A company continuing to illegally advertise apprenticeships, despite promising to stop last year, is facing fresh government action.
Train 2 Travel Ltd was set up by Michelle Van Sprang in 2020 and soon began advertising through social media, a website and a magazine that it can deliver apprenticeships which are 95 per cent funded by government.
But the firm has never gained a place on the government’s register of apprenticeship training providers and is therefore not allowed to deliver apprenticeships in any capacity.
Under the Apprenticeship, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, only statutory apprenticeships can be described as apprenticeships. If a provider does not receive funding for apprenticeships, it cannot advertise apprenticeships on its website or elsewhere.
The Department for Education told FE Week it was first alerted to Train 2 Travel’s illegal advertising of apprenticeships in October 2021 at which point it contacted the firm.
Following this contact, the company “agreed to stop advertising apprenticeships with immediate effect”, a DfE spokesperson said.
But evidence has emerged showing that Train 2 Travel has continued to advertise apprenticeships throughout 2022.
Numerous Facebook posts have been posted this year that celebrate “apprentices of the week” and include comments such as “we pride ourselves on delivering our apprenticeships in line with the ever evolving industry”.
One post on May 15 said one apprentice “began our junior content producer apprenticeship during the pandemic”. Another Train 2 Travel Facebook post from February 22 advertises a level 3 travel consultant “apprenticeship”, and tells prospective apprentices and employers to get in touch by calling the mobile number of Van Sprang.
The Facebook page has been taken down in the past few days.
Train 2 Travel also had a live website, which stated its mission was “excelling in the delivery of on-the-job training through apprenticeships”. The website, which listed eight apprenticeships it could supposedly deliver, also said the firm’s values included: “Integrity: we are honest and open with strong moral principles.”
The website was taken down after FE Week contacted Van Sprang. The owner denied that Train 2 Travel has ever delivered apprenticeships but refused to explain why her firm was advertising that it does.
The DfE said it will now write to Train 2 Travel about its repeat offence of advertising apprenticeships. The exact content of the letter is unclear, but the agency told FE Week that in these instances it will typically tell the firm to remove any adverts of apprenticeships. Further enforcement action may result in a referral to trading standards, an authority that investigates unfair trading and illegal business activity.
Train 2 Travel is expected to action the DfE’s request within 10 working days.
The company appears to have links with another training provider, called A S Training (International) Ltd, which is on the government’s register of apprenticeship training providers. But the nature of this relationship is unclear.
Numerous apprenticeship adverts posted by Train 2 Travel include an email address for A S Training (International) Ltd and link to the provider’s website.
FE Week contacted A S Training (International) Ltd’s owner Stephen Foster who declined to comment on the relationship his firm has with Train 2 Travel.
A S Training (International) Ltd is suspended from recruiting new apprentices following an early monitoring report from Ofsted which was published last month and found the company making ‘insufficient progress’ across the board.
Van Sprang declined to comment on her company’s relationship with A S Training (International) Ltd.
The prime minister has tasked education secretary Kit Malthouse with drawing up plans for two new vocational colleges in the north to rival Oxford and Cambridge.
Details of the new institutions, dubbed ‘Voxbridge’, are sparse but could be fleshed out as early as the spring, Malthouse told the Yorkshire Postduring a visit to York College’s Institute of Technology on Wednesday.
But college leaders have slammed the idea as a headline-grabbing and tokenistic political measure that should be dropped. Instead, they want ministers to fund established colleges properly after over a decade of cuts.
The idea for ‘Voxbridge’ colleges comes just months after the government outlined plans for new “elite” academic sixth forms to become the Etons of the north in areas that have weak educational outcomes.
Prime minister Liz Truss made a pledge to open new ‘Voxbridge’ colleges during her leadership campaign over the summer.
The policy was first tabled by Jake Berry, the then-chair of the Northern Research Group of Tory MPs, who is now Conservative party chair.
In a letter outlining his “Northern agenda” to Truss in July, which the now prime minister signed up to, Berry called for “two brand new vocational institutions in the North of England which will be the national vocational equivalents of Oxford and Cambridge – with a high-skilled, economic development corridor between them.
“We want to celebrate excellence by creating the best dual-track education system in the world – putting academic and vocational education on an equal footing,” the policy paper added.
New types of further education institutions have been rolled out over the past decade despite calls for ministers to focus funding on existing colleges. These include Institutes of Technology, University Technical Colleges and National Colleges. The latter two have been plagued with recruitment and quality issues.
Malthouse said ‘Voxbridge’ colleges are an “incredibly exciting idea”.
“Having centres of excellence, as there is with universities, I think, is a really great idea, so we’ll be taking that forward in developing the policy over the months to come,” he told the Yorkshire Post.
David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said if Truss was serious about strengthening the UK’s vocational offer “then she should properly fund and support the brilliant institutions that already exist”.
“The government’s track record on establishing new institutions to deliver is not a good one, with both specialist colleges and many UTCs not faring well,” he told FE Week. “They have failed where they were not part of the system and where their contribution was not part of a coherent skills offer locally. I fear the same would happen with new institutions now, however well-intentioned, and however well-funded.”
Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, echoed Hughes’ comments.
“Given the enormous financial pressure on colleges and the public purse, we would suggest that any additional investment should be targeted at existing providers to benefit all students,” he said.
“Sixth form colleges are centres of excellence, and they do an extraordinary job of helping students of all abilities to successfully complete academic, applied, and technical courses in order to reach a range of destinations. New investment, rather than new providers, is the key to raising standards and boosting the status of vocational education.”
The Department for Education confirmed that new ‘Voxbridge’ colleges are in the works but stressed the plans are in their infancy.
A spokesperson said proposals like these will “help to boost the profile of vocational education and get more people into apprenticeships, T Levels, degree apprenticeships and other qualifications”.
A deeply unpopular tax-rise that was estimated to cost the college sector an extra £30 million this year has been scrapped.
The new chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced this afternoon that the 1.25 percentage point increase to national insurance, which came into force in April, will be reversed on November 6, 2022.
Colleges and training providers alike complained that the national insurance hike came at a time of unprecedented cost pressures, and college leaders were furious when they were excluded from a scheme which compensated schools and public sector organisations.
The cut could provide an in-year saving of around £15 million for the college sector.
The Association of Employment and Learning Providers estimated that the move will save training providers between £20-£25 million.
This comes a day after the government announced plans to help non-domestic energy users, including colleges and training organisations, with their energy bills this autumn.
Kwarteng will publish the government’s ‘growth plan’ tomorrow which will include other measures designed to support business through growth policies and more tax cuts.
I can confirm that this year’s 1.25% point rise in National Insurance will be reversed on 6th November.
Its replacement – the Health and Social Care Levy planned for April 23 – will be cancelled.
Training providers welcomed the move but told FE Week that any savings would be swallowed up by rising inflation.
Jane Hickie, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: “This tax cut will help individuals and businesses at a very challenging time. However, in the context of spiralling inflation, the savings made from cutting National Insurance alone will be a drop in the ocean for training providers.
“The Chancellor must go further and ensure that funding available for high quality training programmes matches the true cost of delivery” she said.
School and college leaders have demanded better-funded careers advice after official figures showed an uptick in the number of university applicants still without a place a month after results day.
According to UCAS, this means they applied before June 30, but were not placed or holding an offer a month after A-level results day.
At the same point last year, 30,350 students were in the same position. This year’s figure represents a 35.9 per cent increase on 2021, and the highest level in at least 10 years.
A heads’ union warned the figures showed the impact of “severe disruption” during the pandemic.
But UCAS pointed to an increase in applications overall, and said the figures included around 12,000 students who have since found alternative places.
However, the remaining 29,000 students “either withdrew from or did not respond to an offer made during the main cycle”.
University applicants ‘hit by the effects of the pandemic’
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said many of those without places were “young people who have been hit by the effects of the pandemic which has caused severe disruption to their education over the past two years”.
Marchant
“Too many young people appear to have been let down by a higher education system which should have done better for them.”
Writing for Wonkhe today, UCAS chief executive Clare Marchant said the students “had options available to them but, as consumers, chose not to follow this pathway”.
“This may be due to a change of mind or not securing the offer they wanted. Each cycle, 60,000 – 70,000 students, half of which are aged 19, reapply the following cycle – and our survey data suggests that next cycle some of these students will contribute to that.”
She added that choice “continues to exist” for students “whether they wish to find a place in clearing, apply next year or change pathways towards an apprenticeship – which is as expected and a feature of every cycle”.
Growing numbers will put ‘ever-more pressure’ on uni places
The number of applicants has risen every year since 2018, but that rise has steepened in recent years.
This year, applications from 18-year-olds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland increased from around 289,000 to over 303,000. There were 18 per cent more applications this year than in 2019.
The 18-year-old population is expected to grow over the next few years, and Barton said this was “likely to put ever-more pressure on university places, particularly for the most selective universities and courses”.
He called for more government investment in independent careers advice and “information which schools and colleges can draw upon to help their students identify and secure the choices which best suit their needs”.
Although a “record number” of UK 18-year-olds secured a place at university or college after sitting exams, the entry rate 28 days after results day was 37.3 per cent, lower than the 37.9 per cent seen at the same point last year after teachers assessed grades.
However, this is still “notably higher” than the 33.8 per cent seen in 2019.
A former skills adviser to the government has proposed a radical overhaul of the apprenticeship levy that would see nearly all small and medium sized businesses having to pay into the pot.
Business leaders however warn it will be a “retrograde measure” and “yet another tax burden detrimental to the economic growth that springs from SMEs”.
The EDSK think tank has published a report called ‘Changing Courses’ which proposes to split the current apprenticeship levy into separate funds for apprenticeships and skills training, with more businesses paying into it.
Report authors Tom Richmond – a former adviser to Department for Education ministers – and Eleanor Regan propose converting the levy into an ‘apprenticeships and skills levy’ which would see all businesses with 10 employees or more contribute 0.4 per cent of their annual payroll costs to the fund.
That cash would then be distributed to firms in two pots – a national apprenticeship fund to deliver apprenticeships, and a national skills fund to deliver non-apprenticeship skills training.
The national apprenticeship fund would cover apprenticeships up to level 6, and include traineeships.
The national skills fund would then be devolved to mayoral authorities where possible, and be used to upskill or re-skill existing workforces.
In addition, EDSK says the adult education budget and free courses for jobs fund – a flagship government scheme to offer a free first level 3 qualification to those who do not have one or who are unemployed – into a single devolved ‘local skills fund’.
It also wants a right to paid training leave to be introduced enabling employees to access up to five days of paid leave per year for skills or training courses. Employers would be reimbursed a flat £20 per hour rate for those workers to enable it to arrange cover.
The report said that under the proposals, the number of levy-paying businesses would rise from around 23,000 to 278,000, and raise an estimated £3.8 billion per year – £1.1 billion more than the current system.
Presently, only employers with a wage bill of £3 million or more pay into the apprenticeship levy, at a rate of 0.5 per cent of their annual wage bill.
But EDSK said that the current system, introduced in 2017, isn’t effective enough.
It recognised that the levy had increased employer awareness of apprenticeships, but said goals from the outset were “vague”.
The think tank highlighted that often employers were opting for higher level courses to use up levy funds. The report also warned that more than 50 per cent of apprenticeships are “fake”, with employers effectively rebadging their existing training as an apprenticeship in order to fund it through levy cash. Many had apprentices working for the company more than three months prior to their apprenticeship starting.
The report said it had “undermined the apprenticeship brand and wasted a considerable amount of time, money and effort”.
It added: “By moving away from only funding ‘apprenticeships’ and large qualifications to instead supporting more flexible (and often shorter) forms of training such as non-qualification courses and individual units of qualifications, employers, employees and government can all expect better value for money and larger returns on their respective investments.”
But the plans have not been welcomed by the Federation of Small Businesses, which warned that another tax on small firms would be too much for some.
Tina McKenzie, policy chair at the FSB said the levy was designed to encourage small businesses to take up apprenticeships funded by contributions from bigger firms.
“Undermining this fundamental aspect of the system would be a retrograde measure; yet another tax burden detrimental to the economic growth that springs from SMEs, and fewer apprentices would be trained,” she said.
“Broadening the apprenticeship levy to a training levy, could further reduce the number of apprenticeships available in smaller businesses. Small firms already provide significant training opportunities; they could provide even more which could be done through tax training relief. Adding another tax to them will have the opposite outcome.”
England’s largest apprenticeship provider, Lifetime Training, said a period of stability is needed for the levy. Matt Robinson, commercial director added: “Potentially imposing the levy on smaller businesses would be another pressure and potentially force apprenticeships in environments where it would be difficult to provide off the job and mentor support effectively.
“Instead, we would welcome the ability for large employers to transfer funds more easily to smaller businesses by transferring directly between digital accounts.”
EDSK acknowledged that there could be some resistance from smaller employers to the proposals, but said that “every employer needed to have a stake in the training system”.
Firms with 10 to 49 employers would likely only pay between £1,700 and £4,200 per year, making it a “relatively minor investment”, the report said.
“Even though these smaller organisations are now being asked to contribute to the ASL [apprenticeships and skills levy], they will be able to access financial support for apprenticeships and other forms of training that far exceeds their nominal contribution through the ASL,” it added.
Sector leaders have long called for changes to the apprenticeship system since the levy’s launch. Some business chiefs, such as the Confederation of British Industry, have previously called for it to be transformed into a wider skills and training levy.
EDSK’s report comes ahead of potential changes to the apprenticeship levy as part of a review announced by former chancellor Rishi Sunak.
A spokesperson from the DfE said the levy was an “important part of our reforms” and pledged £2.7 billion in apprenticeship funding by 2024/25.
They added: “We continue to improve apprenticeships, making them more flexible for employers in all sectors and making it easier for employers to transfer their unused funds.”
The government has confirmed its plans to help colleges, training providers and other non-domestic energy users with their energy bills this autumn.
Ministers say their plan to reduce rates to a “government-supported price” of £211 per megawatt hour for electricity and £75 for gas will equate to a saving of £4,000 for a school or college paying £10,000 a month for energy.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said it would compensate energy suppliers for the reduction, which will initially apply to energy use between October 1 2022 and March 31 2023.
The discounts will apply to business and public sector organisations on existing fixed price contracts agreed on or after April 1.
They will also apply to those signing new fixed-price contracts, those on “deemed” or out of contract or variable tariffs, and those on flexible purchase or similar contracts.
For fixed contracts, the discount will reflect the difference between the government’s price and the “relevant” wholesale price for the day the contract was agreed.
For variable, deemed and other contracts, the discount will reflect the difference between the government’s price and wholesale price, but will be subject to a “maximum discount” that will be “determined at the beginning of the scheme”.
Colleges could save 40% on energy bills, says BEIS
The government said a school or college using 10 megawatt hours of electricity and 22 megawatt hours of gas a month would currently pay around £10,000 a month.
Because prices were higher than the government-set rates announced today when they signed their contract, they would receive support.
The difference between the two rates would be worth £240 per megawatt hour for electricity and £70 for gas, leading to a reduction in their monthly bill of £4,000, or 40 per cent.
The support will be “automatically applied to all eligible bills”, and colleges “do not need to take action or apply to the scheme”.
Savings for energy used in October will be seen in October bills, which would usually be received in November.
Those who signed new contracts before April 1 “would not have been exposed to the recent rises in wholesale prices, so you will not be eligible for support under the scheme”.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed the details of the scheme, but warned the “glaring problem is the fact that the scheme is time-limited to six months”.
The government has said it will review the scheme in three months before making a decision about support beyond March 2023.
“This uncertainty makes it impossible for schools and colleges to plan financially with any degree of confidence because they could be knocked off course at a later date by steep rises to energy bills if government support drops off.
“School and college budgets are incredibly tight and any financial ill-wind is potentially devastating. We will be pressing the government for a firmer commitment to the sector.”
Jane Hickie, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, also said her members will be “seriously concerned about what happens after April if energy bills fail to return to their previous levels”.
“Rising costs, through energy bills and other pressures, are causing huge challenges within the skills sector that require immediate intervention,” she added.
David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges said: “This week’s energy bill relief announcement will protect many colleges from price rises for the next six months but government needs to make sure that this is not just a temporary reprieve.
“We need a long-term plan and support to make sure that colleges, who have already been battered by a decade of cuts and rising costs, aren’t forced into new financial difficulties when the current arrangements finish.”
Unions representing education workers will take legal action against the government over a new law allowing agency workers to cover for striking staff.
Ministers changed the law in July in response to threats of widespread industrial action over pay. It was previously illegal to draft agency staff in to cover striking workers.
Teaching union NASUWT said it will this week lodge a judicial review of the decision, while support staff union Unison has already lodged papers for its own legal challenge.
The University and College Union as well as the National Education Union, the country’s largest education union, are also participating in a joint legal challenge with other unions, coordinated by the Trades Union Congress. Other unions involved in the judicial review include the GMB and Unite, which represent school and college support staff.
Unison said if both its action and the TUC’s were given permission to proceed, it was “likely all the arguments will be heard together”.
Ministers say law will maintain ‘crucial public services’
Dr Patrick Roach
The government said in July that the law change would allow organisations “most impacted by industrial action to fill vital roles with temporary, skilled workers”.
The reforms would “help ensure crucial public services and people’s daily lives remain uninterrupted by staff strikes”.
But unions have accused the government of bringing in measures to “effectively break strikes”, and said today the new law violates “fundamental trade union rights, including the right to strike”.
“These regulations seek to further undermine and weaken the rights of all workers, including teachers, to take legitimate industrial action,” said Dr Patrick Roach, general secretary of NASUWT.
“The government is seeking to prevent workers taking collective action to defend their jobs, pay and working conditions in direct contravention of its international commitments and obligations. The right to strike is enshrined in international law.”
He said the change in the law would have a “profound impact on supply teachers”.
Unions urge ministers to help solve pay disputes
Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said ministers “should be rolling up their sleeves and helping solve disputes, not risking everyone’s safety by allowing the use of inexperienced agency workers”.
“Changing the law in such a hostile and unpleasant way makes it much harder for workers to stand up to dodgy employers. It also risks limiting the impact of any legal strike.”
It comes as the University and College Union prepares for “unprecedented” strike action against below-inflation pay offers in almost 30 colleges.
The new government also faces a potential triple whammy of industrial action this year from school teachers, support staff and even school leaders in response to ministers’ pay proposals.
The ASCL school leaders’ union is consulting its members on whether to ballot for industrial action for the first time in its 16-year history. The NAHT leaders’ union said it was not ruling “any action in or out”.
Teachers gear up for pay ballots
The National Education Union has promised the “largest teachers’ pay ballot in a generation” when it formally asks around 250,000 members in November if they want to go on strike. NASUWT has also consulted members on the pay proposals.
Announcing the law change earlier this year, the then business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: “In light of militant trade union action threatening to bring vital public services to a standstill, we have moved at speed to repeal these burdensome,1970s – style restrictions.
“From today, businesses exposed to disruption caused by strike action will be able to tap into skilled, temporary workers to provide the services that allow honest, hardworking people to get on with their lives. That’s good news for our society and for our economy.”
The unions now need to wait to receive the permission of the High Court to proceed with their legal challenges.
Twelve months after our first look at diversity and visibility within our newspaper pages, FE Week editor Shane Chowen looks at how we’re doing.
When we published our first diversity audit last year, we said that as the sector’s only dedicated newspaper, we take seriously our responsibility to reflect and represent the diversity of the FE and skills community. That commitment is as true now as it was then and we know we have more to do.
Representation in FE Week in 2021-22 compared to 2020-21
Figures for our 2021/22 publication cycle show that we have made good progress in the visibility of people from ethnic minority backgrounds. We had a more diverse mix of opinion writers last year with 18 per cent coming from an ethnic minority, up four percentage points from the year before.
On our front pages, 31 per cent of the people pictured throughout the year were from ethnic minorities, almost double the proportion from the previous year.
Before the pandemic struck, diversity and inclusion was the sector’s top priority. It’s vital that leaders revisit the commitments they made and bring it back to the top of the agenda.
Because even though we’ve made some progress in our pages, it remains the case that people from ethnic minorities are still woefully underrepresented at the top of the sector. We know that 26 per cent of students and 16 per cent of the FE workforce are from ethnic minorities, yet the latest estimates from the Association of Colleges is that only nine per cent of college principals and chief executives are.
When we introduced The Staffroom last year – a weekly column reserved for writers from the frontline of the sector – we were able to extend our reach beyond the top tier of provider leaders and therefore reach a more diverse pool of writers, perspectives and, hopefully, readers.
Through our special inclusion supplement – FE: For Everyone, published at the AoC Conference in November – we were able to provide a platform for the disruptors and up and-coming leaders from a range of backgrounds in our sector who are not just hungry for change, they are delivering it.
Our other focus has been on making sure that the contribution of women in FE is fairly reflected. Women make up 55 per cent of the student population, 61 per cent of the college workforce and, according to the AoC, now 49 per cent of college principals and chief executives.
However, those numbers have not been so high in the upper echelons of government departments, sector bodies and thinktanks we draw from.
While our audit shows that we have increased the proportion of ethnic minorities in our profile interviews and opinion column writers over 2021/22, those figures dropped from 59 to 57 per cent and 47 to 44 per cent respectively when counting women over the year in FE Week.
Ethnic minority representation in FE Week compared to population data
I recognise that we have more to do on who we commission and write about in our newspaper. We will listen to women and others, such as people with disabilities, who we know are underrepresented in our pages.
But over the last year we’ve made sure we hold the sector, as well as ourselves, to account on the equality agenda.
In addition to our supplement last November, our reporters have covered the achingly slow progress towards closing the gender pay gap in colleges, as well as the responses of ethnic minority leaders to the government’s “bizarre” strategy to increase diversity in apprenticeships. We challenged the DfE’s latest round of appointments for national leaders of further education (NLFEs) for continuing to not promote any non-white principals.
It remains farcical that non-binary students are still forced to choose “male” or “female” in order to get funding for their course – unlike most other places now in the public sector – and that the quality of data on the FE workforce and leaders in parts of the sector is so scarce.
We should not just focus on ethnicity and binary gender. We do not currently track who among our roster of writers identify as LGBTQ+, nor their socio-economic backgrounds. I’d like to hear from our readers on how to make this happen.
So, with your support, FE Week will continue to do its bit in bringing the voices of those you need to hear from, empowering the leaders of tomorrow to disrupt the system, and to hold to account those with the power to change things.
More devolution deals are set to be signed off by the end of the year as the government ploughs ahead with plans to give every area of the country control of its adult education budget (AEB). FE Week takes stock of what progress has been made to date and what to expect in the coming weeks and months.
In February, the government published the Levelling Up white paper, which outlined a number of fresh devolution proposals.
It included “trailblazer” deals for further devolution at two existing mayoral combined authorities, a new deal for York and North Yorkshire, an expanded deal in the north east, and nine “county deal” devolution arrangements.
Most, if not all, are likely to include devolution of the AEB, involvement in local skills improvement plans, and for the two trailblazer areas greater powers over skills provision.
Trailblazers chosen for greater skills devolution
Ten areas of England, including Greater London, have mayoral combined authorities (MCAs), which have control over their AEB.
Of the current MCA areas with devolved AEB, Greater Manchester and West Midlands have been selected by the government to be the trailblazers for further devolution.
Negotiations for those are ongoing and have not been made public, but a few details have been hinted at around which powers authorities would like to take on.
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, told a Royal Society for Arts (RSA) event on local and regional economies over the summer that skills and technical education is “the biggest missing piece and the single most important ask we will make as part of this trailblazer process”.
The authority said it wants a “clearer” role in the wider skills system, with “full devolution of some components and co-commissioning of others”.
It also wants a new role in influencing technical and professional education for 16- to 19-year-olds so that it meets local labour market needs.
Greater Manchester is making three asks as part of the negotiations: local control of post-19 skills and work-based learning, a partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in order to have more influence in how job centres operate, and a tie-up with the Department for Education on 16 to 19 education to co-commission courses such as T Levels.
Further details on those asks have not been disclosed.
“At the moment we are dealing too much in work-arounds and retrofits such as our matchmaking service for the apprenticeship levy,” Burnham told the RSA event. “With more control over post-16 technical education, we could build a more responsive local skills system which would be a significant boost to investment and growth.”
West Midlands has provided fewer details, but the authority said it wants more integration between skills training and employment.
“This would include greater influence over post-16 technical and vocational education and over careers, as well as joint working with DWP in shaping employment support,” a spokesperson said.
A timeline for trailblazer announcements has not been laid out but further details are expected in the coming months.
County deals get off the mark
Elsewhere, the government has confirmed the north east would be invited to expand its existing deal, while York and North Yorkshire’s deal for a mayoral combined authority would be finalised. In addition, nine areas of England were invited to begin negotiations for “county deals”.
Those county deals are based on three levels of devolution. Level one has the lowest level of powers, with local authorities working together in a committee. Level two has a county council without a directly elected mayor but more powers than level one, while level three includes a directly elected mayor with the most powers available.
Government guidance indicates that level two and three deals include a devolved AEB, as well as input into local skills improvement plans (LSIPs).
Negotiations are taking place behind closed doors so the details for each potential deal have not been made public, but political leaders appear to be largely pursuing level two or three options.
It will form the first mayoral combined county authority (MCCA), with the aim of holding a mayoral election in May 2024.
The East Midlands deal involves an estimated £1.14 billion over the next three decades and a fully devolved AEB in time for 2025/26.
The ongoing north east negotiations are expected to centre around expanding the North of Tyne Combined Authority area to include areas south of the river; South Tyneside, Gateshead and Sunderland, as well as Durham which is among the county deal areas.
The county deal areas currently being negotiated are Cornwall; Devon, Plymouth and Torbay; Durham; Hull and East Yorkshire; Leicestershire; Norfolk; and Suffolk.
The government said it wanted to have the county deals wrapped up this autumn, but it looks like that will now be achieved by the end of the year. It is expected that negotiations will then begin for other areas of the country.
What devolution means for adult education
The upshot is that the AEB will increasingly be farmed out to local devolved areas, with the goal of eventually having a “devolved system across all of England”.
In addition, the government expects all areas with devolved AEBs to be involved in the employer-led LSIPs – key documents which outline priorities and changes in that area to make post-16 education more responsive to the needs of the local labour market over the following three years.
It pledged that “by 2030, every part of England that wants one will have a devolution deal with powers at or approaching the highest level of devolution and a simplified, long-term funding settlement”.
The annual AEB pot stands at about £1.5billion, with the government first starting to devolve the AEB in August 2019.
Roughly 60 per cent of the AEB – about £786 million – is devolved to the existing MCAs, but the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) estimates that will reach about 80 per cent, or up to £1.2 billion, with the new and likely devolution deals outlined in the Levelling Up white paper.
Jane Hickie, the chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said the organisation supports devolution of the AEB as long as the commissioning by each area is fair, open and transparent, but stressed that programmes such as apprenticeships and traineeships should continue to be commissioned nationally by central government.
“As devolution is rolled out across the country, this presents both opportunities and risks to providers,” Hickie said.
“On one hand there are now many more commissioning opportunities to engage with. However, a diverse approach to commissioning results in significantly more work and bureaucracy for providers. There needs to be a balanced approach which takes these issues into account and focuses on getting funding to the front-line adult learners.”
Holex, the professional body for adult and community learning, said most providers were happy that combined authorities were doing the right thing for learners but cautioned that they must not forget about lower-level qualifications.
Sue Pember, the director of policy and external relations at Holex added: “We would like to see that the ‘deal’ makes it clear that from day one CAs are there to serve all the residents of the area, and not just those ready for level 3 and above. There needs to be a social inclusion dimension to the work and wider benefits of learning need to be recognised.”
