Gillian Keegan has not met any LGBT+ groups to discuss the government’s planned transgender guidance, despite claiming that delays to its release would allow her to consult stakeholders.
Schools minister Nick Gibb made the admission after Labour MP Nadia Whittome asked how many of the organisations the education secretary had spoken to about the planned guidance over the last year.
She stressed that the move would ensure the advice issued to schools and colleges “meets the high expectations that these groups rightly have for it”.
Transgender guidance ‘created in vacuum’
Nick Gibb
In his response to Whittome, Gibb said the “secretary of state has not met any LGBT organisations directly to discuss” it, but added ministers are “keen to consider the full range of views”.
The DfE will undertake “a public consultation on the draft guidance prior to publication”, he added.
“During the consultation period, the department plans to engage with a range of interested organisations, including organisations that support the LGBT community.”
But Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, accused the department for education of developing the guidance “in a vacuum”.
Keegan: ‘More information needed’
Academies minister Baroness Barran has said guidance will set out schools’ and colleges’ legal duties and provide “clear information to support their consideration of how to respond to transgender issues”.
Speaking about it at the Conservative party conference today, she confirmed the document, which she described as “one of the most sensitive things that I think any of us have ever been involved in”, is “nearly there”.
Barran stressed she “absolutely hear[s] the real need to deliver it and deliver it quickly”, but added: “We are trying to push to be as practical and constructive as possible while sensitive to what is probably one of the most difficult issues that has to be dealt with in school.”
The guidance was scheduled to be published before the summer break.
Keegan insisted at the time that more information was “needed about the long-term implications of a child to act as though they are the opposite sex”.
“We also need to take care to understand how such actions affect other children in the school or college. These decisions must not be taken lightly or in haste,” she said.
‘Schools and colleges urgently need transgender guidance’
“We have made the decision to allow more time – to speak to teachers, parents, lawyers and other stakeholders – in order to ensure this guidance meets the high expectations that these groups rightly have for it.”
National Association of Headteachers general secretary Paul Whiteman said leaders have been “promised this guidance for several years now”. The union leader stated that it is “urgently needed by schools and colleges who are currently being left to navigate complex and sensitive issues in isolation, without support or training”.
Barton added that he is concerned “there has been so little dialogue” up to this point.
“As far as we can see the transgender guidance is being developed in a vacuum without any reference to LGBT groups or other stakeholders, including the schools and colleges which would be required to implement it.”
Young people fleeing conflict, oppression and destitution in their home countries are arriving in England in record numbers.
In the year to June 2023, 4,513 16 to 17-year-olds applied for asylum, up 7 per cent on last year. Eighty-three per cent were unaccompanied. Another 72,391 adults sought asylum, up 19 per cent on last year.
On arrival, young asylum-seekers and refugees face a myriad of complex and competing systems; legal, housing, benefits – and further education.
Hampered by strict course funding rules that limit supply in the face of growing demand, colleges and college teachers aren’t just providing education and training – they are on the frontline bringing all of those systems together to try and make them work for those young people.
Home office data on asylum seekers
Soaring demand for ESOL
Soaring demand for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) courses has left colleges scrambling to put on enough provision and provide the wraparound support these students need.
But Home Office decisions to move large cohorts into areas without giving local services time to prepare have left colleges struggling to meet those needs.
Refugee Education UK (REUK), a charity that helps refugees access education, researched the barriers that displaced young people face in accessing education.
Interim findings shared with FE Week show the biggest obstacle, cited by 49 per cent of the survey’s 140 FE respondents, was a lack of available provision, with courses described as being “often over-subscribed”.
While some colleges offer termly ESOL courses, others are annual, leaving prospective learners having to wait many months.
Megan Greenwood, coordinator for FE Colleges of Sanctuary, a network of colleges that have pledged to support displaced migrants, said one college opened up a course in the spring specifically for recently arrived Ukrainians. But the move was “not the norm”.
A Home Office policy to disperse asylum-seekers and refugees across England, reducing pressure on port areas, has led to placements in areas not accustomed to accommodating non-native speakers. This has left those migrants in some cases struggling to access any ESOL provision at all.
Some areas where the Home Office has placed large numbers of migrants all at once have been suddenly inundated with demand for ESOL.
In York, the arrival of 450 asylum seekers in the city last Christmas meant an “already stretched education system” had to find places for them, Greenwood says.
Luminate Education Group’s ESOL provision in Yorkshire grew from 3,404 in 2021-22 to 4,000 the following year; it also doubled the number of evening classes in Leeds this year.
Brighton, Hove & Sussex Sixth Form College (BHASVIC), which provides ESOL courses for 16 to 19-year-olds, increased its ESOL intake this year by 50 per cent and expanded it from a basic English qualification to English, maths and IT.
When Ukrainian refugee Iryna Samofalova moved to Colchester in July through the Homes for Ukraine scheme, she found it “so stressful and upsetting” to be told by the local Colchester Institute she would not be able to access ESOL provision for several months. However, she was subsequently offered a place on a higher-level course starting in September.
The institute currently has about 100 students awaiting ESOL assessment.
The surge in demand has left some colleges struggling to recruit enough ESOL teachers. West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin told FE Week in June that colleges in her area were “desperate for tutors”, forcing her combined authority to propose setting up boot camps in ESOL teacher training.
Meanwhile, Luminate is appointing several ESOL teaching apprentices each year, and supporting teaching assistants to retrain as ESOL teachers.
Catherine Gladwell of Refugee Education UK, taken by Stephanie Alcaino
Interpret funding rules ‘generously’
The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) funds 16 to 19-year-olds until the end of year 13, but after that, asylum-seekers are only eligible for central adult funding if they have lived in the UK for more than six months while the Home Office is considering their claims, or are receiving certain local authority support.
If they are refused asylum, they become eligible if they have appealed against this and no subsequent decision is made within six months.
All eligible adults can take English and maths up to level 2 if they do not have those GCSEs, and ESOL provision up to level 2 if they’re unemployed or on a low wage.
But Greenwood encourages colleges to take a “generous interpretation” of the funding guidance.
Colleges are “sometimes very nervous” to do so. But BHASVIC’s safeguarding manager Jackie Raybone said her college is “providing learning opportunities regardless of circumstances”.
BHASVIC ESOL teacher Jamal Salman admits ESFA funding “realistically isn’t enough”, with the “minimal” funding increase in recent years “subsumed by the rising cost of living and staffing”.
“All our ESOL students also have social workers and complicated lives that require additional support and advice. We are having to provide this without any additional funding.”
University of Bristol research into 16-plus migrant provision found “dedicated and talented teachers trying to support learners with complex and often poorly understood needs, in a highly fragmented education system”.
It also pointed to a “significant funding gap” for learners who “fall between the school-based and adult education budgets”.
While some colleges offer non-accredited ESOL courses for students unable to pass a qualification, others do not because “funding only goes with qualifications”, explains Oldham College ESOL teacher Eve Sheppard.
Those with “very low levels of education need several years of unaccredited classes” to get to the standard required for accredited courses.
Luminate Education Group’s ESOL provision
The local offer
The cost and availability of adult ESOL provision also depend on decisions by local government, with some areas widening the scope of their ESOL provision to include other subjects while others have not.
Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority is advising its colleges to package ESOL qualifications into a study programme to include maths or numeracy, digital skills, careers and “enrichment”, such as “life in the UK”.
As well as providing fully funded adult ESOL courses, it is “test[ing] new and innovative ways of delivering ESOL in the workplace” as well as funding training for ESOL tutors.
Surrey’s virtual school “may suggest” unaccompanied asylum-seekers under 16 join an FE setting rather than a school, to “minimise” the number of moves they have to make between settings.
But in some areas, cash-strapped councils are curbing their support of asylum-=seekers to save money.
Kent Council, which is at risk of bankruptcy, decided this month to restrict its offer of supported accommodation to unaccompanied asylum-seekers aged up to 18, changing the cut-off point from 21. Restricted services “may include” sessions on education and training, including opportunities such as apprenticeships.
ESOL learners at provision provided by Luminate Education Group
Coping with trauma
Asylum-seekers and refugees often arrive with complex mental health needs. Unaccompanied children who are placed in unsuitable adult asylum hotels can be further traumatised.
The Local Government Association says the number of unaccompanied children in hotels “increased significantly” in June, with six in use and more in the pipeline.
Council sources in Plymouth and Warwickshire told FE Week the Home Office is now placing higher numbers of asylum-seekers into each hotel to maximise their use.
Camden Council leader Georgia Gould says some young asylum-seekers in her authority had been stuck in hotels for two years, which was “severely impacting their mental health”.
Community network Citizen’s UK’s senior organiser Froilan Legaspi describes asylum hotels serving “undercooked chicken and expired milk”, with “many young people staying there losing weight”.
Faheem, 16, a member of All4One – an unaccompanied young asylum-seekers group in Manchester – arrived in June 2022 from Calais, where he spent three days without food.
Nine months later he is still waiting to access any legal support, while another All4One group member has been waiting two years.
The wait is having a “severe impact” on Faheem’s mental health, and on his education: “I am happy that I go to college, I am trying to learn, but the problem is that you keep thinking about your family, waiting and waiting. All the books are in front of me, but I can’t concentrate. You are not sure whether you are going to have a solicitor soon or not. You don’t know what’s gonna happen to you.”
At BHASVIC, Salman believes the uncertainty around immigration status has a “greater impact” on learners than the trauma that brought them to the UK.
“Many” students are receiving CAMHS support, with ESOL teachers “regularly” dealing with solicitors, social workers, key workers, foster carers and the police if the student runs away from home.
“The social workers supporting these students are also overwhelmed and underpaid,” he says. “The expectations of what we can deal with as a college, beyond providing them with learning, is very high.”
An asylum seeker student at BHASVIC in Brighton
Disappearing learners
Asylum-seekers and refugees can sometimes disappear from college communities altogether, either because they have been trafficked by criminal gangs, are evading the authorities to avoid forcible removal, or the Home Office has moved them on at short notice.
About 400 unaccompanied children have gone missing from Home Office-run hotels since July 2021. By June this year, 154 were still missing. The rest were found by the police either with people known to the children or at risk of exploitation by criminal gangs, according to children’s rights organisation ECPAT UK.
The Illegal Migration Act, which became law this year (but has yet to be fully enacted), stipulates that unaccompanied children be removed from the country when they turn 18, prompting concern from the Local Government Association that more young people will disappear shortly before their 18th birthdays.
If they stay, they would be denied access to further or higher education or vocational training.
Similarly, the Hub for Education for Refugees in Europe (HERE) say more children nearing their 18th birthdays are “likely to go missing from care or Home Office accommodation to avoid being detained and removed”.
Greenwood believes colleges are as yet largely unaware of this issue.
But Sanctuary has seen increased interest from colleges in anti-trafficking training because of concern over the exploitation of vulnerable students. “Colleges want to make sure they’re keeping an eye on these students, but at the same time, they don’t want to police them. It’s really challenging.”
BHASVIC ESOL learners
Hotel life without education
Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are entitled to access education within 20 days of arriving in the UK. But that legal duty appears to be rarely met.
Some members of All4One had to wait up to eight months for provision, and in the meantime were “bored”, “isolated” and “desperate to learn”, a recent report for Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit found.
Greenwood says that young people placed in hotels when they arrive have been “ignored and overlooked” when it comes to education.
But the Home Office says that “dedicated staff” are regularly based in hotels, including on weekends, to provide advice and signpost available English language instruction.
The government promised free English courses for Afghan refugees as part of the government’s Operation Warm Welcome scheme. But when Schools Week visited Afghan refugees at a hotel in Essex in July, young mothers described being offered only up to five hours a week of English lessons.
A government inspection of hotels for unaccompanied children last year found that “activities for young people were limited and comprised access to art materials, sport including swimming and football, indoor games, and some basic, perfunctory informal English language sessions”.
“By failing to provide any formal education or schooling, young people’s basic educational needs were unmet.”
Sometimes, the reason for the long wait for provision is down to confusion and miscommunication over what young asylum-seekers and refugees are entitled to receive.
Greenwood believes that college courses offered to these groups are “not very well advertised, both internally and externally”.
REUK’s survey found 41 per cent identified “unclear or inaccurate information about accessing FE” as a barrier.
Greenwood says in some instances asylum-seekers have applied for courses they believed were free, but were later “given a big bill they couldn’t pay”.
REUK’s chief executive Catherine Gladwell says: “Education is critical in enabling young refugees to build hopeful futures in this country. Yet every week we hear from young people who are denied education – sometimes for the simple fact that they are in temporary accommodation or have been given wrong advice about their eligibility.”
But efforts are being made to overcome these problems. Greater Manchester Combined Authority has created an ESOL Advisory Service with contact points in each borough.
Ronnie Bage welfare officer at Hartlepool College with donations for refugees
Colleges going above and beyond
Staff at colleges across England are taking steps through food banks and donations to ensure their refugee and asylum-seeking students don’t go without.
At Hartlepool College, welfare officer Ronnie Bage is using his office to store donations for refugees that include bicycles and cooking equipment.
ESOL classes alone do not give young migrants the opportunity to mix with their English peers, but some providers have found creative ways to integrate them into the wider college community.
That’s especially true at the 19 Colleges of Sanctuary, which were awarded the status by the charity City of Sanctuary UK in recognition of their good practice.
Leeds City College has held listening sessions with ESOL students to better understand their college experience, introducing a training programme for staff to explore common misconceptions about asylum-seekers and refugees.
At BHASVIC, ESOL students felt segregated because their provision was “tucked away at the edge of the building”, so it was moved to a more central point, Raybone explains.
The ESOL tutor group was also combined with a mainstream A Level tutor group, and while this was later discontinued, Raybone recommends the initiative to other colleges.
The college is now seeking to develop activities with a “universal language” such as sports, music and art.
College business centres featured as a key policy pledge in the 2021 skills for jobs white paper, as ministers bid to improve local skills systems by forging stronger links with employers. But, the concept disappeared from government communication following a short trial in a handful of colleges. FE Week investigates what happened…
The Department for Education’s desire to replicate the “world-class” employer-led German skills system in England has been a common theme among the revolving door of skills ministers and education secretaries in recent years.
It led to the decision to hand chambers of commerce greater control over local skills provision, including the creation of local skills improvement plans (LSIPs) which were the headline reform in the 2021 skills for jobs white paper.
Another innovative idea to enhance employer influence over skills training offers was to establish college business centres (CBCs) across the country, to act as a physical space where colleges and employers communicate, collaborate and ultimately “respond to locally agreed priorities”.
A quick-turnaround £65 million pilot through the strategic development fund got underway and handed funding to 18 colleges, seven of which were handed ring-fenced capital and revenue funding to create a CBC.
Timing was tight and they needed to spend all the funding by the end of March 2022 – just eight months after the pilot started.
Colleges opted to use the capital funding to refurbish a part of their existing campus in most cases, and within a short timeframe created a space which would act as a “single point of entry” to the local skills system for employers, who could themselves access industry-standard facilities and equipment. Revenue funding was spent by colleges on hiring business development, engagement and events staff.
Lead colleges collaborated with other colleges and local education providers, as well as their chamber of commerce, to fully utilise the facility.
They’re proving a great way of getting more businesses into colleges
Several colleges and businesses that were involved in the CBC pilot told FE Week the centres indeed had a significant and positive impact.
In Milton Keynes, a CBC called The Chaffron Centre was launched to “bring together companies and educators in collaboration, offering business workspace and meeting facilities to both students and the businesses community”, Milton Keynes College told FE Week.
Over two floors the on-campus centre includes meeting rooms, VR suites, individual classrooms, catering, refreshment areas, and break-out rooms.
“Its purpose was very much about bringing employers into the heart of the college,” said Anna Clarke, MK College’s group director for employer engagement and partnerships.
“There are multiple benefits. Employers come in and see what an FE college looks like in the current state, and we also get that continual narrative from employers about how we need to morph, how do we get the outside world in our curriculum in a way that actually does make our students work ready. They’re also an opportunity for our students to engage with employers in a way they couldn’t before.”
In some areas, CBCs also ended up being a place where entrepreneurs could work, network, and receive advice as they build their businesses. Some colleges also established ways of creating further revenue streams by renting out the space for meetings and events.
Cumbria Chamber of Commerce worked with, and still uses, CBCs spearheaded by Lakes College. The chamber’s managing director Suzanne Caldwell said: “They’re proving a great way of getting more businesses into colleges, seeing their wider facilities and engaging with staff and students. They’re being used for meetings, events, hot desking and more.
“In setting them up, colleges engaged actively with us. I think that’s part of why they’ve proved successful as they’ve been genuinely focussed around business need.”
On the south coast, Fareham College – now part of the South Hampshire College Group – used its funding to create a “co-location” space to strategically co-work with the Hampshire Chamber of Commerce.
“It enabled a really interesting and innovative intersection within the college estate between the chamber’s staff, business members, and the college teams and apprentices,” said South Hampshire College Group chief executive Andrew Kaye.
His college also collaborated with the Isle of Wight College to open its own CBC. “We’ve got a really strong legacy from the CBCs as they allowed us to better develop relationships with businesses to improve participation in further education and skills,” Kaye added. “We did pretty well in terms of bang for buck.”
However, despite the positive feedback the DfE was receiving from the colleges and businesses involved in the pilot, the term CBCs was dropped when the DfE rolled out the national strategic development fund in the 2022/23 academic year.
Andrew Kaye
DfE guidance said the national rollout would adopt an approach “which will give providers more flexibility to offer innovation activities without needing to create a CBC”.
“This includes funding staff time and associated administrative costs to engage employers more fully on skills needs and to channel that intelligence back to the local FE provider base,” the guidance added.
While pilot CBCs were positive in supporting employer and college collaboration, those involved warned of risks to their long-term sustainability as the revenue funding was time-limited. One hired a CBC director, for example, but could only employ them on a fixed-term contract.
The DfE was keen to made it clear to FE Week that the CBC concept has itself not been dropped, but rather that the branding has.
“Providers were permitted to continue CBC-type activity using strategic development fund funding, but this did not have to be branded as a CBC,” the DfE said.
The term CBCs has also not been featured in the local skills improvement fund, which replaced the strategic development fund this year.
Despite the government’s claim that CBCs have not been dropped as a concept, college leaders aren’t expecting them to feature as they did in the pilot, mainly because of the one-year funding settlements being offered.
Marguerite Hogg, senior policy manager at the Association of Colleges, said: “The DfE asked pathfinders to experiment with the CBC model in 2021, but three rounds of short-term funding means that there hasn’t really been a chance to try this out in full.
“Colleges have, and will, use the money from strategic development fund and local skills improvement fund to deploy people to work with employers on innovation. Once we get to a point where there’s longer-term funding in place, it’s likely that we will see something like business centres develop.”
Kaye said he understands that colleges would be perfectly entitled to use as their SDF or LSIF funding to set up something similar in concept to the piloted CBCs, albeit they might not be branded in the same way.
He added that by removing the ring-fenced proportion of the funding it could allow colleges to be “a bit more flexible and innovative in what they want to do”.
And Caldwell said that while CBCs as a specific concept may have worked in areas such as Cumbria, they “may not be suited to circumstances more widely”.
“It is, and should be, a case of horses for courses,” she added.
The Department for Education has taken control of its flagship FE teacher training scheme from its charity partner mid-contract, amid dwindling recruitment numbers, FE Week can reveal.
Taking Teaching Further (TTF) was seized from the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) in March by the DfE after just one year into what was supposed to be a two-year programme.
Delivery of the TTF was taken in-house by the DfE to “enable any possible future changes to be made more easily,” the department claimed. An ETF spokesperson added that necessary changes the DfE wanted to make would have required a retendering exercise.
Soon after the DfE took over the scheme, which retrains industry professionals as FE teachers, it revamped the offer with, for example, £6,000 financial incentives to entice more recruits to the hardest-to-fill subjects.
Figures obtained by FE Week show that from the five funding rounds of TTF managed by the ETF since 2018, just over half of the 1,960 places available were filled.
After the fifth funding wave – which runs from April 2022 to July 2024 – closed for bids in November, only 39 per cent of the 710 places available were filled, the lowest success rate of the scheme.
Across the first four rounds, the ETF supported 780 recruits, but only 508 completed both years of the two-year programme, meaning over one-third dropped out.
The low numbers highlight the recruitment and retention challenges FE providers are facing in England, both organisations told FE Week.
“The programme has had a proven record of success, providing support and training, but it cannot address wider issues affecting the sector such as salaries, the flexibility of FE roles offered compared to other sectors, where working from home is now more prominent, as well as competition from other sectors for people with the skills the FE sector is looking for,” the ETF added.
This could explain the DfE’s introduction of a financial incentive pilot as part of its sixth funding round launch, which awards an extra £6,000 to eligible recruits in hard-to-fill subjects: digital, construction and the built environment, engineering and manufacturing, and maths.
Wave six of the TTF has 710 places available, with up to half of these attracting the new piloted financial incentive, a DfE spokesperson told FE Week.
“We know some subject areas are facing larger recruitment challenges, so introduced the financial incentive pilot for TTF 2023 to further support recruitment in some of the most hard-to-fill subject areas,” they added.
TTF is a two-year programme that aims to recruit people with industry experience to retrain as FE teachers across 15 technical subjects, plus a new core skills route, which targets experts to teach English and maths to technical subject students.
DfE will hand out £18,200 per eligible recruit to colleges and private training providers per funding wave as part of their contract.
The grant funding is used to cover the cost of a teaching qualification – a minimum of a level 5 diploma in education and training – the costs of extra teacher time to mentor the recruit, and the costs to the recruit to have a reduced teaching timetable by covering the cost of backfilling.
The programme follows two routes, one for FE colleges and the other for private providers.
In route one, colleges register their interest, giving an estimate of the number of people they could potentially recruit. After issuing grants, the colleges would then go through the recruitment process.
Route two involved ITPs being issued grants for each person that they recruited.
ETF restructuring
The contract seizure comes at a critical time for the ETF. The foundation is exploring redundancy options amid an “organisational restructure”.
One senior director at the charity posted on LinkedIn this week that he had taken voluntary redundancy due to a “significant organisational restructure with a smaller senior leadership team”.
The ETF would not specify how many staff are at risk of redundancy as it is going through the “process of organisation design” over the next few months and is “not in a position to discuss numbers affected”.
A spokesperson said the charity will launch its new strategy later in the year.
The ETF announced in March 2022 that the DfE was slashing its grant funding, and earlier this year the charity had to repay £6.2 million to the government following a legal dispute over T Levels professional development contract.
The latest restructuring, the ETF claimed, was not driven by the TTF programme returning to DfE nor due to the repayment of funds from the T Levels contract.
“ETF remains in a financially stable position. We have identified opportunities to work more efficiently, remove duplication and continue to deliver outstanding support to the sector,” a spokesperson said.
Previous Job: Co-founder, OneFile and Circle of Trust
Interesting fact: Before founding OneFile, Susanna did a three year shiatsu therapy diploma and was going to start a complimentary therapy business
Dave Trounce
Deputy Principal, The Sheffield College
Start date: October 2023
Previous Job: Deputy Principal, Weston College
Interesting fact: For the last seven years, Dave has been heavily involved in coaching and managing junior girls and women’s football teams
Daniel Braithwaite
Principal & Chief Executive, Lancaster & Morecambe College
Start date: September 2023
Previous Job: Assistant Principal, Lakes College
Interesting fact: Outside of education, Daniel is a keen sportsman playing cricket, football and darts. He is also an aspiring musician, with drums being his instrument of choice
A private training provider has warned it will be forced to close down if “shocking” government proposals to alter the FE teacher training market go ahead.
The Department of Education launched a consultation this week over plans to remove access to student finance for pre-service further education initial teacher training (ITT) courses from 2024/25.
From this point, the DfE proposes to only allow student loan funding where courses are delivered by, or in partnership with, universities and providers with degree awarding powers.
It launched the consultation due to “quality and value for money” concerns around some pre-service courses provided by private training companies.
Latest government data shows there were 11 private providers delivering FE ITT in 2021/22. But the current figure is likely to be higher because the provider market “fluctuates rapidly”, the DfE said.
Sheila Singh, director of the London School of Academics, said she was “really, really shocked” by the proposals. Her firm, which currently has 150 FE teacher trainees, would lose access to student funding if the consultation got approved and be forced to close.
“That’s not fair at all. We solely teach for FE staff and so would need to close down [if it got approved],” she told FE Week.
Singh also disputed the DfE’s concerns around quality, citing previous accolades including being awarded highly commended by City & Guilds in the Lion Award for high-quality teaching in 2018.
“We thrive on quality, 110 per cent,” she said. The provider has not been inspected by Ofsted but is registered with the Office for Students.
Impact on the number of FE teachers
Teachers on pre-service ITT courses complete their teaching qualification before they take up a teaching job. The DfE said teacher training for the FE sector that is delivered in-service, or “on-the-job” will continue to have access to public money through grant-funded programmes, such as Taking Teaching Further.
The DfE claimed there is “emerging evidence”, including Ofsted reports, that gives “cause for concern about the quality” of some pre-service courses provided by private training companies.
It added that colleges have warned that pre-service students who have come to them from private training providers have “sometimes been unprepared to teach effectively in the sector and have required significant re-training”.
Minister for skills, apprenticeships and higher education Robert Halfon said his proposals “should give people and providers the confidence that the quality of FE initial teacher training is top-tier and allow the FE sector to contribute towards its improvement”.
The department’s consultation said there was “no evidence” to suggest its proposed reforms would have a “significant negative impact” on the supply and availability of “appropriately trained” teachers ready to enter the FE sector.
But Singh said it would “definitely” have an impact on the number of FE teachers.
Recently published FE workforce data collection showed that, by the end of 2021/22, 5.4 teaching posts per 100 were vacant. Vacancy rates were as high as 12.9 posts per 100 in construction, planning and the built environment, and over 10 posts per 100 in subjects as diverse as electronics, agriculture and horticulture, design, engineering and manufacturing, and accounting and finance.
A DfE spokesperson said the department welcomes evidence to its consultation on “how the provision of ITT might impact on students intending to enter FE teaching and how pre-service ITT students are successfully progressing into teaching roles”.
The department also plans to use legislation to force FE teacher training organisations to be accredited by the DfE to establish a “clearly defined quality bar” that providers must meet before accessing public funding.
Currently, providers of FE ITT do not need to be accredited which means there is a “lack of stability and sustainability in the FE ITT sector”, according to the DfE.
Accredited providers would need to submit more robust and prescribed data relating to their students and ITT courses to DfE to better manage the market.
Halfon said securing well-trained teachers in high-priority FE subjects is “crucial”.
“Industry professionals know better than most the skills that employers need, and we recognise we need more teachers with specific expertise to share their knowledge and extend the ladder of opportunity to people from all walks of life,” he added.
Unions and MPs have slammed the Treasury’s delay in confirming whether prison educators’ pension schemes will be protected under the Ministry of Justice’s new £1.5 billion prison education contract.
Sector leaders have flagged that prison educators, who now work in the public sector after last November’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) reclassification of colleges, could lose access to the teachers’ pension scheme if the new contract is awarded to a private provider under TUPE terms.
They also warned that private providers could “undercut” colleges currently providing the provision for over 80 prisons by paying “considerably less” in pension contributions.
The concerns come after the Ministry of Justice released a tender for the procurement of new prison education contracts last week, which determines that providers bid for the new core education services across 11 regional lots. The four-year contract for the new service will launch on April 1, 2025.
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) tender documents, seen by FE Week, outline a possible implementation of the “new fair deal” (NFD) policy, which maintains access to public sector pensions for prison education staff even if the contract is transferred to a private provider.
The application of the NFD policy is under review and is “not likely to be confirmed by HM Treasury (HMT) until latest summer 2024,” the documents state. “The authority hopes that a decision on whether NFD will apply will be made by HMT before contract award,” it added.
The deadline for bids is November 13, 2023.
To mitigate this “uncertainty of the timing”, the MoJ has requested that bidders instead carry out extra administrative work to submit two cost budgets depending on the Treasury’s decision.
“This uncertainty has been identified and accordingly bidders are required to submit two pricing mechanisms, one assuming that NFD will apply to the transfer of FE college staff and the other assuming that NFD will not apply.”
An MoJ spokesperson said: “The Ministry of Justice has always complied with the applicable HMT policy on NFD in our procurements and will continue to do so going forwards.”
University and College Union head of further education, Paul Bridge told FE Week: “Without confirmation from the Treasury that further education staff working in prison education will be subject to the NFD, staff pensions will not be protected under the new prison education service bids which cover most prisons in England.
“This could see staff moved to private providers who can undercut colleges currently providing education for over 80 prisons, by paying considerably less in pension contributions.”
Grahame Morris, a Labour MP who has previously questioned the government on its prison provision, told FE Week that the continued uncertainty around new prison education contracts was “unacceptable” and will continue to damage morale among prison educators and deteriorate industrial relations.
“The Treasury must stop delaying the announcement on NFD, create a level playing field for providers bidding for millions of pounds of public money and reverse the trend of devaluing of the work and professionalism of prison educators,” he said.
Morale in the sector has been steadily diminishing over the years from “intolerable” working conditions and pay, Morris said. Last September, 500 prison education members of the UCU were balloted to strike over pay.
Under the current prison education contract terms, education providers were due a payment uplift of 10.4 per cent, and prison education staff and providers expected this to be automatically applied from April 1, 2023.
Justice minister Damian Hinds confirmed the indexation would be applied from April 1, but FE Week understands negotiations between unions, the current contract providers and the MoJ are still in progress.
There are four providers under the current prison education framework, expiring March 31, 2025: Weston College, PeoplePlus Group, Novus (LTE Group), and Milton Keynes College.
A Treasury spokesperson said: “Following the ONS reclassification of FE colleges as public sector bodies, HM Treasury is reviewing the NFD policy in relation to further education colleges, including those involved in the prison education service.
“We are discussing the implications of this reclassification of further education to the public sector with relevant stakeholders and will set out more details in due course.”
The High Court trial between 3aaa co-founder Peter Marples and the Department for Education is set to take place in 2025 – and the loser will have to foot a near-£3 million legal bill.
A costs and case management conference for the high-value case was held this week, in which the DfE was ordered to disclose “key” evidence relating to the sales of other training providers ahead of the 15-day trial.
Ten witnesses are expected from Marples’ side, while the DfE will have five witnesses of its own.
Costs were not discussed during this week’s hearing, but FE Week understands the total legal bill for Marples will be just over £1 million, while the DfE is expected to rack up £1.9 million in costs.
Whichever side loses the case will have to pay the other side’s legal fees.
Marples and three members of his family are attempting to sue the DfE for the then-Skills Funding Agency’s alleged refusal to sign off on the change of ownership of former apprenticeship giant 3aaa in 2016 to TLP (Trilantic Capital Partners LLP), two years before the company went bust amid an investigation and police referral.
Peter Marples
The family is seeking at least £37 million in damages.
The DfE’s legal bill is higher than Marples’ due to the disclosure of evidence costs involved, which hit nearly £1 million on their own.
Master Clark this week ordered the DfE to release documentation that related to the “change of control” of 11 other provider sales that the SFA allegedly consented to between 2015 and 2019, despite resistance from DfE lawyer Michael Walsh.
Walsh argued that this was an attempt by Marples’ team to “cast the widest possible net in what is a fishing expedition”.
“What the disclosure issues ought to relate to is the actual decision under challenge where the allegations are made about the TLP acquisition and not some early decision or indeed a decision about companies which bear no relation to the claimants,” he said.
Marples’ lawyer, Mark Harper KC, argued the DfE’s decision to not consent to the 3aaa change of control was “negligent” because the department has never taken this approach in relation to any other change of control request.
“We will say when it comes to considering those documents, there’ll be a clear difference in approach as to how the defendant approached the request by other companies to how it then approached the TLP request,” Harper said.
Master Clark ruled that the documents are relevant, but their release must be “proportionate”. Discussions between the two legal teams are now ongoing about what specific documentation relating to other provider changes of control should be released.
The DfE was also ordered to release “narrative” evidence related to how the SFA made the decision not to approve the claimant’s change of control request in respect to the TLP acquisition, including what matters it considered in doing so and what process and procedure was adopted.
DfE is now required to search for and disclose, for example, emails between then-Skills Funding Agency chief executive Peter Lauener and his colleagues where they discussed the decision.
Master Clark also ruled that the DfE must disclose communication between the SFA and former FE Week editor Nick Linford which related to 3aaa and Peter Marples during a specific time period.
Disclosure of all documents must be completed by the end of June 2024.
The exact date of the trial is yet to be decided, but the window for it will be between January and October 2025.
You can download all of the published legal files related to the case at the end of this article
The Treasury has been accused of short-changing employers after FE Week analysis revealed HMRC pocketed around £415 million generated from apprenticeship levy receipts last year.
Experts have now called on ministers to rapidly address the emerging mismatch between the cash the apprenticeship levy raises compared to what is being allocated for public spending before it becomes a government “cash cow” amid the fiscal crisis.
Treasury figures show that £3.580 billion was raised by the levy in the 2022-23 financial year but just £2.554 billion was handed to the Department for Education to spend in England, while FE Week estimates that £608 million was handed to the devolved nations.
It means that £418 million of apprenticeship funding went unallocated. On top of this, the DfE underspent its budget by £96 million, meaning the total savings to the Treasury hit £514 million in 2022-23.
And in 2021-22 the Treasury boosted their coffers by over £200 million in unallocated apprenticeship funding.
Simon Ashworth, director of policy at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said the figures show “just how much employers are being short-changed”.
He added: “The purpose of the levy is to fund high-quality apprenticeship training and assessment so the overall programme budget must reflect the amount raised much more closely. We cannot allow the levy to become a cash cow for the Treasury.”
‘Employers are being short-changed’
Since 2017, UK businesses with a payroll of £3 million or more pay each month into a levy pot which is used to fund apprenticeships for both large and small businesses.
The Treasury then distributes a portion of those receipts annually to the Department for Education which is ring-fenced to be spent on apprenticeships in England.
The devolved nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also receive a slice of the receipts. But while the first three years – from 2017-18 to 2019-20 – had allocated budgets, the Treasury has kept exactly how much the devolved nations receive from the levy since 2020-21 a secret. It did however commit that beyond this point the “normal operation of the Barnett Formula should provide a similar outcome”.
FE Week analysed the early budgets for the devolved nations and found they were, on average, handed 17 per cent of the total levy receipts, so we used 17 per cent as an estimation for their share of the levy from 2020 onwards. The devolved nations also do not have their share of the levy ring-fenced for apprenticeships, so it can be spent on any area they choose.
In the early years of the levy, the Treasury appeared to over-commit to the devolved administrations, as figures show HMRC distributed more than what levy receipts generated. But underspends from the DfE’s budget prevented it from an overall overspend.
By using 17 per cent as the best estimate for devolved nations’ levy allocations, FE Week can reveal that the Treasury has retained around £316 million of levy receipts since 2017.
When we take into account DfE underspends, and assuming the devolved nationals spent all of their allocations, it shows that almost £2.5 billion of apprenticeship funding has been kept by, or returned to, the Treasury.
Experts told FE Week the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) believes the levy will raise £3.7 billion this financial year and that levy receipts have already raised £120 million more this year compared to the same period last year.
The government has only committed to increasing England’s apprenticeships budget to £2.7 billion by 2024-25.
Mark Corney, senior policy adviser at the Campaign for Learning, said the levy is raising more and more for the government because of “higher nominal wages and relatively stable number of employees, as the fall in employment is driven by fewer self-employed people”.
He told FE Week: “The bulk of the savings seem to be coming from the underspend in DfE rather than what the levy is yielding above allocation. What’s really interesting is the last two years, when we have got a fiscal crisis, the Treasury has got an extra £200 million in 2021-22 and £418 million in 2022-23.
“The levy is raising far more than is being allocated if we assume the devolved nations have spent all their funding.
“The decision clearly is that the country needs to keep reducing its deficit rather than investing in apprenticeships.”
He added that while these are the best estimations, it would be “better if the Treasury gave us an indicative devolved nation budget for full transparency”.
It comes at a time when big and long-running apprenticeship providers are either closing down or pulling out of the apprenticeship market due to unviable funding rates for apprenticeship standards and functional skills teaching.
Ashworth said: “Against the backdrop of a skills sector crisis this could then pay for a vital new minimum funding threshold and an across-the-board uplift in all apprenticeship funding bands to tackle the rising costs of inflation. It would also help to address the long-standing issue of inadequately funded English and maths qualifications.”
A government spokesperson said: “The apprenticeship levy is designed so that money not used by levy-paying employers is re-allocated to fund apprenticeships from smaller employers. In the last financial year, we were encouraged to see employers utilised over 99 per cent of the apprenticeship budget, benefitting big and small businesses alike.
“The government sets out its plan for departmental public expenditure at spending reviews. This was done most recently in 2021, where plans were set to 2024-25.”
