Two apprenticeship providers have had their funding contracts terminated by the government after a failed high court challenge.
Quest Vocational Training Limited and All Spring Media Limited hired the same law firm to launch separate legal actions against the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s “draconian” decision to end their agreements after Ofsted slapped both providers with a grade four this year.
The providers claimed there were factual inaccuracies and disproportionate judgements made by the watchdog, including that inspectors failed to take into consideration the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. They argued that it was “unreasonable” for the government to cancel their contracts based on a disputed report.
One of the providers, Quest, was successful in forcing the government to overturn an initial suspension on starts in September while it took Ofsted on through a judicial review. However, the Dorset-based firm ultimately failed to overturn the inspectorate’s grade in court, which led to the ESFA immediately terminating its contracts last month.
It was at this point that Buckinghamshire-based All Spring Media decided to discontinue its legal claim against the agency.
Quest, which was ordered by the high court to also pay for the ESFA’s legal costs, declined to comment on the outcome of its case and whether the provider will be forced to close. All Spring Media has said it will be able to continue as apprenticeships are just one part of its offering.
Training providers have long complained about the harsh intervention regime adopted by the ESFA. The agency has the power to end all funding agreements for training providers when they receive a grade four Ofsted report.
A spokesperson for All Spring Media said the ESFA was provided with witness statement evidence to support its position as to why its grade four Ofsted report was “factually inaccurate and unreasonable”.
Despite this, the agency “maintained that it could, under its contract, terminate on 30 days’ notice without reason…given that the ESFA contracts are model form agreements, this position allows the ESFA to terminate at any time without reason on notice.
“Therefore, any improvements made by a training provider after an ‘inadequate’ rating will usually not be able to be evidenced in a monitoring visit by Ofsted because the training provider would have likely already been removed from the register of apprenticeships training providers”.
The spokesperson for All Spring Media told FE Week its ESFA contract allowed for other “less draconian measures than termination”, such as contract monitoring, but the agency “did not accept that the other monitoring measures were proportionate steps to take in the circumstances”.
Private providers often threaten legal action against Ofsted grade four reports and subsequent ESFA contract termination where they feel the judgement is unreasonable, but they rarely follow this through due to the significant cost involved.
Most providers, whose business is predominantly apprenticeship training, are usually forced to close as a result.
The most high-profile high court case against a grade four Ofsted inspection report involved Learndirect in 2017. The company was the country’s biggest training provider at the time. Its lawyers argued that inspectors had a “predetermined” negative view of the provider’s apprenticeship provision, and that Ofsted’s sample size of apprentices was not large enough to reflect the size of the company.
Ofsted won the case which led to the ESFA terminating Learndirect’s funding contracts worth over £100 million. The provider was then forced to close, which put 1,600 people out of work and 70,000 learners needing to find other providers to complete their training.
QVT was formed in 2012 to provide apprenticeships for the health and social care sector. It initially operated as a subcontractor but became a main provider in 2017 with its own direct funding contract. The provider employs more than 50 staff and was training almost 700 apprentices at the time of Ofsted’s inspection last year.
QVT declined to comment on what contract termination means for its future.
All Spring Media launched in 2011 and delivers a various skills training courses for the film and television industries. It has six staff on payroll and works with several freelancers. Almost 140 apprentices are now being transferred to alternative training providers.
All Spring Media’s spokesperson said apprenticeships are “just one intervention in a sector that is seeing one of the biggest skills challenges in its history” so it will “continue to support a pipeline for diverse talent for the film and television industries”.
Both companies instructed Alice Straight, a solicitor for Lester Aldridge, to handle their litigation.
Staff across England walked out on Wednesday in the first national sixth-form college teacher strike in six years, with one union leader warning disruption could be repeated on a greater scale next year.
Members of the National Education Union (NEU) took action at 76 colleges after voting overwhelmingly in favour of a strike over pay. Like their colleagues in schools, most sixth-form college teachers have received below-inflation pay rises of about 5 per cent.
The NEU said the action was “strongly supported”, although it would not say how many of its 4,200 eligible members walked out. It is understood no college had to close.
The union is currently balloting teaching and support staff members in schools. The NASUWT and leadership union NAHT are also balloting members for action.
University and College Union members in colleges held industrial action over the autumn over a separate pay offer from the Association of Colleges, while there was also unprecedented strikes in universities this week.
Mary Bousted, the NEU joint general secretary, said the union would “seek to coordinate further action” in sixth-form colleges with wider walkouts.
“The strength of feeling across the public sector is as one. Today is a warning shot to government if they continue to take no action on calls for a fully funded, above-inflation pay rise for teachers.
“This demonstration of anger will be even more visible should, as we expect, NEU teachers and support staff in schools and academies across England and Wales vote to take strike action in 2023.”
About 60 staff at Woodhouse College, a sixth-form college with academy status in Barnet, north London, were eligible to walk out, with about a third joining a picket outside the gates on Wednesday morning.
Laura Wall, an English teacher and NEU rep, said the issue was “pay stagnation”, which made teachers feel “undervalued and left behind”.
“We’ve worked incredibly hard. We’ve struggled away through the pandemic teaching. We did all the [teacher-assessed grades] and [centre-assessed grades], put all this work in and we’re still having to ask and beg for pay rises that reflect what’s going on in the in the larger economy.”
Sarah Alaali, who has taught maths for nine years, said she had considered opting out of her pension “just so I could afford to keep paying my mortgage. I don’t feel like the government values education.”
John Brennan-Rhodes, the college’s head of maths, said his biggest fear was colleagues leaving the profession.
“I love working here. I’m not really angry at the college itself. I think that they should be given more money so that we can earn more money.”
David Makepeace, a physics teacher, pointed to the government’s decision to scrap the cap on bankers’ bonuses.
“Now they’re back where they were earning loads of money. And yet we haven’t been compensated for all the hard work that we’ve been doing over this time, working through Covid, like the nurses, like other public sector employees.”
The Sixth Form Colleges Association acknowledged salaries were being “eroded”, but said funding was lower for their members than other settings, leaving them without the resources to “meet demands for such a high pay rise”. The DfE was approached for comment.
We are in the midst of a climate-critical decade. The 10 New Insights in Climate Science as referenced at COP27 have suggested urgent global action to reverse the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions is needed if we are to reach anywhere near the Paris Agreement or Net Zero strategies.
By 2030 the Green Jobs Taskforce has set an ambition for two million green jobs in the UK. These green jobs will require green skill development in the talent pipeline. Recent recommendations by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) have suggested that Awarding Organisations can promote Education for Sustainable Development by ensuring they have adequate specialist qualifications alongside embedded sustainability skills across all qualifications.
At Pearson, we are responding to that call to action by incorporating sustainability education throughout our reformed BTEC National qualifications. In addition, we have produced Embedding Sustainability, A Support Guide for BTEC Nationals, designed to provide guidance on embedding sustainable green life skills in a meaningful and pragmatic way. In doing this we hope to support the mission of colleges and schools to achieve their own sustainability targets in line with the DfE Sustainability and climate change strategy.
Supporting the delivery of sustainability education
One of the major challenges is how we address sustainability. FE Week recently reported sustainability as the fourth functional skill. Sustainability should not be an optional add-on but neither should it be something that is synthetically forced into an unfitting curriculum.
The Pearson School Report indicated that 43% of teachers would like climate change and sustainability thread throughout the curriculum. It also indicated that 61% of teachers feel that the current education system does not successfully develop tolerant, sustainably minded global citizens.
There is a real enthusiasm amongst teachers, lecturers, schools and colleges to deliver key green skills across the curriculum regardless of subject. We have recognized that there are a multitude of opportunities to incorporate the discussion of sustainability topics throughout the BTEC Nationals, which we’ve outlined in Embedding Sustainability: A Support Guide for BTEC Nationals.
Sustainability is best understood when it is applied in realistic contextual situations, it is only then that learners feel able to articulate ideas of sustainability, to positively impact challenges in sustainability. We hope that this sustainability guide will offer an opportunity to implement sustainable themes into your teaching practice without any significant impact on preparation and delivery time.
Why deliver sustainability skills?
We are in a world with 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 to 24, according to UN Youth In Action, the largest generation of youth in history. Young people are increasingly aware of the challenges and risks associated with the climate crisis. Students Organising for Sustainability in UK demonstrate that young people are keen to take action to work towards a sustainable future. Sustainability needs to be at the forefront of learning, so that a future focused curriculum provides young people with the skills they need to address the climate emergency.
“The Further Education (FE) and Training sector has a critical role to play in combating climate change and achieving sustainability and social justice both nationally and globally. There isn’t a subject nor industry that won’t be touched by sustainability so it’s vital all learners become sustainability learners. Awarding Organisations can influence significant change in what knowledge, skills and behaviours learners are developing through their course, so it’s great to see Pearson working to embed sustainability education across its portfolio as well as developing specialist sustainability qualifications.”Charlotte Bonner National Head of Education for Sustainable Development, Education and Training Foundation
Ofsted has handed out its first “limited” rating for skills contribution, as part of recently introduced enhanced inspections of colleges.
Strode College received an overall ‘good’ Ofsted rating this week following a visit by inspectors in early October, but scored the lowest rating possible for its work to meet skills needs.
Enhanced inspections for colleges launched in September this year and includes an assessment of how well the college is contributing to addressing skills gaps in the local, regional and national economy.
The outcome of this assessment is not subject to a separate report, but included as a part of the overall inspection. Inspectors dish out one of three ratings for the skills contribution section – limited, reasonable or strong.
Strode is the fourth college report to be published with the additional skills section, but is the first to get a “limited” rating.
Two of the others – Derwentside College and Sandwell College – were given “reasonable” and one – Newham College – received a “strong” rating.
A spokesperson from Strode College said: “Extended EIF [education inspection framework] criteria are very precise and the failure to meet one of the criteria sufficiently, is effectively a limited grade. The college has made significant strides within the local community within the last few months, culminating in a new strategic plan, which was approved by the board in September 2022.
“Ofsted acknowledged the amount of work and direction of travel that the college had made in a short space of time, but despite best endeavours it was unfortunately unable to successfully meet all the criteria.”
Ofsted’s updated handbook said a college’s skills contribution will be judged to be limited if inspectors did not consider leaders to have engaged enough with employers and other key organisations like local enterprise parnerships; did not involve employers and relevant bodies in the design and implementation of the curriculum; were not clear how they contributed to skills needs; or did not teach students the skills they needed.
Colleges are given a week’s notice to line-up chats between inspectors and key stakeholders in the local skills economy it works with, such as local enterprise partnerships, chambers of commerce and employers.
Evidence gathering includes conversations with college leaders, meetings with stakeholders and employers, and information in published documents, such as college skills plans and local skills improvement plans.
Strode College said it struggled to get organisations to talk to inspectors at the right time, and said there had also been some confusion on what was additionally required in the new inspection framework compared to the previous one.
In its report, Ofsted recognised that governors had only recently published a new skills strategy for the college, and said “leaders do not yet ensure that they identify the full range of employer and stakeholder needs, in order to make a sufficient contribution to meeting these in a way that benefits the locality and region”.
It highlighted a new English and maths functional skills curriculum for staff at Yeovil District Hospital to gain qualifications to move into more senior roles.
But the report continued that skills gaps in existing manufacturing, digital, construction, electro-technical and transportation businesses “are starting to be identified” but actions were “yet to have an impact”.
Inspectors said learners did develop their skills well, but employers were not involved enough in the design and implementation of the curriculum.
It did, however, praise leaders for being informed of major capital projects underway in Somerset and how the college could best contribute to those, including training programmes in the £23 million Glastonbury Town Deal projects.
While Strode College was rated ‘good’ overall, this was a downgrade from the ‘outstanding’ it received in 2014. It appears the rating was brought down by provision for learners with high needs, which was judged to be ‘requires improvement’.
Ofsted’s handbook says the skills evaluation is a “sub-judgement” that feeds into its assessment of quality of education and leadership and management. Despite Strode receiving a “limited contribution” on its skills contribution, its quality of education and leadership and management ratings scored ‘good’.
Schools and colleges will have to collect student performance evidence again this year in case exams are cancelled, government has confirmed, despite half of those consulted saying it will increase workload.
The two organisations said it was “very unlikely” exams would be canned, but “good public policy means having contingency, even for extremely unlikely scenarios”.
The government faced fierce criticism for not having an “off-the-shelf plan B” when exams were cancelled for a second time in early 2021 due to the pandemic.
A three week consultation was held this term on draft guidance, which aimed to “improve and streamline” the process by creating the “minimum possible burden”, while allowing a “broadly consistent approach” across all students.
But half of teachers, senior leaders and schools and colleges that responded said the arrangements would not prevent additional teacher workload.
However, only 94 school and college staff replied to the consultation, which had a total of 213 responses.
Only two-thirds of respondents said the guidance should remain in place beyond 2023. Ministers plan to consult on this in the summer term.
‘Guard against over-assessment’
The government and Ofqual said schools and colleges should plan test opportunities in line with their usual assessment approaches, such as mock exams. These can be varied if a school or college needs more evidence, they said.
But they stopped short of repeating advice on the frequency of testing from last year’s guidance, which said a “sensible approach” would be to test once a term.
Teachers should also “guard against over-assessment”, and normally would “not need to spend longer on these assessments than they would on their existing” test plans.
Ofqual made some tweaks to its proposed guidance, such as clarifying evidence can be kept digitally or physically, and that students should normally only be assessed on the content they have been taught.
Students should be supervised during tests, but schools and colleges don’t need to use external invigilators.
Exams workload warning
Overall, 158 of 213 respondents agreed the guidance was helpful.
However the DfE and Ofqual said a “key theme” in responses was the impact on teacher workload in creating, marking and moderating assessments.
One senior leader responded that there was “no question” the system added to teacher workload, adding: “Marking and moderating two sets of exams instead of just one set of mock exams doubles the workload.”
But officials said they had not stated the number of tests that should take place.
One exam board told the consultation it feared students may focus on responding to assessments rather than focus on learning opportunities.
And a centre said “previously valuable formative assessments” could be turned into “magnified high-stakes” tests which impacts their motivation and corrodes their “love for learning”.
In response, officials said the guidance aimed to help schools and colleges to use arrangements “that work best for them and their students”.
Some schools and colleges said there would be costs involved, such as those associated with storing the evidence.
Ofqual said it recognised this, but said costs should be “proportionate to the aim of preparing for the eventuality that exams cannot go ahead for any reason, having learnt from the experiences of the past three years”.
The DfE will continue to monitor school and college financial health and cost pressures they face, they said.
Meanwhile, Ofqual has decided to go ahead with plans to provide exam aids, such as formulae and equation sheets, in 2023 GCSE maths, physics and combined science exams.
More than 93 per cent of respondents said they agreed with proposals for a maths formulae sheet in 2023, and over 95 per cent supported having an equation sheet for physics and combined science.
What if there was a game where you could run a college, experiment with course design and curate your students’ experience? What if it had a 90s nostalgic animation style, just like Theme Park when we were kids? What if I could convince FE Week that I had to play it for essential research purposes and the greater enlightenment of our sector?
No, the campus management strategy game, Two Point Campus isn’t a fever dream but an actual virtual reality. Whether you open a campus from scratch or dive into an established institution with deeper problems, your role is to ensure students are educated, have the facilities they need and graduate having had a good time along the way.
Is it fun? Well, fun is a relative term. My 11-year-old son took mere minutes to reach his review judgment: “This is so tragic. You are literally playing a game about education.”
Perhaps it’s just not his demographic. Or perhaps I should have my own X-Box. Either way, while I like to think playing a game that simulates a college in my spare time is a marker of my passion, I reluctantly accept that he has a point. I don’t imagine farmers are playing Tractor Simulator after a day in the fields.
But as it’s based on sophisticated AI, requires fine-tuning of campus experience and forces you to pick between competing demands, that counts as professional development, right? And who expects that to be fun?
In the real world, politicians’ fantasies about ‘Harry Potter studies’, 21st-Century skills and low standards lead to a constant flow of reform and accountability. In Two Point Campus, however, the challenge is not to protect your institution from interfering policy makers. Instead, the challenges range from saving it from its own grand, ancient, and expensive buildings, to crafting the perfect experience for students of robotics, to working out how to pay for it all. Educate, nurture and expand is its simple formula for success, but sometimes you have to pick.
The uncertain correlations we face in FE are replaced with cheerful causation
In order to make it a game, the uncertain correlations we face in FE are often replaced with a cheerful causation. Build it and they will come, at least in the early levels. A toilet and a well-placed coffee machine will increase happiness. That book or that machine will have an immediate and measurable impact.
Like a general further education college, campus life in this virtual world is eclectic: learners in chef whites rub alongside art students and the more STEM-focused. And, as in real life, your campus’s success relies on the success of all, measured not just in grades, but friendship and overall experience.
In a way, that makes it more realistic than those political fantasies, where academic outcomes are the be-all-and-end-all. Indeed, it reflects exactly what our students tell us in surveys and conversations: that their social experience, the food we provide and what it costs all matter as much as anything learning related.
But as the economic crisis cuts even deeper into colleges’ and families’ budgets, our real choices start to become ever starker. So while Two Point Campus’s AI pushes players to offer a diverse curriculum that meets the demands of all students, back in reality adult student recruitment has collapsed over the past decade, and courses face the twin challenges of enrolling enough students or finding the staff to teach them.
This reality jars with prime minister Sunak’s and skills minister Halfon’s push for a ‘British Baccalaureate’ for further education, not to mention the renewed vocational focus through T levels and short, sharp higher education that tackles our skills and productivity gap.
No matter how creative a leader you are, as any Two Point Campus player could tell you, big ideas need big investment. And if skills education is going to fulfil the promises others have made for it, that investment is needed now.
In the meantime, this game may not prepare anyone for the rigours or educational leadership. But it is fun and food for thought, not least because its artificial intelligence is more hopeful than anything emanating from Westminster.
When I was little and I wanted to know about Guy Fawkes or the Royal Family I would whip out my encyclopaedia and happily scour, pour and flick the pages, learning with each turn. Now I can shout into the ether and a smart device will answer my questions. Similarly when I was at school receiving careers advice, social media and AI automation roles hadn’t been conceived. That’s how fast the world has moved on. How might we as further education professionals prepare students for their futures when we cannot conceive what the world will look like in 20 years?
Rather than being daunted, let’s look to what we do know. Transferable skills will probably be involved. Communication will be key. The ability to navigate and curate this world will be needed. Likewise that resilience to adapt and change. Gone are the days of textbooks and encyclopaedia guiding paths. Learning can happen, anywhere, anytime. How might we harness the opportunities available, to maximise our learning time?
If I asked you now to answer some solving quadratics questions you might need to learn about quadratics before you begin. And what would that learning look like? Probably a YouTube video or a website? So much of the world’s learning exists online. Now let’s look to how we teach our subject, are we including these elements? Do we harness the power of video? What opportunities do students have to share opinions and communicate?
What if we taught students how to curate content and to identify what was good online? Resources exist to help us do this. My students enjoyed the free Common Sense Education post-16 lessons. The ‘Clicks for Cash’ lesson helped some students have that moment of realisation that not everything online is true. These lessons are planned, ready to go and free.
What if, with these new curation skills, students found a favourite TikTokker or YouTuber who explained things in a way that made it click just for them? What if students enjoyed learning solving quadratics on their phone on the bus on the way to college?
Rather than being daunted, let’s look to what we know
Our job has and is always to help students understand. I view this as including an understanding of how they learn, if we can prepare them to know what works for them, this can be transferred to their future careers and learning. You might be worried thinking, if they’ve mastered quadratics in a 10 minute video en route to campus, what purpose do we serve as teachers?
The answer is simple: We add the magic.
By flipping my maths class in this way, students arrived knowing our topic, with some ability to solve quadratics, and armed with questions about why sometimes you need the formula and sometimes you don’t. This meant we had rich discussions at a level we wouldn’t have had time to get to had we relied on me in class to do this and explain the basics. Students arriving with questions ready for us to have these discussions are the magic of teaching and learning for me.
We know that when students watch a video their knowledge increases but that this is where they begin their journey of understanding. As teachers we can help them practice, creating opportunities for them to thrive. We can offer feedback, guidance and help them develop that resilience to keep going. They can share their learning and communicate to peers in class too.
When teachers add the magic it shows that we are in this learning journey together. There is trust from us that learning will happen outside the classroom, that students will practice those curation skills that we taught them and won’t get lost online outside the classroom.
And in return, there is trust from the students that we will be there to help them make connections between the knowledge they have gained and that we will guide them so that they can go further.
And if they go further than any of us can imagine or conceive, then isn’t that magic?
This article is one of a number of contributions to The Staffroom from the authors of Great FE Teaching: Sharing Good Practice, edited by Samantha Jones and available from SAGE.
Earlier this month we learned that adults in lower socio-economic groups are twice as likely to not have participated in learning since leaving full-time education than those in higher socio-economic groups, with some significant regional disparities. The report was published during Lifelong Learning Week and acknowledges the accelerated role of online learning and edtech since the pandemic.
Given that automation will disproportionately affect lower income workers in jobs like food distribution, driving and manufacturing, it’s depressing to hear about what the Learning and Work Institute refer to as a ‘class penalty’, which has persisted since their surveys began.
There are even subtle differences in terminology which echo the ‘parity of esteem’ issue in vocational versus academic education. Most of the time, when we discuss technology for ‘corporate learning’ or ‘Learning and Development’ (L&D), we’re talking about the kind of HBR-reading, LinkedIn-posting learners who use Duolingo for holidays in France and Coursera to sharpen their project management skills. There’s a divide between this and what we refer to as ‘adult education’.
The Adult Participation in Learning Survey found that the two main barriers to adult participation in learning are time and money, which won’t be helped by rising costs of living. And in further gloomy news, government spending on adult education and apprenticeships in England are predicted to be 25 per cent lower in 2025 than in 2010. There’s no shortage of learning technology for adults that promises to close the gap between social classes and geographies, but it’s clearly not enough to build it and hope they come.
Sometimes, learning technology teams can overlook a key barrier, which is that not everyone feels as they do about learning. It’s the same blind spot they warned us about during teacher training: being an academically successful person makes it harder to understand why our students struggle or reject opportunities to learn.
Adult learners and educators are overlooked
Most learning tech teams I’ve worked with are led by successful individuals from the world’s most elite companies – often, it’s McKinsey – who have the time, money, and skillset to start a new venture. It’s rare to find a professional carer or delivery driver doing the same – yet they’d understand their end user better than anyone else could.
Adult educators are overlooked too. Despite their unique position to understand what post-16 learners need from technology solutions, FE is largely ignored while edtech teams focus on schools, higher education and corporate markets.
But as a timely reminder of what’s possible, the adult learning sector has just celebrated ‘Week of Voctech’. This annual exploration of the impact of digital technology on vocational training is notably inclusive of learner groups from all socioeconomic backgrounds. This year’s showcase included an online classroom to help social housing tenants progress through work, an immersive VR car production line and an interactive platform for pest control professionals.
Much of this technology was created with an understanding of the challenges faced by adult learners and a genuine desire to support them. The ‘Marco Writing Support’ app, for instance, was developed by an FE lecturer in Animal Studies to support and motivate vocational learners with their written work. In a brilliant convergence of ‘ed’ and ‘tech’, Marco was devised in Google’s Stockholm offices as part of a design thinking academy for educators and is now supported by UK charity, Ufi Voctech Trust and Bridgend College.
The ‘Week of Voctech’ was a good reminder that we’ve never been more connected to opportunities. In theory, anyone with a phone and WiFi connection can learn anything they like, as anonymously as they’d like, without fear of embarrassment or failure. An apprentice can log onto their learning at any hour and a time-poor working parent can study at their own pace.
In this month’s budget, Jeremy Hunt pledged investment into digital skills and infrastructure to make the UK ‘the world’s next Silicon Valley’. If we’re serious about that, edtech must shake off old ideas that lifelong learning is for the affluent. And the surest way to do that is to support further education providers to meaningfully engage with and co-create edtech solutions with the people developing them.
Hydrogen maintenance engineers, solar photovoltaic entrepreneurs, retrofit advisers, and animal waste manure aggregators – these are some of the 60 new jobs the UK is predicted to need to train people in, if it is to achieve its ambition to become net zero by 2050.
The government has set a target of creating two million green jobs by 2030, and more importantly, all other workers in the economy will also be expected to take on new green skills in their existing jobs.
Although there is now a plethora of new green courses across the country, providers are encountering challenges in recruiting tutors for them; and in understanding the real opportunities a net zero world can provide learners.
Finding the teachers
The National Open College Network’s (NOCN) new report, Greening the UK Skills, estimates that of the 60 potential new occupations required to meet net zero, the largest share (20) is in construction. These learners will be tasked with, among other things, retrofitting the country’s 29 million buildings and ensuring they are adequately insulated.
Another 19 new jobs will be in solar energy generation, and just two in electric vehicle charging and installation.
“The challenge is, we are struggling as a country to find enough people to do these new green jobs, never mind to teach these skills to others,” a source at the Department for Education admitted to FE Week.
Henri Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, which champions the devolution agenda for the North of England, believes some policy experts and industry heads are “risk averse in talking about green skills because training up people to do these things puts more pressure on the existing labour force”.
“We need to get the balance right in terms of those competing tensions,” he said. “As well as jobs created there will be jobs lost in the future, so it’s about the ability to match up people whose jobs are being lost with new opportunities.”
The risks are highest for those providers looking to offer courses in the most budding technologies.
Eight of the new roles will be in carbon capturing and its storage, but NOCN’s chief executive Graham Hasting-Evans warns the technology is in “very, very early days” with investors only just starting to put money into projects.
And there may be new roles not mentioned in the report arising from tidal energy, which Liverpool City Region is hoping to harness on a massive scale, if it can convince the Treasury to invest.
Private sector pull
Eleven of the roles – 18 per cent of the total – are for engineers. But engineers are proving particularly challenging for colleges and training providers to recruit to training roles as they can earn significantly more money in the private sector.
In the case of aviation engineers, a college salary of £30-40,000 a year was described by one college leader as being a “far cry from the £100,000 a year they can earn privately”.
Jan Myatt, vice principal of Birmingham Metropolitan College, told FE Week her college recently held an open day to try to attract engineers to teach there, but very few turned up.
“We can’t pay what the private sector can, and this is a real problem,” she said.
David Wilkins, vice principal of the Bedford College Group, said his college was trying to overcome the challenge by recruiting specialist engineers “just to deliver particular units, which can be challenging, but some are successful”.
“We need to do more of that with green skills, such as heat pump instillations and PVs [photovoltaics],” he said. “The solution lies in great collaborations with industry to bring those skills into the classroom and workshop.
“Lots of colleges are proactive in advertising part-time opportunities and being innovative in how they recruit, for example using ex-forces staff. We’re trying all avenues, but it is difficult given the salary levels in the industry,” he added.
Southgate
Mark Southgate, chief executive of MOBIE (Ministry of Building Innovation and Education), is coming across the same issue in the construction industry and told a session at the Association of Colleges conference last week of examples of housebuilders training up ex-offenders to build using modern methods of construction.
“One of the plusses in an industry that is short people is they’re having to look in places in which they haven’t before,” he said.
Funding opportunities
The Strategic Development Fund (SDF), which provides collaborations of further education (FE) providers with capital and programme funding to support curriculum changes to better meet employers’ needs, this year announced £92 million would go to 41 successful bids – 34 of which included green skills in their focus.
The South East Midlands, which includes Bedford College, is receiving a £2.7 million share and Wilkins says it will “enable us to put several of my staff on more electric vehicle (EV) training where we could do it ourselves”.
“It will also pay to purchase equipment, so we can use VR headsets in teaching,” he said.
Meanwhile, South London Partnership, which includes South Thames College Group, is receiving £1.8 million for boosting green skills in construction, energy, EVs and waste management.
Its vice principal for higher education and business partnerships, Stella Raphael-Reeves, explained how her college worked with organisations including Solar Energy UK, which represents solar companies, to develop a 30-hour employability and solar skills energy course for adult learners which has now had 200 applicants.
While the SDF financing is enabling them to buy in the necessary equipment, she said “we’ve got stuck because we have no one to teach [the course]”.
“The staff at the college are so utilized, they haven’t got the space to do it. We are having really real big difficulties. The GLA (Greater London Authority) is saying this is crazy, you’ve got this amazing course we can build up.”
Knowing what’s on offer
A pressing challenge for all providers is getting companies to tell them where the green jobs are. This provides a real opportunity for local skills improvement plans (LSIPs) in nurturing this collaboration, said Wilkins.
Murison claims that of the combined authorities, Greater Manchester has “the most well-developed understanding” about linking green skills demand with local training opportunities, with mayor Andy Burnham “making commitments and using his convening power for this”.
Greater Manchester has joined a consortium including West Yorkshire, London and the West Midlands to develop proposals for city-led retrofit, and its skills team have produced a skills action plan with a focus on green jobs.
Steve Morris, commercial director at the Learning Curve Group, said they work closely with trade and business organisations as well as LSIPs around the country to understand demand.
“We need employers to tell us the specific skills needed for the specific roles they want so that we can better support,” he said. “If you can’t identify the vacancies then it is impossible to identify where the skills gap is.
“Perhaps the solution is to incorporate sustainability into all existing roles rather than trying to identify where the jobs are in green skills,” he added.
The Learning Curve Group now offers a level two course in climate change and environmental awareness and has started to develop some of its existing apprenticeships to incorporate more sustainability with, for example, a level three apprenticeship in being a sustainable team leader and a level two in being a sustainable LGV driver.
The training company also uses Lightcast (previously EMSI) which provides labour market analytics to understand where demand lies. But Morris cautioned: “You have to be very specific with what occupations you are looking for and have a depth of understanding what is a green profession, how will this job support the reduction of carbon, and meet the governments requirements.”
There are also a growing number of green skills bootcamps on offer in areas including electric vehicle charging, green heating technology, and smart meter installation, with an offer of a job interview with an employer on completion of the course, such as a ‘Route 2 Retrofit’ bootcamp in environmental sustainability in construction.
The take up
So far, take up on green courses appears to have been patchy and providers are calling on the government to do more to help them promote them. The Skills Network has developed a level two course around the fundamentals of sustainability and green skills, designed for all workers, and is also developing a level four course for managers and teachers.
But, its chief executive Mark Dawe admits that “take up isn’t as great as we might expect at the moment”.
“Anything more the government can do to encourage employers and individuals – perhaps promoting sustainability as the fourth functional skill after maths, English and digital – would be great”.
Panditharatna
Wilkins said his college’s PV courses were “highly oversubscribed” particularly when the government launched a green homes grant voucher scheme in 2020. When that scheme ended the following year there were “less students on the programme”, but “now it is a steady ticker”.
While the green skills challenge could offer opportunities to train up people currently not in the workforce, sustainability is not always high on those learners’ priority list.
The Forward Trust offers opportunities to people with drug and alcohol dependencies, and now delivers level one and two qualifications with a focus on green skills.
Its director of employment Asi Panditharatna said many of the learners have had “poor careers advice in general and we also have to embed discussions about green sector jobs, and how sustainability skills will apply to existing jobs”.
“We also link this to things like British values. For example, we encouraged learners to think about the Grenfell five-year anniversary in terms of how more sustainable materials could help recladding in the future.”
