A principal has hailed the hard work of staff and students after her sixth-form college retained an Ofsted ‘outstanding’ judgment over 15 years since its last inspection.
Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridgeshire was lauded by inspectors for creating a “highly ambitious and inclusive community” in a report published this week that resulted in grade ones across the board.
Principal Jo Trump said: “Delivery of educational excellence is about enduring habits and values that have students at the heart of everything. And we do that so well, Ofsted or no Ofsted.
“Throughout every aspect of our work with young people, we strive for excellence, and it’s wonderful to see the hard work of our staff and students recognised in this way.”
‘Outstanding’ schools and colleges began to be inspected last term for the first time since 2010, after an exemption was removed last year.
Hills Road Sixth Form College was last inspected in November 2006.
In the latest inspection, Ofsted found that students “consider it a privilege to study” at Hills Road and “enjoy studying alongside other like-minded students who challenge and inspire them”.
Students also have a “strong work ethic and dedicated focus to achieve the very top grades of which they are capable”.
The college’s “highly ambitious, inspirational and effective curriculum” was also recognised by Ofsted, which found that learning extends “well beyond… academic expectations” by, for instance, creating a “wealth of enrichment opportunities that are highly effective in building students’ character in preparation for their next steps”.
Ofsted said the college teaches around 2,640 level 3 students aged 16 to 19, and there are 13 students with high needs.
Thirty-five A-level subjects are on offer. Inspectors found the college maintains curriculum breadth by supporting small class sizes in specialist subjects, such as dance, Latin, history of art, German and geology.
The college was praised for “extensive investment in specialist tutors, whose role is to support students to cope with such a demanding curriculum”.
Teaching staff were described as “enthusiastic, skilled and highly qualified in their subjects” and who “use their knowledge and skills to successfully inspire and motivate students”.
Senior staff were found to “encourage and achieve extremely high levels of collaboration with parents and carers” as leaders “recognise the considerable benefits of involving and informing parents in their decision making and student progress monitoring”.
Within the college’s provision for students with high needs, “staff are highly proficient and extremely proactive in planning the curriculum for students with SEND”, Ofsted added.
“Students with high needs are supported exceptionally well to integrate with their group and gain confidence in their ability.”
Trump said: “We look forward to maintaining and improving on these standards at Hills Road for many years to come.”
The Treasury has denied the apprenticeship levy is under “formal” review, despite the chancellor promising to “consider” and “examine” its effectiveness.
Rishi Sunak delivered his spring statement on Wednesday and told the House of Commons he would “consider” whether the current tax system, including the operation of the apprenticeship levy, is “doing enough to invest in the right kinds of training”.
Final decisions from this apparent review are set to be announced in the autumn budget, he told the chamber.
Accompanying documents published after Sunak’s speech added: “The government will consider whether further intervention is needed to encourage employers to offer the high-quality employee training the UK needs.
“This will include examining whether the current tax system – including the operation of the apprenticeship levy – is doing enough to incentivise businesses to invest in the right kinds of training.”
But in what one expert described as a “bizarre” backtrack, the Treasury has now played down the review when FE Week approached the department for further details.
FE Week understands the prospect of a formal review into the apprenticeship levy is strongly opposed by officials in the Department for Education who, sources say, pushed back against the Treasury following yesterday’s spring statement.
The Treasury has now said: “There will not be a formal review of the apprenticeship levy or system.
“All taxes are under constant review and we will continue to engage with businesses on the levy. We are committed to protecting the quality of apprenticeship training and improving the system to respond to the legitimate concerns raised by employers.”
Calls for greater flexibilities of the apprenticeship levy have come from employer representatives for years, with various groups welcoming yesterday’s news, as many want to use funds for other training courses and associated apprenticeship costs, such as travel and wages.
Ed Reza Schwitzer, who worked in the DfE for six years before becoming an associate director at public policy think tank Public First, said he suspects the chancellor is likely to announce a “discrete tax credit” in the autumn budget, rather than wholesale change of the apprenticeship levy.
“From what I can pick up from government, this is fundamentally about looking at the skills landscape more broadly and how the current tax system does or doesn’t incentivise the best possible behaviours from business in terms of training and retraining,” he told FE Week.
“Whether this was clear in the original statement is definitely up for debate, but I’m assured that while Treasury will want to ensure any proposed changes work well in tandem with the existing levy set-up, they are not intending to substantially unpack the levy itself.”
He added: “Given the chancellor is clearly working to develop his own personal brand and ‘offer’ to the electorate, I would suspect what would suit the chancellor most is to announce a discrete tax credit of some sort in the autumn budget.”
Tom Bewick, chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, said it was “frankly bizarre that the chancellor would tell parliament on one day that he was reviewing the levy, only to be flatly contradicted by government officials the next”.
Bewick said no one is expecting the levy to be scrapped, or for an entirely new system to be adopted, but to “try and pretend there is no discussion to be had about the efficacy of the levy is to be tone deaf to what has actually happened to the performance of English apprenticeships” a decade on from the Richard Review.
The Institute of Directors called on the Treasury to clarify its plan for engaging with business on this issue as it believes greater flexibilities are needed in the levy, which was echoed by the Confederation of British Industry.
Jane Hickie, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, urged for details of any type of review to be made available as quickly as possible.
And Toby Perkins, Labour’s shadow skills minister, said the apprenticeship levy itself “demonstrates the government’s chaotic failure to deliver a plan to drive forwards the training opportunities needed to help individuals and the economy prosper”.
Rishi Sunak has announced that he will review the apprenticeship levy.
In his spring statement today, the chancellor said a review of the apprenticeship levy will be part of a new Treasury tax plan, which will be finalised in the autumn.
“We lag international peers in adult technical skills. Just 18 per cent of 25-64 hold vocational qualifications, a third lower than the OECD average,” he told the House of Commons.
“And UK employers spend just half the European average on training their employees
“So we will consider whether the current tax system including the operation of the apprenticeship levy is doing enough to incentivise businesses to invest in the right kinds of training.”
Treasury documents published just after Sunak’s speech outlines the government’s new ‘Tax Plan‘. The plan has four themes; cost of living, capital, people and ideas.
Under ‘people’, the Treasury states that “the government is increasing skills funding significantly over the parliament. We want businesses to do the same.”
Calls for flexibilities of the apprenticeship levy have come from employer representatives for years, with various sectors wanting to use funds for other training courses and associated apprenticeship costs like travel and wages.
The Treasury appear to have heard calls for reform. In the main spring statement document, it states: “The government recognises that employers have frustrations with the way that these apprenticeship levy funds can be spent within the apprenticeships system and is delivering a suite of improvements to address these.
“As part of this, the government is looking at how more flexible apprenticeship training models can be supported, while ensuring apprenticeships remain a high-quality training route for employees of all ages and stages of their career.”
Skills sector bodies however have warned against going too far in providing employers with greater levy flexibilities.
Responding to today’s announcement, the chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, Jane Hickie, said: “We would strongly advise that levy funding should remain ring fenced for training and assessment only.
“We look forward to seeing more details about the government’s plans to boost training investment and productivity rates by reforming the apprenticeship levy. Like everybody else, employers and training providers face rising costs over the coming months. Training providers will be disappointed there is little in today’s statement that offers the support they need.”
And speaking at yesterday’s FE Week Annual Apprenticeship Conferece, Association of Colleges boss David Hughes said it would be an “unmitigated disaster” to add radical flexibilities to the levy.
“The funding in the apprenticeship levy is for apprenticeship training, not for things like wage subsidies,” he said.
“I think it could be a really dangerous line to go down. In my view the levy is a tax to pay for training that leads to apprenticeships, it’s really simple. We shouldn’t let it be spent on other things.”
Tom Bewick, the chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, said the review of the levy was the “most welcome” in today’s spring statement.
“The brutal fact is that this payroll tax, levied on just 2 per cent of British companies, has not delivered on its original policy goals because we have fewer people and companies, overall, engaged in apprenticeships than we did in prior to 2017,” he said.
“We look forward therefore to making positive proposals to the government of how to improve the operation of the levy, but crucially, to bring an end to the decline in employer investment in training which has halved over the past decade.”
The winners of the 2022 Annual Apprenticeship Conference Awards have been revealed at a glitzy ceremony in Birmingham.
From a record-breaking 370 awards entries, judges have selected 24 award winners and 12 highly commended recipients. Categories included awards for diversity in apprenticeships, SEND apprenticeships, campaigns that promote apprenticeships as well as 15 sector-specific awards.
Gower College Swansea scooped two awards, taking home care services apprenticeship provider of the year and the SEND apprenticeship champion award.
Shane Mann, managing director of FE Week’s publisher Lsect and AAC awards co-host, said “Tonight we’ve proved that there is so much to celebrate in the apprenticeships sector.
“The providers, employers and individuals we’ve recognised tonight represent the innovators, risk-takers and pioneers that are not only doing amazing things for apprentices, but are also proving that apprenticeships are a first-rate pathway through education.
“Congratulations to all the winners and thank our team of amazing judges, sponsors and partners. We couldn’t have done it without them.”
The evening culminated in the award for apprentice employer of the year, won by Lloyds Banking Group, and apprentice provider of the year, won by Realise.
Also co-hosting the awards ceremony was AELP chief executive Jane Hickie.
“The AAC apprenticeship awards are a highlight of the conference every year – and it’s great that AELP and FE Week have been able to work together to put this event on once again.
“I would like to send congratulations to all the finalists but especially to the winners. The last 12 months have been tough for many apprenticeship providers as we have come out of the pandemic, so it’s even more remarkable that the entrants were so strong this year” she said.
Students staged a mass walk out and a governor resigned yesterday after their college introduced what they call “stop and search” security checks – with some promising more protests are to come.
City and Islington College in London started conducting random security checks at the entrance to its sixth form campus on February 28, something leaders said was necessary because of a rise in knife crime.
The policy change has been met with strong opposition from both students and staff who say that the measures amount to “stop and search” tactics used by the police – a term the college disputes.
Students who spoke to FE Week said they feel “violated” by the checks.
A campaign against the policy has been ongoing since its introduction. But students said that following the scandal around Child Q, where a 15-year-old black girl was strip searched, they decided to stage the walkout.
Some 150 to 200 students attended the protest according to the college. FE Week has also learnt that a student governor on Capital City College Group’s quality oversight committee – the parent group for the college – has resigned over the issue.
Justifying the college’s decision Kurt Hintz, City and Islington College’s principal said: “There have been incidents resulting in injury or death of young people, including students of our colleges in London.
“As one of London’s largest sixth form colleges, our duty is not only to educate and inspire our students, but to do whatever we can to keep them safe while they are in our care.”
The checks take place on average about once every couple of weeks, on a random day. A system then randomly sends 10 to 20 per cent of students for a search when they check-in at college.
If a student is selected for a search, their bags are checked and a metal detecting wand is passed over them – something the college likens to a visit to a museum or an airport.
For those students who are selected for the check, the security screening is conducted by a specially trained security person and that person should be the same gender as the student – a rule which hasn’t been adhered to every time.
The check is also overseen by a member of the college’s curriculum or student support team of the same gender as the student.
“It seems that the first time the checks were carried out at this site, some students may have been checked by someone not of their gender, but the process is completely non-invasive, and at all times a same-gender member of our non-security staff was present during the checks,” a spokesperson for the college said.
The spokesperson said that students who do not wish to participate in the screening on the day are not able to access the site that day but can return the very next day for lessons as normal. No-one is being suspended or excluded as a result.
Hintz said students had every right to protest and said he welcomed the focus on knife crime in London and the “important debate that these additional security checks have brought about”.
However, one student who spoke to FE Week who did not want to be named, argued there’s a culture in college that assumes the guilt of young people before anything has been proven.
“It happens a lot, when teachers are suspicious of students for carrying knives, before they’ve even found anything,” they said.
“It feels like we’ve been violated because we’ve basically been told we are more likely to be carrying knives or weapons.” they added.
A spokesperson from the college said that students and parents had been properly consulted.
“The topic of the additional security checks was then discussed with students in a range of meetings, including a students’ union meeting on February 25,” they said.
The college also wrote to parents and students on March 17 and explained the rationale behind the process.
But students from the college told FE Week that they weren’t consulted properly.
“It felt like one day we turned up, and it was in place — we weren’t given enough of a warning, nor were we widely consulted,” they said.
Do students at the college feel safe?
The college carried out a survey of 987 of its students and found that 63 per cent said the checks made them feel safe.
However, a student from the City and Islington College told FE Week that the security measures had the opposite effect.
“For me, personally, I don’t feel safer if when I come into college I have to be searched. I’ve never felt unsafe in college before,” they said.
“The college is really welcoming. The teachers are really lovely. And the college has been great throughout Covid and throughout the two years I’ve been there.
“I’ve never felt unsafe inside the college. But as soon as they started to introduce stop and search, I started to feel unsafe, because I felt like at any point I could be pulled up and I could be searched and my personal space could be violated.”
A group of students who are running a campaign called “nostopandsearchcandi” against the security measures told FE Week that the measures were “heavy-handed”.
“We do not believe the system enforced by our college is actually keeping us safe, but instead it’s causing a sense of unease and fear.”
Poor reading education at prisons is an “enormous and enduring problem” Ofsted’s chief inspector has said as a new review by inspectors finds reading education at prisons is “minimal at best”.
Ofsted and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) carried out a joint review of reading education in prisons- the results of which were published today.
Inspectorates sought to understand how prisoners’ reading is assessed, what provision is in place and how much progress prisoners make.
Inspectors found that reading education is not given sufficient priority in the prison regime and that much education provision was not organised in a way that supports prisoners to improve their reading.
According to the report the curriculum at prisons was not well designed to improve reading and that prisoners with the greatest need to improve their reading generally received the least support.
“This research shines a light on the reading education that prisoners are getting, or in most cases, the lack of it,” said Amanda Spielman, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Ofsted.
“There are some serious systemic challenges, as well as plenty of poor practice. Little progress has been made in the priority of education since the Coates Review in 2016.
“I want Ofsted, with the prison service and wider government leaders, to be part of the solution to this enormous and enduring problem.”
Last September, the inspectorates committed to carrying out a year-long review of prison education, which included this research into reading in prisons.
Ofsted jointly visited six prisons to carry out the research. Its findings are based on interviews with senior prison leaders, leaders in the education department, teachers, librarians, prison officers and prisoners.
The regulator reviewed curriculum plans and assessment data, visited classrooms, education departments and prison libraries, and spoke to prisoners in their residential units.
“Our study highlights the systemic barriers that prevent prisoners from receiving effective support to acquire or improve their reading skills,” Ofsted said.
Inspectorates found that leaders’ focus was on enrolling prisoners on courses aimed at gaining qualifications, even though up to 50 per cent of the prisoner population could not read well enough to take part.
“As a result, prisoners who need the most support with education are largely overlooked,” Ofsted said in a statement.
Ofsted said that in most prisons, the curriculum is not focused on reading but on practising for exams and prisoners are not encouraged to enjoy reading, to apply their reading skills across their life, or to “read whole books”.
The report goes on to say that many staff did not know how to teach reading.
“This lack of adequate reading education means that quality support has been left to voluntary organisations or enthusiastic staff members,” Ofsted said.
Inspectorates also found that prisons do not have systems in place to identify prisoners’ reading needs or to track their progress.
In most of the prisons visited for the research, routine phonics screening assessments were not being used to identify the gaps in prisoners’ knowledge and skills, and information on prisoners’ learning was not routinely shared with other prisons.
“The failure to teach prisoners to read or to extend the literacy of poor readers is a huge missed opportunity. It means many prisoners do not get the benefits of reading while in prison,” said HMI Prisons Chief Inspector, Charlie Taylor.
“And it means that many will fail to learn the essential skills that will help them to resettle, get work and make a success of their lives when they are released.”
Concerns were echoed by others across the sector.
Peter Cox, managing director of Novus, a provider that delivers education, training and employability services to offenders across the UK, said that reading is a “fundamental skill” and the starting point for learning.
However, he noted that many prisoners arrive in their cells unable to read.
“The biggest obstacle to improving literacy among prisoners is the available budget for prison education, which does not meet need,” he said.
“At present, the hourly funding rate for male prisoners is around 17 per cent of the equivalent rate for students in community-based adult education.
“Prison education has a proven impact on reducing reoffending; according to research by Manchester Metropolitan University, participation in prison education reduces the likelihood of reoffending by around a third.”
Cox called for increasing investment, which he said would reduce the £18 bn cost of reoffending to society each year.
“As the report acknowledges, education providers are mainly funded to deliver qualifications; for those learners who are unable to read, this starting point is beyond their grasp.
“Greater flexibility in education contracts would allow providers to deliver a curriculum focused on need, rather than simply delivering qualifications,” he added.
Francesca Cooney, head of policy at the Prisoners’ Education Trust said the report highlights that prison education is “not good enough and is not the priority that it should be across the prison system”.
“If people leave prison unable to read then we have missed a key chance to help them get a job and turn their lives around.
“The most concerning finding is that learners with the highest level of need receive the least help,” Cooney said.
She argued that supporting learners to read must be a higher priority for prisons and the Ministry of Justice.
“They must focus on reading needs, not just on contractual targets. Funding for prison education must be increased and prison teachers must have more support and training, so that every prisoner gets a high quality education that meets their specific needs,” Cooney added.
Sally Dicketts, who steps down as chief executive of Activate Learning this month, talks to Jess Staufenberg about getting staff development right – and where she found her two life-changing coaches
I clearly remember first meeting Sally Dicketts. It was last year at the Association of Colleges’ conference, where, as president since 2020, she was overseeing one of the first big face-to-face events in many months.
She had on a brilliant red dress, and as I ushered her towards a tiny room for The FE Week Podcast, she noticed great spots of what looked like black bike oil along the hem. “What is that?” she admonished them for a moment. Then she brushed the matter aside, sat down in front of the mic, and gave a fascinating interview. No nonsense, no fuss, straight to the point.
Dicketts’ aura of authority – you can completely see why she was voted AoC’s president – must come from 18 years of being the chief executive of Activate Learning, an Ofsted grade 2 college group with seven colleges across Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Surrey.
Dicketts is stepping down at the end of this month, but in her first interview with this paper back in 2014, she said she thought she might have been passed over for roles earlier in her career because of a lack of “gravitas”, being naturally very “chatty” and without an Oxbridge education. Nowadays, she exudes authority, without throwing it about.
Dickett with her siblings growing up
It’s clear Dicketts has put tremendous effort into developing herself, and her staff in turn, during the past couple of decades – from a girl in Cardiff with dyslexia whose potential was often overlooked, to becoming principal at Milton Keynes College by 1996 and then chief executive at Activate Learning in 2003. Coaching has been instrumental, she says.
She found two long-term coaches – Paula and Nick – herself. Paula she met over a decade ago on a training course run by LSIS, the forerunner to the ESFA.
“They were piloting this very innovative programme and both Shelagh Legrave [now the FE Commissioner] and I were on it. It was unusual because you were there for a day and a night, and one of the tasks was you literally had to talk for 30 minutes about what you were trying to achieve in your organisation,” recalls Dicketts.
“They gave you a coach, and mine was Paula, and she just picked apart all my barriers, very delicately and very impactfully. And I just thought, ‘You’re brilliant’.”
Since then, Paula has coached and supported Dicketts with operations and organisational matters. Meanwhile, her other coach, Nick, has helped her focus on strategy and culture. She found him on a training course at St George’s House in the grounds of Windsor Castle. “He was the facilitator, and he was phenomenal. At the end I asked if he would coach me.”
It must have made an extraordinary difference to have two professional people, external to the college context, to freely bounce ideas and problems with. Dicketts’ determination to keep improving herself seems the opposite of complacent, overconfident leadership.
Dicketts, Angela Richardson MP and local business leader Kathy Slack officially open a training centre at Guildford College
It’s such a priority that she made sure all her senior leaders also got an external coach, paid for by the college group. She additionally appointed a director of coaching who trains middle management staff to coach one another, and in 2020, following the global Black Lives Matter protests, “dual coaching” was introduced.
“I worked with our ethnic minority staff to look at what was happening in our institutions and was horrified at some of the behaviours and a lack of sense of belonging,” she notes. “So those staff who are aspirational are mentored by a senior manager – but the senior manager is also mentored by the member of staff, on what it’s like being in an ethnic minority in our institutions.”
It seems to be working: there has been a 40 per cent increase in staff with black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds applying for and getting faculty manager roles, compared to before the coaching initiative was introduced.
But for Dicketts, her leadership has been about demonstrating that while staff will always be developed, the individual is expected to put in hard work for themselves too. On this, she wanted to set an example.
“For me, if you are a learning organisation, the most senior person should be the best learner,” she explains. “I’m always learning, and I’m still reading.” Right now Dicketts is reading Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown, a former US social worker turned researcher who discusses vulnerability and shame, or a lack of sense of self-worth, and leadership.
For me, the most senior person in an organisation should be the best learner
Dicketts has wanted to boost her staff’s sense of self-worth but has also expected them to take opportunities. It’s the same for students, whom she regularly reminds that “cleverness is like a muscle – it increases the more you use it”.
“Some people might say, ‘Sally Dicketts didn’t give me what I wanted’ – I’ve given you learning opportunities, but I won’t take you there, you need to meet me halfway,” she says frankly.
“For instance, do I want staff to do all the heavy lifting for students? Absolutely not. And that’s the same in how I lead.” Dicketts has hoped to lead by example, always developing herself and taking opportunities, and giving staff opportunities for development for them to take too.
Nigel Huddleston, tourism minister, Dicketts and Nigel Tipple, CEO, OxLEP, open new hospitality and catering facilities at City of Oxford College
One of the greatest challenges of leadership has been what to do when someone is not developing themselves as expected, she continues.
“That’s difficult, when you’re going into an organisation and you’re meeting students who aren’t getting the great deal you thought they were, and for many of them, this is their last opportunity, and they will suffer. We talk about our learning philosophy, and there’s a buzz around that. But if there’s a teacher who doesn’t understand that, and we’ve not enabled that enough, that’s hard.”
Dicketts is admirably frank about her own mistakes as a leader in some of those situations. “Normally the place where you might get it wrong is around people, where instead of challenging them to develop themselves further, you’ve actually made them feel worse about themselves, and that’s not great. Then it’s about trying to resolve that.”
This is why the best and most important continuous professional development for leaders focuses not on the ‘what’ of leadership, but on the ‘how’, she says.
“CPD for leaders has improved, but it can tend to be on the ‘what’, so that leaders must know about balance sheets, cash flows, marketing, which I wouldn’t disagree with, but actually it’s, ‘what are the biggest barriers to the individual succeeding?’ And that’s behaviours. It’s about looking at your behaviour as a leader.”
On this, Dicketts has all the self-insight of someone who has been coached effectively for at least a decade. “So for example, I can do things badly, I can be distracted, I can probably have a grumpy day. If that’s pointed out to me, I will apologise. You have to do a lot of work to see your strengths and weaknesses.”
It’s perhaps unsurprising then, that neuroscience is one of the five “drivers” for the 2021 to 2025 strategic plan that Dicketts is leaving Activate Learning with when she steps down. Understanding the science behind teaching and learning must be a key pillar in the group’s decisions.
The other four are: globalisation (the need to have strong global relationships, as particularly exemplified through Covid, Brexit and the Russian invasion of Ukraine); technology (its importance but also the impact of device use); sustainability (of the organisation and the planet); and wellbeing (particularly since the stress caused by the pandemic).
Dicketts at the Association of Colleges Conference in 2021
Dicketts also leaves Activate Learning the legacy of a new structure, through its academy trust (which opened in 2013 and now has four UTCs and two secondary schools) and a reworked college staffing structure – both moves designed to break down barriers between institutions and to create opportunities for development. It’s particularly her move around her senior leadership structure that pricks up my ears.
“We have a very unusual leadership structure, in that we don’t have college principals,” says Dicketts. In 2015, she replaced the principals of each college with cross-college faculty and executive directors instead, because she was finding that “principals were loyal to their college, not to Activate Learning”.
The faculty directors are responsible for six programme areas across all colleges: technology, lifestyle, creative industries, land-based, life skills; and then A-levels, professional, business and other studies as the final programme area.
We have a very unusual leadership structure
There are also three director roles: a director of pathways, who looks outwards to where learners are headed; a design director, to design the programmes; and a delivery director. “All three have to work very closely together.”
The move has largely worked, says Dicketts, although design directors needed time and training to grasp the role, and she thinks the delivery director role needs tweaking. It’s work for the person who will replace her: Gary Headland, joining after seven years as chief executive at Lincoln College Group.
As a leader, Dicketts has clearly been fascinated by how people develop and learn, driving through new roles, new challenges and free coaches during her tenure as an authoritative, motivated person.
Now, she’s headed for a well-earned break, not planning on becoming an interim college principal, and remaining in post as AoC president. All in all, as she bows out, she’s happy. “The team universally embrace learning, feedback and coaching. There’s a real learning culture.”
In this episode, education journalist Jess Staufenberg explores disability – or differing ability – and what it means as an identity ahead of the long-awaited SEND review.
Join her, and staff and students, from across the sector. Is this sector lagging behind on disability diversity?
Training providers will not be dealt low Ofsted grades just because their achievement rates have declined, the chief inspector has promised.
Amanda Spielman told FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference this afternoon that the watchdog’s new inspection framework “does not require inspectors to use achievement rates to make a judgement”.
Her assurance came hours after the government’s director of apprenticeships, Peter Mucklow, warned the sector that officials “will not be satisfied” with the level of apprenticeship achievement rates when they are published in the coming days.
Spielman said she was aware that the pandemic has caused more apprentices than usual to go beyond their planned end date or even out of funding.
“It’s understandable that many of you are concerned about the impact of this on your achievement rates and how this might affect inspection judgements,” she told delegates.
“Achievement rates are important. Apprentices want to pass their qualification as it is often a passport to their next steps – and that’s a good thing. But please be assured, the framework does not require inspectors to use achievement rates to make judgement.”
The chief inspector continued: “We will not be making judgements of ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ just because your achievement rates have declined during the pandemic.
“What we will want to hear about, and see evidence of, is how your teams of mentors, coaches and trainers are working with apprentices and employers to reorganise training. It’s this that will keep current apprentices making good progress, and get the apprentices who are past their planned end date, or out of funding, through their end point assessment.
“It could mean additional or refresher training, or some reorganisation of responsibilities at work. The outcome that we will be looking for is apprentices who have the skills and knowledge to achieve their qualification.
“Similarly, if achievement rates were poor before the pandemic, perhaps as a result of a poorly planned and taught curriculum, we will want to know what it is you are doing to improve the curriculum and how you know this is working.”
Apprenticeship achievement rates dropped slightly from 64.8 per cent in 2018/19 to 64.2 per cent in 2019/20. However, they were removed in February due to an “error” and will be republished in the coming weeks.
The rates have not been published at institution level for the past two years owing to the pandemic and will not return until 2021/22.
However, while provider-level achievement rates will not be published this year, they will still be shared with providers and Ofsted privately.
