Staff voices get marginalised in hierarchical workforces

Lecturers for ‘lower ability’ groups are sometimes not treated with the same respect as A-level staff, writes Chantal Brown

We all know that FE is already considered the poor counterpart to HE, secondary and primary learning. But inside FE institutions themselves, does another hierarchy exist?

A hierarchy where teachers rate themselves as more or less superior to their colleagues based on the level and subject they teach? 

And is there a snobbery around teaching certain cohorts, such as “lower-ability” students? Is this snobbery perpetuated by how teachers value their own contributions?

My very skilled colleagues, including all-important support staff, are passionate about giving young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) a broad and stimulating learning experience.

In doing so, I and my team help the voices of young people with SEND to be heard.

Until recently, I thought that marginalisation in FE was all about the students and the challenges many of them face.

It seems ludicrous to think not all teachers are valuing equally the specialisms and expertise of their colleagues. They know first-hand how challenging the profession can be. 

But my experiences reveal a certain ignorance towards SEND as a specialism in FE. 

The term SEND covers a broad and in some ways endless spectrum of adaptation, diagnoses, support and perspectives that really is not transferable from one cohort of students to another. You can’t package up your approach to one set of students and deliver it again, like a level 3 lesson.

Don’t get me wrong. This commentary is by no means a bashing piece on any other teaching area or curriculum level.

It’s more an attempt to call for equal respect for SEND lecturers and practitioners within the already understated position of FE in England. 

We should give all FE specialisms equal respect

It is a conversation I have had with colleagues, asking them how they think the role of the SEND lecturer is perceived. Some have overheard comments that teaching SEND is not “proper” teaching, or that “it’s easier” due to delivering entry-level subjects. 

At this point I would like to raise that, yes, my colleagues and I are experienced in teaching entry-level subjects. At the same time, we also know how to teach level 1, 2 and GCSE. 

Teaching students with very individualised academic, behavioural or emotional needs can be both rewarding and challenging all at the same time. 

Often the young people and adults we teach have had poor experiences in education, been written off by professionals and the system, and have been deemed as having no chance of progression or even employment. 

But it is such a privilege to support learners to overcome barriers to learning, engage with their peers positively, achieve qualifications and develop social and emotional skills and independence. It makes teaching SEND one of the most rewarding specialisms in FE and in education in general. 

There are no exam board-focused schemes of work or lesson plans. Quite rightly, the curriculum is reviewed regularly and adapted frequently, with the learners at the forefront of those decisions. 

Being a teacher of SEND also means there are no single subject specialism on your timetable. You don’t get to focus on teaching maybe two levels in the subject area in which you are qualified or have the most vocational experience. 

Whether it be GCSE maths or supporting learners to access college facilities independently, teachers of SEND have to be flexible and highly professional in all they do. They are representative of the whole ethos of FE.

I share this brief depiction of what typifies some of the key functions of my role in FE, to dispel some of the mystery around SEND.

Many lecturers won’t have the time to find out what SEND teaching is about, and won’t realise how much is involved.

All of us in FE work hard. Really hard. 

The fact a single institution can offer so many modes of delivery, qualifications and opportunities is testament to the variety of professionalism and expertise in the workforce of an FE college. It is most definitely representative of my college. 

So let’s take the time to genuinely appreciate all lecturers – regardless of their specialisms.

Royal charter status for IoTs needs more detailed thought

Royal charter status is not the quick win it at first appears, writes Mark Taylor

The levelling up white paper sets out the government’s plans for successful institutes of technology (IoTs) to apply for royal charter status.

In May last year I commented in this newspaper on the then newly published skills bill. My conclusion was that, while it was welcome news that the FE sector was being given prominence and the promise of better funding, there would be a number of legal and governance issues to work through during implementation. 

I now find myself coming to the same conclusion on plans for IoTs to have royal charter status.

What is a royal charter?

A royal charter is effectively the constitution of a royal charter corporation, in the same way as a further education corporation has an instrument and articles and a company has articles of association.

This means that a royal charter corporation is a separate legal entity (pay attention, that will be important later). 

As you could probably tell from the name, a royal charter is granted by the Queen.

What is the advantage of a royal charter?

The levelling up white paper speaks of putting IoT’s “on the same level as our world-leading historic universities”. The Privy Council Office speaks of royal charter status being a “prestigious way of acquiring legal personality and reflects the high status of that body”. 

So you can see that this is about status and prestige. Having a royal charter can be important because it looks important. It would be easy to scoff at this, but it can genuinely be a useful tool for a body in attracting business (or learners) and working with collaborators (or employers, in this instance).

Royal charter corporations have very wide powers and are subject to less regulation than other types of legal entity. This is all very exciting for a lawyer like me, but it does not make a big difference in the real world.

What issues need to be considered?

The levelling up white paper explains that more detail will be given in the spring on how to apply for royal charter status. 

Here are the issues which I will be looking out for:

You will remember that a royal charter corporation is a separate legal entity: it is a legal thing. Many IoTs (and well over half of those on which I have advised) are not legal entities at all. Those IoTs are set up as a contractual collaboration between colleges, universities and employers. For those IoTs to apply for a royal charter, their model would need to be completely rewritten. This would require planning around contracts, governance, tax and procurement.

Their model would need to be completely rewritten

2.         Who will control them?

Nobody owns a royal charter corporation. Would the institutions that have set up an IoT be willing to set up a body that is very much independent of them? This would present an issue for institutions, particularly if the IoT were to act in competition with the college or university.

3.         IoTs would need to comply with more rules

IoTs do not currently deliver education, they act as a funding and branding mechanism for the individual colleges and universities to themselves deliver education. If that is to change, then IoTs would need to comply with relevant funding rules, for example, around the register of apprentice training providers (RoATP), Office for Students registration and subcontracting rules.

4.         Give colleges royal charter status?

If royal charter status brings the benefit of prestige to the IoT, then what about its members (such as further or higher education corporations) which do not have that status? It could be argued that it would be simpler and would have more effect to give royal charter status to more colleges and universities.

5.         Time and money for applying

Achieving a royal charter is not simple. The application process can take some time, it is not certain to succeed and it would incur cost. Only around half a dozen new royal charters are granted each year.

Any focus on, or funding for, technical education is to be welcomed. Royal charters for IoTs could give the sector a real boost, but this is not the quick win which it may first appear to be.

Is the Teaching Excellence Framework useful – or just another audit burden?

FE providers already evidencing excellence might not need another framework, writes Stephen Corbett

The introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) for higher education has created another mechanism of reviewing FE providers. This, in addition to existing audit mechanisms, such as Ofsted, does raise a question: is it really useful to layer “quality audits” on to FE providers? 

The breadth of provision offered by the FE sector is a real attribute to our education system. One aspect of that offer is university-level studies. This delivers a distinct benefit in terms of choice and opportunities for students.

I’m sure we are in no doubt that it is important students have an excellent learning experience. But mechanisms intended to ensure this are often widely debated.  

Higher education courses offered by FE providers are a small proportion of the sector’s overall provision. About 118,000 students are studying higher education in 162 colleges this year, according to the Association of Colleges. That’s 6.9 per cent of all students in FE.  

By comparison, there were 2.7 million students undertaking HE courses through both colleges and universities in 2020/21 (this year’s data is not yet available). 

While not a direct comparison, it is reasonable to extrapolate that FE providers are responsible for about four per cent of HE students. 

The vast majority of the FE sector’s remaining provision is already subject to continuous external quality review. 

Some higher education curriculum offered by further education providers can fall outside of this framework. However, much is within it, including initial teacher education and higher apprenticeships.

Overall, the provision sitting outside of the current quality framework is limited when considering the overall work of a further education provider.  

Furthermore, it has been necessary for further education providers to meet national higher education quality standards as laid out by the Quality Assurance Agency for higher education and through subject benchmarks.

This is not to say provision being continually reviewed is not valuable. When reviews are done in a supportive way that facilitates useful reflection and dialogue, it can enhance the student experience.  

However, caution should be exercised when considering the different mechanisms for review. This is particularly the case where they might create an unnecessary burden to providers already evidencing excellence. 

It is not uncommon for FE providers to work with universities in developing and delivering HE provision. Such collaborative programmes offer students access to wider resources, facilities and expertise. 

Where strong collaborations exist between FE providers and universities, there are distinct benefits for students, employers and the education providers themselves. 

Of course, we could cynically suggest that a key driver for collaboration is financial benefit for both further and higher education institutions. However, there are far greater advantages other than the “bottom line”.  

Layering more quality assurance systems may not be the most effective solution

A key advantage is the two-way knowledge exchange that takes place. Both providers have expertise that each can benefit from, and there are many examples of highly effective collaborative relationships.  

Each year, excellent teaching and collaborative working are recognised by Advance HE, the professional membership scheme, through its national teaching fellowships and collaborative awards for teaching excellence.  

Such initiatives share good practice and it could be suggested are an effective way of encouraging true innovation in educational working practices and pedagogy. 

In recent years, FE and HE sectors have experienced higher expectations from both students and regulatory bodies such as the Office for Students.

The latter has sought to clarify expectations of participation, student experience, outcomes and value for money. This greater level of transparency and choice for students is very valuable. 

But we should also be reflective on what the most effective and proportionate mechanisms for achieving this are.

Layering more quality assurance systems may not be the most effective solution, and certainly isn’t the only one.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 378

Sian Wilson

Executive director- commercial, The Skills Network

Start date: February 2022

Previous Job: Director of channels and partnerships, Practice Labs

Interesting fact: Sian loves boxing and has completed an amateur boxing award

Naomi Phillips

Deputy chief executive & director of policy and research, Learning and Work Institute

Start date: January 2022

Previous Job: Director of policy & advocacy, British Red Cross

Interesting fact: Naomi started running just before the pandemic and is training for her 3rd half marathon. Naomi likes to run at around 5am, before the world wakes up

Stuart Hales

Managing director- apprenticeships, The Skills Network

Start date: January 2022

Previous Job: Managing director of apprenticeships, Entelechy Academy

Interesting fact: Stuart swims long distance and is currently training for a 13-mile swim

Phil Wilkinson

Chair, Nelson and Colne College Group

Start date: February 2022

Concurrent Job: CEO at Ascentis

Interesting fact: He once enjoyed a cup of tea whilst standing on an iceberg off the coast of East Greenland

Levelling up Access to Further Education Whitepaper

There is broad agreement, also among students, that universities and colleges of Further Education responded effectively to the digital challenge of “lockdown education”. It is too soon to determine in what ways remote learning is affecting student progress, but there is a sense of urgency around this question because the pandemic is far from over. Also, we discovered that virtual lessons have certain clear advantages over “real classrooms”: remote learning resolves issues around accessibility, frees up student time, and allows them to review the recorded lesson. 

Two recent reports acknowledge that technology will play an ever-larger role in delivering Higher and Further Education but are short on answers on how EdTech can help universities and FE colleges to be digital game-changers now.

Levelling up Access to Further Education 

Code Institute, Gateway Qualifications and four colleges of Further Education – Newcastle College, City of Bristol College, College y Cymoedd and South Devon College have  collaborated on a new whitepaper, Levelling Up Access to Further Education: Using technology to skill more digital talent. The whitepaper takes a forensic look at how colleges have used technology in the shape of platform, curriculum content and online tutor-support to deliver qualifications in web application development. 

Each college overcame particular challenges relating to physical resources, subject expertise and increasing frequency of course delivery to meet learner demand. This white paper explores how the technology and business model of the Gateway Qualifications Level 5 Diploma in Web Application Development, delivered on the Code Institute platform, enabled Further Education colleges to transform course delivery in the same way that fintech transformed banking, and streaming revolutionised the media and music industries.

“We’re focussed on delivering skills for jobs using a combination of learning at scale technology and qualifications. For colleges, the real benefit of the learning platform comes from the flexibility it affords in terms of how programmes are delivered. But, equally, for learners, the increased flexibility makes it easier to mix upskilling into their already busy work and personal schedules.” explains Lee Lindsay, UK Education Partner Manager, Code Institute

Welsh Experience

In Wales, where the course is fully funded through the mechanism of the Personal Learner Account, the Gateway/Code Institute programme launched with a cohort of 20 learners under a year ago, and has since scaled to prepare 200 learners for a career in software development. 

Coleg y Cymoedd offers a wide range of PLA-sponsored courses in priority sectors such as sustainable construction, business management, occupational health and safety, social care, and digital technology. “Some of these courses are taught by us,” says Kathryn Bishop, Business Development Manager at Coleg y Cymoedd, “but for Level 5 software development we lacked the required in-house expertise.”

As soon as the Gateway Qualifications Level 5 Diploma in Web Application Development was approved by the Welsh Government for PLA funding, Coleg y Cymoedd got the green light to offer this qualification through Code Institute.

English Colleges 

Whereas Coleg y Cymmoed outsources all learning aspects to Code Institute, the delivery model at City of Bristol College is hybrid: the Code Institute provide the platform, mentoring and careers guidance to support the College in delivery, while the College take the lead on assessment and provides direct support to the students, which is led by Pasquale Fasulo, Head of Department for Digital and Creative. 

“It’s evolved to the point where from January 2022 we’re going to do rolled monthly starts. We will continue to offer support but the approach will be more flexible. We will ring-fence and protect certain times for learners to drop in and book appointments with us and have progress reviews,” explains Pasquale.

The flexibility of the enrollment was something that appealed to South Devon College where Conrad Saunders, Programme Coordinator for Digital  understood the benefit of rolling enrolments given the likely demand for the course in the region. “We’ve seen for a long time that there are a lot of learners going off and doing their degrees but afterwards there’s nothing for them. They don’t find employment,” Saunders says. “Often they have media-type degrees in digital production that just aren’t right for today’s jobs market.

“The [Code Institute] platform is proven, the students are eligible for an Advanced Learner Loan, so let’s run with it. We just hit the ground running 100 miles an hour.

“In terms of the model, rather than looking at a traditional termly intake, we look at a monthly intake as this was technically as feasible as anything else. It also allowed us to dip our toes in the water, and see if we could get the numbers. We’ve had a cohort in September, October, and November. We paused December but started up again in January with five students.” concludes Conrad.

This flexibility was what Newcastle College spotted when they were the first FE college to rollout the qualification in 2020. That, and a strong need for a relatively short and directed course that would lead to employment in the tech sector. Currently, Newcastle has three intakes per year which have grown from 14 to 25 learners per cohort. Achieving this growth in learner numbers have been chiefly down to their pre-existing relationships with local employers who are seeking these skills.

Level 3 for Adult Learners

Building on the success of this qualification, Code Institute and Gateway Qualifications have partnered once more on the development of a Level 3 Diploma in Software Development which will be rolled out in 2022. This gives learners from a variety of backgrounds an opportunity to lay the foundation for a career in tech through further study such as the Level 5, a higher level qualification or through work based learning.

Paul Saunders, Business Development Manager of Gateway Qualification has worked with Code Institute on creating a solution that will be the right fit for learners and colleges looking to deliver these skills ina  flexible format that allow them to reach more learners: “We are delighted to be able to build on our successful partnership with Code Institute to bring the same level of expert support to more learners and centres on the Level 3 Diploma and Certificate in Software Development.

The qualifications address a key government priority and provide excellent preparation for learners wishing to develop a career in the software industry and progress to the Level 5 Diploma, or to similar qualifications.”

From a college’s perspective the quality is there, the demand is growing and the outcomes are proven. This solution offers colleges the ability deliver with flexibility outside of college hours, meet learner demand and provide adult skills qualifications where learners can access Adult Skills funding streams including National Skills Fund, Adult Education Budget, PLA funding and Advanced Lerner Loan. All key criteria in successfully increasing accessibility to digital skills.

Read the whitepaper now

FE loans training provider goes bust after damning Ofsted inspection

A loans-only training provider that quickly trebled its learner numbers has ceased trading after Ofsted published a scathing ‘inadequate’ report.   

The Education and Skills Funding Agency told FE Week its £750,000 advance learner loan facility with Focus Training Limited was terminated on January 27, 2022.   

The Bolton-based firm, which has been running health and fitness courses since the year 2000, has now gone insolvent. More than 550 learners and 20 staff have been affected.   

Ofsted inspected the provider, which delivered most training online and via phone calls, in late November and published a damning grade four report on Wednesday.   

The report said the quality of training had “deteriorated” since Focus Training’s previous full inspection in 2018.   

Inspectors found that since then, leaders have more than trebled the number of learners enrolled on courses but have not increased the number of staff accordingly. “Consequently, learners wait too long to be contacted by tutors, which delays their learning,” the report said. Some learners wait several months for feedback on their work.   

Ofsted reported that leaders’ aspirations for the most able learners were “too low”, finding that those with prior experience in the fitness industry completed the same programme as learners with no experience.   

Learners with experience subsequently became “demotivated” and did not learn substantial new knowledge and skills.   

Leaders were also criticised for not promoting an “ambitious culture”, with Ofsted finding that just over half of learners were beyond their planned end-date.   

The watchdog deemed safeguarding at Focus Training to be ineffective. The provider did not obtain or record staff recruitment references appropriately and did not always check the identification of new employees.   

Leaders also failed to “sufficiently risk assess in-person training venues”. Venues had not been assessed for safety for over two years, despite practical training resuming six months ago.   

The ESFA said all affected learners are being sought alternative training providers to complete their learning. 

Focus Training’s managing director, Bob Ellis, did not respond to requests for comment. 

Getting ready for Shanghai: inside WorldSkills UK’s motivational bootcamp

FE Week’s senior reporter Will Nott attended a WorldSkills UK bootcamp in Loughborough last Saturday to hear how competitors have been preparing for the 47th WorldSkills competition in Shanghai, despite two years of disruption caused by the pandemic. 

The morning kicked off with around 80 skilled young people coming together with their trainers to hear from somebody who had achieved what they all dreamed of. 

Haydn Jakes won a gold medal in aircraft maintenance after beating competitors from 75 countries at WorldSkills Kazan 2019. 

He stood on a stage and smiled at the audience. “I want you all to take a moment to think about why you want that gold medal,” he told the packed-out room of competitors. 

“Because it is a lot easier to get out of bed in the morning to go training if you say to yourself ‘I want this gold medal because of this’. Take that away and think about it throughout your training.” 

Keeping up motivation and dealing with added pressure has been a constant battle over the past two years. 

The pandemic has caused widespread disruption for those involved in the vocational skills championship. First, WorldSkills Shanghai 2021 was postponed by one year and is now planned to take place this October. 

To make things worse, the UK was forced to pull out of the 2021 EuroSkills competition in Graz, Austria, to the disappointment of competitors who had been training hard for the event.

I spoke to Ben Blackledge, WorldSkills UK’s deputy chief executive, who told me the past few years have been “really challenging”. 

Normal team selection cycles have been disrupted and hard decisions have had to be made on whether the UK would compete in international events. 

“It’s a lot of planning and a lot of resources and time to do that and actually we just thought our focus needed to be on Shanghai,” Blackledge said regarding the missed EuroSkills competition. 

“It was a difficult period, especially having to say to these young people ‘you are going’, then ‘you’re not going’. So we didn’t go.” 

The impact on competitors who had been training intensely for the event was significant. Abigail Stansfield, who is competing in the CNC milling skill, told me of her excitement when she was first selected to go to Europe and then her disappointment: “It definitely knocked my motivation,” she said. 

“Personally, I was high mentally after I was told I could compete for EuroSkills and then after the decision was made that the UK wasn’t going to go, that knocked me so much. 

“I was low at that point, but it’s all about working your way back up and getting motivated again.” 

Helping competitors with their mental health was a key part of last week’s bootcamp, with a team of sports psychologists being brought in to help them deal with the stress and self-doubt that can result from taking part in high pressure competitions. 

The psychologists took the competitors off into groups and asked questions about the mental blocks they were experiencing. 

The competitors shared their thoughts and concerns with each other – saying what they thought might stop them from achieving their goals. 

These moments, where competitors are able to come together in this way, are precious. Since the UK squad was selected back in 2019, they have only been able to meet once. 

This lack of contact is just an added pressure on competitors, who put everything on the line for the competition. 

Blackledge told me that WorldSkills UK had seen an increase in the need for additional support around mental health even before the pandemic struck – something that the organisation has been working hard on. 

“The closer you get to competition and the closer you are to getting on that plane, the support increases,” he said. 

“It’s about avoiding that toxic win-at-all costs mentality. But getting the balance right between ‘this is important’ and ‘this is a big deal’.” 

One competitor who feels she has been able to achieve that balance is Mona Nawaz, who is competing in the digital construction skill category. She told me that she has struggled with her mental health but that she feels support has been in place to help her keep going. 

“I am lucky enough that I have people that support me. My training manager, my parents, everyone is there. When they notice me going on a little bit of a downfall, they are always there to help me out,” she said. 

“It’s about having that support system that has really got me through Covid.” 

Trainers play a vital role in preparing competitors for the next stage of selection, and ultimately, if they are successful, Shanghai. 

This is particularly true of the past few years, where they have had to think of innovative ways to keep training going despite lockdowns and other restrictions. 

In one session during the bootcamp, the trainer’s contributions were acknowledged with certificates being given out for innovation. 

One of these trainers was for Sean Owens, UK training manager for culinary arts, who came up with a way to do taste tests remotely using the hedonic taste scale. 

“From my experience I do a lot of new product development and I looked at a model that was created around the end of the second world war called the hedonic taste scale,” he told me. 

The scale uses nine points to measure food acceptability. Owens, who also works as a food consultant, said that competitors used the scale to rate their own food. 

This innovation ultimately enabled competitors to keep doing virtual international pressure tests – a key part of the training process that helps competitors see how they are doing, compared to their international rivals. 

Dealing with pressure is the name of the game when it comes to WorldSkills. And so sure enough, the bootcamp finished with more tests. Competitors gathered for a series of tasks that, while fun, would also help them deal with things going wrong in skills tests. 

Practice like this could see them get through the next stage of selection or even on to Shanghai. 

When I asked Mona Nawaz whether she ever felt that all the pressure was too much she smiled. 

“Too much pressure is difficult, but you also need it to be the best you can be,” she said. 

After two years of putting up with Covid, as well as getting ready for the “skills Olympics”, they should be fighting fit and ready to bring back gold in October.

Fourth consecutive ‘requires improvement’ Ofsted rating for BMet

Birmingham Metropolitan College has received a fourth ‘requires improvement’ Ofsted rating in a row. 

In a report published yesterday, inspectors praised BMet for dealing with significant financial challenges, but issues with the consistency of a new curriculum were identified. 

The last time the college received a ‘good’ rating was back in February 2011. The college has since received grade three reports in 2015, 2017 and 2018. 

“Since the previous inspection, senior leaders and governors have changed the structure and focus of the college significantly,” Ofsted said. 

“They have reduced the number of college sites and reformed the curriculum to meet the needs of learners, employers and stakeholders in Birmingham. 

“Consequently, leaders and governors have now resolved the college’s long-term structural and financial issues.” 

However, inspectors criticised leaders for failing to “ensure that the college’s curriculum is consistently good in all subjects and at all campuses”. 

Inspectors called on governors to ensure that BMet’s leaders “identify the weaknesses” in all curriculum areas, including courses for adults and programmes for learners who have high needs. 

They added that, while governors have the experience and skills to challenge leaders’ strategy and actions, the governors “accept” that recent structural and financial issues have drawn their focus from the quality of education and reduced their effectiveness in holding leaders to account. 

The Ofsted report said the college required improvement in four out of eight assessment areas, including the quality of education, leadership and management, and provision for learners with high needs. 

Adult learning programmes, judged ‘good’ in the college’s previous inspection, now also ‘require improvement’. 

Programmes for young people however have improved to ‘good’. 

The college had just over 8,700 learners at the time of the inspection, including 4,465 young people, 3,468 adults, 757 apprentices and 88 high-needs students. 

BMet entered government intervention in 2015 after significant financial issues were identified. By the end of 2016/17 the college owed almost £14 million in exceptional financial support and racked up debts of £23.4 million. 

In 2019 the college controversially closed its Stourbridge campus and then sold it in 2020 for £3.55 million – a figure that was £1.45 million lower than the makeover costs in 2015. 

The college’s fortunes seemed to be looking up after it received a highly positive report from the FE Commissioner in 2020 which then skills minister Gillian Keegan said showed “remarkable improvements”. 

Pat Carvalho took over as principal of BMet in June 2021. She told FE Week that the Ofsted report did applaud the “focussed work that has taken place over the last two years across BMet. 

“[The report] acknowledges the clear improvements in the quality of curriculum – particularly in education programmes for young people,” Carvalho said. 

“We were pleased that we were awarded ‘good’ for: behaviour and attitudes of students, personal development, education programmes for young people and for our good apprenticeships delivery.” 

Carvalho drew attention to the fact the report said learners and apprentices develop the necessary work-related skills and experience for their future success in education, employment or training. 

“There is, though, still work to do and we were disappointed, despite the clear improvements in the quality of curriculum, that the college received an overall ‘requires improvement’ grading,” Carvalho said. 

“We will continue to strive to improve and to ensure that our students have a quality experience at BMet and are able to flourish.”

Focus on adult education is promising – but lacks ambition

It is also surprising the levelling up white paper has so little to say on green skills, write Aveek Bhattacharya and Amy Norman

For those of us who have been following the government’s skills and post-18 education policy, the levelling up white paper was very familiar. We knew many of the key announcements already: local skills improvement plans, lifetime skills guarantee, more skills bootcamps. 

But although the skills sections of the white paper may have contained more rhetoric than fresh policy meat, that is not necessarily a bad thing.  

Certainly, it is encouraging that the government has made such a strong and explicit connection between the levelling project and investment in skills and training.

The fact that the government wants to talk so much about post-18 education is a positive signal about its prominence in its policy agenda. After years of relative neglect, that should not be taken for granted. 

Perhaps the most significant new announcement was the government’s stated “mission” to get 200,000 more people a year successfully completing high-quality skills training, with 80,000 of them in the lowest skilled areas.  

What constitutes “high quality” remains vague in the paper, but this renewed focus on adult education is promising.  

At the same time, however, this target is too modest, recovering only a quarter of the 800,000 lost learners in the past decade.  

That lack of ambition reflects a broader failure to recognise the amount of ground that needs to be made up when it comes to further and adult education.  

By 2024/25, per student college funding will be down ten per cent on 2010/11 levels, and adult education spending will be 15 per cent lower overall than 2009/10.  

There was at least more action in the primary education section of the white paper, with another mission to ensure 90 per cent of children achieve the expected standard in reading, writing and maths by 2030.  

If achieved, this would have downstream ramifications for FE and adult education, which play a key role in teaching basic skills to those that missed out in school – although that impact would not be felt for a decade or two.  

In any case, it is questionable whether the government’s measures to achieve this target are up to the job. These measures include focusing resources on “education investment areas”, encouraging the best academy trusts to support weaker schools and creating an online “national academy”. 

It is questionable whether the government’s measures are up to the job

The white paper also recognises the economic opportunities for levelling up from emerging clean industries that are central to a net zero economy. These green jobs will require skills transformations across the UK workforce, particularly in carbon-intensive industrial heartlands.  

Given this, it is surprising to have so little detail on the policy proposals for delivering green skills. As it stands, skills bootcamps and apprenticeship standards are limited in their offer for green skills, particularly related to home heat and electric vehicles. 

That said, it remains to be seen whether the Department for Education’s latest invitation to tender for bootcamp providers will address these gaps. 

As for the rest of the white paper, the overwhelming majority of the policy commitments it contained have been announced and re-announced several times in the past few months.

We already knew about local skills improvement plans, which bring employers, colleges and other institutions together to ensure their offering meets local labour market needs.  

And we knew about the expansion of skills bootcamps, offering rapid intensive training in shortage areas. And about investment in the FE college estate. We also knew about new institutes of technology, which are collaborations of colleges and universities to deliver higher technical education.

And we’d been told about the lifetime skills guarantee, offering free level 3 qualifications to those with low previous attainment.  

All were trumpeted in the white paper, and none was new.  

Then again, it is unreasonable to expect the government to promise new billions every time it makes a statement on education.  

There have been a lot of statements on education in the past year or so: the skills white paper, a comprehensive spending review, multiple fiscal events and an ad hoc speech from the prime minister on skills.  

So although the levelling up white paper does not provide anything substantially new for skills or further education policy, it does emphatically reaffirm the government’s commitment to the skills agenda. 

The task for the coming years is ensuring they fully deliver on that commitment.