A new inquiry into the “effectiveness” of post-16 qualifications like A-levels, T Levels, BTECs and apprenticeships has been launched by the House of Commons education committee.
MPs on the committee 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 its chair Robert Halfon in 2019.
The ‘Future of Post-16 Qualifications’ inquiry will consider whether current post-16 courses “properly prepare young people for the future world of work”, according to a spokesperson.
Controversial proposed reforms to level 3 qualifications, which could spell the end of funding for most BTECs, as well as the proposals set out in the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill currently going through parliament, will also be examined.
Halfon (pictured) said: “The post-16 curriculum must be robust enough to meet the challenges of the modern economy. With the fourth industrial revolution and an increasingly digital age where AI is king, we must ensure proper attention is paid to the fundamental link between education and employment.”
He added: “Rather than create a binary system of academic A-levels and vocational T Levels, should we think more broadly to create a parity of esteem between vocational and academic learning?
“A new, baccalaureate-style system, similar to the International Baccalaureate already used in 150 countries, that allows students flexibility and the scope to blend high-quality academic and vocational routes could be the solution.”
Halfon called for GCSEs and A-levels to be scrapped and replaced with one “holistic baccalaureate” for 18-year-olds which recognises academic and technical skills and personal development during a speech to the Edge Foundation in February 2019.
His proposal was made in the face of growing calls for GCSEs to be scrapped.
The education committee is currently inviting written submissions in the following areas for its new inquiry:
. The experience to date of those taking or delivering T Levels, and any changes to T Levels that may be needed to ensure they are accessible to all students.
. The strengths and weaknesses of the current system of post-16 qualifications, with reference to A Levels, T Levels, BTECs and apprenticeships, in preparing young people for work or further and higher education.
. The benefits and challenges the Government’s proposed changes to level 3 qualifications would bring, with reference to any implications for BTECs and routes into apprenticeships.
. The extent to which the Government’s review of level 3 qualifications will impact disadvantaged groups, students from minority ethnic backgrounds, students known to the care system, and students with special educational needs or disabilities, and what measures might be put in place to mitigate any negative impacts
. The benefits and disadvantages of introducing a baccalaureate system in post-16 education that allows students to take a variety of subjects, including both academic and vocational options.
. The benefits and disadvantages of a post-qualifications admission system. International good practice examples of systems for post-16 education and qualifications.
Asi Panditharatna is tired of low expectations for former prisoners, drug addicts and the unemployed. He asks Jess Staufenberg why only certain people are thought of as ‘labour’
A few weeks ago the deputy prime minister came out with a grand possible solution to the HGV driver shortage causing havoc at petrol stations and food shortages across the country. Low-level offenders – those serving community sentences – could become HGV drivers as “a benefit for the economy and a benefit for society”, announced Dominic Raab.
Asi Panditharatna, director of employment services at charity and training provider The Forward Trust, is not wild about this kind of rhetoric.
His organisation delivers training and support to prisoners, those with substance addictions and the unemployed – some of the most vulnerable people in society. Although Raab has an important point when he says people with “some skin in the game” are “less likely to reoffend”, the proposal that offenders become HGV drivers also misses another, more important point, says Panditharatna.
“It’s always been my belief that ex-offenders and other vulnerable people need to be offered aspirational careers. If you’re in a low-wage job, you’re going to be tempted to re-offend, or at least move into the grey economy [informal work that isn’t properly taxed] instead.”
Panditharatna is talking from The Forward Trust’s offices in Kennington, south London. He joined in 2018, and on arriving in post he made the charity a member of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers.
Slightly to Panditharatna’s surprise, his team won two AEB contracts: a devolved one under the Greater London Authority, specialising in ‘green recovery’ training; and a non-devolved contract in Kent called the ‘skills, training and jobs pathway’ for unemployed adults.
A client who completed a programme with The Forward Trust
The charity wasn’t completely new to the AEB, having delivered digital skills, customer service and employability support for two years already, but the two new contracts this summer show it has not only survived the government cull, but (unlike many other providers) has been offered the chance to prove itself on a bigger scale.
It would appear Panditharatna’s relentless drive for higher standards is a not insignificant factor in this expansion. He leans in, warming to his topic.
“So now they’re saying ex-offenders ought to drive an HGV? I’m sick of hearing people talked about as ‘labour’ – they’re people, learners, participants,” he says. “What if someone doesn’t want to drive an HGV?”
In contrast to this kind of approach, Panditharatna has been working on a new offer for ex-offenders and former substance abusers – to become successful, self-employed entrepreneurs. It’s not a route ministers often, if ever, present as desirable for people on the fringes of society.
In fact FE students generally are not usually spoken about by the Department for Education as the business entrepreneurs of the future – more as employees to ‘fill skills gaps’.
“When I first joined here we had a small fund for people wanting to set up their own business, but I said, ‘Come on, let’s really get in there,’” he continues.
He spoke to the charity’s chief executive, Mike Trace, a former deputy drugs ‘tsar’ to Tony Blair (and formerly a frequent target of tabloid articles for seeking to make it easier for substance addicts to get treatment). “I said to Mike, we need coaches. So I wrote the job description for a social enterprise coach.”
The enterprise support programme, which launched off the back of Panditharatna’s strategy in 2019, is open to ex-offenders, those in recovery from addiction, those not in education, employment or training, and those “facing other challenges or barriers to starting your own business”.
They are each assigned an enterprise coach and, if needed, an additional business mentor, to go through everything from developing the ‘right mindset’, business planning, applying for funding and tax, plus masterclasses and workshops, including from auditing firm Deloitte. There are currently 75 people on the programme, which the charity raises funds for.
“But we want to have government contracts for this. You could run AEB ‘enterprise’ qualifications!” enthuses Panditharatna. “I like having government contracts, it keeps you sharp.”
The supportive nature of the programme is particularly important for those recovering from addiction, he explains. “These learners can be quite different from ex-offenders – it’s not necessarily that they are low skilled, they can be quite highly qualified, but they have an addiction. And once you’re in recovery, you’re in recovery for ever. So with substance misuse, you need that network. They want to stay in touch with us the most.”
Panditharatna recalls one ex-offender in recovery from addiction who joined the programme because he “didn’t want to work for anyone else” and went on to build a successful print and design business with his wife.
A client who completed a programme with The Forward Trust
Given that in 2019, 29 per cent of adult offenders re-offended, and the figure for juvenile offenders was 38 per cent, tailoring learning to what genuinely interests and enthuses people might be a lesson worth noting by ministers.
The key is to make multiple aspirational pathways available, says Panditharatna. “Our enterprise pathway is not as big as our AEB provision, but it’s about being able to offer it anyway.”
Taking heed of skills gaps is still important, he continues – the charity’s ‘Restart’ programme helps people on universal credit into a job, and its AEB provision in London delivers the NCFE ‘climate change and awareness’ qualification at level 2, with guaranteed job interviews at the end.
This year his team also started delivering the ‘employability practitioner’ apprenticeship, to reflect a growing need for careers advisers as more people switch jobs. Two of the apprentices have been on universal credit themselves, so can talk with “real empathy” to their clients, he says.
But society has not caught up with the idea of aspirational, motivated, talented people who are recovering from addiction or have recently left prison.
“When we have people with us who we know we can progress, it’s so hard to get them on to an apprenticeship. I have to call people and pull in favours just to get them on. Why can’t we give them a break?
“It’s about removing unconscious bias. It’s easier to employ people who have the A-levels and the networks and who look good on paper. There are very few providers who are keen to look at our learners. It’s OK to get rejected sometimes, but not all the time. With ex-offenders especially, it’s very, very difficult.”
There are very few providers who are keen to look at our learners
Perhaps Panditharatna sympathises in part because of his own experiences. He says he struggled academically at school and didn’t enjoy its rigid structure, being much happier at Windsor and Maidenhead College (now East Berkshire College), where he could be more independent. “I was a bit of a late developer in life. I understand with some of our learners how frustrating it can be.”
As someone who has valued independence very much himself, Panditharatna is a rare voice in advocating it as valuable, and attainable, for learners who may be talented, capable, and vulnerable all at the same time.
Asi speaking at an online event recently
This takes him on to another problem in the system. “There needs to be parity between community learning and prisons,” he says. “There’s got to be the same level of quality of service. Why can’t someone like me who went to college have the same experience if I was in prison?”
Panditharatna sets a similarly high bar for those charities involved in training. In his previous role he was managing director of apprenticeships and employability at charity training provider Catch22, and endured two ‘requires improvement’ judgments from Ofsted.
Other people might have left, but he faced it down, bringing in multiple experts to help instead. In 2015 the charity got its first ever ‘good’, which Panditharatna describes as “the best feeling ever”.
“Charities delivering skills should be moving towards ‘outstanding’,” he tells me. “We shouldn’t be thinking just because we’re charities, or we work with disadvantaged people, that we shouldn’t be aiming for outstanding.”
The Forward Trust is awaiting its first Ofsted inspection: “I welcome it.”
Charities delivering skills should be moving to “outstanding”
So when Raab, or indeed any ministers, talk about plonking learners whom they assume to have few life options into lorries, they may want to think again.
Meanwhile, FE students up and down the country are being hailed as the solution to the country’s skills gaps (even as the curriculum to age 16 remains heavily academic). But Panditharatna’s message is this: whether privileged, an ex-offender, or a recovering addict ̶ no one is ‘labour’.
Labour has selected a former education secretary as one of three new skills advisers to help bridge attainment gaps between different areas of the country.
David Blunkett will sit on a council of skills advisers with former Institute for Apprenticeships shadow chief executive Rachel Sandby-Thomas and IVF company chief executive Praful Nargund.
Announcing it at the Confederation of British Industry annual conference today, Labour leader Keir Starmer said the council will “recommend the change we need to ensure everyone leaves education job ready and life ready”.
Low-achieving young people could ‘flourish’ with technical training, Labour says
Labour analysis of government attainment data has shown young people in Hull were nearly half as likely to achieve a level 3 qualification by age 19 as young people in Kensington, London in 2019/20 – 40 per cent to 76 per cent.
On a regional basis, a 19-year-old in London was 31 per cent more like to achieve a level 3 qualification by age 19 compared to a young person in the North East that year.
“We don’t value technical and vocational skills nearly enough,” Starmer told the conference.
Forty per cent of young people left education in 2019-20 without a level 3 qualification and “a lot of these students could really flourish if they received a high-quality technical training,” he continued.
A spokesperson added that the Conservatives’ “failure to deliver the skills and qualifications young people in every region need makes a mockery of the promise to spread opportunity”.
Blunkett ran the Department for Education from 1997 to 2001 during Tony Blair’s New Labour government.
After her time at the IfA (now the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education), Sandby-Thomas became registrar for the University of Warwick. She previously served as the director general for enterprise and skills at the then-Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
Nargund is chief executive of CREATE Fertility, an IVF company and has won a number of business and entrepreneurial awards from The Spectator magazine, The Daily Telegraph newspapers, among others.
‘Nothing more important than spreading what works’
The party’s shadow education secretary Kate Green said “far too many” young people are being “let down by a Conservative government that’s living in the past”.
She is “looking forward” to working with the skills advisers, who will be touring the country with Green to meet with employers, educators, parents and young people to discuss what changes ought to be made to the skills system.
Lord Blunkett said he was “very pleased to be able to continue contributing to the critical debate about how we modernise and reform the lifelong learning journey from schools through to progression in work”.
Earlier this year, he was announced as part of an expert panel, commissioned by awarding body Pearson, steering research into the future of assessments for people aged 14 to 19.
“Nothing can be more important,” he said, “than spreading what works, embedding high-quality and inspirational teaching and learning, and adapting a curriculum that provides motivation to young people at every stage, and reassurance to employers that they will have literate, numerate, creative and responsive employees for the future”.
Colleges must fight against the “always busy” culture that crushes innovation, writes Brian Banks
Two strange things happened to me the other morning.
First, I tried to make a pot of coffee using a teabag. I recall staring in the coffee pot, dimly aware that something was wrong, but what?
Then, later, I couldn’t remember if I’d washed my hair or not. My hair was wet, but had I used shampoo? Complete blank.
It was as though I had one too many browser tabs open, and these simple extra tasks had tipped over the operating system in my skull.
I had exhausted my mental bandwidth.
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, both US academics, define “mental bandwidth” as two components of mental function. The first is cognitive capacity, including the ability to reason abstractly and solve problems. The second is executive control, our ability to manage our cognitive activities.
In 2016 Mullainathan, with economists Heather Schofield and Frank Schilbach, used this model to argue that people living in poverty use so much bandwidth simply coping with the demands of daily survival, they lack cognitive space to develop innovative strategies to escape that poverty.
Perhaps factoring in mental bandwidth into our practice could provide colleges with tangible, quickly attainable, benefits.
Helping lecturers to grow their mental bandwidth nurtures creativity and innovation in teaching and learning.
Becoming a reflective teacher is a baked-in part of every educator’s journey, and rightly so. Yet it is often just another box to fill on a lesson plan form, rather than the transcendent practice it is meant to be. Why?
I think this is because true reflection takes time: real time, not five minutes in the corridor on the way to another class. And time costs money.
It also needs plenty of bandwidth. Just as you might shut down some tabs to stream an HD movie, so we need to shut down some of our mental threads to reflect and learn from our experiences.
Jotting down reflective notes in case a lesson plan gets monitored is a simulacrum of true reflection, of benefit only to those with other boxes to tick.
Reflection is often just another tickbox to fill in’
Yet investing in proper reflection time is money well spent, as “thinking time” is where we find the seams of teaching gold. It is where “good” becomes “outstanding”. By giving our subconscious mental processes time to run, we encourage our deepest learning, and produce our most innovative, most inspired, ideas.
What this looks like in the real world may not be what people generally consider working, but off-task contemplation is valuable work indeed.
The question is, in organisations where people feel they must always appear busy, how can we change college culture to make this spin-down time?
One solution is to remove extraneous tasks to free space for lecturers’ primary roles.
The anthropologist David Graeber was baffled by the ever-increasing administrative demands on university academics.
Admin filled their mental bandwidths, so instead of exceptional teaching, learning and research, universities got reams of mediocre admin, with burned-out, disillusioned, academics.
This highlights an important point. While facilitating staff bandwidth carries benefits, failing to do so carries considerable costs.
If staff are living with their bandwidth in the red most of the time, burnout is never far away.
Reflection time is also recovery time, and freeing up bandwidth is a pressure release for a busy brain.
Since it can take months to recover from burnout, it makes financial sense for institutions to do all they can to keep staff from reaching this dangerous mental state.
It’s hard to create a culture in colleges that let minds recover some of the bandwidth burned up by increasingly busy lives.
But achieving it makes for happier, more effective staff; for teams brimming with innovative solutions to drive the organisation forward; and students who have the drive and capacity to achieve excellence in their learning journey.
And it makes for a better pot of coffee in the morning.
Preserving funding for applied general qualifications is the best way to ensure T Levels succeed, says Ian Pryce
Can you remember that dress that went viral in 2015, generating more than 10 million tweets? There were furious rows about whether it was black and blue, or white and gold, yet everyone was looking at the same frock.
We thought there were two dresses, but closer inspection revealed they were identical.
There probably haven’t been 10 million tweets on the proposed culling of BTECs in favour of T Levels but, once the concept of T Levels as a mass-market qualification met the bruising reality of parental expectation and employers’ capacity, there have been compromises.
Too much compromise would undermine the idea of the T Level and end with them looking surprisingly similar to a BTEC. That was never the plan, but, as Mike Tyson famously said, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”.
The compromise started in earnest in the past few weeks, with three separate statements.
First, despite the Treasury announcing funding for 100,000 T Level students by 2024, up from an estimated 1,300 last year, we were told on November 4 there was no target for T Level recruitment.
Second, at the same time our new education secretary explained there was never an intention to stop funding BTECs, and indeed high-quality BTECs will continue.
This is at odds with the Department for Education consultation response last August that expected applied generals to become “rare”.
Third, a “temporary” change was announced by the Education and Skills Funding Agency to allow up to 40 per cent of T Level work placement to be done remotely.
Then finally at the start of this week Nadhim Zahawi announced the removal of BTECs would be delayed by a year, and the exit requirements for English and maths, requiring students to achieve level 2 in those subjects, would be watered down.
The reassurance from the education secretary on preserving funding for applied general qualifications is welcome. He rightly recognises it is the best way to delivering a fabulous new addition to our curriculum.
Meanwhile, the government should also be applauded for recognising the traditional post-16 curriculum had a major gap. There was no true, industry-specific, technical education programme.
T Levels were developed thoughtfully and effectively, with upfront investment in facilities and staff training.
They are genuinely world-class qualifications, designed for elite students who have a strong notion about their future career.
But they are designed for that minority.
They are not designed for a mass-market. It seems unlikely T levels will become highly valued if their sole comparator is A-levels.
T Levels are designed for a minority, not for the mass-market
In contrast, BTECs and equivalents are designed as mass-market options. Like A-levels you can as easily offer a very wide range of subjects in rural Cumbria as you can in urban Manchester.
They can be studied in colleges or schools. Crucially they do not require a deep commitment to an occupation, which is helpful when few 16-year-olds know their ambitions in any precise way.
We also have a practical barrier, if we are hellbent on switching 200,000 students to a T Level.
The idea that our current employer landscape could support quality work placements for so many is silly.
Employers in specific sectors are not evenly spread across the country. You need to be of good size to offer most placements, yet in the UK there are fewer than 8,000 companies that employ more than 250 staff.
The danger is that if the government culls BTECs, it will actually damage T Levels, because we will see further compromise on content, quality and design.
Parents will not allow their children to be forced to choose a narrow specialism with no effective exit.
Let’s not throw away the promise of the T Level by trying to make them all things to all students.
Otherwise, just like the blue/gold dress, they could end up looking very much like BTECs do now.
It is not hard to see why. Critics are right that Ofsted inspections and the wider accountability system cause stress and anxiety for teachers and leaders. And they are also right that many teachers and leaders are struggling from non-stop work over the past 18 months.
Amanda Spielman recognised as much, telling the Association of Colleges conference this week it had been a “very turbulent year in education, and a difficult time for colleges”.
I cannot emphasise enough how much respect I have for teachers and leaders – and I completely believe the unions when they say many of them are close to total burnout.
But accountability exists for a reason – to ensure students are both safe and receiving a high-quality education. And it is exactly at a time when staff are most stretched that students are at the greatest risk.
We still do not fully know the impact of Covid-19 on students, and particularly the most vulnerable.
Students are at the greatest risk exactly when staff are most stretched
And while the vast majority of colleges and schools delivered heroics for them (moving education online, safeguarding vulnerable students on site, and often delivering vital supplies to students’ homes) this was not the case universally.
We know from focus groups that there are a small minority of colleges and schools where online teaching was essentially not happening, or was of insufficient quality. No one was inspecting them.
This isn’t about blame, but we cannot have a situation where, unnoticed by anyone, a small minority of colleges and schools has failed to adapt to the challenges of the pandemic. This would be to fail thousands upon thousands of students.
And, of course, the awful truth is that even the colleges and schools who pulled out all the stops during the pandemic may also be struggling from burnout, having given their all.
What we knew about their safeguarding, leadership and quality of education has gone out of the window during the pandemic.
And we all know that drops in these standards are likely to affect vulnerable students worst.
Which returns us to the original point and the role of Ofsted.
Having someone check up on you after most likely the worst, most traumatic experience in your professional career will always be seen as heartless and unhelpful – but in reality it is the time when this check and balance is most needed.
If we accept this argument, it is still important to deal with the legitimate criticism of the effect on staff wellbeing.
I would argue that much of the narrative around catch-up to date has been unrealistic. Money for tutoring or a longer day is helpful, but the more fundamental, human point is that teachers and leaders need time off to recharge.
They need support to help them cope, and need training to help them manage the transition to a new way of teaching. And this all requires funding.
I have heard many people say that anxious, unhappy students can’t learn, and I agree. But anxious, unhappy staff are a problem too.
Anxious, unhappy staff are a problem
So I say, keep the Ofsted inspections. It’s right to scrutinise education at this moment in time.
But if Ofsted confirms the many challenges schools and their staff face, as I suspect will be the case, then let’s use that to reinforce arguments for why proper catch-up funding is needed.
Amanda Spielman said this week that her plan “lets the government know how Covid recovery is going”.
So let us say to government: “You asked Ofsted to uncover issues – and they no doubt will.
“When this happens, be ready with your chequebook. It’s going to be expensive to truly fix a system that is close to collapse.”
Diversity and climate change were the big topics of the event in Birmingham, writes Philippa Alway
After two years of Zoom meetings, being able to come together in person for Association of College’s annual conference was pretty special. In the time apart, colleges have shown the vital role they play in their communities and truly stepped up during the pandemic.
From the last two days, it is clear the importance of colleges has been recognised.
Politically, colleges and the further education sector are in a really strong place. The enthusiasm for colleges and the role they will continue to play as we rebuild as a country shone through every keynote speech and breakout session.
Politically, colleges are in a really strong place
Having the new education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, address conference and make some positive announcements before and during his speech was a clear sign that he and his ministers are listening and reacting positively to us. His speech went down well, and I believe in his intention to work and collaborate with us on the big issues.
The announcement to delay the defunding of BTECs and other technical qualifications and to remove the English and maths GCSE exit requirement for T Levels is a sign the education secretary is taking an evidence-led view.
Disadvantaged students stood to lose the most from a rushed qualification reform timeline, so this delay and these changes are welcome.
Equally, his commitment to widening the eligibility for free level 3 courses to those earning less than the national living wage will help adults who will benefit most from the government’s skills for jobs plans to access the opportunities.
There is always more campaigning to do. As the skills bill progresses through parliament we will continue to make the case for amendments that increase access to education and skills for the most marginalised communities.
This must include empowering colleges to play an ever-stronger role in skills planning as strategic partners with their local employers and stakeholders.
That’s why it was so welcome to hear the shadow secretary of state, Kate Green, in her speech on the first day, commit to retaining the amendments made in the House of Lords, along with Labour’s support for further strengthening these and other areas.
Our president, Sally Dicketts, spoke passionately about systems leadership and much of her speech chimed with the themes in the Independent Commission on the College of the Future’s final report.
The conference showed this in action as well as words, with breakout sessions focused on equality, diversity and inclusion, mental health, climate change and sustainability.
There was also a conference address from Jonathan Dewsbury, the Department for Education’s lead on sustainability and climate change. It was great to join him in a breakout session to present the AoC’s Green College commitment. The commitment to action is clear – both from DfE and from the sector.
We heard just a taste of how colleges are leading the change needed from Yvonne Kelly at Barking & Dagenham College, and William Baldwin at Brighton, Hove & Sussex Sixth Form College.
The discussion with delegates focused on the tangible next steps they can take, and the Climate Action Roadmap for FE Colleges, which FE climate commissioner, Steve Frampton, called the go-to resource.
Another key – and related – theme from conference was equality, diversity and inclusion. The AoC governance team published a bold and honest report on the first day, highlighting the lack of diversity of many college boards.
There is a clear need to do better at representing people from minority backgrounds at the highest levels of further education, and I hope this report and the call to action from conference speaker and footballer Eniola Aluko means that the college board delegates at the next conference will become more and more diverse.
As we leave conference for another year, I’m glad I made it out in one piece after Tuesday night’s celebrations.
I’m really grateful to work in a sector that is front and centre of the change that has to happen to create a fairer, happier and more sustainable future.
Previous job: Vice principal, organisational development and learner services, Cheshire College South & West
Interesting fact: While raising two children, her family ran a smallholding with a varied collection of animals as pets, including breeding emus and piglets.
Jonathan Slater, Senior advisor, The Public Service Consultants
Start date: November 2021
Previous job: Permanent secretary, Department for Education
Interesting fact: He was runner up in the second division of the York and District Table Tennis Association Cup in 1982.
Lee Barrett, Head of personal and social development, Leicester College
Start date: September 2021
Previous job: Director of quality, teaching, learning and assessment, Coventry College
Interesting fact: He can play Grade 8 piano and had an early “midlife crisis” in his mid-20s, so he travelled the world for nearly two years.
Eight in ten of the UK’s colleges and post-16 academies are failing to meet a legal requirement to provide information on how visually impaired or blind students can access learning, new research has found.
The report, Technology and accessibility in further education, also revealed that half of general further education colleges failed a ‘mystery shopping’ exercise where researchers requested this information.
One student with an impairment surveyed for the report said it “sometimes feels like I just get ignored” by colleges, which “kind of makes me question my future”.
Researchers also found over 90 per cent of 23 specialist colleges audited have not met a legal requirement for a statement on accessibility on their websites.
Colleges’ compliance with accessibility rules worse than universities
This can include giving users the option to change font size, for there to be sufficient contrast in the colours used, and for websites to sufficiently describe what is on a webpage so software that reads it out can properly explain to a visually impaired user what the page is showing.
Analysis of the websites of over 400 UK post-16 providers, including colleges, sixth forms and 16-19 academies revealed only 13.36 per cent were compliant with the regulations – the lowest of all public sectors.
Forty-nine per cent of universities were compliant, while the most compliant was the police, with over 60 per cent.
“After three years of the regulations being in effect, for colleges to be significantly behind to this extent is symptomatic of a sector that is unable to react,” reads the report, carried out by accessibility consulting company All Able.
Eight out of ten colleges do not provide useful or legally-required information
As part of the 2018 regulations, public bodies must produce accessibility statements, which helps disabled people navigate accessibility issues and signposts support.
The providers’ websites were analysed for their statements, and it was found 127 (29.7 per cent) had no statements publicly available, while 195 (45.6 per cent) provided poor advice in All Able’s view, and 34 (7.9 per cent) had statements that did not meet the regulations.
This means eight out of ten colleges do not provide information that is useful or meets legal requirements, according to the report.
Separate to this research, All Able analysed the websites of 23 UK specialist colleges that provide to young people with learning difficulties and disabilities and found 21 had no statement or a ‘poor attempt’ at one on their websites.
Researchers also contacted a sample of colleges via email or a web form as a blind person looking to enrol who wanted to get in touch with the disabled student support service and find out about the accessibility of the college’s digital platforms.
Almost half of the colleges did not respond, and where colleges did respond, one-third could not say which virtual learning environment they used, which tells the student what technology they will need to access it.
Just three per cent gave legally required information on the accessibility of the learning environment or directed the person getting in touch to whether systems will be compatible with assistive technology.
Specialist provision system ‘under significant pressure’
The trust’s head of education, Tara Chattaway, criticised colleges for a “prevailing culture where student support departments are viewed as the only teams that have a responsibility to consider the needs of people with disabilities”.
The report reasons that the “system of specialist provision is under significant pressure,” citing a 2019 Royal National Institute of Blind People report showing just under half of local authorities have cut or frozen vision impairment education services.
It recommends “urgent” action to improve legal compliance, with the government targeting guidance on the requirements at college leadership.
Specialist providers’ network Natspec said it takes the recommendations “seriously,” and “will continue to work to improve accessibility for all students” through its assistive technology support service, TechAbility.
“We look forward to supporting the work of the trust and helping to ensure the new resources being developed are available to all our members,” a Natspec spokesperson added.
Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes said colleges “take very seriously the need to be accessible for everyone, including blind and partially sighted students.”
He promised the association will “look carefully” at this report and is “keen to see what needs to be done”.
