A high-profile skills civil servant is set to leave the Department for Education to become the chief executive of a college.
Keith Smith will take the reins at HCUC, the merged college group for Harrow College and Uxbridge College, in November.
He will replace Darrell DeSouza who is retiring from the role after over 20 years at Uxbridge College and HCUC.
Smith began working in the then Skills Funding Agency in 2012 as director of funding and programmes before becoming director of apprenticeships in the Education and Skills Funding Agency in 2018, leading on the levy and funding reforms.
“It is a real privilege to be given the opportunity to lead HCUC,” Smith said. “I am really excited to work alongside such an amazing team and represent the outstanding work done at both Harrow College and Uxbridge College. We have an exciting future ahead.”
His move comes amid government plans to reduce the civil service headcount by 91,000 by 2025.
HCUC said Smith’s experience and background will “provide a new perspective for the role” at the college.
Nick Davies, HCUC chair, said: “I know all of HCUC’s staff and stakeholders will join me and the entire governing body in congratulating Mr Smith on his appointment, and we look forward to Keith taking up this new role later in the year.”
HCUC teaches almost 10,000 students, including programmes for young people, adults and apprentices.
The college was judged as ‘good’ by Ofsted in a report published last month.
Smith will join as Richmond upon Thames College merges with HCUC in the autumn. Richmond is currently engaged in a bitter dispute with University and College Union staff members, who are preparing to strike for three consecutive weeks at the beginning of the 2022/23 academic year.
Having access to detailed and up to the minute data is critical for successful colleges and education providers. Too many are still being held back by clunky, non-intuitive and restrictive systems that are not capable of delivering the information needed in a timely or practical fashion. There are a number of ways that shifting to a connected suite of digital solutions can transform processes and results.
Management data
Securing funding and maintaining funding streams can dominate the management and administration of education provision. Many stakeholders have already adopted new digital technologies that support efficient and effective data management and reporting and expect the same of the education providers they partner with. Colleges cannot afford to get left behind.
Using powerful data management solutions means the right information can be pulled together quickly and easily to create insightful reports to be shared with key stakeholders. They allow for more meaningful reporting that can focus on multiple datasets that can be repeated as often as needed – where once it might have taken days to go through spreadsheets and pull out the necessary information, now it can be done with not much more than the click of a few keyboard buttons.
This is invaluable for things like Ofsted inspections. Being able to produce meaningful and appropriate evidence, virtually to order, will drastically reduce the stress on staff during these high-pressure visits. Immediate access to information is critical for providers seeking to monitor their own KPIs and trends, helping with strategic decision-making.
It can also help drive further funding from new and existing stakeholders who are more likely to choose to work with the most professional and modern providers because they know they can get accurate and current reports that complement their own processes and decision-making.
Course data
Having access to data about course delivery and learner successes is key for managers in supporting teaching staff, helping them to understand what is and is not working for their students and enhance the way they shape their sessions to deliver the best learner outcomes.
Creativity and fresh new ideas can quickly dissolve when making them happen becomes too complicated and arduous. Good data empowers teachers to develop their lesson content and delivery and be the best they can be. Where the old processes were time-consuming, automation takes the grind out of necessary tasks and lets them concentrate on their core skillset.
Feeling more in control of one’s daily work-life and being more self-directed is good for staff morale. Happier staff contribute to an overall better working environment where positivity, mutual support and better outcomes can flourish. It also plays a key role in helping to increase employee retention, benefitting the provider with a more stable, experienced team of educators. This means less disruption for students and saves providers the significant costs and resources required for hiring and onboarding new teachers.
Course data is also valuable for college managers, giving them real time oversight of information such as attendance, that can help them shape future courses and provision. Strategies can be developed using accurate information that may be far more revealing than previous anecdotal evidence and reflective of actual rather than perceived changes in trends.
Individual learning journey
Ultimately, the day to day function of education delivery needs to be student-focused, with the experience of each individual learner a critical element in broader trends and outcomes. High quality data about individual learning journeys helps educators identify areas where a student may need more support or require a different approach in order to achieve their own particular goals.
Using accurate data is an essential tool for sharing information with students, as it represents honest and unbiased information. Teachers can use this to motivate, encourage and support better outcomes. When students can see that their learning experience is being recorded and evidenced in this way it can help with engagement, encouraging them to stick with their studies and achieve their goals. Supporting learner retention is not just important for the students, it’s a vital objective for providers to maintain income streams that correlate to learner numbers and course completion data.
Data security
Education providers hold lots of sensitive personal information, including student and employee contact details and addresses, employee bank details and identity documents. They also have detailed information about people’s learning, their backgrounds and special educational needs as well as records of their performance and achievements. This is the sort of data that can cause immense reputational damage if it falls into the wrong hands. Digital solutions reduce the need for paper files and significantly reduce the risk of things going astray, keeping everything in a ‘single’ secure place from the point of view of the end-user.
Cybercrime is a growing concern for organisations in all industries and sectors, which is why it makes sense to choose a digital solutions provider implementing the highest-level cybersecurity measures with built-in compliance around data security. Well designed digital solutions are automatically updated whenever guidelines or legal requirements change, ensuring that compliance is also automatic.
Case study
SPS Training Solutions is an education provider in the East of England that helps people acquire key skills in subjects like maths, English and IT; provides training for vocational skills in a wide range of industries; and runs short courses in subjects ranging from software packages to languages.
The provider implemented Advanced’s ProSuite in 2017, when it secured funding from the Education & Skills Funding Agency (ESFA). Like many stakeholders, the ESFA required there to be a digital management system in place and offered the use of its own system. However, as SPS has contracts with other clients it made sense to set up its own solution that could effectively integrate all of its management and learning data into one place.
Director of funding, Ben Wise says: “We chose ProSuite because it was easy to use and it was critical that staff with little prior experience could input data and access it easily.” Each of the different solutions within the system addresses a specific pain point and are fully integrated with each other. As such they are perfect for users who want to start with one solution and build the suite over time. Advanced supports its clients with regular updates, new developments and built-in tools, making sure that they can access the most relevant and up to date solutions to operational challenges. SPS began with ProSolution, a student management information system and Ben estimates that using the Envelope feature combined with Web Enrolment has saved teams around 50% of previous admin time.
During the first lockdown ProSolution gave the provider a powerful tool to connect with and market themselves to previous students, as job centres were focusing on helping the growing numbers of unemployed people to access benefits instead of training. With no other income streams available at that time, Ben says: “We would not be here without ProSolution.” The facility to easily contact previous learners and enrol them remotely has now become standard practice. “It speeds up the process of enrolling unemployed adults who come for training and improves the experience for them too. Signing and returning documents digitally has streamlined entire the process, helping us to be a much more professional organisation.”
The scaleability of the entire suite was another critical factor in choice and SPS intends to add more solutions such as ProMetrics and ProMonitor in line with organisational growth and new funding.
Conclusions
At the end of the day, data is just information and it is only as useful as the processes put into place to access and measure it. Data becomes a hugely powerful tool for success when it is used correctly. Education providers amass large quantities of information and it is essential it is used to inform better decision-making and inspire new ways of doing things. Implementing a powerful suite of fully integrated solutions is the way to achieve optimum results. Systems that ‘talk’ to each other can also each contribute to a more detailed and in-depth collection of information that can help transform efficiencies. These provide an opportunity to select from a suite of solutions and add to these as the organisation grows and its needs change, to provide a truly scaleable solution.
Implementing any new system requires careful decision-making, particularly for managers in the Education sector. It makes sense to consider data management systems and services from a solutions provider with experience in the education sector, that understands the pain points, challenges and implications of the changing trends in education management and delivery. A well-resourced solutions company with longevity is more likely to be around and continue to supply developments and enhancements to their solutions in the long-term – a partner that can be counted upon to keep delivering the solutions and support that successful education providers need, now and into the future.
Achieve optimum results at every stage
Connected solutions, with connected data, can be the difference maker for colleges. Which is why Advanced are committed to offering the most comprehensive and integrated suite of digital solutions in the education space. Innovative software products that support you on every step of the journey. If you aspire to be an outstanding provider, we can help – with connected solutions covering MIS, ILR, LMS, ePortfolio, learner monitoring, functional skills, GCSE and much more.
Three powerful, class-leading education solutions – all from Advanced:
ProSuite for MIS, ILR and learner monitoring
Smart Apprentices for ePortfolio and LMS
bksb for functional skills and GCSE
For an informal chat about a more connected future for your organisation, please get in touch.
Discussions are underway for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers to return as co-owners of the Education and Training Foundation – four years after all ties were cut.
AELP dramatically walked away from the ETF in 2018 after claiming the foundation was ignoring independent training providers and was “no longer an organisation run by the FE sector for the sector”.
Two AELP trustees resigned from the ETF’s board, leaving the Association of Colleges and adult community education body Holex as the foundation’s remaining part-owners.
David Hughes, the AoC’s chief executive, revealed at today’s AELP national conference that he is now working with the AELP to return as an ETF member to increase collaboration in the sector.
He said the ETF has “lost sight of their true purpose” in recent years and that it is time to have a “fundamental review” of the foundation’s role and purpose.
AELP chief executive Jane Hickie (pictured) confirmed that “productive discussions” about their return to ETF co-ownership are taking place.
She told FE Week that this is a “critical time for the FE sector and our workforces” in the face of the cost-of-living crisis and inflation pressures, so “we need a collaborative approach to tackle the challenges with an ETF that represents the interests of the sector as a whole”.
She told FE Week the ETF wants AELP to be a member again because “we recognise how important it is to have the representation across the sector, in terms of all those different views”.
Established in October 2013 by former skills minister John Hayes, the ETF was mostly funded by the Department for Education and designed as a “sector-owned” support body, helping train the people who work in technical and vocational education.
Hughes, who was chair of the steering group which set up the ETF, told today’s conference that he was “really clear all the way along” that the foundation needed to be a “small organisation procured from the market” including colleges, private providers and adult education providers.
But instead “I think they’ve started to think well, actually, we need to survive as an institution” which resulted in the ETF venturing into delivery.
“I think that was a mistake and I said so at the time,” Hughes said, “so I’m really keen that we have a fundamental review of purpose and role, and that we work out what the relationship is between ETF and my organisation, and AELP, and HOLEX, and ITPs and colleges”.
In response, Jarvis said: “I think we’ve always had a clear core purpose and it’s always been linked to our charitable aims and objectives and articles, which is about post-14 and workforce development. That’s what we’re always here for and that it was what we will be doing.”
She added that the ETF has received around 4,000 responses as part of a “big listening exercise” to “make sure we’re meeting needs in this changing environment”.
Having become an MP in 1989, Lord Mike Watson has spent many years in frustrating opposition for the Labour Party. As he steps down as shadow education minister in the Lords, he offers words of advice for his successors
It’s not often you sit in a grand, wood-panelled room in the heart of Westminster, and the Lord sitting opposite you says: “I started out as a communist, you know.”
But that is where I find myself with the highly likeable Mike Watson, or Baron Watson of Invergowrie (which is his birthplace, a village on the east coast of Scotland). The shadow education minister for Labour in the House of Lords became an MP in 1989, was made a life peer by Tony Blair in 1997, and then got the education brief during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure, in 2015.
He has worked with five shadow education secretaries, seen Labour education policies rise and fall, and had plenty to say in the recent debates in parliament on the then skills and post 16 education bill, now the skills and post 16 education act.
In 2005, he was even briefly kicked out of the party for setting fire to some curtains in a hotel while under the influence of alcohol, meaning his Wikipedia entry has to be one of the most colourful around (“Watson is a British Labour Party politician and arsonist.”) He tells me: “Both myself and the party have moved on, and I was very pleased to hold the education brief on the front bench in the Lords under two party leaders.”
But after seven years working hard at the education brief, he’s now stepping down and handing over to Baroness Jenny Chapman, former MP for Darlington, to spend more time with his family.
It was at university, he says, that he was “hit between the eyes with student politics”. He didn’t come from an especially political household – his father worked for a clothes trading company and his mother was a teacher – but at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh he came across Marxist theory while studying economics.
“In those days, student politics was really alive in a way it’s not now, and most weeks we’d be protesting the Vietnam war,” he says. “The debates were really rigorous. It wasn’t exactly preparation for real life, but it was a good preparation for debating in the chambers.”
But political reality soon hit home. He left university in 1974 and moved to Derbyshire to become a teacher with the Workers’ Educational Association, delivering adult education.
“It gave working-class people who had day jobs the opportunity to get the education they perhaps hadn’t got before,” he says approvingly. He taught multiple subjects and remains involved in the all-party parliamentary group on adult education to this day.
Labour Party conference Brighton, 1977
It was at this point he also decided the Communist Party had “good polemic” but little chance of power, and so, inspired by some of the Labour Party’s greatest figures, he switched to Labour.
Two of these influential figures were Scottish. Keir Hardie – a Lanarkshire man, like Watson – was one of the founders of the Labour Party in the late 19th century. Likewise, James Maxton was a Scot and former teacher who became a Glasgow MP in 1922 and was considered a powerful orator.
His other hero is democratic socialist the late Tony Benn. Watson grins as he recalls the story of Benn filling out a form including a section on his education, under which he simply wrote: “Ongoing.”
“These people were moving politics forward, and really improving people’s lives,” he says. “To me, that’s the purpose, to be in power and be able to change people’s lives.”
More soberly, he adds: “That’s why it’s been so disappointing to me that for so much of my active political life, Labour has been out of power.”
The party’s election history is indeed sobering: out of 28 general elections since 1918, the Conservatives have won 19 and Labour just nine. Watson admits that currently he “despairs” at the large Conservative majority, and the fact there is only one Labour MP in Scotland.
But he adds an important qualification: “I certainly think there’s a very good chance there will be a Labour-led government after the next election.” He’s not opposed to an SNP coalition, arguing the threat of a referendum is not as imminent as some may think.
So under a Labour-led government, what should FE policy look like?
First off, Watson breaks away from some in his party by voicing his support for the apprenticeship levy, a policy he clearly thinks merits continuation. “The levy has tended to be derided by some of my colleagues, but I’ve tended to me more supportive. Yes, the funding needs to be more carefully allocated […] but I think we should make the most of it. Bluntly, it’s a tax.”
If Labour had tried to introduce the levy, they would have been accused of hammering business
He adds the very interesting point: “If Labour had tried to introduce it, they would have been accused of hammering business. But the Tories can get away with it, and they have got away with it. So I wouldn’t look to junk it, I would look to revise and refocus it.”
Where he does have reservations is around the use of apprenticeship levy funding for degree apprenticeships. “I’m not anti-degree apprenticeships […] No debt, work experience, perhaps a guaranteed job – what’s not to like? But to call that an apprenticeship really is stretching it a bit, I think, and I don’t really want to see apprenticeship levy funds used for that.”
Watson also has little time for employers who complain about the 20 per cent off-the-job training requirement for apprenticeships (now dropped in favour of a minimum six-hour per week requirement). He points out “the historic record of British employers investing in training is appalling” compared with many northern European nations, adding “it’s such a short-sighted approach”.
His other calls are, like many in the sector, for the lifetime skills guarantee to be extended below level 3, and for funding for participants to do those qualifications, given the financial and caring responsibilities many are saddled with.
With Eddie Floyd (far left), Ben E King (centre) and fellow soul-loving MPs, House of Commons terrace, 1990
But as well as offering room for improvement on the bill, Watson gives credit where it’s due, too. “I’ve been less critical of the skills bill than some, because I do believe the government’s got its heart in the right place about boosting skills and lifetime learning.”
The other area he wants Labour to lead on is careers advice. Watson once started an apprenticeship in accountancy before quitting, and is frustrated “too many” schools aren’t promoting them and other routes into further education.
This is the key role of being in the Lords – providing a critical eye on the legislation of the day. But interestingly, Watson reveals Labour members in the Commons and the Lords don’t interact very much (the two houses even have different conventions: the politer Lords has ‘content’ and ‘not content’ votes, rather than ‘ayes’ and ‘noes’). For instance it was Angela Smith, Labour’s leader in the Lords, who handpicked Watson for the education brief in 2015, not Jeremy Corbyn himself.
Lord Watson, 1985
Only she and Roy Kennedy, the shadow chief whip, also sit on the shadow cabinet, providing “that direct link back” to Labour’s top team, says Watson. Similarly, the Lords only has a soft power over the government (the many rejected amendments to the skills bill being a case in point).
“But ministers will be told, ‘the feeling in the Lords was strong on this, you might want to tweak that’,” explains Watson. He adds that Baroness Barran, the government’s education minister in the Lords, was “very receptive” to concerns in the House.
Instead the real problem within the Lords is the lack of staff, continues Watson. Shadow cabinet members might have one member of staff to research policy issues, but the Lords usually have none. “It does hamper you when you’re up against ministers who have civil servants.”
The lack of staff does hamper you when you’re up against ministers
It means his key advice to Chapman, his replacement, is to “build relationships and contacts” with sector organisations and think tanks who can offer answers, including the Careers & Enterprise Company, education unions, children’s rights groups and parent groups such as More Than A Score.
Watson concludes with similar advice for Bridget Phillipson, the latest person to be shadow education secretary for his party. He points out the most impactful education secretaries such as David Blunkett and Michael Gove “spent three years preparing” for the role and could “take down a folder of policies ready to go” once in office. “It really helps to be prepared.”
From the Communist Party to wearing gowns in the Lords, Watson clearly feels the education brief has been one of his most rewarding stints in politics.
“Education is just something we can all identify with. It has issues of importance and great interest to everyone,” he says. “It’s just a brilliant portfolio.”
Staff at Richmond upon Thames College have announced another round of strikes over “fire and rehire” plans – this time for 14 consecutive days that clash with the first teaching week of the next academic year.
University and College Union members said they will down tools over a three-week period in August and September in response to management plans to “sack every teacher at the college and force them to reapply for their jobs on worse terms and conditions if they want to stay”.
The announcement comes as staff take a further day of strike action today aimed at disrupting an open day taking place at the college.
Richmond upon Thames College (RuTC) previously condemned the UCU’s action, which clashed with the busy exam period for students.
The college has urged the union to reconsider its latest strike action, which a spokesperson described as an “unacceptable tactic”.
The dispute has arisen over the college’s proposal to reduce the current 64 days per year of annual leave, including bank holidays and efficiency days, to what the college calls “a level in line with other FE colleges”.
UCU has claimed staff would lose 10 days of holiday – but the college said they are proposing a “net loss” of eight days of annual leave with full financial compensation.
“This is not a cost cutting exercise but one which in fact will compensate staff fully for the reduction in annual leave and thereby increase their salary during a time of cost-of-living rises,” a spokesperson for the college said.
But UCU said holiday entitlement is one of the few perks in RuTC, which allegedly pays qualified teachers “as little as £26,000”. The union claimed that teachers with over 13 years’ experience only earn around £37,000 – lower than at “most colleges in the surrounding area and teachers at local schools can earn up to £51,000”.
UCU regional official Adam Lincoln said: “Staff now fighting to save their jobs have dedicated themselves to supporting their students and the fact that management are trying to slash 10 days from their holiday entitlement is a mark of shame for the entire college, and one which will rightly shock current and prospective students as well as the wider community in the area.
“The announcement of further strike action shows staff are going absolutely nowhere and it is in the interests of college management to immediately remove the threat to people’s jobs, ditch these plans and treat staff properly.”
Striking staff will be picketing and holding a rally at RuTC’s Marsh Farm Lane entrance at 4pm today as prospective students and their parents visit the college. The protest will include a mobile billboard outlining the college’s fire and rehire plans.
Further strikes in the summer, which will hit enrolment, induction and the first week of teaching in 2022/23, will run from August 22 to September 9.
An RuTC spokesperson said: “These dates are clearly and cynically targeted at disrupting the enrolment process and start of teaching for new students joining the college in 2022/23, as well as prolonging the disruption to the learning experience for continuing students who have been impacted by the strike action carried out to date.
“We are aware that the ongoing dispute with UCU might reasonably give rise to concerns for prospective students and their parents/carers, as well as those already with us and continuing into 2022/23.
“Please be reassured that the college remains committed to providing all of our students with the best possible learning experience and opportunities to achieve, and we have already put in place strong and effective contingency plans to ensure that any disruption from further industrial action is minimised and our students’ learning experience is fully protected.”
The spokesperson added that management at RuTC “will not be intimidated by tactics that seek to coerce by means of threat of further disruption to our students’ learning and assessment experience”.
The skills minister has set a new “ambitious” target for an overall 67 per cent achievement rate on apprenticeship standards by 2025 – a 15 percentage point increase on the current rate.
He has also announced a new exit feedback tool for drop-outs to better understand why half of apprentices withdraw.
Alex Burghart told today’s Association of Employment and Learning Providers national conference that government will provide a package of support to address the issues, including workforce development and “continued targeted support for employers”.
He has outlined further details in a letter to the sector.
The achievement rate on standards is a big issue for ministers and was named as one of the top concerns for Amanda Spielman at Ofsted and Jennifer Coupland at the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education during their speeches at AELP’s conference earlier today.
Meanwhile, old-style frameworks, which are being phased out, hit a 68.1 per cent achievement rate in 2019/20 and 68.9 per cent achievement rate in 2020/21.
Only one of the 11 subject sector areas – science and mathematics – had an overall achievement rate of above 67 per cent on standards in 2020/21.
Announcing the 67 per cent target, Burghart said: “I know this is not an easy task, I know it is made harder by the impact of the pandemic and the associated challenges that you, employers and apprentices themselves have faced.
“It will require a combined effort from everyone, and we want to work with you on it.
“I am confident that by prioritising quality, we can make progress towards this point in the coming years.”
But AELP chief executive Jane Hickie fears the target will be unachievable.
She told FE Week: “While this new target is certainly very ambitious, there is a danger that we are trying to compare frameworks to standards when they are not like for like.
“AELP feels the target will unfortunately be unachievable until the DfE iron out unhelpful nuances in the current qualification achievement rate methodology – updating and reflecting the new climate that we’re all working in. Without revisions, there is a real risk of undermined confidence in apprenticeships.”
Government data shows that only 53 per cent of apprentices on standards stayed on their programme until their end-point assessment in 2020/21 – meaning that 47 per cent dropped out.
The drop-out rate for frameworks was 17 percentage points lower than standards in 2020/21.
By comparison, latest Department for Education data shows the drop-out rate for A-levels in 2019 was less than one in ten (8.7 per cent).
Burghart said the DfE is looking at “kickstarting” the feedback tool in the department, and it is the DfE’s intention to collate the data rather than providers or employers. The DfE is aiming to have the tool up and running this autumn.
A DfE apprentice survey published last month found that personal or domestic factors such as a better job offer, mental health issues or caring responsibilities were among the key reasons for apprentices dropping out in 2019/20.
And when it comes to apprenticeship-related factors for withdrawals, the most common reasons were that apprentices felt they did not have enough time for training, poor quality training and badly run programmes.
People with caring responsibilities and disabilities must be properly understood if they are to access the lifelong loan entitlement, write Ed Reza Schwitzer and Patrick Thomson
In our last piece in FE Week we highlighted that the core challenge for the lifelong loan entitlement (LLE) is behavioural – to have impact, individuals, providers and employers must make different decisions to the ones they make currently.
We also looked at some of the particular challenges faced by those in mid to late career, recognising that four-fifths of the rise in economic inactivity since the pandemic has been among the over-50s.
But we also know that only 53.5 per cent of disabled people aged 16 to 64 were in employment between July and September 2021, compared with 81.6 per cent of non-disabled people.
And in addition, research by Ipsos shows that one in five women (19 per cent) have left a job because of difficulties balancing work with caring responsibilities, and that women account for 85 per cent of sole carers for children, and 65 per cent of sole carers for older adults.
So as well as our existing focus on mid- to late-career workers, we can see that individuals with disabilities and caring responsibilities are also disproportionately excluded from the workforce.
Therefore they could gain substantially from support to train or retrain. However, both groups experience significant barriers to accessing that training.
To test this in more depth we ran two focus groups with participants over the age of 45 and without university degrees, who had either/both an acute caring responsibility, or a physical or mental health condition.
A number of participants across both groups were also unemployed.
We found strong support for training and retraining
We were genuinely moved by the extent to which our participants were motivated to learn and work despite in some cases struggling with day-to-day tasks.
In one particularly harrowing case, a woman had been attacked at work, suffering life-changing injuries, and said she “locked [herself] in the house and didn’t leave for nearly two years”. She regretted not attending university at a younger age, describing that she “fell in love and left my future to be with him”.
They don’t want to sit in a classroom with teenagers and 20-somethings
In another case a woman cared for her partner who had Parkinson’s but she managed to take real joy from doing short courses on cookery at her local FE college.
Indeed, many of our participants described learning as a way not to feel useless again, with one participant referring to people like her as “the zombies of our age group” – marching through life without any support to do something new.
One of the most positive accounts we heard was from a woman who had benefitted from a higher level apprenticeship with her existing employer – which had given her a new direction and sense of purpose.
But training must take account of people’s individual circumstances and experience
Our groups were unanimous in their view that training or retraining for them could not mean “starting at the bottom rung of salaries again”.
They wanted new job opportunities which paid decent wages, taking into account the experience they already had. And they wanted training that was flexible around their needs, for example, at times to suit those with caring responsibilities.
Our participants also did not want to sit in a classroom with teenagers or those in their 20s and be made to feel “like a dumbo”.
One of our participants who suffered from acute anxiety and depression was particularly strong on this point – she wanted to be in classes with other people her age.
People want to feel like someone cares about them
The strongest sense we got from our participants was that they wanted a positive vision in which they were included.
It was quite obvious that participants in these two groups did not feel as though people were interested in helping them.
Whether it was being turned down for training opportunities or passed up for jobs in favour of younger people, there was a strong consensus that they were battling to get any support.
We cannot put it any better than one of our participants who said, “They want us to work until we’re 67 years old but they don’t want to train us after 40”.
It will take a combined effort of employers, government and training providers to change that perception.
We beat NASA to win a top technology award because of our innovative software for learners, writes Matt Jarvis
The idea of “skill” dates back to the 13th century, when the word usually referred to physical co-ordination and denoted learnt rather than innate abilities.
The idea was radical in an era when abilities were generally considered gifts from God. In many ways the notion of teachable and learnable skills remains the liberation theology that underpins modern ideas like social mobility.
The term “soft skills” is believed to have originated in the US military in the 1970s. It has been used in various contexts to mean personal qualities such as emotional intelligence, pro-social values and resilience, cognitive skills such as problem-solving and decision-making, social and communication skills and employment-specific attributes like professionalism and leadership.
It isn’t hard to see how soft skills are relevant to success in the workplace.
Many disadvantaged learners lack soft skills, and this is one of the barriers standing between them and the workplace.
So developing soft skills in our learners is a very important part of our role as FE providers.
What excites me is the chance to deploy innovative technologies in ways that create learning opportunities that would be difficult to achieve otherwise – especially where they can impact hard-to-reach learners.
We’ve collaborated on a project around soft skills development that has brought together cutting-edge technology with a significant learner need.
We worked with a tech start-up that specialises in ethical applications of artificial intelligence, A-dapt, and together we won an Innovate UK grant, part of the government’s research and innovation funding agency.
The grant allowed us to develop and test a package that combines interactive video and AI facial expression analysis to teach interview skills including social micro-skills such as eye contact and expression management.
I wanted to focus on interview skills because, while all soft skills are important, some are higher level and must be learned in the workplace – so the first step is to enable learners to access the workplace by training them in some basics.
The interview coach software involves two stages. In the first, learners are shown a series of interview scenarios and asked to judge good and bad responses to questions.
Bad responses included shouting at a family member during a remote interview and asking for an Audi company car.
Our learner feedback on this section surprised and impressed me – I had worried that they might find this kind of stuff obvious and even patronising, but this was absolutely not the case and learners reported learning a lot from it.
This is a valuable reminder of how easy it is to make assumptions about learners’ implicit understandings of workplace norms.
It is easy to make assumptions about learners’ understandings of workplace norms
The second part of the experience involves answering interview questions asked on-screen by a recorded actor.
At this point the learner is on camera and their facial expression and position are monitored in real time by an artificial intelligence that feeds back in real time how positive and attentive they will appear to the interviewer.
If they look away or cease to smile this will show on the on-screen ‘positivity’ and ‘attention’ metres.
Our initial trial with our learners showed substantial improvements to the quality of interview answers following use of the package.
This spring we were humbled to win the science and education (remote and immersive) category of the Webby Awards, which are the ‘internet Oscars’. We beat NASA!
We were sitting alongside actress Drew Barrymore and National Geographic, who were winners of other categories.
This is why my job is so rewarding. Working at an ITP means I have the freedom to embrace innovative tech to help our learners learn and develop skills they might have missed out on.
I’m looking forward to keeping this AI work going to help more of our learners smash through the invisible soft skills barriers and get to where they want to be.
Suggestions that training spend should be limited to those with the lowest qualifications are misguided, writes Mandy Crawford-Lee
In the past couple of months, there has been some very useful analysis out from the Learning and Work Institute (LWI). This includes one of its most recent reports called ‘Raising the Bar’, on the lack of employer investment in skills.
This report is more balanced thanthe LWI’s previous report ‘Bridging the Gap: Next Steps for the Apprenticeship Levy’, where it proposed prioritising the apprenticeship levy pot by age or level. This proposal thankfully failed to gain traction.
The University Vocational Awards Council concurs with the excellent analysis in the ‘Raising the Bar’ report on the need to reverse the decline in employer investment in skills. We also sympathise with the view that action is needed to train low-paid and low-qualified employees who have missed out on training.
Points on the short-termism of skills policy in England are equally well made.
Crucially, LWI is also right that we need to focus on how to increase employer investment in skills.
However, with the skills gap and cost of living crisis making these issues more important than ever, we also want to raise the following points.
Allow training for older and more skilled employees too
If we’re really interested in raising productivity, employers should be allowed to invest in the development of the skills their organisations need to raise performance.
Unfortunately, the LWI does not seem to accept this argument and makes recommendations that undermine this approach.
These include proposals to restrict employer spend to train older employees or for higher-level skills programmes.
But it’s not market failure if employers spend their training budget on developing the skills needed to raise productivity.
It’s not market failure if employers spend their training budget on what’s needed
LWI’s contention that employers need to spend more on training those with the lowest qualifications will elicit sympathy. But I doubt anyone would object to more being spent on the initial and ongoing training and development of a nurse (level 6) than a retail role (level 2).
We believe LWI’s proposals to restrict employer apprenticeship spend for the over-25s and for higher-level programmes would undermine the social mobility it seeks to champion.
What is needed are more work-based opportunities and career pathways for individuals to progress to technical and professional level jobs.
[x-head] Prioritise training on level 4 to level 7
A tax credit to incentivise employer investment in training is worthy of exploration.
But focusing the tax credit on functional skills and limiting coverage up to and including level 3 is a puzzling suggestion. Surely the government, not employers, should pay for training that rectifies a failure of the school system?
If we want to develop as a high-skill, high-wage economy, spend should be prioritised on training at level 4 to level 7.
The government should invest
Three groups benefit from investment in skills: society, employers and individuals.
We’d suggest that government covers the cost of those skills that society would expect an individual to acquire through compulsory education alongside incentivising spend on training in areas of need.
It should also ensure the skills system works effectively by facilitating regulation, quality assurance and the operation of the apprenticeship and loans systems.
Meanwhile employers’ primary role should be to invest in skills to enhance performance and productivity and support progression to technical, managerial and professional level occupations.
Think carefully about an apprenticeship versus skills levy
The argument that the apprenticeship levy should be replaced by a skills levy may be superficially attractive.
But LWI may wish to explain why we should prioritise subsidising SMEs to pay the wages of restaurant staff and hairdressers, while restricting the ability of the NHS to use its apprenticeship programmes and levy payments to train nurses.
We appreciate LWI’s focus, but the skills debate is, however, far broader.
Proposals that support young people and those with lower-level qualifications, but which undermine investment in training to raise productivity, are not the way forward for the skills agenda.
