed to get underway until April 2023, however.
Ofsted told FE Week that it inspected School of Code ahead of this because its skills bootcamps are funded through the West Midlands Combined Authority’s adult education budget.
A spokesperson confirmed that skills bootcamps funded through the DfE’s national skills fund, which includes the vast majority of skills bootcamps, will be inspected from April 2023.
Skills bootcamps are flexible courses designed for adults to train in careers in areas of national skills shortage, such as construction, manufacturing and digital. The bootcamps, based around levels 3 to 5, also guarantee an interview with an employer.
School of Code was teaching 122 learners at the time of Ofsted’s inspection.
The inspectorate said the company’s leaders are “highly ambitious for their learners” having designed and implemented a course that aims to take learners with no prior coding experience to becoming work ready within 20 weeks.
Through biannual partnership boards, leaders work with employers to “identify current industry needs and to reflect on and improve activities such as ‘Demo Days’ where employers interact with learners”.
The “strong” relationships they nurture with employers result in learners having opportunities to apply for jobs in the sector.
Leaders also “support coaches to maintain and develop their coding skills well” and there is a board of governance that offers a “range of expertise, including education experience in coding, corporate training and finance”.
Chris Meah, chief executive of the School of Code, said: “We’re not your traditional FE provider. We’re an entrepreneurial, transformational, intensive course that started to help more and different types of people learn tech skills and launch great careers.
“The fact that Ofsted have given such an excellent review of what we’re doing is fantastic and shows we’re not only reinventing skills training with our free, 16-week bootcamp but also keeping and pushing standards higher as we go.”
