The words were an uncomfortable reminder that education support is unfairly complicated outside the school gates, despite the herculean efforts of educators, parents and carers, and the sheer determination of young people.
It is widely known that children and young people have big decisions to make at age 16 and 18. But those learners with more vulnerabilities than their peers, including young people with SEND and learning differences, can find themselves in a position of heightened uncertainty about their future pathway at an even earlier age.
And Ofsted’s revelation that there are “serious weaknesses” in students’ transition between school and college or even employment should remind us of the huge challenges they face.
It’s not surprising to hear that a number of young people and their families feel they are not receiving the level of support they require. They are not following a direct pathway or being pointed in the right direction, leading to confusion as they miss out, further reducing their confidence levels behind those of their peers.
It is time for a rethink! Assistive technology solutions are available and a curriculum based on inclusive teaching and language can be created.
Finally, hearing stories of young people routinely arriving at college with an out-of-date education, health and care plan is deeply concerning. How can we talk of improving the current SEND system if the building blocks are not fully implemented?
Most worrying of all, it indicates a lack of support for an individual at key transition points. How confident could anyone feel in the validity of such an assessment, or the relevance of the stated needs?
Young people and their families quite frankly deserve better.
For many learners with SEND, their ambition is to live an ordinary life and to have choices just like their peers. That means having options in their local community and having the support to navigate education and training pathways.
So, what is the solution?
The problem cannot be sorted overnight. At Nasen, we seek to tackle the barriers to equity in education and promote inclusion in education settings.
At the top of my list I would place collaboration and training across the professional divide, uniting those working in all phases of the education system.
At the top of my list I would place collaboration across the professional divide
I have yet to meet anyone working in education who does not want to do the best they can for learners. The issue is not with educators per se, it’s the system that throws up barriers. Bridging that divide is key.
The needs of learners with SEND must be identified earlier and more effectively through person-centred planning. Standard frameworks and common language need to be used and then shared with the educators and providers along their education pathway.
We also need to invest in a common continuous professional development short module for the wider workforce, especially those working with 16-18-year-olds that promotes inclusive attitudes and ambition for learners and builds on the excellent work of colleges and providers. It can also create the channels for effective communication across the sectors.
The way that information is shared also needs to be simplified and to enable agency for a young person, along with ease of sharing between relevant agencies.
We should focus on having a mandatory strategic role for each local authority area, accountable for ensuring all learners with SEND have good, local options, all the way to age 25.
Our learners with SEND deserve equality in the education system. From classroom to college, let’s act now to prioritise our young people at a vital stage.
Together we can address the potholes on the pathway to adulthood.
An apprenticeship has allowed me to learn in a way neither school nor a BTEC prepared me for, writes Aaliyah Cadogan
I became a sports coach for children through an apprenticeship, and I feel so lucky I took that route. It wasn’t a route my school told me about when I was a student, but it’s just been brilliant.
When I finished sixth form, I knew I didn’t want to go to university. I didn’t want to be sitting in lectures for three years – I learn by doing, and so when I saw an advert for a PE apprentice, I went for it.
I have been on the apprenticeship for three years currently, working towards completing a level 4 diploma in primary physical education practice qualification alongside my level 3 teaching assistant apprenticeship standard.
From the very start, I was getting first-hand experience with the children and doing a proper 9-to-5 job.
Employers always want work experience, and that’s not something you get on a degree. But the apprenticeship is like a two-in-one. It helped me to get a job as a paid sports coach from this September.
The money is fine for me as well. I’m still living at home and don’t have bills to pay, so obviously that helps, but out of me and all my friends I’m usually the only one with money. Their student loan money doesn’t seem to stretch very far. I’m getting paid to work and honestly, anything is better than getting into debt from university.
Out of me and my friends at university, I’m usually the only one with any money
My friends are also quite stressed out at university, but I’ve found my apprenticeship supportive, and I actually feel quite relaxed. On Friday we’re in training and my tutor goes through my coursework with me.
Sometimes I go to my training provider to learn about safeguarding, managing behaviour, first aid and useful skills, with the other apprentices.
But when I started the apprenticeship, I wasn’t confident at all. I didn’t know what to expect, and I had to learn quickly how to be organised and communicate with others.
There are so many people in a school, you have to make sure your communication is on point. It’s a really big learning experience. I used to be quite nervous about taking a whole lesson, but now if someone asks me to, I can do it.
The thing that’s motivated me a lot is the children. In my first year as a PE apprentice I was helping out with the after-school netball club. There was a girl who was trying to learn how to shoot, so I helped her technique. She got the ball in, and she said, “Thank you, thank you”, to me, and I thought, “This is why I want to do this”.
It’s the same feeling when the students ask me, “Miss, are you taking us for PE today?” and if I say no, they are disappointed. It makes me smile. Just seeing the children happy in PE too, especially the ones who previously found it difficult – it gives me something to live for.
At some points it is hard too, of course. Working in a school is very busy and you don’t know what is going to happen on that day. You might have to cover an extra class suddenly, and you have coursework to focus on, on top of that.
My BTEC didn’t really prepare me for my apprenticeship
I was lucky that the first school I worked in had an apprentice before me, so they knew what they were doing when I arrived.
But my own school where I was a student didn’t tell me anything about apprenticeships. I just feel like secondary schools only really care about university, and they make you think if don’t go to university, it’s the end of the world.
If I hadn’t found this apprenticeship, I honestly don’t know what I’d be doing right now.
My BTEC was also quite theory-based, and it didn’t really prepare me for my apprenticeship either. I once had to lead a warm-up for younger students, but apart from that, there wasn’t a really practical aspect to the BTEC.
Without the apprenticeship, I wouldn’t have been able to get this sports coach job, so it’s genuinely been a lifesaver. I just wish they’d talked about apprenticeships more at school.
Jo James started as a typist at her chamber and has shot up the ranks to chief executive. She tells Jess Staufenberg why local skills improvement plans can’t be all things to all people
Apparently Jo James has been out dancing all night. She beams and chuckles throughout our conversation, but is seemingly feeling the effects of the evening before on her feet – it was the business awards ceremony at the Kent Invicta chamber of commerce, where she has been chief executive since 2008. (The ‘invicta’ bit means ‘undefeated’ and is Kent’s motto – something to do with scaring off William the Conqueror.)
The names of the winners have been sat sealed inside envelopes for 20 months, because James refused to do a virtual ceremony – which, let’s be honest, is never as good as the real thing.
“We haven’t had a lot to celebrate until last night, even pre-pandemic – it wasn’t a great environment already for business,” she confesses. This is a reference to Brexit, whose effects on local economies have been worsened by the double whammy of the pandemic.
When she won her OBE for services to the economy in 2019, Prince William had apparently asked James how Brexit was affecting Kent. She’d joked that the trip to Buckingham Palace had at least “given her a day off from Brexit talk”, which, according to Kent Online, made him laugh.
But even someone with a cheeky sense of humour like James (she got her dog on the same day she received her letter from Buckingham Palace, so he’s called, you’ve guessed it, Obe) does not try to make light of the situation facing employers now.
James and her collie, Obe
After Brexit came Covid, plus a prime minister whose flustered address this week to the Confederation of British Industry was criticised as a “failed speech” and “inappropriate” by some business groups.
“To thrive, business needs stability and clarity, and clarity is probably more important,” continues James. “If you don’t have clarity, how can you plan? We’ve had a tough four years of uncertainty. Businesses need to know what the ground rules are.”
“I need to inform and keep all stakeholders on board, but the only voice I need to hear right now is the voice of employers. Yes, there are young people not in education, training or employment (NEET), and there’s the 16-19 agenda, but I’m not being dragged into that. For this piece of work, it’s about the voice of employers.”
The other stakeholders are universities, FE providers, the Careers & Enterprise Company, local authorities, private providers, and more, says James. But she argues she must prioritise employers, because they desperately need to be heard.
“What skills we’re getting in the county at the moment is driven by the student, and there’s no relation between what a student wants, and what business wants, and the growth areas we’re going to have,” she explains. “And actually there’s a mismatch between what’s coming out of HE and FE, and business. That’s not fault of colleges: that’s a fault of the system.”
The skills we’re getting at the moment is driven by the student, not business
One of the systemic problems is the way FE is funded, continues James. “Colleges of course need to have sufficient people to make a course financially viable […] so one of the things the government can do is to enable colleges to put on not so popular courses that are really essential to the growth of the county.”
But how many young people – particularly in Kent, with London so close – will then stay in their county? I ask. How will the chamber ensure students who have taken critically important college courses don’t leave, and the government hasn’t wasted money on a course with no tangible local benefit?
James nods. “Yes, it’s the big London agency that has the pull.” The pandemic has put rural economies even more on the back foot in this respect, she continues.
“On the one hand the pandemic has given us opportunities, but on the other hand there’s also a threat.” Previously, explains James, Kent’s employers could compete with their counterparts in big cities by pointing out the drawbacks of the length and cost of commute. With more people working from home, that’s no longer the case.
“So that’s driving up salary costs here, because employers are having to compete to make the offer more compelling.” It’s a “much more candidate-driven market,” James adds.
James receiving her OBE in 2019
Placed in this context, with business struggling on all sides, James’s friendly but firm determination to listen to them foremost makes more sense.
“I’m not getting sidetracked. The local authority may have a real problem with NEET and want to come and talk to me about it, but that’s for a later stage, that’s not now. The whole thing is about ensuring we’ve got the employer voice at the heart of FE.”
There do seem to be a few tensions here, which will need someone as friendly and light-touch as James to steer through. She’s got a clear process for trying to bring all voices to the table – but business gets the final look-in.
To begin with, her team is gathering the ‘data’ on the problems facing employers. It’s a three-pronged approach: first, through direct conversations and surveys with 25 member organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institute of Directors, the National Farmers’ Union, the House Builders Association and so on, asking them and their members for their views.
The second approach is through a market research company gathering responses from at least 2,000 businesses, asking about recruitment, in which sectors and which skills, and so on. The third is focus groups, with 20 to 30 people led by James and her team.
James expects three issues to become clearer: “the immediate skills needs; the technical qualifications and what needs to change there; and where there is a lack of people going into key sectors”. She is already aware that the sectors most struggling in Kent are manufacturing, engineering and agriculture.
This information will then be gathered and put to an “employer board”, which James expects to convene in the next two to three weeks with about 30 employers (she is clear she doesn’t just want the “usual suspects” representing local business, but those who don’t often speak up too).
“We’ll then say to the board, this is what the data is telling us – does this problem resonate with you? And if the answer is yes, we move on to creating a solutions panel.”
The solutions panel is where FE providers come in ̶ along with HE and private training providers, government department representatives, local authorities, as well as employers and businesses. The panel will propose recommendations to tackle the problems identified by businesses, says James.
“Then we’ll take those solutions back to the employer board and say, do these sound the right solutions to you?”
It’s clear who the LSIP is serving – business – but then, that’s what the government has contracted James to do, and she makes a fair point about the mismatch between skills gaps and education. The only problem is convincing everybody else the LSIP is definitely their LSIP too.
“That’s why it’s so key that those stakeholders are brought into the process, so actually it’s not a chamber of ‘Jo James’ LSIP ̶ it’s a Kent and Medway LSIP,” says James.
But with colleges facing possibly legally binding LSIPs, it will be important that providers aren’t made to feel they’ve lost all autonomy over what is in the best interests of students.
James, however, praises how her local colleges for cultivating a close relationship with the chamber, and it is unlikely many college principals will not see the advantages of making LSIPs work.
My final question is practical. Even if everyone is signed up in principle, frustrations could arise if the plan is not smoothly managed. What is the strategy to ensure LSIPs are actually carried out? Who will keep the plan on track?
“To me the LSIP is just the start of the journey,” explains James. “If it’s just one piece of work, it’s a wasted effort.”
If the LSIP is just one piece of work, it’s a wasted effort
James has a major advantage: she is immensely likeable. She is a former FE student herself, having not enjoyed school and taken a secretarial course at Ashford College. She never even intended to lead the chamber, having been interested in hairdressing.
Instead, as a stay-at-home mum, she one day applied to a newspaper advert for “typist, 12 hours a week”, and it turned out to be at the chamber of commerce. Since then she has shot up through the ranks, and was asked to take over as CEO 12 years ago. “I have a wild imagination, and I never in my wildest imagination would have thought I’d be doing this!”
Her team has got until end of February to submit the LSIP. With so much effort put into them by exhausted employers, let’s hope they might work.
One of England’s largest college groups has settled a pay and conditions dispute with the University and College Union.
Capital City College Group (CCCG) faced ten days of strike action this year. It has now agreed to a one-off £700 pay award for all staff in December, ahead of negotiations after Easter 2022 on a pay rise.
UCU London official Adam Lincoln said: “This deal is a testament to our members’ determination to fight for fairer pay, working conditions and against excessive monitoring and surveillance of staff.”
The London-based college group, which includes City and Islington College, College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London (CONEL), and Westminster Kingsway College, had attempted to implement a new “open classroom model”, according to the UCU.
This, the union said, would have allowed lecturers to be observed at any time by any manager and linked their performance in these observations to their job’s future.
The new deal means lecturers will instead receive 15-to-20-minute visits three times a year, not linked to their future prospects, and lecturers will be pre-notified about the visits.
Deal also includes extra pay and holiday
Additionally, CONEL’s lecturers will be put on a London weighting worth £1,700 and be moved onto a CCCG contract which is worth an extra £1,500 to their pay packets plus three additional days’ holiday, which will bring them in line with CCCG’s other colleges’ staff.
“We hope the settlement of this dispute will now pave the way for a more positive working relationship and improved future negotiations on pay and conditions at CCCG,” Lincoln said.
College leaders and the union have agreed to establish a working group to look at ways to reduce workload and administrative tasks.
Negotiations over learning support assistant and hourly-paid lecturer contracts will also be commenced.
This comes after Croydon College and South Thames College Group put forward pay increases and benefits such as extra leave earlier this month. CCCG is the last to settle its dispute with the union.
CCCG previously granted staff an up to five per cent pay rise in November 2018.
The group then generated a £10 million deficit in 2018/19, surprising leaders after they had budgeted for a £750,000 surplus.
It recorded a £4.2 million operating loss in 2019/20.
Capital City College Group chief executive Roy O’Shaughnessy said: “We are pleased that we and our UCU colleagues have reached an agreement.
“Both sides made concessions during the negotiations, and we’re pleased that we are now able to give our staff a well-deserved pay award, without comprising our financial position and security, and that we’re making progress to reduce the workload for our teachers.
“We are also glad that the end of the dispute also mitigates future disruption to our students’ education.”
Dan Shelley, Chief transformation officer, EKC Group
Start date: January 2022
Previous job: Executive director for strategic partnerships and engagement, East Sussex College
Interesting fact: He has run two of the six city marathons (Berlin and New York) and wants to complete the set before he retires, but is not sure that this is compatible with his ambition to own a micro-pub.
Beverley Poole, Director of college business centres for the Solent region, Fareham College
Start date: November 2021
Previous job: Founder and chief executive, Aspire4Business Academy
Interesting fact: She has a medal for league rifle shooting.
Anthony Impey, Chair, Apprenticeship Ambassador Network
Start date: November 2021
Concurrent job: Chief executive, Be the Business
Interesting fact: He received an MBE in 2018 for his services to apprenticeships and small businesses.
This week Shane is joined by three guests, to cover three particularly interesting topics: Ed Reza Schwitzer, former DfE civil servant, Sue Pember, adult education guru, and Catherine Sezen at the Association of Colleges.
Has the government got it right with its plans to involve universities more in student outcomes?
How can the sector drive up adult participation in further education?
And why did Ofsted get into a row with a mayoral combined authority?
Listen to episode 8 below, and hit subscribe to follow the podcast!
The gold, silver and bronze medallists from this year’s WorldSkills UK national finals have been announced.
One hundred and eighty-six skilled young people from across the country have been recognised across a range of competitions, in which over 400 competitors took part.
The winners were announced this evening during a special live programme from the studios of skills sector supporter Steph McGovern’s Steph’sPacked Lunch Channel 4 show.
McGovern said: “This is just brilliant. Everyone should be jumping for joy, what an early Christmas present that is. They must have put in some graft to smash it like that.”
English learners from across the country pick up medals
Steph McGovern
This year’s national finals were removed from their usual venue at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre.
They usually coincide with the wider WorldSkills UK LIVE event but this and the finals were called off owing to uncertainty around holding large-scale events during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Instead, the 62 finals were spread across 25 venues around the UK, including Weston College, which hosted the web design competition.
Shipley College put on the health and social care tournament, while the butchery competition took place at Reaseheath College.
The 32 gold medal winners from England for this year’s competition stretch from Yorkshire to the south-west.
Students from North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College picked up five gold medals in the foundation skills catering, hairdressing and motor vehicle competitions as well as the contests in visual merchandising and joinery.
Toyota Manufacturing won gold in both the mechatronics and automation competition.
Ten Scottish competitors took gold, alongside 14 Welsh winners and six Northern Irish students.
‘These young people are a real inspiration,’ says WorldSkills UK
WorldSkills UK deputy chief executive Ben Blackledge said: “These young people are a real inspiration. They are an example to us all and should be celebrated. To have excelled after such a difficult year shows that their dedication and skills are truly excellent.
“Skills are the lifeblood of every economy, creating high-quality jobs, rewarding careers, and our competitions are proof that there is amazing talent in every part of the UK.”
He offered his congratulations to “all those who took part in our programme this year, especially the finalists”.
See the full list of gold, silver and bronze medal winners here.
The government have begun to reverse changes made by the House of Lords to the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill.
The Lords made a number of popular amendments, many of which went against the will of the government. These included a bolstered Baker clause on careers guidance and a four year hiatus on removal of level 3 qualification funding including BTECs. Both now face being cut from the bill.
The Conservatives do not have a majority in the House of Lords, but will make up the majority of the committee that will debate and approve amendments to the bill from Tuesday next week.
Local Skills Improvement Plans
Nadhim Zahawi announced last week that the government will amend the skills bill so that mayoral combined authorities, and the Greater London Authority, will have a right to have their views “duly considered” as part of the LSIP development process.
Alex Burghart
This amendment is part of a raft of proposed changes published in the name of skills minister Alex Burghart for the bill committee to debate and approve.
Burghart’s amendments remove lines added by the Lords which stated that local authorities, further education providers and universities must also be involved in the development of LSIPs.
Level 3 funding, careers guidance and apprenticeships
Lines added by Lord David Blunkett and Lord Kenneth Baker to prevent defunding of level 3 qualifications for four years are also now set to be removed from the bill.
Lord Baker’s ‘super-Baker clause’, which would have provided an enforceable entitlement for school pupils to access information from a range of FE and training providers at least three times, is also up for deletion.
It will be replaced by a government-backed amendment which reduces the mandatory number of encounters to “at least one”, and modifies Baker’s proposal ensuring pupils access information from “a representative range of education and training providers” to “at least one provider”.
Lord Kenneth Clarke successfully added a section to the bill which would have provided funded access to education up to level 3 and that would have reserved two-thirds of apprenticeship levy funding for apprentices under the age of 25. This is also set to be removed from the bill.
Universal Credit conditionality
The Bishop of Durham passed a popular amendment in the Lords which would have meant continuing eligibility for Universal Credit claimants on specified FE courses. This section of the bill is also up for the chop via another amendment from Burghart.
Other lines from the Lords likely to be removed from the bill include a requirement for special educational needs awareness training as part of FE teacher training courses and a duty on the education secretary to publish a report on the impact on skills levels of the equivalent or lower level qualification funding rules.
The Bill Committee
FE Week understands that Labour’s Clive Efford and the Conservatives’ Maria Miller will co-chair the committee, which will begin scrutinising the bill line by line from Tuesday.
The committee is expected to have its first meeting on November 30 and is set to conclude on December 7.
Parliamentary procedure dictates that because the skills bill started in the House of Lords, the committee will not be inviting sector organisations to oral evidence sessions but written evidence is being accepted.
Miller is best known as the secretary of state for culture, media and sport and minister for women and equalities in David Cameron’s coalition cabinet between September 2012 and April 2014. Before entering government, Miller was part of Cameron’s shadow education and skills team. She has been the MP for Basingstoke since 2005.
Efford was elected to represent the Eltham constituency in May 1997. Over the course of his parliamentary career he has served as a shadow culture minister and served on a number of parliamentary committees. He currently also sits on the digital, culture, media a sport committee.
Confirmation of their appointments, and the remaining committee members, is expected very shortly.
Discord between Ofsted and a mayoral combined authority has emerged after inspectors criticised a provider for enrolling graduates on a level 1 programme.
First Face to Face Limited was found to be making ‘insufficient progress’ in all three areas of a monitoring visit for its adult learning provision, funded by North of Tyne Combined Authority.
Inspectors found the provider “recruits too many learners who are undergraduates or have degrees” to their level 1 computerised accountancy and understanding enterprise programme, when the learners “are not planning to set up their own business”.
“These learners have enrolled on the programmes simply to enhance their curriculum vitae,” the report reads.
Information on learners’ prior qualifications is gathered, but they are enrolled on programmes that are “not sufficiently challenging”.
At the time of the visit, 12 learners were studying the computerised accountancy course and fewer than five were on the understanding enterprise programmes.
‘Clear rationale’ for allowing graduates on level 1 courses
In response to the report, the provider’s managing director Charlotte Windebank said the combined authority had “specifically commissioned” the adult education provision to “respond to low business start-up rates in the northeast,” and was intended to support entrepreneurial skills “regardless of prior attainment”.
A spokesperson for North of Tyne Combined Authority argued there was a “clear rationale” for the level 1 programme which “supports undergraduates into self-employment and social enterprise”.
Ofsted responded: “During a monitoring visit, inspectors check that programmes are at a suitable level for learners and that they benefit from the intended purpose of the course.”
North of Tyne Combined Authority took over its £23 million adult education budget in 2020, behind the first wave, but ahead of Sheffield City Region and West Yorkshire combined authorities, which took control of their local budgets last August.
The disparity between Ofsted’s idea of best practice and the combined authority’s plans for its adult education provision sets up a potential future conflict between the central government body and devolved areas.
Ofsted criticised how learners study same programme
Ofsted’s report also criticised leaders for not having “effective oversight” of learners’ progress and for not intervening “quickly enough” when students fall behind on the computerised accountancy programme.
All learners receive the same programme content regardless of prior knowledge and can “competently complete” course workbook activities before they start the programme.
Leaders do not ensure all the provider’s teaching and pastoral staff complete safeguarding and ‘prevent’ duty training “quickly enough”.
Windebank said the provider was “obviously disappointed” with the report, “but are taking steps to ensure it fits the Ofsted framework when we get our full inspection in the new year”.
The provider’s leaders were complimented on the “useful advice about relevant careers” received by learners, though inspectors highlighted that leaders do not ensure access to “impartial careers advice about other opportunities”.
Appropriately qualified tutors also use their skills and experience to develop the skills of learners, who improve their confidence and gain useful networking opportunities.
North of Tyne Combined Authority said it will continue to monitor the provider and are working with them while First Face to Face implements their “robust” action plan.
