Q&A: Ofsted’s verdict on T Levels

Ofsted released a damning review of T Levels over the summer, warning that many students have dropped out after being “misled” on to the new flagship qualifications and that teachers are struggling to teach the “complex” courses.

The watchdog will begin looking at T Level provision as part of routine inspections from this month as many new T Levels come on board. FE Week deputy editor Billy Camden spoke with the Ofsted deputy director for FE, Paul Joyce, to find out his biggest concerns and to ask what colleges can expect from inspection.

Q. What was the most concerning finding from Ofsted’s thematic review of T Levels for you?

“It’s worth remembering that this is a reform programme that’s still a work in progress. We did find that T Levels and the transition programme have been implemented with varying degrees of success, with student experiences varying considerably. As with lots of qualifications that are new, there are some shortcomings that providers and the Department for Education will want to address, including around content, assessment, and work placement. I guess more than anything else that was surprising to me was, despite the [government’s] campaign to raise profile and raise awareness, it was the public’s, students’, teachers’, and employers’ awareness – or lack of awareness – of T Levels and what they [the qualifications] would involve.”

Q. Who’s at fault for the awareness of T Levels not being up to scratch?

“That’s difficult. I mean, the DfE with their T Levels campaign put an awful lot of work in. We saw radio, we saw TV, but that hasn’t seeped through to schools, to school teachers, careers advisers, parents, students and employers who didn’t really understand what T Levels are in practice. Their perception of what T Levels are, in many cases, is not the reality. Many students expected them to have far more practical content than they actually do. And for those reasons they were disappointed.”

Q. The report says students have been “misled” and warned of a big dropout rate. Over the summer, when T Level results were released, we found a third of students who started in 2021 had dropped out before completing. How concerning is this?

“It’s important to say that, as time has gone on, it has got better. But undoubtedly, particularly in the first year, there was a bit of providers not really understanding what T Levels were because they were new, and there wasn’t a great deal of teaching support material etc available to them. And therefore, teachers and careers advisers could not give that detailed information about the course content [to prospective students]. We have found between our first visits and our second visits that that advice and guidance is getting better.

“There is no doubt we have found some students that enrolled this year were expecting a very different course than they’ve ended up being enrolled upon.

“We did find, from our evidence, a variety of reasons for students dropping out. Some of those are undoubtedly going to be for personal reasons, cost-of-living related issues, employment economic factors, but also, student dissatisfaction with courses was a factor and they made the decision to leave.”

Q. Former education secretary Damian Hinds overruled then-DfE permanent secretary Jonathan Slater in 2018 to press ahead with the 2020 launch. Was this the wrong choice in hindsight, considering your findings? The warnings were clearly there. Were T Levels too rushed?

“Timing really is a matter for government and not for us. But as you rightly say, our survey has found that public and employer awareness does need to improve, and there do remain issues with work placements, with course content and with assessment that we would want to see addressed before these are rolled out at scale or more extensively.”

Q. Your boss, Amanda Spielman, described the findings as “teething issues”. Is Ofsted confident these issues can be fixed in good time? What needs to change? Are there enough employers to deliver more than 100,000 315-hour industry placements a year, for example?

“That’s probably one of the most significant concerns that policy colleagues have got to think about. A lot of providers have told us that it’s relatively easy to find 15, 20 placements. But if you’re looking at doing this at huge scale with lots more numbers, it’s going to become more and more difficult to find those quality placements in any given area in any given locality.”

Q. Ofsted’s report tells DfE to “carefully consider the implications and impact of the planned withdrawal of funding for other similar courses to ensure that students are not disadvantaged”. Should the 2025 defunding timeline for alternative level 3 qualifications be paused?

“I think this is a cog in a wider reform agenda. There’s no doubt really that all the issues we’ve identified, the majority of which DfE and others were already aware of, can be sorted, can be ironed out. It’s just ensuring that they [T Levels] are working as well as they possibly can be before these are rolled out to more and more students in more and more providers, and importantly, to make sure that these courses are running and operating properly. We wouldn’t want to see students unable to access courses in certain sectors because other courses have been withdrawn when replacement courses aren’t yet ready.”

Q. Ofsted will start to inspect T Levels as part of regular inspections from this month [September]. What can colleges expect?

“As always, we are not separately going to inspect and grade T Levels and the transition programme. We will look at that provision when we look at and grade “education programmes for young people”. It will be done appropriately and proportionately. Inspectors will look at a T Level route or two in terms of their deep-dive activity, but any inspection outcome or weighting for T Levels will be judged in proportion to the provision we’re inspecting. So if it’s a relatively small part of education programmes for young people alongside a raft of other level two, level three technical vocational qualifications and a raft of other A-levels potentially, the impact on inspection outcome may be quite limited. If it’s larger provision, it will obviously be judged proportionally.”

How to buck the low T Level retention trend

With the Department for Education promising to investigate why only two in three T Level students complete their programme, senior reporter Joshua Stein spoke to the colleges who beat the national average to find out how they ensure students stay on the course

“The first thing is, you have to get the right learners on the right course. I do think with T Levels, they are really demanding,” Alison Leaverland, deputy principal for quality and curriculum at Strode College told FE Week.

According to FE Week analysis of DfE data, Strode College scored a relatively high retention rate this year for their T Levels completers of 79 per cent, beating the national retention figure by more than ten percentage points.

Of the 5,210 wave two T Level students in England that started in 2021, 3,448, just two-thirds, got their results this summer.

Even for a new qualification, the T Level retention rate compares poorly with other level 3 options such as A-levels (95 per cent), applied general qualifications (92 per cent) and tech levels (91 per cent).

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said during results week in August that it would work with colleges to “understand more about the reasons for students dropping out and what can be done to improve retention”.

Early adopters

Suffolk New College was one college that scored a higher overall retention rate, coming in at 80.6 per cent across two T Levels: education and childcare; and design, surveying and planning for construction.

Its 12 students on the education and childcare T Level finished the course, while 13 of its 19 students on the design, surveying and planning for construction course completed.

Alan Pease, the college’s chief executive, put that higher retention level down to his college being an early adopter of T Levels. In 2020, it started delivering the design, surveying and planning for construction T Level, and crucially involved other parts of the college in its delivery to prepare for later years.

“So while we had our construction and engineering staff deliver that qualification, in all of our planning and quality meetings we had a wider group of people taking an interest because we knew we wanted to set up different [T Level] routes in subsequent years,” Pease said.

“We had different curriculum areas involved. We really wanted to use that first cohort as our pilot, and share their experience and expertise with the rest of the college community so that when we did subsequent routes, it wasn’t so new to us because we’d had that experience of running a first cohort.”

Once the education and childcare qualification got going, those staff then knew how to go about the T Level as it was not new to them.

Pease did say it was “disappointing” that the retention rate was lower on the construction pathway, but said a “significant proportion of those that left early did so with positive destination outcomes, going into work or apprenticeships”.

Leaverland said Strode College had a similar experience as an early adopter.

“Having that extra year to go through a [T Level] completion, you learn things,” she said, for instance at T Level meetings where those delivering courses could discuss any issues they were facing.

“There’s a very close communication network between all the T Level delivery teams. And I think that was because we had the leader for digital [their first T-Level] there that they were able to share their experiences.

“I just think you could reflect and share good practice between the teams.”

‘A real-life experience’

But on top of that, the high-tech facilities and good-quality industry placements also inspired learners to stay and complete their course, leaders said.

“It’s just a real-life experience,” Leaverland said. For instance, on their science courses, they have built what looks like a real hospital ward with “simulated patients”, so learners can learn practically.

Her college scored an overall retention rate of 79.2 per cent, across four separate T Levels in digital, education, science and health.

Retention for digital students came in at 90.3 per cent, while education and science scored retention rates of 82.4 per cent and 71.4 per cent respectively. However, health’s retention rate came in at 63.6 per cent.

Leaverland put the lower health T Level retention rates down to errors found by Ofqual last year for health and science exams, so that students’ first-year assessments had to be regraded. “That did impact on our retention,” Leaverland admitted, but she also pointed to health students sometimes needing more one-to-one support due to the intense nature of their courses.

Blackpool and The Fylde College, too, had strong retention rates, with a 96 per cent average. For its health and science courses, it scored a 100 per cent retention rate, while design development and engineering achieved 94 per cent and education and childcare 96 per cent.

For its off-site construction T Level, it gained a 75 per cent retention rate, while the construction, design and surveying retention rate was 100 per cent.

Alun Francis, the college’s new principal and chief executive, said the high levels of retention were mainly down to how the college has “embraced” T Levels. Building on already strong relationships with employers was also “quite critical”, as it “gives the learners the confidence that this is a different qualification and they’re going to gain something more through their time at the workplace”.

A spokesperson for Harlow College also put down their high T Levels retention rate to “good employer links”. Its design, surveying and planning T Level had a 79 per cent retention rate – with 15 of its 19 starters finishing the course.

“The new T Level [also] mapped well to the previous well-recognised industry qualification in this area,” the spokesperson added.

The right learners

At Milton Keynes College Group, 28 students started one of three T Level two years ago. Of those, just one student transferred to another course, with the rest completing. Principal Alex Warner said giving students as much information as possible at the start of the course was essential to managing expectations.

“We made sure from the very start that students who entered T Level courses knew exactly what would be expected of them in terms of college time, high expectations and industry placements. We wanted to be sure students had as strong an idea as possible of what lay ahead and what they would gain, so there were no nasty surprises and every reason to continue,” he said.

Strode’s Leaverland agrees. “The first thing is, you have to get the right learners on the right course,” Leaverland told FE Week. “If you’ve got students that haven’t got English and maths [qualifications], it’s really difficult to then do a T Level.”

Taking the time to make sure learners are prepared for, and suited to, T Levels would mean that they are more likely to get through the courses.

Pease recommended other colleges go ahead with research to drive T Levels retention up: “Be engaged with the awarding body – we had CPD events around T Levels, and we got teachers ready well in advance.”

‘An unfinished masterpiece’

With T Levels being new and so different to the other level 3 qualifications available, it is key that colleges “take [their] time and develop an evidence-based offer, and then bring staff along quite slowly. It’s important you make sure you upskill them sufficiently over time,” Pease said.

Blackpool and The Fylde College is adding new courses in digital and finance this year.

For Francis, T Levels are an “unfinished masterpiece”. Though he pinpointed a few problems with occupational standards and creating consistency between T Levels and apprenticeships, he assured FE Week they would be a “very important part of our college in the future”.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 433

Leah Palmer

Interim Principal and CEO, New College Swindon

Start date: August 2023

Previous Job: Deputy CEO/Deputy Principal, New College Swindon

Interesting fact: Leah completed the hottest London Marathon on record. An experience to remember and highly recommended (in cooler weather!)

Lucy Auchincloss

Partnerships Director, Lifetime Training

Start date: September 2023

Previous Job: Director of Learning Operations – Fast Futures, Avado

Interesting fact: Lucy is an avid traveller and has a special spot for Zimbabwe where she was born. Plans for an upcoming significant birthday include a safari there and diving with Great White Sharks off the coast of South Africa

Heather Marks

Deputy Principal, Boston College

Start date: August 2023

Previous job: Vice Principal – Curriculum, Quality and Learner Services, Boston College

Interesting fact: Heather is a keen skydiver in her spare time and is currently training to become a fully licensed skydiver

Lee Pryor

Acting Principal, Leeds City College’s Printworks Campus

Start date: August 2023

Previous job: Director of Apprenticeships, Luminate Education Group

Interesting fact: Lee trained in one of the first cohorts of Project 2000 Nursing at the Lakeland School of Nursing and Midwifery, Carlisle

Lawyers advise colleges to sell surplus assets in next 18 months

Legal firms are advising colleges to sell surplus buildings and land in the next 18 months before a possible change in the rules on what they can do with the proceeds.

Eversheds Sutherland and Bates Wells, which represents more than 110 colleges in England, has told its clients they “might want to consider” quickly offloading any under-utilised assets ahead of a reclassification review in March 2025. 

There are concerns that the review, which will be led by the Department for Education, could result in profits from land sales going to the government. Currently, colleges can retain any surplus cash they make from land sales and can use it in a variety of different ways, such as paying down debts.

“If there are surplus assets, colleges might want to consider whether or not they dispose of those assets prior to March 2025,” Nathan Lucas, principal associate at Eversheds Sutherland told FE Week.

He added that March 2025 is not “necessarily a drop-dead date, where restrictions will be imposed. It just means that there will be a review.”

But it could see colleges make moves to sell surplus assets in case the rules change.

‘Freedoms and flexibilities’

Colleges were reclassified as public sector organisations on November 29, 2022. It marked a move away from a 2012 policy introduced when colleges were classified as private sector bodies, to let colleges control their own financial plans.

The policy, called “Freedoms and Flexibilities”, allowed colleges to be “nimble about being entrepreneurial”, Jean Tsang, head of education at Bates Wells, said.

Following last year’s switch back to the public sector, Education and Skills Funding Agency chief executive David Withey told college leaders: “Colleges will continue to be able to manage their assets, including their estate, and to retain the proceeds of disposals. However, colleges will be required to ringfence the proceeds for reinvestment in capital assets.

“We will keep this approach in place until the end of the current spending review period (31 March 2025), when it will be reviewed.”

Tsang said: “We don’t know what’s going to happen. If you’re going to sell [a building], sell it sooner rather than later.”

There were concerns that rules would already tighten after reclassification. There are some limits on how colleges can spend funds made through asset sales – money can now only be spent paying back loans from the DfE, or banks, or on capital assets. They could also use that money as working capital to avoid insolvency if they get permission from the DfE.

Colleges selling land and buildings is nothing new, with many opting to do so in recent years to balance the books and keep financially stable. But it can be controversial locally.

Last month, Warwickshire College Group was finally allowed to sell off its Malvern Hills campus to a non-education entity after a drawn-out court case. It had faced strong opposition from locals and its local MP, Harriet Baldwin, who bemoaned the college’s “asset-stripping exercise”.

Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said it is “up to colleges to take their own decisions based on appropriate advice”, pointing out that a lawyer “might favour a quick sale” while a surveyor “might point out that property prices have fallen recently”.

He added: “Planning is always difficult, but it really doesn’t help that colleges don’t know whether current capital budgets will continue after 2025, what the borrowing rules will be and whether Treasury will try to change rules on capital receipts.”

‘Simply don’t know where we are’

Though there are now some limits on how colleges spend funds made through asset sales, colleges do not need consent to sell assets or give their sale profits to the government. But that could change, and there remain other uncertainties while colleges and their legal teams await the publication of a new financial handbook, expected by August 2024.

“I think from my perspective, we simply don’t know where we are,” Lucas, from Eversheds Sutherland said. “We are waiting for the financial handbook to be released, which we expect to be based largely on the existing academies handbook.”

But in the latest version of the academies handbook, published earlier this year, academies do need to get prior approval from the ESFA to sell off any kind of fixed assets, including buildings.

An upcoming consultation will look at the handbook and how colleges should operate in the public sphere.

Tsang said colleges understand they are in the public sphere but want the government to “give them as much freedom as possible within those confines”.

Education MPs endorse Sir Martyn Oliver as new Ofsted boss

The education select committee has endorsed the appointment of Sir Martyn Oliver as chief inspector of Ofsted.

Recruitment documents published by the committee show Oliver – one of the country’s leading trust bosses – described the inspectorate as going from being “seen as combative … to cold”.

He also revealed Ofsted chief inspector was not a role he had ever “proactively considered”, but applied because “many system leaders” asked him to.

Oliver, currently paid £180,000 as chief executive of the Outwood Grange Academies Trust, will take a £15,000 pay cut.

Four candidates were invited to interview after 29 applications for the role. Only two candidates were found to be appointable, the other believed to be Sir Ian Bauckham.

Oliver’s appointment will now be ratified by the Privy Council. He is due to start on January 1.

Quizzed by MPs on Tuesday, Oliver set out his main priorities for the role, including undertaking a “big listen” to the sector and getting more sector leaders inspecting.

In a report today, the commitee recognised Oliver’s “commitment to education and his breadth of experience both within schools and as a leader, with a particular focus on the most disadvantaged children.”

“However, given that safeguarding has been a key focus of this Committee, we hope that Sir Martyn will make this one of his priorities moving forward and we hope he can expand on his stated ambition to make Ofsted work holistically across different areas to support safeguarding.”

Oliver told MPs he had never been an inspector because he had been “too busy going behind the schools that Ofsted has placed into special measures and picking them up to have the time to go on and do it myself”.

The committee said it was “reassured that Sir Martyn has taken steps to engage with children’s services and the education sector more widely in preparation for this role”. Most of his experience has been in the schools sector.

One MP did not endorse new Ofsted chief

Kim Johnson, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, did not back the appointment.

“Instead of embracing the desperate demands for change, the appointment of Sir Martyn Oliver shows they are doubling down on their draconian approach to school inspections,” she said in a statement.

“This appointment shows a disturbing commitment by those in power to continue to wield Ofsted as a tool to punish schools for supporting the most vulnerable pupils.”

Oliver served as a commissioner on the government commission on race and ethnic disparities, which was heavily criticised for underplaying racism.

OGAT’s zero-tolerance approach to education has also been criticised:  from its schools high exclusion rates to facing a legal challenge over its use of isolation booths. A pupil claimed they had spent almost a third of their time at school in isolation.

FE Week’s sister publication Schools Week also first revealed the trust had run “flattening the grass” assemblies where ex teachers said pupils were shouted at and humiliated.

‘Parents like one-word grades’

On Tuesday, Oliver told MPs he thought “parents do like the ability to describe their school simply”, in relation to questions over ditching one-word grades.

But he added that he was interested in views from parents and children about “how much faith” they “put upon the single-word judgment” as well as alternative ways of reporting outcomes.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t have that one word, I’m asking what will you do [without it].”

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “As Martyn Oliver takes up the post of the new Chief Inspector of Ofsted, he will know that he is taking over an organisation in which the profession has lost trust.

“Real policy change is needed because Ofsted is out of touch with the realities school staff are juggling on the ground, especially as so many other family and children’s services have disappeared.”

EuroSkills 2023: Restaurant services with a smile

A trio of competitors in restaurant services are feeling hopeful about the final day of the EuroSkills 2023 competition despite a set of difficult tasks.

Team UK competitor Daniel Davies told FE Week that the first two days of the competition in Gdansk, Poland started off well but his training programme has been incredibly intense having only truly started in July. The WorldSkills cycle began back in March.

“We didn’t get the training programme up until July so really, I’ve only had about maybe two or three months to actually train,” he said.

“I did have three training sessions and that’s like week-long sessions throughout August, so that was a very tough month,” he said.

Davies’ first day began with the most complex task for participants specialising in restaurant services: fine dining.

“That was arguably the most complex day because of the sheer amount of tasks to do,” he said.

Davies, aged 21, hails from Aberporth in West Wales. He studied at nearby Coleg Ceredigion, and told FE Week that he is competing in EuroSkills 2023 because his catering hospitality lecturer Huw Morgan signed him up for a competition without his knowledge some years ago.

“Funny story actually. My lecturer signed me up to a front of house competition without me knowing and he came up to me about it four weeks beforehand,” he said.

“If I hadn’t done that competition, I wouldn’t be here.”

Dishing up at EuroSkills 2023

Some other competitors in restaurant services had different routes into EuroSkills Gdansk.

French competitor Mathis Foucart was an apprentice when he got involved with WorldSkills.

But the 22-year-old started unofficially in the industry aged 14, where he would wash dishes in a restaurant his brother worked in.

“And at 15, I started serving. I then went to catering school for three years, and after going to high school for two years I was an apprentice, and there I started with WorldSkills,” he told FE Week.

Mathis Foucart, France, Restaurant Service

Foucart’s training over the summer was intense. He didn’t have a single day off. And post-EuroSkills Gdansk, he won’t get much downtime.

“I need to come back to the restaurant because it’s so busy,” he said. “It’s a five-star hotel in Provence and it’s so busy the whole year, you don’t have a chill season.”

Foucart will be too old to compete in WorldSkills Lyon 2024, but he said it will be so important for the French team to have local support there, just as the competitors have here at EuroSkills.

Meanwhile, 24-year-old Łukasz Kobyłecki from the Polish delegation has only worked in restaurants for six years, and entered a national competition last year before training for EuroSkills.

“I started to work in restaurants six years ago and last year, I made the first steps to the competition here,” he said.

The competition has already opened doors for Kobyłecki, as he said after EuroSkills he will start a new job as head waiter in another restaurant.

“This competition is like training for me because we are planning to go to WorldSkills next year,” he added.

Łukasz Kobyłecki, Poland, Restaurant Service Photo: Paulina Latek-Przybylska/WorldSkills Europe

Those in the restaurant services skill taking part in the three-day intensive event are put on shifts and have to serve in three different settings: fine dining, casual bistro dining, and a specific task module.

The specific tasks entail duties such as serving coffee, pouring prosecco, creating classic cocktails, and carving a pineapple which is then used to make a pineapple flambe.

Ahead of the final day, Kobyłecki said he was really proud of himself during the bistro service.

“The specific task model, it’s much harder than bistro. I hope tomorrow I do my best.”

In the tent where the tasks take place, the public and delegates can sign up to be customers in the makeshift restaurant environment.

The competitors said the setting is better than just having experts judge them.

“For me, it’s better because you can speak with the customer to relax,” said Foucart.

“When you have only the experts to judge, it’s more difficult for me because you have only the eyes of judgement, not the eyes of the customer with their big eyes and big smiles.”

RAAC surveys delayed due to lack of specialists

Surveyor shortages have delayed vital checks to buildings for crumbling RAAC concrete at England’s biggest college group.

At least two other colleges have had to partially close their sites as more than 100 schools battle a crisis around buildings at risk of collapse.

But FE Week understands no colleges have yet had to delay the start of term for any students due to reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), with affected learners moved to other facilities.

Ministers ordered 147 education settings to shut this week because of concerns around RAAC, which was widely used as a lighter alternative to standard concrete from the 1950s to the 1980s. Studies have since found the material can become destabilised over time. The government has known about the problem for years but only recently acted on it after learning over the summer of cases where buildings with RAAC collapsed, despite not showing any signs of deterioration.

A list of 146 schools and one college – Petroc – that have been forced to fully or partially close was published by the Department for Education this week, but it only includes cases identified as of August 30. About 1,500 schools and about 20 colleges are yet to complete RAAC checks, meaning the number of settings at risk is likely to be even higher.

Newcastle College Group (NCG) – one of the largest college groups in England, with more
than 30,000 students spread across seven colleges – told FE Week it was due to begin its
RAAC surveys last month but has so far failed to carry them out due to a lack of specialists.

A spokesperson for the group said the on-site survey scheduled for August “is now planned to take place in September and October, due to the availability of the specialist consultants required to undertake it”.

However, the college confirmed there has been no disruption to learning and that all learners are on site.

‘A pinch point’

There are concerns that finding enough specialist staff to complete the surveys will prove difficult and that the surging demand could open the door to unqualified personnel carrying out the checks.

Graham Watts, chief executive of the Construction Industry Council, warned that there is “likely to be a pinch point” around the number of available surveyors due to the large amount of work needed in a short space of time. However, he “believe[s] the industry will cope” despite capacity issues and that any pinch points could “be variable according to locality”.

However, he told FE Week it was imperative to avoid the “possible tendency of a knee-jerk reaction to asset managers appointing ‘surveyors’ who do not have the competence to carry out an appropriate survey since this will inevitably lead to more problems”.

‘Restricted access’

At least two other colleges have had to partially close their sites this week after identifying RAAC.

Trafford College Group, which serves more than 12,000 students across four colleges, closed part of its Marple campus including six classrooms. A spokesperson for the college said it had “restrict[ed] access to the affected area while we complete further surveys and if necessary, remedial works”.

“The classrooms affected will not be in use until we are reassured that they are fit for purpose and have passed all necessary health and safety checks,” they added.

The area is isolated on one side of the campus and there have been “no delays” to anyone starting term on time, as there is extra capacity. But it is “too early” to say when the RAAC will be removed from the site.

Sealed off

Devon-based Petroc, which has about 11,000 students, had to close the first floor of a building in Barnstable after it found RAAC at the site in February. A statement on its website published this week said the area “remains sealed off”, with “specialist engineering support structures” installed as a precaution. The college has put aside £300,000 to remediate its RAAC.

The DfE has pledged to fund all the cash needed to remediate school and college buildings with RAAC. FE Week also understands extra funding for things like transport to alternative classrooms will be discussed on a case-by-case basis.

FE Week understands that another college, Barnet and Southgate College, found RAAC during a refurbishment job in 2020 but has since removed it.

Experts within the FE sector anticipate that RAAC will be a lesser problem in colleges than in schools. In a blog for the Association of Colleges, Ian Pryce, chief executive of the Bedford College Group, said colleges “naturally generate cash to maintain the quality and value of their estate” as their accounts need to show the depreciation of their buildings. With schools, this is not the case, meaning “buildings are treated as rentfree accommodation”.

AoC deputy chief executive, Julian Gravatt, said: “Colleges operate from more than 4,500
buildings and we are certain that there will be a few cases where these buildings contain
RAAC but, so far, there are no cases where this has required a significant building closure or a delay to the start of term.

“It can be quite hard to locate RAAC in a building because it is sometimes hidden by
cladding, but colleges have a good track record in managing their buildings and the vast majority (more than 90 per cent) returned questionnaires to DfE when asked to do so earlier this year. DfE has commissioned specialist surveyors to carry out on-site inspections in schools and colleges in cases to follow-up suspected cases. This work continues.”

‘Outstanding’ provider exits apprenticeships and bootcamps

An Ofsted grade one apprenticeship provider has pulled out of apprenticeship delivery and government-funded skill bootcamps due to a change in “market attractiveness”.

Avado Apprenticeships Limited, formerly known as BC Arch Limited, is switching its focus to growing business lines of “professional qualifications and AI technology software as a service (SaaS) products”.

The company, which was one of the largest providers of apprenticeships in England with 1,350 starts in 2021/22, has seen its turnover and profit drop in recent years.

Avado Apprenticeships’ latest financial report, for 2021, shows turnover dropped 29 per cent that year (from £16.9 million to £12 million) and gross profit went down from 53 to 29 per cent, “largely due to the increase in subcontractor costs for new standards”.

Avado then decided to “make a strategic exit from low value and less profitable HR apprenticeship courses”, with a focus instead on “more sustainable and profitable data, marketing and agility academies”.

It decided to exit apprenticeships altogether last month.

The provider also began delivering government-funded skills bootcamps last year in digital and data skills but is now pulling out. However, it will continue to support corporate-funded data and digital bootcamps.

Multiple other big providers have pulled out of apprenticeships and bootcamps in recent years due to unsustainable funding rates offered by the government.

Lee Arthur, chair of Avado, said: “There are fundamental changes in education delivery we expect to be brought about by AI technologies. Our decision was a strategic decision based on market attractiveness. There are several more attractive markets.

“We feel we could move faster in those markets and help more learners by exiting apprenticeships. We are quickly developing and deploying several AI-edtech assessment and virtual coaching technologies.”

He added: “We remain strong supporters and advocates of the apprenticeship ideal, and of all the people who work tirelessly in this field both in government and private sector – to give opportunities to people to build a career and learn their craft on the job.”

Avado Apprenticeships was originally formed as Arch Apprenticeships (BC Arch Limited) by parent company Blenheim Chalcot LTF Limited – one of the UK’s biggest venture builders and private equity specialists – in 2012.

Its aim was to address the sorts of digital skills gaps the firm was seeing in its tech start-ups. Blenheim Chalcot, which was also behind software giant Agilisys, has offices in India, South Africa and the US.

Run through the Avado Group Ltd (registered in Jersey), Avado saw itself as one of the largest government-authorised apprenticeship training providers. It supported more than 8,000 apprentices  over the past nine years and helped develop the UK’s first digital marketing apprenticeship.

New Lifetime Training leadership plans more redundancies

About 50 further jobs are set to be lost at England’s largest apprenticeship provider as a new leadership team takes shape.

Lifetime Training this week launched a redundancy consultation – its second this year – to reduce its 1,000-strong workforce by about 5 per cent.

FE Week understands that nine departments across the business are affected, including curriculum, learner support and work-based learning partnerships.

The cuts come weeks after David Smith replaced Jon Graham as chief executive of the provider.

Smith also recently announced the appointment of a new chief financial officer, people director, operations delivery director, and partnerships director.

A spokesperson for Lifetime said the leadership team completed a “strategic planning exercise” over the summer, focusing on “growth and long-term sustainability”, which led to the decision to reduce the workforce. FE Week understands 120 staff are part of the redundancy consultation, but 50 jobs are expected to be cut.

Smith said: “Our focus is on long-term sustainability and enabling the business to take advantage of future growth opportunities. We have been carrying out a cross-functional review to avoid duplication and improve accountability and ownership. The review also strengthens our partnership, compliance, quality and operational models of delivery, which are reflected in the updated governance structure, bringing further emphasis to high-quality teaching strategies.”

Smith comes from outside the FE sector having led big-name companies such as Parcelforce, Royal Mail, City Link, Serco and, most recently, estates management company Bellrock Group.

He replaced Graham in July, who was moved on after just over a year in charge.

The CEO switch came a week after Lifetime Training’s executive chair Geoff Russell, who used to lead the Skills Funding Agency, suddenly left his post.

Both Graham and Russell were brought in from another large training provider, JTL, last year. Their departures came months after Lifetime Training was taken over by its lender, Alcentra.

The provider has experienced a rocky year including a critical ‘requires improvement’ Ofsted report and an ongoing government audit dispute that could result in a £13m clawback. It made about 60 staff redundant earlier this year.