A controversial threshold that triggers “enhanced monitoring” of apprenticeship providers if they have more than 100 withdrawals has been increased following sector outcry.
Officials have also revealed the qualification achievement rate threshold for intervention – where action can be as severe as contract termination – has been set at a much lower rate than previous years.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency published a new apprenticeship accountability framework for 2021/22 earlier this year, which sets out the quality indicators that providers will be measured against.
The original version stated that providers would be placed in a ‘needs improvement’ category and become subject to “enhanced monitoring” when the number of apprentices in a cohort are past their planned end-dates, on breaks in learning or have withdrawn is more than 15 per cent or “greater than 100”.
Large providers that spoke to FE Week hit out at the rule at the time, warning that they would be “disproportionately penalised”.
Version 2 of the framework has been published today and shows the ESFA has given in to the pressure and increased the threshold to “greater than 250”.
But Jane Hickie, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, warned that the increase may not go far enough for the largest providers.
She said: “AELP is pleased that the ESFA apprenticeship accountability framework has reviewed the original threshold proposed of 100 withdrawals or delay completions to 250. The initial threshold of 100 withdrawals would have led to a significant number of medium to large sized providers being disproportionately impacted.
“We strongly opposed the original threshold at the time and are pleased that ministers and officials have accepted our arguments. However, we are concerned that the largest providers – particularly those who deliver in sectors like hospitality, retail, and social care – are still likely to be affected by the threshold through no fault of their own. We would urge a balanced and sensible approach which takes these factors into account.”
The enhanced monitoring definition has stayed the same and could include management conversations with government officials, the development of “improvement plans” and potential referrals to Ofsted.
Achievement and retention rate thresholds for intervention revealed
In terms of formal intervention, the ESFA announced today that providers will face action where they have an all age apprenticeship achievement rate of less than 50 per cent.
This is markedly lower than the 62 per cent threshold that was set for apprenticeship standards under the old regime.
Government data published in March showed the overall achievement rate for all apprenticeships hit 57.7 per cent in 2020/21.
Meanwhile, the threshold for intervention when it comes to retention has been set at below 52 per cent. This means that if a provider has more than 48 per cent of apprentices dropping out they will face intervention.
Worldskills UK has announced the elite squad of skills competitors that will face off against challengers from around the world at the global Worldskills competition in Shanghai later this year.
Thirty nine students and apprentices have been selected through a gruelling run of domestic competitions and bootcamps in over 30 disciplines including welding, hairdressing, mechatronics and 3D game art.
Team UK will go up against their peers from all over the world over the intense four-day competition in October.
Worldskills Shanghai should have taken place last year but was delayed because of Covid 19 restrictions. This means our UK champions have had even longer to undergo Worldskills UK’s rigorous elite training regime in preparation for the competition.
“After the delays and difficulties of the past couple of years, we should all be proud of the skill and determination these young professionals have shown to get out there and fly the flag for the UK. They represent the very best in their field, but will have to be at the top of their game competing against their peers from across the globe,” Worldskills UK’s deputy CEO Ben Blackledge said.
But the competition isn’t just about bringing home medals.
Blackledge adds: ”We are not only giving young people the opportunity to reach their full potential but we also believe that we can transfer the insights gained from competing against other countries to drive up standards at home and boost the economy.”
The whole FE and skills sector will be wishing Team UK success in October against rival competitors from China, Germany, Australia, Switzerland and Japan.
Chief among them is skills minister Alex Burghart. He said: “I am delighted that these remarkable young people will soon be showcasing their talents and skills on the global stage – they should be so proud of their achievements to date and I look forward to cheering them on when they go for gold in Shanghai.”
Team UK has its sight set firmly on improving its medal position from the previous competition, held in Kazan, Russia in 2019, where it tabled in 12th place.
Competing in the aircraft maintenance category four years ago was Haydn Jakes. He was one of two gold medal winners from Team UK at the last competition and is now part of the UK training team. The University of Nottingham student’s win on the global stage also got him an MBE in the 2020 Queen’s birthday honours for services to Worldskills.
“You learn and gain so much from competing and going through the Worldskills UK programme,” Jakes said. “It’s like nothing you have experienced before and, as well as demonstrating you have the technical skills, you have to be able to keep focus and perform under pressure.”
Following in Jakes’ footsteps is 23 year-old Mona Nawaz, who will be competing in the digital construction category this year. The former New College Lanarkshire student, now at Balfour Beatty, said: ”I am ecstatic to have reached this level and been selected for Team UK. I can’t wait to get out to Shanghai and show everyone what I can do.”
Joining Nawaz is Kieran McShane, 20, from Burnley College who will be competing in the construction metalwork category and Team UK’s hairdressing champion, Grimsby Institute’s Ellie Mumby, 22.
Sai Patravu, a University of Manchester student, and Luke Jowett, from Walsall College, have their sights set on gold in the two-person cyber security competition. Patravu said he is “nervous about the next steps, but I can’t wait to take this to the next level and go up against the best of the best from other countries”.
Click below for the full table of Team UK members.
Assessment adaptations for vocational and technical qualifications that were implemented due to Covid-19 are to be scrapped next year, Ofqual has confirmed.
Exam adaptions allowing schools and colleges to choose which topics to teach in some GCSEs will also be canned in 2022/23, although spacing out exams again to limit potential disruption will be considered.
The exams watchdog has also not ruled out allowing exam aids and advance information in next year’s academic exams, pledging to “monitor the path and impact of the pandemic” before deciding.
However, an update published today by Ofqual stated the government wants “to return to the carefully designed and well-established pre-pandemic assessment arrangements as quickly as possible, given they are the best and fairest way of assessing what students know and can do”.
In FE, awarding organisations decided which adaptations were appropriate for their qualifications in accordance with Ofqual’s vocational and technical qualifications contingency regulatory framework.
The regulator said some adaptations were in response to public health restrictions and given that public health restrictions are no longer in place, these adaptations “are no longer necessary for the academic year 2022 to 2023 onwards”.
Ofqual said today it will ask boards to look “carefully at the design” of the GCSE and A-level exam timetable for next year “to see if increase spacing between subjects” should “be retained”.
There were no new policies for further education in today’s Queen’s speech, with ministers focusing instead on new legislation for schools and higher education.
Prince Charles delivered the speech to mark the state opening of Parliament for the first time today after the Queen pulled out due to “episodic mobility issues”, as announced by Buckingham Palace yesterday.
The speech sets out the government’s legislative agenda for the next year.
It was delivered two weeks after the skills and post-16 education bill gained royal assent, so it was unsurprising that the speech had little focus on FE.
But in the speech, Prince Charles said planned reforms to education will “help every child to fulfil their potential wherever they live, raising standards and improving the quality of schools and higher education”.
He also said her majesty’s ministers will “publish draft legislation to reform the mental health act”.
Downing Street confirmed on Sunday that a new higher education bill is to be announced this week, enabling the introduction of the lifelong loan entitlement.
The entitlement will provide people with a loan equivalent to four years of education (£37,000 in today’s fees) that they can use over their lifetime for a range of higher level courses including shorter and technical courses in universities and colleges.
The new schools bill is planned to boost intervention in failing academies, support more schools to join academy trusts and implement a “direct” national funding formula.
Baroness Ruby McGregor-Smith, who became chair of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education in August, is overseeing 280 staff and huge responsibilities. What makes her tick? Jess Staufenberg finds out
Baroness Ruby McGregor-Smith is telling me a story. She remembers being chief executive of Mitie, a facilities management outsourcing company, and talking to a young black apprentice at the firm.
“I was talking to him about race in the workplace, saying, ‘I think I understand some of the issues.’
“And this young apprentice said to me, ‘You really don’t get it, do you? When you were young, you had to adapt the way you were to fit in. So by the time you had got through education and came into the workplace, you were used to walking into a very white workplace.’”
In contrast to McGregor-Smith’s experience of living in a largely white neighbourhood and community, the apprentice said they had always been surrounded by people who looked like them. This role, at the company, was the first time they were in a white-dominated environment.
“I’ve been in a gang,” they explained. “I walk into our offices, and I don’t know where to start or what to do.”
McGregor-Smith leans back in her chair in our glass-walled meeting room in Sanctuary Buildings, Department for Education. “I had assumed I could connect, and our experiences could connect. But our experiences were very different,” she continues.
“That’s why a mentor is so important, to bring individuals together to have those conversations, to make sure your workplace is welcoming.”
McGregor-Smith with senior press manager (and former FE Week deputy editor) Paul Offord
This sort of careful insight about the subtleties of inclusivity and representation seems characteristic of McGregor-Smith.
It’s rooted in her own experiences: growing up in an environment in which she felt different to almost everyone else around her – far from a community, or wider family, to whom she clearly belonged.
The former business executive arrived in London from Lucknow in India with her mother in 1965, aged just two years old.
Her father had travelled ahead, with only a plane ticket to his name, and the young McGregor-Smith remembers a loving, but lonely, childhood while her parents were out working hard.
Her two sisters arrived 11 years after her, and she says she was “not a fan” of living so long without siblings.
“I remember a really deep sense of loneliness,” she says. At that time, communicating with family in India (she has a big family, with 54 first cousins) involved writing a letter which took six weeks to arrive, or booking in a timeslot with BT just to make one call.
Meanwhile, her parents were so poor initially that McGregor-Smith recalls them being in tears when she outgrew her first pair of shoes. At primary school, she was the only Asian child, and at secondary school, one of just a small group.
“It was that feeling you really were on your own. I was this little girl, growing up in an environment that was pretty hostile.”
A love of sport – netball, running and high jump – brought relief at secondary school, but the familial expectation she should study medicine led McGregor-Smith to take science A-levels she didn’t enjoy and get lower grades than she would have liked.
“I should have been doing T Levels!” she says emphatically. “I needed applied work.” She took her own path to study economics at Kingston Polytechnic, and after that qualified as an accountant with BDO, the global accountancy firm.
McGregor-Smith giving a speech to the Women’s Business Council in 2014
But she wanted to work in industry rather than audit, and so joined “a group of people working in a warehouse in Sunbury-on-Thames”. That small group was to become Serco, now the giant outsourcing company.
Aged 28, McGregor-Smith became the finance manager and was one of just a few women at the company. It was here she felt properly welcomed and mentored. Founder Richard White said she had “the potential to get to the top”. “I’m forever indebted to him,” she adds.
Having found a space in which she felt supported, the next big challenge in McGregor-Smith’s life was leaving that environment. After nine years at Serco, she had two children and found the juggling act was impossible.
“That was a really tough time. I had underestimated it – I love kids, but I was just so tired. I had come to the conclusion that this big career I had, something had to give, so what had to give was my career.
“I made a decision people don’t often make at my level.”
Stepping off the career ladder was “a hugely risky and traumatic thing to do. I was hugely committed to Serco and the senior executive team”. Aged 37, she took time with her family for two years.
Like many parents, McGregor-Smith felt torn. “I felt guilty about everything – guilt, guilt, guilt was the overriding emotion of some of those early years.”
Then at 39, she was approached to become chief financial officer at Mitie. The company clearly won her loyalty: she remembers again worrying about whether to watch her son in the school nativity play or attend some shareholder meetings. Then-chief executive Ian Stewart said to her: “It’s pretty easy – there’s only one nativity play.”
The flexibility and support paid off. McGregor-Smith stayed with the company and went on to become chief executive in 2007, which meant she was the only Asian female CEO of a FTSE 250 company. She had increased its turnover by more than £2 billion by 2012.
She was then approached by Theresa May to chair the Women’s Business Council, launched the same year to tackle the gender pay gap.
So although McGregor-Smith had a different experience to the young apprentice she talked to, she understands one thing very well: everyone wants to feel they belong, in education and work.
“Fitting in is so hard when you’re different. I craved to fit in. I don’t want to be different, I want to fit in.” Even now, she notes, “When I walk into the Institute for Apprenticeships, there aren’t many people who look like me. I would like a few more.”
Her answer to the problem is mentoring, she says, and she wants this approach used to tackle the drop-out rate of apprentices. (In 2020/21, a staggering 47 per cent of apprentices dropped out.)
“It’s about making sure your workplace is more welcoming. One of the challenges around the drop-out rate is about, how welcome do they feel? How nurtured?” says McGregor-Smith firmly. “When you have a good manager who is supporting and mentoring you, people tend to stay.”
McGregor-Smith formalised these suggestions in a 2017 review she led called ‘Race in the Workplace’. Mentors and mentoring is mentioned more than 70 times, and one of its key recommendations to employers is to provide mentoring and sponsorship for employees.
Since becoming IfATE’s chair in August (paid £29,500 annually for one day per week), it’s not just race that’s on her agenda. She is not a fan of recruitment quotas but she wants strategies towards ambitious targets (such as a proportion of the workforce coming from particular backgrounds, or identities).
“We don’t have enough targets around disabilities,” she says with frustration.
One of the IfATE board members, Robin Millar, is a globally known music producer and is blind. He has shown McGregor-Smith the dismal statistics on blind people in employment. “Why haven’t we adapted the workplace to be more welcoming?”
McGregor-Smith when she became CEO of Mitie
While at Mitie, she also supported calls for prisoner apprenticeships through working with the charity Clink at Brixton Prison: “It’s a natural rehabilitation piece.” She adds: “I’m also very keen not to have an age limit on apprenticeships. I want us to start thinking differently around age.”
But mentoring is also not enough to tackle apprenticeship drop-out and low start numbers, she acknowledges. “We’ve got a huge crisis in terms of cost of living this year, and I would encourage employers to look at pay rates to support the most disadvantaged.”
As chair of IfATE, McGregor-Smith says she can’t make specific calls for greater pay for apprentices, but she does want to do more work at IfATE around career paths. “For me it’s about the progression piece. At IfATE we will be supporting more around occupational maps.”
With apprentice minimum pay at just £4.81 an hour, an occupational progression map attached to each standard sounds like a much-needed, excellent idea.
And what about employers and training providers? The Association of Employment and Learning Providers has explained that some smaller SMEs find the digital accounts for the apprenticeship levy off-putting.
“I personally believe what we’ll see with the levy is making sure it’s more attractive to SMEs,” responds McGregor-Smith. She points out that Serco was an SME once. “SMEs are the lifeblood of the nation.”
Let’s have occupational maps for apprentices
The other area facing teething issues are T Levels. FE Week recently ran an excellent piece from a staff member at Bury College, explaining what tweaks would help the qualification work on the ground (including reducing the size of the qualification, and standardising the size across the different subject areas).
McGregor-Smith says this kind of feedback will be vital going forward.
“You’ve got the first group of learners going through now, and what you will have coming out is data on what the experiences have been like,” she explains, adding: “If I take you forward five years, it’s very likely some [elements of T Levels] will have changed. It’s still early days, and we’ve got to be pragmatic all the way through this.”
She adds, as a personal philosophy: “I’m all for evolution, rather than revolution.”
It’s clear that McGregor-Smith has steadily, and successfully, built herself up from the ground – and this is reflected in her approach to IfATE’s own work.
My only challenge is that education only happens once for most people. Qualifications probably need to be as perfect as possible first time round, especially for disadvantaged learners.
Brands can also take a long time to recover from an initial rash of bad press, so evolution might carry significant risk.
But McGregor-Smith’s commitment, and business nous, is not in question. “We’re in the next phase of growth,” she smiles.
Principal & Director of Education and Skills, NACRO
Start date: May 2022
Previous Job: Vice Principal – Quality, Teaching, Learning and Assessment, The Sheffield College
Interesting fact: Elise is at her happiest when exploring new places with her favourite people, getting creative in the kitchen, or indulging in her love of gaming.
Matt Phelps
Deputy CEO and Deputy Principal Curriculum and Quality, City of Portsmouth College
Start date: April 2022
Previous Job: Director of Commercial Partnerships, Strive Training
Interesting fact: Matt is a keen explorer and in 2013 visited all seven wonders of the world.
“A lot of children don’t get GCSEs above a grade 4 – so they are deemed to have failed, and they don’t really have a good record of what they achieved,” says Tom Sherrington of the National Baccalaureate Trust.
The trust this week published detailed proposals for a new qualification they say would solve this problem by giving all students a record of accomplishments between 14 to 18-years-old.
The National Baccalaureate for England (NBfE) would be made up of 600 credits (200 for 14 to 16-year-olds, and 400 for 16 to 18-year-olds).
Rather than choosing to study a certain number of full qualifications, pupils could pick and choose either full or part subjects that would all be worth a different number of credits.
English and maths would be studied until 18, and pupils would also have to complete units in personal development and research projects, such as Duke of Edinburgh awards or the National Citizen Service.
Rather than grades, they would be awarded points for each unit completed – with 600 points the maximum overall score at 18.
Sherrington
They would finish with a full digital transcript detailing their achievements – rather than just what they “failed”.
It would encourage exams to be taken “when ready” and expand assessment to include moderated portfolios, oral, practical and adaptive tests.
“The people who say ‘scrap GCSEs’ are not helping, because they are never saying what would happen instead,” Sherrington said.
“The baccalaureate would allow you to stop thinking, are exams good? Should we have GCSEs? It’s about the most appropriate mode of assessment for each type of subject.”
What problems would Baccalaureate solve?
The trust says the system’s weight currently “falls heavily” in year 11 with the volume of tests and revision “disproportionate” and “distorting” to a coherent 14 to 18 curriculum.
Students move from a “crowded, inflexible” GCSE experience to a “narrow three-subject curriculum” at A-level or single-discipline technical qualification, with little scope for further study.
The qualification also puts academic and technical pathways on “parallel” terms, the trust says, and ensures children take part in extracurricular activities.
“There is a whole other world of assessment beyond this very narrow, precise way we do it now,” Sherrington said.
It would mean huge upheaval, though. One proposal is to introduce the framework using GCSEs before gradually breaking them up into more “flexible and specialised” one-year courses.
Eventually pupils could access more subjects, with minimum credits set across certain areas such as languages, social sciences and humanities.
Wood Green School, an academy in West Oxfordshire, has created its own baccalaureate, based around the core GCSEs and A-levels, but with an extended project, personal development programme and work experience.
Robert Shadbolt, the school’s head, said it had “embedded” this into the curriculum as an “entitlement” for every pupil.
‘Long-lasting support would be essential’
While Covid has amplified calls for exam reform, the government’s commitment to them has not faltered.
Meadows
But the trust’s plans put back on the table baccalaureate-style proposals similar to those put forward in 2004 by the government-commissioned Tomlinson review. Despite early support, they were not implemented after changes in ministerial teams.
Dr Michelle Meadows, a former deputy chief regulator at Ofqual, said Tomlinson showed that “long-lasting cross-party consensus and support” would be essential.
“For too long, we have over-relied on qualifications alone to represent what a person is capable of,” she said. But changes to the qualification system were high risk.
“Perhaps this is one proposal capable of generating the consensus needed to succeed.”
Jonathan Simons, a partner at the consultancy Public First, said it was one of the “most thoughtful and worked-through” attempts to “to square the desire to ensure all young people have a wide range of skills and capabilities, with the need for rigorous knowledge and accurate and valid assessment.”
Oates
However Tim Oates, director of assessment research at Cambridge Assessment, said wider discussions on system change seemed to confuse qualifications reform with curriculum reform.
“We need better formative assessment overall, better diagnostic assessment at the beginning of key stage 3, and we need to look at relevance and engagement.”
Barnaby Lenon, a former Ofqual standards adviser, said the proposals sounded like the old national record of achievement, “which was a failure partly because of the bureaucracy involved”.
Good schools and colleges already promoted and recorded non-exam activities. Without the motivation of GCSEs,16-year-olds would not “engage fully”.
A Department for Education spokesperson said reformed GCSEs “rigorously assess the knowledge acquired by pupils and are in line with the expected standards in countries with high-performing education systems”.
A consultation on the government’s SEND review has been extended for three weeks after accessible versions of the document were finally published today.
Last week, FE Weekreported how the near six-week wait had excluded some of the communities the SEND review seeks to support from the consultation process.
A large print version was published alongside the review in late March, with British Sign Language and easy-read versions promised in “early April”. Children’s minister Will Quince then pledged to get them out by the end of last month, which they also missed.
The government has now published the documents. In an update this morning, DfE said the consultation closing date had been extended from July 1 to July 22 to “give participants time to use the new materials and submit their responses”.
I’ve listened to your concerns and I’m extending the #SENDReview consultation to July 22.
A full, fair, open consultation is key to our vision for more inclusivity. We've published a suite of accessible versions of our Green Paper so even more people can get involved. 1/3
A guide to the SEND review for children and young people has also been published.
In a tweet, Quince said: “I’ve listened to your concerns and I’m extending the SEND Review consultation to July 22.
“A full, fair, open consultation is key to our vision for more inclusivity. We’ve published a suite of accessible versions of our Green Paper so even more people can get involved.”
Last week, Simon Knight, the head of Frank Wise special school in Oxfordshire, said the lack of accessible materials was “hugely concerning and is materially impacting on the ability of our students to have their voice heard”.
“It is tragically ironic that a consultation designed to address the dysfunctionality of the SEND system is, through the lack of suitable adapted materials, disadvantaging those very people the consultation is intended to improve outcomes for.”
Many service leavers lack confidence in their skills when they exit the armed forces. Providers and employers must step up, writes Alex Firmin
With around 14,000 people leaving the armed forces every year and more than two million ex-service people living in the UK, the transition into the next stage in their career can be daunting.
Veterans can be critical of themselves, lacking confidence in the skills outside of those they’ve acquired in the armed forces.
Often, they find it hard to identify what could make them attractive to an employer, or, if they wish to work in FE, to a provider like mine.
Research from the Forces Employment Charity shows civilians recognise the value ex-forces bring to the workplace, including in FE providers.
But unfortunately, many military leavers think they are not qualified for roles they would in fact be suitable for and would thrive in.
It’s the duty of leaders, managers and trainers in non-forces businesses to nurture and help them make that transition as smooth and stress-free as possible.
Be empathetic
Leaving the Army was a surreal time for me.
It was a major culture shock. After spending several years in service, on tour in places like Afghanistan, I didn’t allow time for myself to adjust when I left.
Admittedly, I was quite naïve and it took some time to find my feet.
I didn’t allow myself time to adjust
These feelings are not uncommon in ex-military personnel. One in three confess that they’ve faced a lack of understanding amongst employers and/or colleagues about how their skills from active duty translate into a business environment.
There’s also a greater focus on the pastoral aspect of leadership in the forces than in industry. Military leaders are taught to care for the wellbeing of their followers and are often perceived as mentors by their colleagues.
Many businesses and organisations do have pastoral elements in place. But more recognition of the skills of veterans will boost confidence from the off. This includes ex-forces staff joining training providers.
Offer work experience
Of the 2020/21 regular service leavers who used the Ministry of Defence’s career transition partnership provision, 83 per cent were employed within six months of leaving the forces.
However, many ex-services personnel can feel a sense of urgency in gaining employment. So they often go into low-paid or routine occupations that don’t make full use of their skills.
Moreover, a rushed transition can possibly lead to a new place of work not being the right place for them, with many resigning quickly, leaving their confidence dented.
As all service leavers are entitled to resettlement financial assistance, employers could offer a short period of paid or unpaid work. This means an individual has time to understand whether or not a role could work for them.
If successful, this period of supportive work experience would hopefully lead to longer-term benefits for both parties.
Provide mentoring or support services
For many, military life is all-consuming, and civilian life can be more uncomfortable than being on the frontline. Imagine moving from that regimented world into a new job that has its own culture.
Despite what may seem like disparate worlds, a veteran can bring skills in time management, problem solving, teamwork, resilience and much more. However, many just need a helping hand to identify those skills.
That’s where a mentor or support group from employers or training providers can prove useful. That interaction could also be beneficial for the business or organisation as a whole, as well as for the individual.
Practise what you preach
Many organisations have pledged their support to the armed forces community, maybe in the form of signing the armed forces covenant, which is a moral obligation to treat service leavers fairly.
But employers and providers who take these vows must ensure sustained action.
Since 2011, more than 8,800 businesses have signed the armed forces covenant. Your provider can too!
Offering education, training or internships will maximise the potential of service leavers, improve mental health, develop industry awareness and ultimately benefit the person, employer and provider.
