Almost half of learners on the new-style apprenticeship standards failed to successfully complete their programme last year, new figures for 2020/21 reveal.
National achievement rate tables (NARTs) published this morning by the Department for Education show that the overall achievement rate for all apprenticeships increased slightly from 57.5 per cent in 2019/20 to 57.7 per cent in 2020/21.
The rate for 2019/20 has been revised downwards from 64.2 per cent which was calculated in “error” last year (click here full story here).
Today’s data shows that apprentices on old-style frameworks, which are being phased out, hit a 68.9 per cent achievement rate in 2020/21, but the new-style standards only achieved 51.8 per cent.
The revised achievement rate for standards in 2019/20 was actually just 45.2 per cent – compared to the 58.7 per cent originally stated.
The overall retention rate for all apprenticeships in 2020/21 was 58.8 per cent, which drops to 53 per cent when just looking at the retention rate for standards – meaning 47 per cent on standards dropped out.
Responding to today’s figures, a DfE spokesperson said Covid-19 had a “big impact” on the rates but admitted “more needs to be done” to improve them going forward.
“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 promotion,” they said.
“We are pleased achievement rates have improved, but we know more needs to be done to ensure as many people as possible complete their apprenticeship when that’s right for them.”
The spokesperson added: “We have raised the bar to make apprenticeships more rigorous and we are also taking steps to drive up quality and ensure apprentices get a great experience. This includes more support for providers and employers and making sure prospective apprentices get the best possible information, advice, and guidance so they can make informed decision about their futures.”
Commentary published by the DfE alongside today’s data states that care are should be taken when comparing the rates with previous years “due to the effects of the pandemic”.
It said: “A number of things will have impacted the data. For example there was an increase in the number of breaks in learning which meant learners being reported in a different year to the one in which they were expected to complete. In 2018/19 only 6,000 learners were carried forward whereas 24,000 and 28,000 were carried forward in 2019/20 and 2020/21 respectively.”
The statisticians also say it is important to consider the “impact of programme change” in the nature of the provision resulting from the transition of frameworks to standards.
“Standards are designed to be more demanding than traditional frameworks,” they said.
“The assessment process is also more rigorous with a specific end point assessment phase following completion of training designed to ensure the apprentice is ready to do the job they have been trained for.”
In 2018/19 the proportion of learners on standards stood at 18.5 per cent whilst for 2019/20 the proportion had increased to 46.3 per cent. For 2020/21 the proportion has now reached 65.9 per cent.
The overall achievement rate for apprenticeships in 2019/20 has fallen to 57.5 per cent – 6.7 percentage points lower than what the government had originally calculated, revised data published today has revealed.
And the drop-out rate for that year on the new-style standards has increased by 13.6 percentage points from 39.8 per cent to 53.4 per cent.
Original figures for 2019/20 previously published by the Department for Education had stated the overall achievement rate sat at 64.2 per cent, with the new-style standards achieving 58.7 per cent.
The DfE was forced to remove last year’s published achievement rates in February due to an “error”.
Revised figures have been published today and show and overall achievement rate of 57.5 per cent.
The revised achievement rate for standards in 2019/20 is 45.2 per cent, while the rate the old-style frameworks is 68.1 per cent.
Retention for all apprenticeships continues to be an issue: the rate fell from 66.1 per cent in 2018/19 to 58.7 per cent in 2019/20.
The retention rate for standards was 60.2 per cent under the original calculations – meaning that 39.8 per cent of apprentices dropped out before taking their end-point assessment.
But under the reviesed figures, the retention figure has dropped by 13.6 percentage points to 46.6 per cent – meaning there was a 53.4 per cent drop out rate.
The 16 to 19 tuition fund will be opened up next year to students who have not achieved a grade 6 in English or maths GCSE, the government announced today.
But a sector leader has warned this eligibility extension has been introduced too late and predicts “many” colleges and training providers will be forced to return unspent funds.
The tuition fund was first rolled out in 2020/21, backed by £96 million, as part of the government’s Covid-19 education catch-up package.
It was extended into 2021/22 with an additional £102 million. An extra £222 million has since been made available to run over 2022/23 and 2023/24.
The fund aims to support small group tuition for sixth form-aged students in English, maths and other subjects that have been disrupted by the pandemic. Students have so far been eligible if they have not achieved a GCSE grade 4 or 5 in English and/or maths or have a grade 4 or above and are from an economically disadvantaged background.
Colleges, sixth forms and other training providers have complained that the eligibility criteria is too restrictive.
In response, the DfE announced today that from 2022/23: “Students who have not achieved a grade 6 in English and/or maths at age 16 will be eligible to receive tuition support.”
Students in receipt of 16 to 19 bursary funding will also be eligible to receive tuition support next year, “even where they do not meet the current eligibility criteria of living in the 27 per cent most economically deprived areas of the country”.
James Kewin, deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, welcomed the move as it “will ensure more students will benefit from small group tuition”.
But he warned: “As demand for the tuition fund far outstrips the number of eligible students, and as these new flexibilities do not kick in until next year, it means many institutions may still end up returning unspent funds for 2021/22.
“That does not reflect lack of need – quite the opposite – it reflects that narrowness of the eligibility criteria.”
Kewin added that it would make more sense to allow colleges and providers to identify the students that should benefit from the fund and permit any unspent funds from 2021/22 to be carried over into next year.
The DfE also announced today there will be an automatic renewal process for colleges and providers who received 16 to 19 tuition funding in 2021/22. Those who have not yet accessed the fund will need to opt-in through a digital form.
The requirement for colleges and providers to publish a “statement of intent” on how they intend to deliver the fund will be removed next year and replaced with the submission of an “end of year financial report”.
Jane Hickie, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, welcomed the extension of the fund but called on the DfE to go further by opening it up to apprentices.
“This does extend the lack of parity with 16 to 19 year old apprentices who are not eligible for this support,” she said.
“Therefore, AELP would like to see this fund expanded to treat work and classroom based provision equally.”
Central Bedfordshire College is set to merge with The Bedford College Group, it has been announced today.
The two college’s plan for the “strategic” merger to take effect from February 1, 2023.
It is hoped the move will enable Central Bedfordshire College to expand its educational offer and create one “financially strong institution”.
Central Bedfordshire College principal Ali Hadawi said: “This merger will enable us to offer additional courses in a wider range of subjects to a larger number of learners, young and old.
“We will also be able to meet the needs of a broader range of businesses across a wide range of industries locally, hence enhancing their competitiveness and success.”
The Bedford College Group chief executive Ian Pryce added: “We already have a great relationship with the college but this will allow us to deepen and build that relationship to create something very special for our community, employers, staff and students.”
This isn’t the first time Central Bedfordshire College has had its eyes on a merger.
The college had planned to merge with Barnfield College but this was taken off the table in 2017 after comments were made on local ITV news by Central Bedfordshire’s chair James Crabbe which were taken as a power grab.
Central Bedfordshire College’s accounts show it is in a good financial position with a £1.4 million surplus recorded for the year ending July 2021. The college taught more than 3,500 students in the same year. Its total income was £16.4 million. The college is rated ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted.
This could become a model for mergers in the FE sector
Commenting on this new merger, Crabbe said: “I am confident that this merger of our college, with its strong culture of an inclusive, calm and caring environment for learners and staff, will fit well with the ethos of The Bedford College Group, and could become a model for mergers in the FE sector.”
The Bedford College Group was formed in 2017 when Bedford College, which includes Shuttleworth College, merged with Tresham College in Northamptonshire.
The group’s accounts show a surplus of £0.885 million in the year ending July 2021, during a year in which it taught more than 16,000 students. Its total income was £57.8 million. The group is rated ‘good’ by Ofsted.
A spokesperson said for both learners and staff at Central Bedfordshire College it is “business as usual” with classes and courses continuing as expected while management works behind the scenes to “ensure a seamless transition”.
Allan Schofield, chair of The Bedford College Group, said: “The Bedford College Group is delighted to have been selected as the merger partner for Central Bedfordshire College.
“It brings together the two largest post-16 educators in the local authority area and creates a financially strong institution which will allow us to expand the educational opportunities to everyone in Central Bedfordshire and Luton.”
The government’s proposals to reform the SEND system have finally been published – but college leaders have been left disappointed.
Today’s consultation is the government’s response to the SEND review it launched in September 2019.
The Department for Education (DfE) said its new proposals will build a “single, national SEND and alternative provision system” promising “excellent provision from early years to adulthood”.
FE and specialist post-16 SEND providers were hoping to see proposals that would alleviate significant levels of bureaucracy, under-funding and inconsistency in the current system.
The consultation seeks views on a range of proposals including a new national pricing framework and national standards for the planning and funding of SEND and alternative provision services.
There are also plans for digital education, health and care plans (EHCPs), local oversight of new local inclusion plans as well as an open “inclusion dashboard for 0-25 provision” to improve accountability and transparency.
The education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, said that he “wants to end the postcode lottery of uncertainty and poor accountability that exists for too many families, boost confidence in the system across the board and increase local mainstream and specialist education to give parents better choice”.
“I want to make sure everyone knows what to expect, when to expect it and where the support should come from,” he said today.
Yet, FE leaders have expressed disappointment.
The DfE’s consultation highlights how young people in alternative provision and those with SEND achieve poorer outcomes than their peers at every stage of their education. Key stage 4 destination data shows that only 55 per cent of young people in alternative provision sustained their post-16 destination for more than six months in 2019/20.
But today’s proposals do not contain “any recognition of the needs of young people, nor any explicit support for FE” according to Clare Howard, chief executive at Natspec, the representative body for specialist SEND colleges.
“There are lots of positives in the green paper, including the ambition to apply coherent standards to alternative provision, local inclusion plans overseen by DfE, and banded price tariffs for high needs,” said David Hughes, chief executive at the Association of Colleges.
But for Hughes, proposals miss an opportunity to “improve the way funding is fairly and properly allocated” for students, particularly those “whose needs are real but less pronounced”.
And similarly for Howard, there were issues that today’s consultation should have responded to that were missed.
“We have worked hard to impress on the government the need to recognise what’s needed for FE – college capital funding, improved post-education services for young people to prevent the cliff-edge experience of leaving college, investment in specialist careers advisers, the development of a specialist FE workforce – the list goes on. The consultation was an opportunity to shine a light on issues for young people in FE, and it appears to have been missed,” she told FE Week.
The review itself even highlights that of the £2.2 billion extra spent on high needs funding in 2020/21 compared to 2014/15, only £175 million of that increase went on post-16 provision.
Young people with SEN are 25 per cent less likely to be in sustained employment at age 27 than their peers and are more likely to become long-term NEET, the government says.
“There is no point in building a bridge three-quarters of the way across a river, if you want to properly help people to get to their next destination – but that’s what today’s SEND Green Paper does,” Hughes added.
The consultation opens today and closes on July 1, 2022.
Proposals at a glance
Improving SEND students’ transition to FE
DfE says that information about a young person’s needs often holds up transition from one setting to a further education provider.
A proposed set of national standards will include standards for young people’s transition from one provider to another. The consultation document says this will provide “consistent, time, high-quality transition preparation”.
The statutory standards would act as a “common point of reference” detailing what support should be made available in mainstream settings and when an education health and care plan (EHCP) is needed.
For alternative provision, “successful transition to post-16” education and training is listed as one of five proposed “key outcome” measures for a new national performance framework. It sits alongside outreach support, improved attendance, reintegration and academic attainment. An expert working group will be formed to advise the government on developing this framework.
Another proposal is to expand the use of Common Transfer Files so information about a young person’s needs to be more easily shared between schools and FE providers.
Digital, standardised EHCPs
The government wants to introduce standardised, digital education, health and care plan templates to reduce variations between councils and bureaucracy.
They may include photos or videos to give a “holistic picture” of the young person and would allow for “better data collection” – including “anonymous tracking of progress towards outcomes” and prevalence of need.
Local SEND inclusion plans, national funding tariffs
New local SEND partnerships will be established and will produce a local inclusion plan. Partnerships will be formed by local authorities and include education, health and care stakeholders. There’s no explicit reference to requirements to involve post-16 providers in the consultation.
The local inclusion plans will be strategic documents that set out what services are available and what needs to be commissioned in order to meet the new national SEND standards.
Funding to support those plans will be determined by a new national framework of banding and price tariffs. The government says this “should address concerns about the inconsistency in current local authority arrangements” but also recognises the complexities involved. It has committed to small-scale pilots with some high-cost provision before “carefully sequencing” a full roll out.
Careers and employment
The government is proposing to “improved careers guidance” with “better information about the support that is available as [young people with SEND] move in to work”.
However the consultation doesn’t explain in much detail what this will look like, who will have access and at what stage in education.
The consultation does say improved careers support will be delivered via careers hubs “tailored to meet the needs of young people with SEND” which are “currently” supported by the Careers and Enterprise Company.
The DfE also confirms that they will use statutory guidance to force employer representative bodies to say how they will address local SEND employment gaps in their local skills improvement plans.
There is also a commitment to double the number of supported internships over the next three years.
After 62 years, the Leeds College of Building has just appointed its first ever female principal. Jess Staufenberg asks the incoming Nikki Davis what she’ll do to grow the vanishingly small proportion of female learners studying construction
Nikki Davis, currently vice principal at Leeds College of Building, is set to become its first ever female principal in August this year: a small watershed moment in the history of a college set up in 1960.
She will be joining the ranks of the 48 per cent of principals in FE who are women, swelling their number just a tiny bit. In many respects, that percentage is pretty impressive, and one the further education sector has every right to be relatively proud of – after all, that’s almost half.
That proportion is also ahead of other education sectors: according to the latest Association of Colleges figures, only 40 per cent of secondary school headteachers are women, and only 31 per cent of university vice-chancellors. Perhaps the traditional, academic sectors still revere the male brain more than the less traditional, vocational sector, whose whole raison d’être is to champion the underdog.
Davis is clear: time and again in FE she has been encouraged by the professional women around her to be ambitious for herself, with three women acting as key role models. Now, it is Davis’s turn to act as a role model, not only for aspiring female leaders, but, just as importantly, for her students.
Davis with current principal and CEO, Derek Whitehead, and chair of governors Peter Norris
Her college is dedicated to courses in construction (and the only one of its kind in the country), but it has a vanishingly small female learner population: only eight per cent. It will be the biggest challenge of her impending leadership.
Before Davis tells me about the three women who mentored her, she recalls her own mum, a Yorkshire woman who brought up her, her brother and sister, first in Hampshire (Davis says she started off life “with a strong southern accent”) and then in Cheshire. Her father worked with IBM, the technology corporation, and her mum kept the home.
“She had that strength of character: she was definitely the one in charge when I was growing up,” smiles Davis.
Another key influence alongside her mum was sport, with Davis admitting to being secretly “competitive, but only about the things that matter”, doing everything from netball, tennis and athletics to county-level hockey. It was another arena in which she could build her confidence as a young woman.
But it was perhaps a move by her dad which deeply impacted on Davis’s self-belief and skillsets. It was New Year’s Eve, and the restaurant her older sister worked at rang to say they were short-staffed.
“My dad said, ‘Go and work with your sister,’ and packed me off. I had literally just turned 13!” she laughs. “I don’t know if that was allowed, and I don’t think I was meant to still be working at midnight, but I actually loved it.”
The story might shock some educators, but the sense of autonomy and challenge the experience gave Davis is arguably not what schools are known to excel at providing for their pupils. “At school, you’re sat down, you’re told what to do, what to think, but in the work environment you have to think for yourself. I look back now and I think, that’s where it all started.
“Hospitality gives you so many skills. You had to work under pressure, and it was busy and hectic and you’re talking to a lot of people. It was managed chaos.”
Davis (fourth from the left) playing hockey as a teenager
Davis muses that nowadays, many young people she knows are only just developing those skills aged around 16 or later. “There’s something missing,” she tells me, “around building up that experience and those skills earlier on.”
With those six years of restaurant experience, Davis then got into Leeds Beckett University to study hospitality and business management, with a plan to get into top roles in the industry.
This takes us into a brief sideline in our conversation in which she strongly criticises the Department for Education’s plans to prevent students who have failed English and maths GCSEs from attending university, as well as threatening to defund what they term as “Mickey Mouse degrees”.
“Who are they to say what those are?” she says bluntly. “If they want to limit access to university to those groups we should probably be encouraging to go, then this is how to do it. It’s completely wrong.”
Anyway- after her degree, the long and anti-social working hours in the hospitality industry seemed unfeasible, and so aged 24 Davis studied a PGCE at Leeds Trinity University in business and economics, specialising in 14-19 education. By complete fluke, one of her two placements was in FE, at Leeds City College.
“I didn’t like the school placement, and if it wasn’t for the experience of the college placement, I probably would have left.” This suggests that in order to recruit more staff to the sector, an obligatory teacher training placement in FE might not be a bad starting point for the DfE.
A cheque being presented by West Yorkshire deputy mayor, Alison Lowe
From then on Davis rapidly climbed the ladder, taking on big workloads and responsibilities as she went: first a lecturer in business and economics at Calderdale College in Halifax from 2002 until 2005, then head of department for business and enterprise at Park Lane College (now a campus with Leeds City College) until 2010, then another head of department role at Kirklees College until 2015, then vice principal at York College until 2019, before she joined Leeds College of Building.
En route, Davis met three important women. The first was Joyce Wilson, her mentor as a newly qualified teacher at Calderdale College.
“Joyce told me that if you want to progress, you need to move and keep moving, because experience in different places is important,” explains Davis. It was advice she clearly took. “She was also very supportive. Your first teaching role is hard, and she was brilliant.”
This more gently supportive approach was different to her next role model, Vicky Slater, her line manager at Park Lane College.
“It was a very different style of management, very straightforward, no nonsense, very black and white,” smiles Davis. “People might have thought she’d be difficult to work for, but she wasn’t. If you worked for her, you really enjoyed it, because she was very clear what the expectations were.”
Having experienced these two differing leadership styles, it was at York College, under then-principal Alison Birkinshaw, that Davis learnt the value of a leader being comfortable with their own style (on her retirement, the York newspaper The Press described Birkinshaw as “exceptional”).
“I learnt so much from Alison about what matters, especially that you do leadership how you want to do it, otherwise it’s not authentic to you.” The attention to detail and depth of experience when making decisions was amazing, says Davis.
You have to do leadership how you want to do it, otherwise it’s not authentic
Birkinshaw would email around, for instance, having spotted the only student out of hundreds off timetable. “You’d think, how did she see that?” Davis laughs. “It was an incredible level of detail. It was all about doing what was right for the college and the learners.”
Having been surrounded by challenging and high-quality environments – from her restaurant right through the FE sector – Davis has made it to the top in two decades. What are the challenges ahead?
The first, of course, is staffing. The college currently has 15 lecturing vacancies out of 200 lecturing staff, and it’s not helped by a booming construction industry trying to recruit for big national infrastructure projects, such as HS2.
“Our ability to compete with the construction industry is impossible, particularly with the cost of living crisis,” says Davis frankly. Because of the shortage of staff, the college is having to pay some staff overtime, or simply not lay on courses. One of her first tasks from September will be “looking at our people strategy in depth”.
Female students at Leeds College of Building
The other big focus will be increasing the diversity of entrants to the construction industry, partly by recruiting more female and minority ethnicity learners. To me it seems extraordinary that I’ve still never seen a woman in a hard hat on a building site.
That’s partly why it’s important to recruit more female staff, according to Davis: all of the female lecturers except one are on the “professional” courses, such as civil engineering, with only one female lecturer on a construction craft course, such as carpentry, joinery or plastering.
It’s about considering who you’re sending into schools
Meanwhile the college also wants to keep reducing its gender pay gap, which was 18.7 per cent in 2021. Across the sector, the college gender pay gap was 10.5 per cent in 2018/19, according to the ETF.
To tackle these inequalities, the college needs to do more to “challenge some of the norms of the industry,” says Davis. She wants employers to get much more involved in meeting school students, putting forward female and minority ethnic speakers as much as possible.
“It’s about considering who you’re sending in when you’re promoting the sector, and not reinforcing stereotypes.”
It means that appointing its first female principal, when current chief executive Derek Whitehead steps down, is a particularly important move for Leeds College of Building.
If Davis can lead the charge into schools, perhaps more young women will enter construction – and FE leadership thereafter – in the future.
Moves to withdraw funding from level 3 qualifications that overlap with T Levels will continue as planned as the government sees off another attempt, through the skills bill, to force a delay.
An amendment to the skills and post-16 education bill, which would have prevented the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) from withdrawing funding for level 3 qualifications for at least three years, had achieved a majority in the House of Lords just last week.
However, the government was able to use its majority in the House of Commons on Monday to remove it from the bill.
That amendment was originally tabled in the Lords by David Blunkett, who served as Tony Blair’s secretary of state for education from 1997 to 2001.
Blunkett told FE Week that he “remains absolutely convinced that the introduction of T Levels should in no way be an excuse for withdrawing the choice and opportunity for young people who wish to explore more broad-based pathways to jobs”.
However, he believes there was a “feeling of inevitability that the government would get their way”.
James Kewin, deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association and a leading figure in the #ProtectStudentChoice campaign, said the government has “passed up a golden opportunity to adopt an evidence-based approach to qualification reform”.
“A delay to the defunding timetable would have given ministers time to consider the evidence on both groups of qualifications before making far-reaching, potentially irreversible, decisions about the funding of level 3 BTECs,” he told FE Week.
The bill must now return to the Lords to agree or disagree with the changes made by the Commons this week.
FE Week can reveal that Blunkett won’t push the issue of level 3 defunding any further. “In these circumstances, it would appear to be extremely challenging to continue the standoff with the Commons, but I don’t believe this is the end of the story by any means,” he said.
“All those with a real interest in the future of young people will eventually understand that those of us engaged in seeking to change the government’s mind were thinking about a very different employment landscape of the future, and not some nostalgia for the past.
“We are the futurists, predicting the kind of preparation for work which will be commonplace in ten years’ time.”
As this last remaining issue of contention now appears to have been cleared, the bill is free to receive Royal Assent to become law in the coming weeks.
Government bows to pressure on beefed-up Baker clause
MPs unanimously supported a government-backed amendment to the skills bill that will double the number of mandatory encounters schools pupils have with providers of technical education and apprenticeships.
Training providers and colleges have complained for years that the current law on careers guidance encounters in schools, known as the Baker clause, is not being followed.
Members of the House of Lords, opposition MPs and prominent Conservative MP Robert Halfon have been making the case for months that the government’s original proposal of three mandatory encounters wasn’t enough.
In fact, Halfon recently proposed that the government should insist on nine encounters over a pupil’s secondary school education.
Following this pressure, the government has now changed its own bill and settled on mandating six encounters in the wording of the bill.
Speaking from the despatch box, skills minister Alex Burghart said the skills bill will “boost productivity and level up our country”.
Burghart said the government’s new position “should help ensure that young people meet a greater breadth of providers and crucially should prevent schools from simply arranging one provider meeting and turning down all other providers”.
“The underpinning statutory guidance will include details of the full range of providers that we’d expect all pupils to have the opportunity to meet during their time at secondary school,” he said.
The government has been accused of “throwing in the towel” after officials confirmed the public sector apprenticeship target is to be scrapped.
Under the target, public sector bodies in England with 250 or more staff had to aim to employ an average of at least 2.3 per cent of their staff as new apprentice starts over the period April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2021.
Figures published in November revealed this target had been missed as an average of 1.7 per cent of public sector employees started an apprenticeship over that period. This equated to a combined total of over 220,000 starts.
The armed forces performed the best, achieving an average of 7.9 per cent between 2017 and 2021, while schools were the worst at 1 per cent. The civil service achieved 1.8 per cent.
Last year the government announced the target would be restated for another year – from the period April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022.
Toby Perkins, Labour’s shadow skills minister, criticised the move.
He told FE Week: “After the embarrassment of missing public sector apprenticeship targets last year, the government’s approach is now simply to scrap the target.
“It is typical of this government that, rather than working with the sector to drive up apprenticeships, to ensure that there are more opportunities in the sector, they are happy to throw in the towel.”
In-scope public sector employers will still be asked, but not mandated, to report their apprenticeship numbers. The data will be published annually to “support transparency and external accountability”, the DfE said.
Simon Ashworth, director of policy at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said his organisation was “disappointed” by today’s decision.
“Encouraging, rather than mandating, publication of apprenticeship starts will reduce transparency at a time it is still needed,” he said.
“Given the public sector still needs to improve its record on the number of apprentices it takes on, we would question whether now is the right point at which this guidance should end.”
The target encompassed schools, local authorities, central government and their arms-length bodies, NHS organisations, the armed forces, and emergency services.
Vulnerable refugee learners are being moved around between local authorities, threatening their education, writes Beth Moore
At just 16 or 17 years old, imagine being alone in a foreign country, with no family or friends, few possessions, very little money and being unable to speak the language.
Imagine also that you had been forced to flee your own country due to war or another life-threatening situation.
This is the reality for 145 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in our college, who make up four per cent of our total student population.
Many have come from countries such as Syria and Afghanistan, with little hope of returning, and are in the care of social services.
We have seen this college cohort not only increase in size over the past few years, but the issues we are dealing with have become far more complex.
The unimaginable experiences of these young people are leading to a manifestation of mental health problems, including PTSD, which require expert support.
However, accessing help can be extremely difficult due to the many social, cultural and language barriers these students face.
The complex bureaucracy involved in getting financial support and practical help is difficult enough as it is, let alone for vulnerable learners with very little English.
We work hard to support these students, playing a significant pastoral role alongside our primary task of teaching English. This requires close working with other agencies, including social services and charities.
Sadly, the problems don’t ease when the students reach adulthood. Take Talia (not her real name), who arrived in the UK two years ago. She is studying hard at our college and wants to work towards achieving a degree.
However, when she reaches the age of 18, she will be expected to live independently without the support of her current foster carer.
The problems don’t ease when the students reach adulthood
She is also currently awaiting a response from the Home Office regarding her immigration status. Understandably she is worried and distressed by the uncertainty of her situation.
Another student, Abbas (not his real name), has been struggling with his mental health, alongside possible undiagnosed learning difficulties. When he turned 18, he was offered accommodation with other traumatised and volatile young men – which wouldn’t have been a suitable setting for him at all.
He was then left to find alternative accommodation by himself, which is an almost impossible task for someone so vulnerable and equipped with few English language skills.
Meanwhile, some of our UASC are being moved to completely different areas mid-year – for example, we had one young man who was moved from Kent to Croydon.
This took him away from much-needed friendship and support networks and made it impossible for him to continue travelling to college. This relates to local authorities being under great pressure in terms of housing.
Developing proficiency in English and gaining a qualification is crucial for these young people to build a life for themselves and to integrate into their communities.
We must help them to do this in every way we can – but the ongoing practical issues with accommodation and transport is limiting.
We are living in difficult times, with the unfolding crisis in Ukraine having a wide-reaching impact across our whole college community.
Watching people having to flee their homes is particularly triggering for many of our own refugees, increasing anxiety and stress among students who are already struggling and alone.
We also know that the number of UASC students will continue to increase and this will undoubtedly impact college services.
These vulnerable young people need alternative and differentiated support from the standard processes for looked-after children.
For example, access to interpreters and counselling support in their own language is essential to overcome communication barriers.
Staff also need to be well trained in a trauma-based approach so they can support the students effectively.
Colleges work hard to improve people’s lives on many different levels.
But more recognition and understanding by government of this group of young people, and the complex issues they face, is now needed.
