T Levels should be slimmed down so that students can study other qualifications, such as BTECs, alongside them, the new Ofqual boss has said.

Jo Saxton called for a “much more mixed offering” when it comes to post-16 qualifications during an interview with FE Week’s sister publication Schools Week.

She questioned a system that creates “division” between certain types of qualifications and welcomed the Department for Education’s new ministerial team’s recent reassurance that they do not want a binary choice of T Levels and A-levels when young people leave school.

“If I was in charge of T Level policy you would have a T Level that was equivalent to two A-levels so you could do a T Level and something else,” Saxton then said.

Her view is similar to that of education select committee chair Robert Halfon. His committee this week launched an inquiry into the “effectiveness” of post-16 qualifications such as A-levels, T Levels, BTECs and apprenticeships.

It will explore whether a new baccalaureate system that would “allow young people to study a greater blend of academic and vocational subjects” should be introduced in their place – an idea proposed by Halfon in 2019.

T Levels, which typically involve 1,800 teaching hours, including a 45-day work placement, are currently the equivalent to three A-levels. The government does not allow for other qualifications to be taken alongside them, whereas they do for A-levels.

The Department for Education is also in the midst of controversial reforms to level 3 qualifications, which are set to see the defunding of most BTECs and other applied general qualifications that overlap with T Levels and A-levels.

Ofqual regulates the technical qualification component of T Levels but overall policy design sits with the DfE and Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education.

Saxton admitted her regulator’s power over the make-up of T Levels is “quite limited” but said she would “definitely like to get more involved” in their development.

She added: “We want these high quality, innovative qualifications to be as accessible as possible to all learners. I’m thrilled to be leading Ofqual at a time when we will be regulating the technical qualification component of T Levels as they are introduced.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said there are “no plans to change T Levels” when asked if the DfE would consider Saxton’s proposal.

Saxton has taken over Ofqual at a time when regulation of vocational and technical qualifications is going through significant change.

One contentious reform is a proposal in the Skills Bill, which is currently making its way through parliament, to give the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education the ultimate sign-off power for the approval and regulation of technical qualifications in future.

Awarding bodies have claimed this is a “retrograde step” and would reverse the “gains” of independent regulation that parliament intended in 2009 when it set up Ofqual.

Unlike Ofqual, the institute is a non-departmental public body directly accountable to ministers, not parliament.

There is concern that IfATE’s new powers would therefore introduce a conflict of interest. Some also fear that having two regulators splitting responsibility for certain types of vocational and technical qualifications could also create a muddled and cumbersome two-tier system of regulation.

Saxton admitted the move is “slightly controversial” but believes it is “completely right” because IfATE has the expertise and time that Ofqual doesn’t to explore exactly what type of technical qualifications are needed by employers.

“The new powers mean IfATE gets to hold the kind of standard of what good technical qualification – in whatever discipline that is employer-related – looks like. We get to look at the assessment part of it.

“I think that separation is quite useful.”

She added: “I’ve heard already from a number of awarding organisations in vocational and technical sectors that they’re worried about this being the beginning of what they call ‘dual regulation’ and there are more hoops to jump through.

“But for me, I think it’s completely in the interests of learners. There is a legal requirement to keep an eye on regulatory burdens, and we’ve got to make sure that it doesn’t become inappropriate.”

The country’s spending watchdog has found the government is oblivious to the quality, targeting and scale of “deadweight” Kickstart jobs.

A report by the National Audit Office has also revealed the flagship programme is set for a £650 million underspend, as officials now estimate they’ll only reach 168,000 starts compared to the 250,000 the chancellor Rishi Sunak was aiming for.

But at a cost of around £7,000 per participant, Kickstart has become the Department for Work and Pensions most expensive support scheme.

The department claimed its benefits to society will outweigh the costs by up to £1.65 for every £1 invested, but only if it is targeted “effectively at the right people and the jobs created would not have otherwise been funded by employers”.

The NAO found the DWP has “limited assurance” over this, because the department does not collect or monitor the necessary data.

Meg Hillier MP, chair of the public accounts committee, said the “jury is out” on whether Kickstart will end up being value for money and “whether it will actually help those groups of young people who truly need it”.

She expressed concern at the DWP’s “worryingly light-touch approach to setting targets or tracking performance”, considering the government pumped £1.9 billion into the scheme.

A government spokesperson said their officials acted “quickly and decisively to establish Kickstart at the start of the pandemic when it was feared unemployment levels would more than double – as this report acknowledges”.

Kickstart was launched in September 2020 in a bid to prevent a significant rise in youth unemployment in the face of Covid-19.

It offers six-month paid work placements to those aged 16 to 24 who are on Universal Credit and deemed to be at risk of long-term unemployment – with the government picking up their wage bill.

Employers were only supposed to benefit from the wage-subsidy if they could prove the jobs were “additional” and would not have existed without the funding provided.

Even before the scheme got under way, the DWP assumed that only 50 per cent of the economic output of Kickstart jobs would be additional, the NAO found.

The department calculated the figure could be as low as 30 per cent, but claimed the scheme would still have a positive social return if it “also has the intended employment impact”.

The NAO report states the DWP also “recognised the risk” that non-additionality could increase as the economy recovered and does not expect its evaluation, planned to be released in several years, to “achieve a robust estimate of Kickstart’s impact on the wider economy”.

Labour market conditions developed in unexpected ways that hampered the take-up and effectiveness of the scheme, according to the audit office.

It found the number of young people claiming Universal Credit and searching for work for more than a year has continued to increase, from 48,800 in February 2020 to 144,000 in September 2021 – a 195 per cent increase – despite Kickstart.

By summer 2021, the DWP acknowledged it was unrealistic to achieve its initial aim of 250,000 young people starting a Kickstart job by December 31, 2021 and is now planning on the basis of up to 168,000 starts by the end of March 2022, following the scheme’s extension.

Some 100,000 people have started jobs created by the scheme to date. DWP expects to spend £1.26 billion in total.

Wider issues with the scheme’s rollout are laid bare in today’s report.

As the DWP launched Kickstart at pace due to the pandemic, it experienced “a number of problems, leading to some criticism from stakeholders about unclear rules, a lack of published data on progress and short notice about changes”.

It has also “generally taken several months to fill the vacancies that have been filled”, with employers waiting an average of 62 days for the DWP to complete administrative checks on each application, according to the NAO.

This echoes the findings of a recent FE Week investigation, in which businesses slammed Kickstart as overly “complex, bureaucratic and slow”.

The NAO has told the DWP to start monitoring whether work coaches refer the right people to the scheme and assess why there are many people who, in principle, are eligible for the scheme but are not taking up the outstanding vacancies.

DWP should also “conduct routine inspections and monitoring of Kickstart employers to ensure that they are fulfilling the condition that these jobs are high quality and additional”.

Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: “DWP has limited assurance that Kickstart is having the positive impact intended. It does not know whether the jobs created are of high quality or whether they would have existed without the scheme.

“It could also do more to ensure the scheme is targeted at those who need it the most.”

The government’s public sector apprenticeship target has officially been missed, final year-end data for 2020/21 has revealed.

Figures published this morning by the Department for Education also show colleges accounted for only 18.5 per cent of apprenticeship starts last year, as well as the impact multiple lockdowns has had on adult education participation.

The department said “extra care” should be taken when comparing the stats to previous years because they cover the period affected by varying Covid-19 restrictions, which impacted on learning and provider reporting “behaviour”.

Here are five things we learned…

1. Apprenticeship starts stay stagnant

Overall apprenticeship starts were down by 0.3 per cent to 321,400, compared to 322,500 reported for the same period in 2019/20.

The proportion of starts for young people under the age of 19 dropped from 23.6 per cent to 20.3 per cent, while starts for over 25s grew from 46.8 per cent to 50.3 per cent.

At the same time, the proportion of starts on level 2 apprenticeships shrunk from 30.8 per cent to 26.2 per cent, while starts at level 4 and above shot up from 25.6 per cent to 30.7 per cent.

2. Colleges accounted for just 18.5% of apprenticeship starts

Out of the 321,400 starts in 2020/21, private providers had 64.4 per cent of the market.

Other public funded provider such as local authorities and higher education institutions accounted for 16.3 per cent, while schools, sixth form colleges and special colleges made up 0.8 per cent.

Concerningly for education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, general FE colleges only accounted for 18.5 per cent (59,500) starts.

The figures come a week after Zahawi issued a call to arms to college leaders to deliver more apprenticeships. Addressing the Association of Colleges conference, he said: “Currently around 30 per cent of apprenticeships are carried out in colleges, but if we really want to transform supply we will have to grow that number.

“I know colleges are more than capable of it.”

3. 2.3% public sector target failure

Public sector bodies in England with 250 or more staff were set a target by government to employ an average of at least 2.3 per cent of their staff as new apprentice starts over the period 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2021.

Figures published for the first time today show an average of 1.7 per cent of employees started an apprenticeship over that period. This equated to a combined total of over 220,000 starts.

The armed forces performed the best, achieving an average of 7.9 per cent between 2017 and 2021, while schools were the worst at 1 per cent.

4. Tripling traineeships target tanks

Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Plan for Jobs provided £111 million for up to 36,700 additional traineeships in 2020/21, including paying employers £1,000 for providing work placements for trainees.

This would triple the number of starts on the pre-employment programme after 14,900 were achieved in 2019/20.

Final year-end data published today shows only 17,400 starts were achieved in 2020/21 – 47 per cent of the target.

Plans to rapidly grow traineeship numbers were scuppered by various delays to tenders intended to expand the provider-base.

5. Adult participation takes another hit

Adult government-funded further education and skills participation decreased by 6 per cent to 1,640,300 compared to 1,745,800 in the same period in 2019/20.

Participation specifically for the adult education budget meanwhile dropped 11.2 per cent to 925,300 compared to 1,042,000.

And participation in community learning fell by 32 per cent to 243,700 in 2020/21, from 358,300. 

The number of learners taking out an advance learner loan dropped to its lowest since 2014. Numbers in that year sat at 75,400 and grew to a peak of 119,000 in 2017. Loans participation in 2020/21 sat at 86,200.

The number of further education providers in scope for Ofsted inspection has surpassed the 2,000-mark, new data released today has revealed.

And the proportion of providers judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ has slightly increased two percentage points to 83 per cent – but this is mainly due to poor performing providers losing their funding.

The stats were revealed by the watchdog in its published management information on inspections conducted in the 2020/21 academic year, which was heavily impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Here are the key findings…

Provider numbers continue to grow…

England has seen the number of providers publicly funded to deliver further education, training and/or apprenticeships rocket since the government apprenticeship reforms in 2018.

As of 31 August 2021, there were 2,053 further education and skills providers publicly funded. This is 181 more than on 31 August 2020 and 885 more than on 31 August 2017.

Between 31 August 2020 and 31 August 2021, an additional 307 providers started delivering FE provision, according to today’s Ofsted release.

Over the same period, the watchdog stopped reporting on 126 providers because they either merged, ceased to be funded or stopped delivering.

The additional 307 providers include 273 independent learning providers (including employer providers) and 26 higher education institutions. All but 25 of the independent learning providers are delivering apprenticeships. All of the additional higher education institutions are delivering level 6 and 7 apprenticeships, which Ofsted became responsible for inspecting on 1 April 2021.

Interestingly, of the 126 providers that stopped being subject to Ofsted inspection, 44 providers started and stopped receiving funding the inspectorate could carry out any form of inspection.

…but college numbers continue to fall

The number of general further education colleges has fallen further, and now sits at 163 – five less than in August 2020.

Ofsted said this is mainly due to established colleges merging to form new entities – which leads to their old inspection grades being wiped clean.

As previously revealed by FE Week, two national colleges have closed over the past 12 months and been taken over by other institutions.

Just 44 full inspections were carried out last year

During 2020/21, full inspections were only able to take place during the last three months, between June and August.

All of these were to independent learning providers, including employer providers, that had not previously been inspected.

Of these, four were judged ‘outstanding’, 26 were judged ‘good’, 12 received ‘requires improvement’ and two were judged ‘inadequate’.

But almost 230 new provider monitoring visits were conducted

In between the national lockdowns, Ofsted continued with new provider monitoring visits as these were “deemed to be the highest priority”.

Of the 229 visits carried out in 2020/21, just over three quarters (76 per cent) were judged to be making at least ‘reasonable progress’ in all themes. Ofsted said this was unchanged from 2019/20.

The watchdog judged 19 per cent to be making ‘insufficient progress’ in at least one theme, however – a judgement which typically triggers the Education and Skills Funding Agency to suspend the provider from starting new apprentices.

Proportion of FE providers with the top 2 grades bumped up

On 31 August 2021, 52 per cent of the 2,053 further education and skills providers had received a full inspection.

Of these, 83 per cent were judged to be ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, an increase of two percentage points from 31 August 2020.

Ofsted said this increase is mainly as a result of providers judged ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ no longer being in scope for inspection.

Usually, this is because either the provider has lost its funding to deliver public education or has closed.

Apprenticeship quality slightly improves

On 31 August 2021, there were 1,598 providers funded and delivering apprenticeships in Ofsted’s systems.

Of these, 1,175 (74 per cent) had a judgement made on the quality of their apprenticeship provision at the time of their full inspection or new provider monitoring visit.

In total, 81 per cent of the 1,175 were judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ at their full inspection or were judged to be making at least ‘reasonable progress’ at their new provider monitoring visit – a two percentage point increase from the previous year.