A green skills solution from The Skills Network

In October 2021 the state of the climate was highlighted in Glasgow, where more than 200 of the world’s leaders united to discuss the climate crisis at COP26.

The event described as “the world’s best last chance to get runaway climate change under control” [1], brought talks of a green industrial revolution and a reaffirmation of the commitment to limiting global warming to 1.5C.

Now six months later and amidst an exceptional energy crisis throughout the UK, the demand for sustainable energy, practices and knowledge is now paramount for the future both of the economy and society as a whole.

Why now?

As the climate crisis grows, calls for an integration of a fourth functional skill into mass upskilling across the country are clear. The three functional skills areas – those basic skills required for a successful life – have been focused on Maths, English and ICT comprehension. But now a push for a fourth and vital upskilling resource in climate sustainability is emerging – critical to turn the tide on climate change.

The workplace has seen an 142% increase in the demand for “green” knowledge in employment over the last five years, with hard skills in Sustainability, Environment Health and Safety and Auditing now critically needed. This, alongside a growing green sector is demanding skills in practical “how to do” sustainability and pushing ITPs and educators to step up to the mark in green skills training.

The growth of “green” offers prediction of the direction the job market is traveling, but to solve the climate crisis it is now fundamental that “green skills” are integrated across all sectors. Targeting green jobs alone will not bring the scale of change needed to meet sustainability targets.

When it comes to skills training to facilitate the scale of social change required to fight climate change, it’s essential that those operating in non-green jobs have access to green skills training to develop widespread individual sustainability practices.

While green skills training is becoming ever more essential for employability, the challenge remains of inducing widespread personal and societal change in behaviour, ensuring individuals know how their choices, as citizens and consumers, impact on the climate and future generations.

This means that our challenge goes far beyond developing skills for green jobs. We need to embed mass eco-literacy and sustainability skills across all sectors, job roles and society as a whole. The skills sector is the obvious choice to lead on this.

Those of us working within the skills sector are clear on our responsibility in this fight and we at The Skills Network are leading on this with the development of our training provisions.

How can it be done?

To address the climate sustainability skills shortage, we must train in a way that looks beyond the green sector, focusing on developing a provision that is widely accessible.

With few resources offering practical action through skills training, now a regulatory requirement for colleges, educators have an essential role in embedding sustainability training into all elements of education – bringing climate action to life through real case study scenarios and practical application. We at The Skills Network are proud to be one of the first ITP’s to develop and offer to the market just this – a leading solution for mass sustainability and eco literacy skills development in non-green jobs.

Now we have urgently developed an innovative end-to-end learning solution to meet the demands of sustainability training on a national scale, leading on the delivery of sustainability training and accessing those operating in industries far removed from the “green sector”.

Through our expert provision we are able to train staff while providing adaptable, sector specific examples and practical applications of sustainability practices. Through the quality of our technology and expertly developed course content, both the employer and employee can become sustainability champion instantly! And it is the simplicity and accessibility of this resource that will prove key in the fight against environmental disaster. 

Our new suite of fully accredited training courses cover key topics related to environmental sustainability including the control of global warming, reducing carbon emission and efficient energy management, with embedded case studies and activities throughout. Our sustainability content is delivered through two Level 2 Certificates in Sustainability and Sustainability Impact for Work.  The content has been developed to align with the UN’s 17 sustainable Development Goals, addressing the global challenges we face including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity and peace and justice.

Through the first three modules, learners will explore the key principles of sustainable developments, communities and energy management. This content is closely aligned to SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities and SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production. The remaining four modules explore themes of social responsibility for businesses, the principles of waste management, sustainable transport and a module exploring the application of sustainability principles in applicable settings.

Throughout each unit there are opportunities to apply learning, a training approach that allows for the development of competency-based sustainability knowledge and skills that can be aligned to multiple roles and sectors, making learners more employable and able to use the practical skills developed to effect positive changes within society.

The content is aligned to the global context. As well as incorporating the concepts from the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, we have embedded key information from the biggest summits on climate change on an international scale, allow the development of the most relevant and expert sustainability training provision produced to date.

To help transform cultures, systems, communities and societies, this offer is designed to find ways to meet the people where they are, and shrink the distance between the issues we collectively face and the personal choices we make every day.

The courses are available is at no cost, funded by the Government’s Adult Education Budget and will be deployed to schools and institutes across the country through our award-winning learner management system Equal. The development and delivery of such content looks to lead the way in sustainability and climate education on a national scale, encouraging educators and students to equip themselves with the tools necessary to change the direction of the climate crisis now.

This accessible provision and expert content allows employers to embed environmental sustainability into their staff training programmes, providing adaptable, sector specific examples and practical applications of sustainability practices.

The critical element here is the impact of our training. We do not need more people to simply know more things, but rather to feel able, empowered and ready to do more. To meet this challenge, and to address the sustainability skills gap, The Skills Network has developed it’s transformative solutions.

Offering a real word solution through government funded courses, The Skills Network is fighting the climate crisis, allowing employers to align sustainability training to their individual business’ needs and ultimately upskill on mass in these key areas.

The next step?

The EU is applying a requirement that 25% of skills funding must now be allotted to sustainability linked programmes, – this provides a likely forecast to skills funding allocations in the UK. This alongside further Government investment into the Lifetime Skills Guarantee, shows the funding sources in the pipeline for sustainability training provisions in the coming months and years.

The Skills Network is ahead of the curve, acting to fulfil the most critical skills shortage crisis ever seen, through their expertly developed provision.

It’s time for the industry to catch up and join the climate fight together so become a sustainability champion today.

Want to know more? See The Skills Network’s Sustainability training content here https://bit.ly/3tWB9SS

[1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ukraine-invasion-chills-cop26-fossil-fuel-commitments-f0nr2h0kj

Recovering colleges’ latest Ofsted results

Three colleges that have faced significant leadership and financial challenges in recent years had full inspections from Ofsted in February and saw their reports published this week. FE Week spoke to the leader of each college to find out how they got on:

Inspection came ‘too soon’ for Hull College

Lowell Williams

The interim boss of Hull College has said Ofsted’s visit came “too soon” after going through multiple leadership changes since the college’s last grade three report in 2019. 

Numerous scandals have engulfed the college, which resulted in formal government intervention and seven acting principals over the past two and a half years. 

Ofsted inspected the college again in February and gave them a second consecutive overall ‘requires improvement’ rating. 

However, the report rates three out of four of the college’s provision types – courses for apprentices, adult learners and learners with high needs – as ‘good’. 

The area where the college continues to struggle is its teaching for 16- to 18-yearolds. Lowell Williams is in the final days of his second stint as interim chief of the college. 

He’ll hand the reins to Debra Gray, who is moving from The Grimsby Institute (now known as the TEC Partnership), next week. 

Reacting to the report, Williams said the new leadership could have done with more time and called on Ofsted to be more aware of individual college circumstances when deciding when to inspect. 

“We weren’t expecting an inspection so soon. I’m not sure it’s helpful or represents good value for the public,” he told FE Week. 

“In the period between that last inspection in 2019 and now there have been seven people who have acted as the principal of the college, if you count me twice. And there has been a pandemic in between, where the college has effectively closed, really.” 

Williams pressed that the latest new senior team has only been in place for eight months. 

“So, the college’s journey to recovery, after the instability in leadership, and after the pandemic, started in August 2021. 

“Quite what the value is in inspecting the college in March 2022 I’m not sure. That said, ironically, it does show that the college is making huge progress and making huge progress quickly, because three out of four the provision types were good.” 

He added: “I think it would have been better served all round to have had a full academic year. It’s very, very difficult to really improve the provision for young people on full-time study programmes unless you’ve been through a whole academic cycle.” 

Williams called on Ofsted to work more collaboratively with the FE Commissioner’s team and the Education and Skills Funding Agency where there are exceptional circumstances for colleges. 

In its report, Ofsted acknowledged that the college’s senior leadership team have undergone a “sustained period of instability”. 

Williams said the staff at Hull College have been “desperately let down by leadership over time” and it’s their stewardship of the college that has “meant there was still a college there to recover”. 

He added: “I’d like to pay tribute to all the staff for their resilience and stewardship of the college during the period of instability. Finally, the college is looking forward to the future with confidence.”

Delayed city-wide review thwarting progress at Southampton City College

Sarah Stannard

The FE Commissioner’s failure to resolve questions on a college’s financial position has slowed leaders’ progress in improving its quality of education, according to Ofsted. 

Southampton City College’s latest inspection resulted in another ‘requires improvement’ judgment overall. This follows a previous grade three report back in 2018. 

The college is currently surviving on emergency money from the Education and Skills Funding Agency which is due to run out by February 2023. 

The FE Commissioner is working on a city-wide review of Southampton’s FE provision which aims to ensure the positive long-term future of the college. 

However, the college’s principal Sarah Stannard has said the review has taken up much of the college leadership’s time and limited their ability to make “rapid improvements” to tackle ongoing quality issues – something noted in the Ofsted report. 

“We note the inspectors’ judgment that the failure of external decision-makers to resolve questions on the college’s financial position and post-16 education in Southampton has taken up much of the college leadership’s time and has limited our ability to make rapid improvements,” she said.

 “This is very frustrating for all at City College. Staff and students have been made to wait too long for a clear way forward.” Stannard said a clear solution “with a real date” was needed to help college leaders’ work on improving the quality of education. 

“Much leadership time has necessarily been devoted to negotiations with, and representations to, external bodies,” the Ofsted report said. 

“This has slowed progress in other aspects of college improvement. Over the past six years, public debate about the college’s future has also had a negative impact on staff morale.”

Inspectors said that as a result, leaders’ efforts to provide high-quality vocational training for students aged 16 to 18 have only been partly successful. 

Other findings of the report were that senior leaders do not check the quality of education closely enough. 

“Consequently, they have not identified many of the weaknesses that inspectors found during the inspection and have not moved swiftly to put in place effective methods to deal with those that they have identified,” inspectors said.

Cornwall College bounces back to ‘good’

John Evans

The chief executive of Cornwall College has said he is “delighted” after a recent Ofsted inspection found senior leaders and governors have “transformed the culture at the college”. 

Ofsted rated the college ‘good’ – a jump up from a ‘requires improvement’ rating they received in 2019. The college has had its fair share of financial issues, which resulted in a £30 million bailout from government and a controversial campus sale. 

The FE Commissioner later suggested the college should merge with Truro and Penwith College, but it was later decided that both colleges should remain standalone. 

Cornwall College’s fortunes have now turned around, with Ofsted finding that governors, senior leaders and managers have worked “relentlessly to establish the college as an influential partner in the region”. 

“Myself, governors and staff are highly delighted with the result, which is the accumulation of an immense effort from everybody which all comes down to putting the learner at the centre of all your decisions,” chief executive of Cornwall College John Evans, who took over in 2019, told FE Week. 

Evans, who is a former Ofsted inspector, said the college has always had some “brilliant niche provision” and lauded the efforts of staff for the latest Ofsted result. 

Ofsted’s report was largely positive, with inspectors saying that leaders focus consistently on learners and their learning and wellbeing. 

“They place a high priority on the importance of good teaching. Leaders have communicated this message to staff, who share the same high expectations for learners,” they said. 

Evans told FE Week that leaders focused an “immense effort” on improving the quality of teaching learning assessment and the learner experience. 

“The college did many things well, but not consistently. And it was pulling together effectively ten campuses and driving the culture of everybody having an uncompromising ambition for their learners,” he added.

Ofsted slams SEND college for ‘highly inappropriate’ activities

Young adults at a SEND college were taught personal and intimate care in mixed-gender groups and took part in “highly inappropriate” activities, an Ofsted inspection has found. 

The watchdog also found the students with special educational needs and disabilities were tube fed and medicated in classrooms in front of their peers and staff. 

Ofsted published a damning ‘inadequate’ report of the Michael Tippett College, an independent specialist college in Balham, south London, this week. Inspectors uncovered serious failures in safeguarding. 

These included leaders not developing policies for how staff should manage any potential incidents of harmful sexual behaviour. Learners were also left at risk of “significant harm for longer periods than necessary”. 

A council is now reviewing any placements it has with the college in light of the findings. Concerns were first raised at a monitoring visit last year. 

The college has told FE Week that there are no plans for its closure and said that they are making improvements under new leadership. 

“The Michael Tippett College accepts the outcome of the Ofsted report. The inspection team were fair and took the time to explain their judgments,” acting head of the college, Perry Vlachos, told FE Week. 

“The college has recently undergone a great deal of change this academic year, especially at the executive and senior management levels. The college recognises that significant improvements are needed.” 

The Michael Tippett College caters for young adults aged 19 to 25 who have a range of profound multiple learning difficulties or severe learning difficulties – some with autism spectrum disorder. At the time of the inspection there were 41 learners. 

Nearly all were on a three-year preparation for work and life programme. Ofsted found that learners did not benefit from an effective curriculum. 

They said it was poorly planned, and learners weren’t provided opportunities to develop essential skills needed for adulthood based on what they can already do. 

Leaders, trustees and staff were accused of not having sufficient expertise in special educational needs and/or disabilities to ensure that the curriculum was “appropriate and ambitious for learners with complex needs”. 

Ofsted also found a wide range of safeguarding concerns – saying that learners were not always treated with “respect for their dignity”. 

As an example, inspectors cited the fact that when supporting learners with tube feeding and medication, staff did so in the classroom in front of other learners and staff. 

“Teachers teach sensitive topics such as personal and intimate care in mixed-gender groups, and activities are highly inappropriate,” the report added. 

Staff and designated safeguarding leads did not follow their own safeguarding policy to make timely referrals to the adult services duty team when vulnerable learners are at risk. 

“Consequently, learners remain at risk of significant harm for longer periods than are necessary,” inspectors said. 

Safety concerns were previously raised in a monitoring visit that was carried out in November last year, where inspectors found that senior leaders and trustees did not have effective safeguarding arrangements in place. 

Ofsted inspectors did note that the new acting head of college and trustees have begun to improve on some of the “significant weaknesses” identified at the previous safeguarding monitoring visit. 

“As a result, leaders have ensured that appropriate checks are now in place for current staff to ensure that they are safe to work with the college’s learners,” inspectors said. 

Vlachos told FE Week that under his interim management the college is working closely with stakeholders and have begun to “effectively address the issues” raised in the report. 

“For example, regarding safeguarding, we have amended our policy to clarify processes and responsibilities and have completed a whole-staff ‘Prevent’ training.” 

He claimed the college is not in danger of closing and is planning to make the necessary improvements to enhance the future of the college and our students’ outcomes. 

But Lambeth Council, the college’s local authority, is reviewing its relationship with the college. 

A spokesperson said: “The Michael Tippett College in Balham is an independently run specialist education centre located in Lambeth that sits outside local authority control. 

“The Ofsted inspection includes concerning findings and we are reviewing any placements we have at the college.”

DfE slashes grant funding for ETF

The Education and Training Foundation has had millions of pounds of grant funding cut by the Department for Education. 

ETF announced the cuts on Monday, stating that the affected continuing professional development (CPD) programmes include basic skills, essential digital skills, practitioner research, advanced practitioner, and outstanding teaching, learning and assessment. 

Analysis of ETF funding documents by FE Week shows that grants for these programmes were worth £3,226,124 for 2021/22 – marking a 15 per cent cut to the ETF’s overall DfE funding of £21,008,540 for that year. 

It is expected that some programmes previously provided by ETF will be put out to tender by the DfE. 

ETF’s chief executive told FE Week that cuts to its grant do not threaten the future of the organisation, and that the move to switch to more tendering for programmes has been coming for a number of years. 

The charity would not comment on whether the cuts would result in any redundancies. 

The news comes after FE Week revealed in March that the DfE grant for ETF’s practitioner research programme would not be available in 2022/23. 

“The ETF would like to wholeheartedly thank everyone who has made such a success of basic skills-related CPD for FE practitioners over the last eight years,” said David Russell, chief executive of the ETF. 

“It has been a vital source of support, particularly while the sector tackled the challenge of implementing the GCSE resit policy, but it has also been so much more.” 

He said programmes such as the advanced practitioner programme, the outstanding teaching, learning and assessment programme, and the practitioner research programme have been “transformational” for many teachers and trainers. 

“Teachers have told me personally how these programmes ‘rekindled their love of teaching’, helped elevate their professional development, and in some cases were the difference that kept them in the profession,” he added. 

The affected programmes fall under the basic skills workforce grant. In June 2021, the DfE awarded the ETF £3,226,124 for this grant for the period ending March 31, 2022. 

According to the grant letter published on the ETF’s website, total grant funding awarded from the DfE was £21,008,540 for the 2021/22 financial year and included: the SEND further education workforce development grant, basic skills workforce grant, further education workforce development grant, and leadership and governance programme development grant. 

FE Week contacted the DfE to ask why the funding has been cut. 

“We remain committed to supporting FE teachers and the vital work they do in improving achievement in English and maths,” a spokesperson said. 

“We will continue investing in the English and maths workforce in 2022 and beyond. This includes supporting practitioners to test successful and transferable approaches to improving post-16 level 2 English and maths outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged learners.” 

They added that the DfE intends to conduct “competitive processes” to enable new programme delivery to commence during 2022/23, including “expert and sector-led English and maths continuing professional development, as well as robust, large scale research to develop our evidence base of what works”. 

ETF said that since 2014, the DfE’s basic skills grant to the ETF has been of “great benefit to the sector”, providing maths and English CPD support to tens of thousands of colleagues across all types of FE settings. 

The support has included online and face-to-face training; one-to-one and group coaching; networks and events; and specialist advice and support. In 2021/22 alone, the ETF delivered more than 240 training events, ran more than 65 networking events, and reached more than 10,000 delegates. 

The grant has also supported the creation of resources and training opportunities, such as: functional skills mathematics level 1, GCSE English writing, CPD training for teachers, and teaching functional skills maths. 

ETF provided participation figures to FE Week for the Practitioner Research programme and the Outstanding Teaching, Learning and Assessment. For the Practitioner Research programme there were 188 participants between 2018 and 2022. 

The OTLA saw 1,249 participants from 2019 to 2022. The ETF did not provide FE Week with figures for the other affected programmes. 

“It is both rare and excellent for programme support to last long enough to allow them to grow roots in the sector, and achieve sustainable, irreversible change in the levels of professionalism, collaboration and capacity amongst participants,” said Russell. 

“This has certainly been the case here, and the legacy of these programmes will live on strongly. We would like to thank everyone from colleagues in the DfE to our fantastic delivery partners who have been part of this successful journey.” 

“It is the ETF’s continuing mission to help practitioners in our sector find new ways to excel and grow, for the benefit of their learners,” he added.

Shock as half of apprentices drop out

Nearly half of all apprentices dropped out last year, new government data has revealed.   

And revised figures for the year before show the drop-out rate has shot up by a huge amount for 2019/20 after officials fixed an “error” in their original calculations.   

Experts have expressed “deep concern” at the high drop-out rate, which one says would result in a “national outcry” and calls for an independent inquiry if it happened with A-levels.   

The government has admitted that “more needs to be done” as it investigates the reasons behind the issue for apprenticeships.   

National achievement rate tables (NARTs), which show how many apprentices passed, achieved and stayed on to complete their apprenticeship, were published on Thursday morning for the 2020/21 academic year by the Department for Education.   

Also published yesterday were revised NARTs for 2019/20. Original figures for that year were published in March 2021 but had to be removed and recalculated when DfE officials identified a blunder.   

The data includes a breakdown of the figures for those on the government’s new-style apprenticeship “standards”, which are designed to be tougher and of higher quality than the old-style “frameworks” which are being phased out.   

Included is a “retention rate”, which showed 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.   

The figure was even worse in 2019/20: original data said the retention rate for standards that year was 60.2 per cent, but this has now been revised down to 46.6 per cent – resulting in a 53.4 per cent drop-out rate. In 2019/20 the revised drop-out rate for frameworks was 22.6 percentage points lower.   

The overall drop-out rate for apprenticeships was 41.3 per cent in 2019/20 and 41.2 per cent in 2020/21. 

By comparison, latest DfE data shows the drop-out rate for A-levels in 2019 was less than one in ten (8.7 per cent).   

There are increasing numbers of apprentices taking the government’s new-style standards, which makes the high drop-out rate all the more concerning.   

In 2018/19 the proportion of apprentices on standards stood at 18.5 per cent. In 2019/20 that proportion had increased to 46.3 per cent and for 2020/21 the proportion had reached 65.9 per cent.   

Former skills minister Gillian Keegan ordered an investigation into the “astonishingly” high drop-out rate for apprenticeship last year after the fudged 2019/20 figures were published.   

Asked for a response to Thursday’s revised figures and those for 2020/21, a DfE spokesperson said: “Covid-19 had a big impact on achievement rates in 19/20 but even in normal years there are many reasons why people move on from apprenticeships, such as changes in family circumstances or getting a promotion.   

“We have replaced the old style ‘frameworks’ with high-quality ‘standards’ that better reflect employer needs. Standards are rightly more difficult to achieve than frameworks, so lower rates on standards are not unexpected.”   

The spokesperson added that the department is aware that “more needs to be done to ensure as many people as possible complete their apprenticeship when that’s right for them”.   

Speaking to FE Week in February, the DfE’s joint minister for FE and HE Michelle Donelan said another reason for drop-outs is because some apprentices achieve professional qualifications to start a job and are offered employment before they sit their end-point assessment. The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education is now looking to align to apprentices’ final assessments with professional qualifications to remove this incentive to leave early, she said.   

But Donelan insisted there is “no one reason” for the issue.   

Tom Richmond, a former adviser to two skills ministers and now director of think tank EDSK, was shocked by the figures.   

“If half of A-level students were dropping out of their courses before taking their final exams, there would be a national outcry and calls for an independent inquiry,” he said.   

“We should be equally concerned by these new figures on apprenticeships, as they suggest that there could be some fundamental problems with the delivery of apprenticeship standards.”   

Simon Ashworth, director of policy at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said his membership body is “deeply concerned at the high drop-out rate for apprenticeship standards”.   

He told FE Week that although the employer cash incentives for hiring apprentices “successfully” boosted starts, he claimed “Covid-related disruption” has now impacted the numbers completing their apprenticeship.

Yesterday’s data shows the overall achievement rate for all apprenticeships hit 57.7 per cent in 2020/21.   

This was a slight increase on the achievement rate for 2019/20 which now stands at 57.5 per cent after being originally stated as 64.2 per cent before the DfE’s recalculation.   

For 2020/21 the achievement rate on standards was just 51.8 per cent, while in 2019/20 it was 45.2 per cent.   

The St Martin’s Group, which comprises some of the country’s largest apprenticeship training providers and employers, warned that the data could deter people and businesses from starting an apprenticeship.   

A spokesperson said: “Thursday’s achievement rates will not surprise many in the sector as they have been significantly affected by Covid and by people leaving and moving jobs, especially in longer apprenticeship standards.   

“Unfortunately, these rates could negatively impact the perception of apprenticeships, making it more challenging to attract prospective apprentices and increase the number of businesses offering them.”   

Provider-level achievement rates have not been included due to the disruption caused by the pandemic. But they will be shared with Ofsted.   

Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, told FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference last week that low achievement rates on their own will not result in lower inspection grades. 

‘Frustrating’ for some but ‘not surprising’: ESFA extends AEB contracts for one more year

National adult education budget (AEB) procured contracts are being extended for another year, the Education and Skills Funding Agency has announced.   

Training providers that were successful in a controversial tender to win adult education funding from central government in 2021/22 will have their allocations renewed into 2022/23 for one year.   

In total, £74 million was allocated to private providers this year, which was down by one-fifth on the £92 million in the last AEB tender from 2017.   

FE Week analysis shows the number of private providers with a direct ESFA AEB contract has now shrunk by almost 60 per cent, from 208 to 88.   

Several long-running providers who missed out on the contracts previously accused the ESFA of using last year’s AEB tender process to “manoeuvre its hidden agenda” of shrinking the private provider market – as they spoke out about “horrendous” bid rejections.   

There has been a mixed reaction to the announcement that there will be no new procurement for 2022/23.   

Mark Dawe, chief executive of The Skills Network, said: “After the disappointment of missing out on a contract in the last procurement by one mark, and no real explanation as to how we dropped marks, we would obviously like to go for it again.   

“However, I’m not sure the sector could take another procurement at the moment after the mess we had to endure last year and the disruption it causes. The ESFA needs to get their procurement processes right before they run another one.”   

Simon Ashworth, director of policy at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said the contracts extension is a “sensible decision”, given the “difficulties” of procurement last year.   

“An extra procurement exercise covering a single year period would have resulted in a disproportionate level of disruption as well as unnecessary added costs for providers and taxpayers,” he added.   

Jill Whittaker, managing director of HIT Training, said the contracts extension is “not exactly surprising” but expressed frustration at the decision.   

“As a provider who lost their AEB contract of 15 years last year due to a submission error that left the information incomplete, I am very disappointed at not having the opportunity to rectify the situation,” she told FE Week.   

The majority of HIT’s AEB was used for functional skills. Whittaker said her provider still has large volumes of these learners, and the only current option is to put them on to an apprenticeship instead, which she says is a “mammoth task” and “off-putting” for some. 

The skills bill endgame ushers in a new age of paternalism

The skills bill brings to a head over four decades of state-ist beliefs, writes Tom Bewick

The skills bill has entered the last of its parliamentary stages, known as ‘ping-pong’. This rather cute verb, like the game of table tennis, is an apt way of describing the battle of wills now under way between the elected Commons and the appointed House of Lords.

Considering the government has a majority in the Commons, and the most seats of any one political party in the Lords, the outcome has never been in doubt. Ministers and senior officials will get their way.

But it is worth reflecting perhaps on why the government has endured so many defeats in the upper house. A number of chunky amendments have passed with cross-party support, only to be overturned in the Commons.

When historians come to look at this landmark piece of legislation they may wonder why two towering titans of post-war education reform ̶ Lord Baker (Conservative education secretary, 1986-1989) and Lord Blunkett (Labour education secretary, 1997-2001) ̶ found themselves in such agreement trying to change so many aspects of a fundamentally flawed bill.

From the get-go, ministers have been clear that their desire is to give themselves and related quangos more statutory powers to design, fund, defund and direct technical education reforms from the centre.

As Baker observed in his speech last week: “At no stage have any government or minister said that a student cannot take two qualifications that are funded and available. This has never happened before in our history, so why is it being done now? The government have never justified this, and it is extraordinary.”

Similarly, despite the introduction of local skills improvement plans, officials in Whitehall will ultimately sign them off.

Amendments were tabled to significantly strengthen the role of elected mayoral authorities, but what we’ve got instead is watered-down devolution.

The same is true of qualifications reform. The view appears to be that colleges, course leaders and learners cannot be trusted to make informed choices.

Students in future will not be able to combine A-levels and T Levels. It seems we’re entering a new age of paternalism where decisions are best made by the state in the form of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education.

And don’t believe all the hype about this being some employer-driven skills revolution. It’s nothing of the sort.

Don’t believe all the hype that this is an employer-led skills revolution

The parliamentary under-secretary, Alex Burghart, proudly boasts of 250 employers being engaged in the design of these technical education reforms to date.

Is he seriously trying to tell us, in a British economy of 5.6 million firms, that a cohort equivalent to just 0.0045 per cent of all employers is some groundswell example of popular reform?

No, this is a top-down technocratic revolution that brings to a head over four decades of state-ist beliefs that the answer to our relatively poor productivity and skills performance is more bureaucracy. It does not matter if the ministers are Labour or Conservative.

The architect of these reforms, Lord Sainsbury, wrote a book in 2020, praising the authoritarian impulses of the Chinese Communist Party. What more need I say?

Indeed, without any apparent irony about who has been in charge this past decade, chancellor Rishi Sunak recently lamented the UK’s comparative inability to equip adults with vocational technical qualifications, and the fact employers invest about half the European average on workplace training.

Of course, the government would say the post-16 skills and education bill is the answer. Instead we will end up with an imperfect law that future generations will be able to build on.

For instance, the genie is out of the bottle on the lifetime skills guarantee. It’s only a matter of time before we see a statutory right to lifelong learning.

As in all great parliamentary and policy battles, the committed among us will live on to fight another day.

Highlights from Annual Apprenticeships Conference 2022

In this special souvenir supplement, the FE Week team round up the highlights of the 2022 Annual Apprenticeships Conference.

Over two days in Birmingham, more than 1,000 delegates and exhibitors got together for the first time in two years to discuss, learn and debate the big issues in apprenticeships. The sense of excitement and, in a way, relief that the event could go ahead at all reflects a sector that is eager to move forward from the challenges on the pandemic. 

That eagerness and enthusiasm was palpable. If you were a delegate at this year’s AAC, I hope you find that reflected in the pages of this special FE Week supplement. 

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Focus on vocabulary, and you improve attainment across subjects

Staff can prevent ESOL learners from needing to stay an extra year if they get targeted vocabulary interventions early, writes Saqib Brook

Vocabulary and attainment are tightly linked in education. We know this – the research proves it. As far back as 1995, Hart and Risley showed that the size of learner vocabulary related to their academic success.

At my college, like at many others, we have plenty of students from overseas, including from Syria, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. Soon, we also expect to welcome students from Ukraine.

For many of these students, English is not always their second language but sometimes their third or fourth. 

Understandably, many students have good skills in maths and science, but their English needs improving.

This includes understanding basic vocabulary, but also idioms. For instance, they might think someone literally means it when they say “I’ve got butterflies in my stomach”.

But there is also a culture gap. Some students come from classrooms where they haven’t been encouraged to discuss and debate. Without the right vocabulary, they are even less confident about doing this.

All this causes real problems for students in terms of attainment. They may get good A-levels, but if they do not make their GCSE English grade, they will be prevented from further study. For more competitive courses at university, such as medicine, they will need a grade 6 in English GCSE.

So I set up a project to improve the literacy of our students who are English speakers of other languages (ESOL). About 85 of our 150 learners are ESOL.

I started the project in September by delivering four staff development sessions on literacy attainment effectiveness.

We did an initial literacy assessment of the students in September, another in January, and we obtained student feedback. These showed we were closing the gap in literacy attainment and that students felt more confident.

This improvement also translated into the sciences, where students need a good flow of language to answer six-mark questions, for example.

So how can you do it?

Alongside more targeted teaching, consider what material to give students to read.

Teen fiction does not offer the academic vocabulary needed for high-level GCSE and A-level.

You can also encourage students to read academic subscription magazines. These can be extension activities and provide a more rewarding alternative to ‘extra work’. With online platforms such as Teams, you can also link to subject-specific literature databases in channels. 

Encourage students to read academic subscription magazines

Use vocabulary books and give students ownership of how they utilise these – some may wish to section alphabetically, while others may prefer to categorise by topic and use pictures.

Exposure to subject-specific vocabulary can be done through low-stakes assessment, such as quizzes ahead of an essay.

In my science lessons, my students keep a list of command words (explain, suggest, describe, etc) on file, and they look up their meaning before attempting a question in an exam. Eventually, students can be weaned off this support.

It is important to not overkill the errors made by ESOL students, as this will only demotivate them. Instead, ask them to proofread their work and identify their errors.

Develop oracy through discussion, and teach active listening skills, such as finding key information in a podcast.

When using idioms, do explain them, so that “taking a rain check” is not taken literally.

Most importantly, get their names right! This will convey respect and inclusion. If you can pronounce Tchaikovsky, you can also pronounce Abdulrahman.

Also, make sure staff are onboard. Get staff feedback early on, so any issues around workload can be resolved.

I’m delighted about how this has helped. One of our students from Hong Kong, for example, was doing very well in maths but was going to have to spend an extra year at college to get their English.

Because of this project, they don’t have to stay another year but can move on to their next steps.

Vocabulary is so important. It should be a core part of our teaching – ESOL students particularly, but for all students.