The Good for Me, Good for FE campaign is halfway to its target of generating £1 million in social value, following a blast of volunteering by colleges.
The sector-led charity drive has accumulated 23,000 volunteering hours, which have been put through a calculator to work out their monetary value towards the target.
Additionally, the campaign’s target of donating 20,000 items to foodbanks has been reached.
‘Campaign highlights the true generosity of staff and students’
The three colleges’ principals – Sam Parrett, Stuart Rimmer, and Jo Maher – have said: “Seeing how the sector has come together to support this initiative is truly amazing.
“We already know what important roles colleges play in their communities, but this campaign highlights the true generosity of staff and students when it comes to supporting others.”
After such a “challenging” year, the campaign’s success is “even more impressive,” they argued, and reaching halfway “is testament to our incredible sector and we thank every single staff member and student who has contributed so far.
“We look forward to hopefully smashing our target next year – and to seeing how much more can be achieved by our fantastic sector.”
Colleges’ volunteering helped foodbanks and healthy living
A number of colleges have put on special events to generate social value, including a Santa dash organised by East Coast College.
LSEC’s Christmas hampers for foodbanks
There has also been a community college kitchen set up by Trafford College, as well as a social action day at Loughborough to support a local homeless charity.
London South East Colleges has donated 124 Christmas hampers to foodbanks, while Lancaster and Morecambe College asked attendees to an open day to bring an item for the foodbank collection.
Lincoln College also combined forces with Morrisons and a local construction firm to provide ingredients and recipe cards for students as part of its ‘eat well and learn well’ initiative.
Staff have also been volunteering in other roles, such as football coaches or supporting St John Ambulance, in their communities.
Good for Me, Good for FE was recently buoyed by a £750 donation by the Skills and Education Group, won in an online vote by readers of FE Week and its sister paper Schools Week.
The campaign says this money has now been donated to the Trussell Trust foodbank charity.
Congratulations to Good for Me Good for FE for getting the most votes on Day 3!
The Scouts, the FA, the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action, and SLQ Sports Leaders have also helped offer volunteering opportunities across the country.
Pictured top: Participants in East Coast College’s Santa dash
Ofsted has pushed back its research into T Levels by a year due to the pandemic.
A thematic survey looking into the implementation of the government’s flagship qualifications and its transition programme in their first two years was announced in December 2020.
An interim report was due out in September 2021 with the final report planned for September 2022. But a spokesperson for the watchdog told FE Week: “We’ve had to push back our T Level thematic survey by a year because of the pandemic.
“We will publish an interim report in autumn next year, with the final report being published in autumn 2023. In all other respects, our approach will be the same as what was announced previously.”
Visits to T Level providers ‘will continue’
The thematic survey involves visiting a sample of the over 100 current T Level providers and applying Ofsted’s education inspection framework to assess educational effectiveness and the quality of education.
This is intended to give an independent overview of the quality of T Levels, including strengths, weaknesses, areas for improvement and good practice, which can be fed back to government and stakeholders.
Ofsted says these visits “have started and will continue until next spring”.
T Levels have already faced disruption of their own
Ten T Levels are now available for delivery, with three having been rolled out in the first wave in 2020 and a further seven starting last September.
Six extra courses will start in 2022, followed by another seven in 2023.
The pandemic has already taken a heavy toll on the new level 3 qualifications, cutting off opportunities for students to fulfil the 315-hour mandatory industry placement.
After an FE Week investigation this month found 9 out of 10 T Level providers had missed enrolment targets for the second wave of T Levels, the Department for Education admitted there have been “some challenges” in securing placements “as a result of Covid-19”.
Students who started their T Level in 2020 can now spend a maximum of 40 per cent of their placement hours remotely after the government issued a new flexibility in November.
The NHS, local councils and employers are also being pressed upon to offer up more industry placements after colleges have struggled to find enough for their students.
Close contacts of all Covid cases should take daily lateral flow tests for a week meaning they can stay in the classroom if they are negative under new rules introduced today.
Education leaders were told of the “new national approach” in an email from the Department for Education (DfE) sent at around 5pm yesterday.
It states fully-vaccinated adults and children aged between five and 18 years and 6 months should take a lateral flow test every day for a week instead of self-isolating after coming into contact with someone who has Covid.
Close contacts will be expected to report the results online each day and can attend their education provider following a negative result.
Those that test positive should self-isolate and order a confirmatory PCR test. A negative PCR result would override the initial lateral flow test.
The daily testing applies whether the contact tests positive for “Omicron or not”. Staff who are close contacts but not doubled-jabbed should isolate for ten days.
Previously, close contacts of Omicron cases were told to self-isolate for up to 10 days, while close contacts of other variants were advised to take a PCR test.
The guidance states that close contacts will be notified by NHS Test and Trace. It is unclear how the service will know which students and staff are close contacts without the education provider playing a role in providing that information.
The DfE told leaders in its email last night that daily testing for Covid contacts will “help protect education settings by reducing transmission and will also help keep pupils in face-to-face education”.
Test shortages
However, people in England are currently unable to order test kits online due to “exceptionally high demand” following prime minister Boris Johnson’s national address last night.
The DfE states that all staff and secondary aged students should have access to a box of seven lateral flow tests.
Additional tests are “available through the standard ordering process” or can be ordered “emergency replenishment” via 199.
Social media was yesterday flooded with numerous reports of people unable to access the ordering portal.
They are met with a message stating: “Sorry, there are no more home tests available right now. Try again later. Or, you can go back and try to book a test site appointment instead.”
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has warned: “Due to exceptionally high demand, ordering lateral flow tests on gov.uk has been temporarily suspended to fulfil existing orders.”
It advised those in need to collect kits from local pharmacies, community site and “some schools and colleges.”
The guidance adds that for pupils with SEND who struggle or are unable to swab daily, “settings should work with students and their families to agree an appropriate testing route, such as assisted swabbing”.
Air cleaning ‘marketplace’ launched
The Department for Education has launched an online “marketplace” for schools and colleges to buy purifiers to help tackle Covid, recommending units which cost up to £1,170 each.
But the units are not available to private training providers.
The government yesterday confirmed deals with six approved suppliers to sell two recommended units for state funded education settings at agreed prices, with colleges now able to place orders.
The products are the Dyson Pure Cool Formaldehyde TP09, which costs £424.82 per unit, and the Camfil City M, costing £1170 per unit. Multiple general retailers are selling the Dyson unit for around £600 online.
Both products are said to remove more than 99.9 per cent of ultrafine particles in the air.
The DfE told leaders by email: “In the very few cases where an area of poor ventilation has been identified and this cannot be resolved through opening windows and doors or minor repair works, it may be appropriate to consider the use of an air cleaning unit as an additional mitigation whilst further remedial work is undertaken to improve ventilation.
“However, it should be noted that they are not a substitute for ventilation and should never be used as a reason to reduce ventilation.”
If Melissa Tisdale and her students aren’t laughing, they’re crying. The FE lecturer of the year explains how to build the highest-quality relationships around
A car has just careered through one of the many puddles in Walsall, a town in the West Midlands, and soaked my feet. I’ve had to get up too early, it’s cold, the sky is grey, and no one looks very happy. And now I’ve got to meet the FE lecturer of the year with wet ankles and frizzy hair.
Walsall seems home to good folk, if the friendly station staff are anything to go by, and it also feels small and forgotten. I’m just starting to regret my career choices (zooming around the country looking for education institutions) when a giant sign saying ‘Walsall College’ appears on the concrete horizon.
I turn the corner into a courtyard, and an impressive piece of modern architecture suddenly rises up in front: the college is huge. Dozens of students are streaming in and out, and a giant glass front stretches skywards to reveal multiple floors built from beautiful wood.
At the reception desk, all the mini dramas of a community are playing out. One girl in glamorous gothic make-up and boots I now want for Christmas is getting help with paperwork.
Another girl has forgotten her asthma inhaler and a staff member is reassuring her that a taxi has been booked for home and she can take it back to college too. Students of all ages, sizes, disabilities and ethnicities queue up or sit around in the vast atrium, chatting between classes.
Improving matters further is the prompt arrival of Melissa Tisdale, who won the gold award for the FE lecturer this year in the Pearson National Teaching Awards. She’s only 30, and whisks me off to her classroom several floors above, folding into her chair like a cat in its favourite spot.
It is warm, and I am intrigued by the huge cameras, floodlights and a vast green screen down one side of the room. Tisdale is a media studies lecturer, specialising in film and TV production. The miserably cold streets seem a world away now: everything feels quite exciting and possible.
Tisdale in her green room
It turns out that her students feel the same. Part-way through our conversation, Tisdale reveals that when the judges researched the nominations for FE lecturer, they spoke to her principal, line manager, the team, staff members in other departments – and her current and former students.
During one of the calls with judges, Tisdale was pacing up and down the corridor outside her classroom, “twiddling her thumbs and feeling like a spare part”, while her manager sat inside on the call with students. Then her manager came out – crying.
“I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ And she said, ‘The kids are crying’, and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, why are the kids crying?’, and she said, ‘They’re all in floods of tears’.” (I’m slow to catch on at this point, too – why are they crying?).
For explanation, Tisdale shows me a video of the Zoom call with about six of her students testifying to the judge. Most of them are holding back or wiping away tears.
One girl clearly says: “My confidence has changed drastically. It wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t know Mel.”
Here we come to Tisdale’s core approach. I’m not sure what I thought the FE lecturer of the year’s ‘secret ingredient’ would be (of course, there is no such thing), but I’m pretty sure I didn’t think it was acceptance. More like subject knowledge, or a brilliant new careers programme, or something.
“The thing I do first and foremost, when I get a new group of students, is I say, unapologetically, you are in the media department now. Who you are is completely accepted here. Whether you have a different pronoun, a different name, whatever your sexual orientation, you can be who you really are here.
“Maybe they’ve struggled, or their parents don’t understand or accept it. So having that safe place where they can be who they are is so important.”
Tisdale with her media class
Colleges talk about inclusion a lot, but Tisdale literally doesn’t seem to be able to stop talking about it. And she does it without using hackneyed phrases like ‘EDI’ or, indeed, ‘inclusion’. She just keeps talking about building her students’ confidence in whoever they are, over and over again.
“I’ve seen students who have come here, and they’re like a shell of a person. There was a student who came out as trans, for example. When they started, they wouldn’t speak and wouldn’t make eye contact.
“After four months, they were laughing, joking, and they did a presentation. It was because they could be who they were. We validate their feelings. It’s really important they know someone really, really believes in them.”
Another girl, she tells me, was at the college for four years, starting on a level 3 and moving through a higher national certificate and higher national diploma.
When she finally left – which Tisdale laughingly says “broke my heart” – she was significantly more confident than when she came, she says. Students like her persuaded the judges that Tisdale deserved the top award.
As if perfectly timed, a boy pops his face through the classroom door, silently giving an inquisitive thumbs up. Tisdale beams at him and says: “Thank you so much, it nearly made me cry! Thank you.” He grins again and disappears.
What’s that? I query, bewildered. It turns out Tisdale lost a close friend of hers yesterday. She had shared with the class what had happened and when she returned to her desk later, two of her students – usually cheeky chaps “full of banter” – had laid out Starbursts in a heart shape with a message from the class inside saying “We hope you’re OK now”.
Having accepted her students so thoroughly, they clearly went to extra lengths to show they accept her too, particularly on a down day.
Tisdale with her media class
It appears Tisdale has been recognised at a college, and then national, level for the sheer quality of the relationships she has with students. This doesn’t mean she’s not mad about her subject: she has a Masters in it and is currently pursuing a PhD.
But she explains she can only get across how mad she is about media studies because of how hard she works at prioritising great relationship with the students.
She explains: “When you do your teaching qualifications, you have to talk about what your teaching pedagogy is. I say first and foremost, rapport with the students. Without that, you have nothing.”
Tisdale’s own experiences, and her close observations of those around her, have inspired this approach. Her mum brought her up, encouraging her at every turn. “She’s the person I look up to for everything. She especially taught me that I am complete as who I am. This is something I really try to enforce on the kids now,” continues Tisdale.
“They spend so much of their lives thinking they’re not a whole person until they meet another person. I teach them, you are complete as who you are.” In an online world that hugely idolises romantic love, such a tour-de-force lesson from Tisdale must make a genuine impression on her students.
She also didn’t fit in at school (“I was a greebo,” she tells me, which is apparently a bit like an emo ̶ straightened black hair, alternative music) and was unhappy. Instead, she turned to “bad TV” like Sex and the City and One Tree Hill, getting into characters and plotlines: “That really started my love of TV.”
Media is a subject that particularly allows students to come out of their shell and feel accepted, and learn about others, she explains. She has set up a film production company for her students called Future Flames Productions.
One of their next projects is with pupils with special educational needs at Derwen College, “because they’ve not done that before, and it’s so important they work with different people”.
At the 2021 Pearson Teaching Awards
Another big influence on her thinking has been her best friend, Ronald Kafesu, whom she met at Bournville College in Birmingham. “Ronald used to dress in college in what was seen as that stereotypical manner for black young men, and he is so successful in his career now.
“He inspired me so, so much, because his life was not easy, and he had to work harder to prove to people he was good.”
After college, which Tisdale describes as “the best days”, she went on to South and City College in Birmingham for a higher national diploma in media production and was “the only white person in the class”.
Such experiences have meant “my passion to be an ally was just normal to me”, she says. Now her PhD is about how white filmmakers can stereotypically portray black characters.
This is what is different about Tisdale: she doesn’t talk about inclusivity as something that objectively it is good to be – she’s breathing it all the time in a way which, I must admit, I have rarely seen in someone not from a minority background.
How do we create more staff like you in FE? I ask her. Will she lead from the top?
“Progression scares me a bit, because you get further away from the kids. But I am ambitious.” She leans back, laughing for the thousandth time in our interview. “People ask me, have you got kids? And I say, yes ̶ I’ve got 122. They’re all my kids.”
Contemporary texts can draw parallels with learners’ own lives, writes Sarah Wilson
I work in a local community with a large African and Afro-Caribbean population. As the curriculum manager for English, it’s important to me that inclusion and promotion of equality and diversity are significant features of the curriculum.
In my department we have come up with pedagogical strategies to decolonise the curriculum, in a way that makes teaching and learning a more transparent, relatable and inspiring experience.
So we have embedded texts that are culturally rich and bring to the forefront challenging themes that address culture, disenfranchisement and the myths of colonialism. These texts also give a voice to the migrant experience and how those experiences have helped to shape contemporary Britain.
For instance, we have moved away from using canonical texts such as Animal Farm by George Orwell, published in 1945, to excerpts from The Lonely Londonersby Trinidadian author Sam Selvon, published in 1956.
Meanwhile, among the quick reads for lower-entry learners we now have Hello Mum by British-Nigerian author Bernadine Evaristo from 2010. This story explores gang culture from the viewpoint of a 14-year-old boy, who communicates with his mother through letters.
The latter texts reflect the diversity of local community members and therefore create a necessary sense of connectedness with the reader.
Recognition and promotion of black and female writers who address the “black experience” through various lenses, voices and genres are also a critical part of the curriculum.
Dark comedies such as The Other Black Girl by black American author Zakiya Dalila Harris focus on the racial micro-aggressions within the workplace.
Published this year, this book follows a woman who is at first the only black person working at a publishing company, and what happens when another black woman is hired too.
Meanwhile, fantasy novellas such as Given by Nandi Taylor, a Canadian author of Afro-Caribbean descent, take readers into an empire inspired by her heritage. The tale, published last year, helps to demystify assumptions about black writers.
Contemporary texts with culturally relevant themes often have strong parallels with the lives of many young people. This can encourage engagement, even from the most reluctant readers.
This is especially important for learners from marginalised backgrounds without pre-requisite English and maths qualifications, who have difficulty in accessing learning.
So alongside changes to the English curriculum, offering bespoke, full-time English and maths programmes for 16-18 learners can also widen their participation.
For example, a student who responded really well to Hello Mum was one of our male learners with additional learning support needs (ADHD and dyslexia). The student presented challenging and combative behaviour at times, so his reaction to reading the text was particularly rewarding.
He was initially reluctant to participate in reading out loud in class but as the weeks went on became increasingly engaged.
When we reached halfway, the student came to my office excitedly to reveal that he had predicted what would happen in the next chapters and was starting to analyse the motivations of the characters.
This culminated in the student writing a deeply layered book review. Despite being enrolled on a functional skills level 1 programme, the student was able to show high-level text analysis skills, recognise the wider societal themes and make valid connections between them.
This shows why texts should be decolonised and made relevant and engaging for marginalised communities.
Leaders must factor in staff workload
However, the main challenge to transforming the curriculum is time: the time to construct resources that support innovative and advanced teaching, as well as re-shaping how Western frameworks have been taught.
Leadership must recognise the importance of factoring this into staff workload and planning. Opportunities also need to be created for more joined-up working across the sector, with providers actively engaged in decolonising the curriculum able to share best practice.
These are localised curriculum actions I am steering, to help address a much wider, national problem.
Even if you’re being shouted at, don’t raise your voice, writes Errol Ince
Having worked in FE for over 30 years, I have experience of dealing with behaviour in colleges in many different contexts. Whether I’m dealing with apprentices or with altercations in corridors, I have tried and tested an array of techniques.
Above all else, I’ve learnt that establishing genuine relationships with students is by far the most effective tool in the behaviour management toolbox. A person’s ability to form a rapport with others will positively impact them in all situations.
Making a connection with a student does not mean becoming their best friend. It’s about creating an environment in which people feel valued and supported to share their ideas in a structured way.
For example, I taught a student who was consistently looking out of the window. Each time he lost concentration, I asked him another question to draw him back into the conversation and into the learning.
We joked about this – rather than me shouting at him to pay attention – and the student’s engagement increased.
We all learn from our mistakes and I certainly have. Many years ago, a student made a comment about the shirt I was wearing. I responded with a comment back about his own dress sense and immediately realised that I’d crossed a line.
Focus on the most dominant character within a group
I’d been too personal, and rather than “making a rapport”, I’d upset the student and lost my connection with him. It took some time to repair this relationship and was a clear lesson to me.
As a teacher, raising your voice rarely has a positive impact. I’d go as far as saying NEVER escalate your voice. If a student is shouting, the calmer you need to stay.
Not always easy, but two angry people will have a phenomenally worse outcome than one angry person. The only time I would break this rule is if a student was putting themselves, or someone else, in danger – “STOP!”.
I’ve come across many lively characters in the classroom – all vying for the attention of others and myself. Low-level disruption in this setting can severely impact learning, so needs to be dealt with swiftly and firmly.
Focusing on the most dominant character within a group is key – picking them out, addressing them by their name and challenging them politely and positively where possible.
As well as teaching, I’ve spent much time as senior manager and an associate inspector, helping to maintain behaviour across communal areas in the college. This often brings different challenges from those we face in the classroom, but the golden rules remain the same.
Colleges need rules to keep people safe, such as wearing ID, not having hoods up and (at the moment) wearing face coverings. Young people rarely respond well to constantly being told to do something they don’t want to do, so delivery is key to ensuring a positive response.
Unlike your own class of students, you are unlikely to know the names of everyone walking around the campus. However, all should be wearing their college ID, so make a point of looking at this and addressing them by their name.
This immediately establishes a connection and indicates that you are talking very personally to them.
Taking a positive and friendly approach will almost always elicit a better response. Rather than shouting, “Take that hood off”, I’d approach a student, ask them what course they are on and then ask them to remove their hood, explaining why we have this rule in place.
Luckily, serious incidents at our college are rare, but we know they can happen. If staff have formed effective relationships with students through high-quality day-to-day behaviour management, there is a far better chance that more serious situations can be de-escalated quickly.
Consistency is key. All staff members need to be enforcing the same rules and challenging unacceptable behaviour in the same way.
Behaviour management requires a united front across the board – so students know what is required of them and when, no matter who is patrolling the corridor!
She will be the sixth leader at Hull in two years, after Chris Malish handed in his notice in August having only served since April, owing to difficulty working away from his family.
College ‘delighted’ Gray will be taking over as principal
College chair Lesley Davies said she was “delighted that Debra will be taking over the leadership of the college at such an exciting time.
“Debra’s experience not only as a leader of an outstanding college, but in curriculum quality and innovation will be a perfect complement to the ambitious strategic plan we are setting ourselves.”
Gray was made an MBE for services to education in the Queen’s 2020 birthday honours.
Appointment comes after bailouts, campus closures, and investigations
Hull College has been through the wringer, having faced multiple financial and management problems, which first became public when it received a £42 million bailout from the government in 2018 as part of a Fresh Start process.
Michelle Swithenbank resigned as principal in December 2019, after an investigation into nepotism and financial wrongdoing at the college found “no impropriety” on her part.
Around that time, the then FE Commissioner Richard Atkins launched his own investigation into the college and a report leaked to FE Week last year revealed how the close family of senior postholders had been handed jobs at the college while staff did not speak out for “fear of being exited at short notice”.
Since Swithenbank left, the college has been led by the college’s then-vice principal for finance Darryn Hedges; followed by Hull’s former deputy principal turned Hopwood Hall leader Derek O’Toole; followed by then Newcastle College principal Tony Lewin; before former Dudley College boss Lowell Williams stepped in as interim before and after Malish.
In April 2019, the college announced it would offload its Harrogate campus to Leeds City College as part of restructuring plans following the Fresh Start bailout.
The Further Education Commissioner (FEC), Shelagh Legrave, has published her first annual report. The report covers the intervention work of the commissioner and her team from August 2020 to the end of July 2021.
Here’s what you need to know.
1. Number of colleges entering intervention sharply falls, but might go up again
Four colleges entered formal intervention last academic year (July 2020-August 2021), down from 13 in the previous year. Three of those were due to tripping financial triggers and one was due to quality concerns. The colleges are not identified in the report.
The most recent intervention reports listed include Northern College, Nottingham College, City of Wolverhampton College and Shrewsbury Colleges Group.
One college had a “refreshed intervention assessment” this year due to the “extended” period of time which it has been subject to intervention measures.
However, income and cost pressures in 2022/23 are a risk on the new commissioner’s radar.
Speaking to FE Week ahead of the launch of the annual report, Shelagh Legrave said that she has heard anecdotally that colleges have under-recruited 16-19 year olds this year “because they’ve stayed on at school.”
“I think the challenge is going to come in 2022/23, when income will be down” Legrave said, adding “there are huge cost pressures on colleges this year. You’ve also got the national insurance increase and you’ve got inflation running significantly higher with no increase in funding rates. It’s going to be tough.”
2. More colleges exited intervention
Ten colleges had their intervention status lifted, up from five in the previous reporting year.
Of the ten, six exited due to improvements in performance.
FE Week investigated the improvement journeys of West Nottinghamshire College, Lancaster and Morecombe College and Warrington and Vale College earlier this year.
Two colleges exited due to structural change and two because of education administration.
As of the end of July 2021, there were 22 colleges in formal intervention in total.
3. FEC-backed mergers continued
The year also saw the completion of five FEC-backed structural reviews, detailed in the annual report. These include college mergers such as East Riding College joining TEC Partnership in August 2020, Cheadle and Marple Sixth Form College merging with Trafford College in May 2021, and Highbury College merging with Portsmouth College, forming City of Portsmouth College, in July 2021.
4. Diagnostics double
During the 2020/21 year, 25 diagnostic assessments took place which is more than double the number that took place last year (11).
These assessments, usually conducted over two-days by a team of deputy FE commissioners and FE advisers, involve discussions with senior executive staff, governors, staff, students and stakeholders and are designed to give an objective view about a college’s financial and/or quality plans.
Plans can either be endorsed by the commissioner, or there will be recommendations for changes and follow-up visits. Only two college plans received immediate endorsement.
In “exceptional circumstances”, a diagnostic visit can lead to formal intervention if the commissioner’s team finds “significant risk”.
One such escalation took place this year.
Northern College received a diagnostic assessment in February 2021 due to financial health concerns and received an intervention visit a month later. A structure and prospects appraisal of the college was ordered and, as FE Week reported in August, the college retained its independence having fought off a potentially terminal ESFA clawback.
The findings and outcomes of diagnostic assessments are not published.
5. National leaders are keeping busy
Teams of serving college leaders and governance experts, the ‘national leaders of further education’ and ‘national leaders of governance’, supported 40 colleges this year, according to the annual report. This is down from 50 in the previous year.
The national leaders’ programme, as well as the wider FEC team of deputy commissioners and advisers, have been criticised for not having any non-white members within their ranks.
In an exclusive interview with FE Week earlier this year, Shelagh Legrave said this was “reflective of the small number of BAME leaders in the sector” adding “I will certainly work with everybody to try and ensure that there is a greater diversity.”
Since assuming office this October, Legrave has talked about reshaping the further education commissioner role in to one that more actively supports colleges. This already includes a number of new ‘active support’ measures including allowing any college to request a diagnostic assessment, a new ‘curriculum efficiency and financial sustainability’ programme and publishing best practice management accounts.
According to the annual report, this could go further in the near future, with the commissioner gaining additional responsibilities through funding and accountability reforms.
It will be the FEC’s responsibility to support colleges that are found to not be delivering local skills needs and that underperforming on the new ‘skills measure’ which is currently under consultation.
Asked whether these new responsibilities will trigger a change in the expertise required within the FEC team, Legrave told FE Week that “as we extend active support to more people, we will need more resource” but added “we haven’t been given a budget yet for 22/23.”
The issue facing aspiring apprentices will be even more pressing if BTECs are defunded, writes Henry Faulkner-Ellis
Imagine a school leaver has just completed their GCSEs and wants to get on to an apprenticeship scheme. They search through the vacancies online but find that almost every advert asks for qualifications they don’t have.
This is currently the case for a significant number of young people.
To address this issue, the government needs to re-assess how minimum English and maths requirements are incorporated into apprenticeship training.
The government must consider how they can better support employers in taking on apprentices who do not meet them.
In 2014/15 the government made it mandatory for all apprentices to continue studying towards a level 2 qualification in English and maths (e.g. achieving a minimum GCSE grade of 4), where an apprentice did not already meet this requirement.
Both providers and employers have reported filtering out candidates without minimum English and maths requirements, as these candidates are seen to be less likely to pass the end-point assessment.
Only half of all young people from disadvantaged backgrounds (as measured by eligibility for free school meals) achieved a grade 9-4 in English and maths at key stage 4 in the last academic year.
Because of this low rate, the requirement to continue studying towards level 2 qualifications in English and maths may have contributed to the particular decline in apprenticeship starts among disadvantaged young people, as highlighted in our recent NFER research report.
But until now it has not been possible to assess how widespread minimum English and maths requirements are.
For the first time, the DfE has published detailed vacancy information from its Find An Apprenticeship (FAA) service, where employers can advertise apprenticeship vacancies.
While the platform only includes a subset of all apprenticeship opportunities, it still provides the most comprehensive picture yet of apprenticeship entry requirements.
Our analysis finds that almost 80 per cent of all apprenticeship vacancies advertised on the FAA website between August 2018 and October 2021 mention English or maths as qualifications required to fill the vacancy.
While this percentage increases with the level associated with the apprenticeship, we still find that 71 per cent of intermediate apprenticeships (level 2) mention English or maths in their qualification requirements.
Considering only half of disadvantaged young people achieve these qualifications at KS4, these requirements are a significant obstacle to having more disadvantaged young people doing apprenticeships.
While some apprenticeships require high levels of English and maths skills, there are apprenticeships where only some aspects of these skills might be required. For example, a social care apprentice is unlikely to require the same levels of numerical skills as an engineering apprentice.
Despite this, we find that the majority of vacancies across all sectors mention English or maths requirements – even in the sectors where an apprentice might not necessarily need to meet minimum requirements at the start of their apprenticeship.
This suggests that employers are imposing minimum requirements because of how the system is designed, and not because they are a prerequisite for the actual apprenticeship.
These are not prerequisites for the actual apprenticeship
While there is no doubt that numeracy and literacy are important for young people to succeed in the labour market, it is clear that the current minimum requirements act as a barrier to young people accessing apprenticeships. This is particularly important as these young people will be even more restricted in their options if plans to de-fund some BTECs go ahead in 2024.
To ensure that all young people are able to access a suitable route at post-16, the government needs to re-assess how English and maths requirements are incorporated into apprenticeships.
They should also consider how they can better support and incentivise employers to take on apprentices who do not meet minimum requirements before starting their apprenticeships.
