A senior Ofsted inspector has warned colleges against using “reviewers for hire” who would “fly from one end of the country to another” for new external governance reviews.
Colleges should instead call upon reviewers with knowledge of the local context and stakeholders to investigate how governors can improve their effectiveness.
This comes after the skills for jobs white paper revealed in January that the government would be setting out new requirements for boards to be regularly appraised by an external reviewer.
New FE Commissioner Shelagh Legrave was among a panel of her team members and Department for Education officials speaking about the reviews at this week’s Association of Colleges annual conference.
Using ‘reviewers for hire’ for governance audits would be a ‘shame and a waste’
During a question-and-answer session, audience member and Ofsted senior inspector for further education and skills Richard Beynon warned attendees: “If people are going to get underneath governance and the relationship between governance and leadership, they can’t do that if they’re flying from one end of the country to another.”
This, he explained, was because the review would not understand the local context and stakeholder base of the college.
“It fills me with disappointment that perhaps we’re going to have a fleet of reviewers for hire who circulate around colleges in the country,” said Beynon, as this would “be a shame and a waste”.
Instead, colleges should “start thinking about reviewers in your locality in your region. Think about how they can bring value because they understand the mission, the purpose and the context in which the college operates.”
Deputy FE Commissioner and panellist Meredydd David said reviewers “understanding the local context” of a college was a “very, very good point”.
However, Legrave highlighted how the national leaders of governance, nine governors and clerks who mentor and support struggling college boards, do travel from one part of the country to another, which “works very effectively”.
While understanding the context a college operated in was “vital”, she believes “expertise could be geographically spread”.
Reviewers will have to be ‘independent and suitably experienced’
The commissioner’s FE adviser Esme Winch told delegates that reviewers ought not to provide any other service to the college which could be a conflict of interest, should be independent of every board member, should have a breadth of experience of education and charity governance and ought to be accredited by an organisation such as the Chartered Governance Institute, or Institute of Directors.
The DfE has said guidance on the reviews will be published in spring 2022.
But interim DfE guidance dated this month and seen by FE Week mandates that the reviews must take place on a three-year cycle, so a college board’s first one will fall due between 2021/22 and 2023/2024.
It will be up to each board to commission an “independent and suitably experienced provider” to deliver the external review.
The guidance says there is no prescribed model for self-assessments or external reviews, but they should look at a board’s impact and how it can be enhanced.
Despite having been first mooted for English colleges in the white paper, external governance reviews have been a requirement for the FTSE 350 companies – the largest businesses in the UK – since 2010.
The Education Training Foundation, supported by the Association of Colleges, was commissioned by the DfE in August 2020 to carry out pilot external governance reviews.
The 28 reviews that followed found boards were composed of a range of different expertise and skills, but most boards did not review their impact or evaluate individual governor performance.
The Association of Colleges’ governance advisor Kurt Hall told Tuesday’s session the reviews also found there was a “big gap” where most boards had not created an “inclusive culture”.
‘Outstanding’ providers are being inspected this term for the first time since 2010, after an exemption was removed last year.
It will be the first time ‘outstanding’ providers are inspected under the education inspection framework (EIF), which was introduced in 2019.
As such, Ofsted expects fewer providers will stay ‘outstanding’, with national director for education Chris Russell saying the framework makes that “a challenging and exacting judgment to achieve”.
This week the watchdog announced every college will receive a full inspection until 2025, regardless of whether they are rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’. Typically, such colleges would receive a short inspection.
Ofsted pulls up provider on careers advice and functional skills
At the time of its inspection, Fareport had 449 apprentices on levels 2 to 5, who “develop substantial new knowledge and skills, which they apply quickly at work”.
Inspectors highlighted how leaders “have created an ambitious curriculum and culture for apprentices, including those with additional learning needs”.
The provider was brought up on its functional skills provision though, with the report finding trainers “lack the confidence to support apprentices with English and maths”, so the learners fail their exams multiple times or do not pass them before they get near the end of their training.
Apprentices do not benefit from impartial careers advice, so “do not know what they may be able to do outside their current company or sector”. But they are informed about further qualifications and opportunities with their current employer.
In a statement, Fareport called the inspection process “very thorough and testing”, but the report “highlights many strengths”.
The provider had not self-assessed as ‘outstanding’ this year, owing to a dip in success rates caused by a “large number” of apprentices leaving work or not being released for training.
Retention issues, Fareport says, “have now been largely resolved”.
On the recommendation about functional skills, the provider said it has an action plan under way and has appointed a new trainer. It will be implementing impartial careers advice in consultation with its employers.
The first colleges to have full inspection reports published by Ofsted since visits resumed have seen ‘good’ results.
West Thames College has improved from grade three to grade two, with an ‘outstanding’ for behaviour and attitudes.
East Durham College has maintained its grade two, originally awarded in 2008, also with a grade one for behaviour.
Inspectors found the former, which has two main sites in London, to be “a welcoming and inclusive place in which to study” by its 3,664 learners.
A “very high” proportion of adults “successfully get jobs or programmes at work” following their courses, and learners have benefitted from remote work experience at a local airport, while health and social care students volunteer with the NHS.
Leaders were praised for ensuring learners receive suitable careers advice and guidance, but it was found business administration apprentices do not receive “sufficient” advice and in a small number of cases, apprentices do not know what to do after their course ends.
Leaders have identified that they need to improve apprentices’ careers advice.
West Thames College principal Tracy Aust said providing high-quality provision in a safe environment “so effectively in the current climate is no mean feat” and she is “incredibly proud of our staff, our students and our partners”.
Both colleges praised for students’ behaviour
East Durham’s learners participate “enthusiastically” in lessons, with “exceptional” behaviour attributed to high expectations set by leaders and staff.
This ensures students are “respectful, courteous and very well-behaved in lessons, social spaces and workplaces” which creates a “safe and nurturing environment” across three centres.
The range of subjects and types of provision are “well informed by the needs of employers and key regional partners”, so learners and apprentices study programmes which provide opportunities for them to gain employment or move to alternative jobs.
Inspectors did find fault with teachers not taking sufficient account of the support and learning requirements of high-needs learners, while they and managers do not act early enough to identify adult learners’ additional needs.
College chair David Butler said staff and students’ “determination to work together to continue to offer the best educational experience we can, whatever the challenges we face, has been endorsed in this report”.
Full inspections by Ofsted resumed in September, after having been postponed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Chief inspector Amanda Spielman announced this week all colleges and FE providers will receive full inspections by summer 2025.
MPs have called for more flexibilities in local skills plans and for even more time before some level 3 qualifications are defunded.
The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill received its second reading in the House of Commons on Monday; a part of the process where MPs get to have their say on the broad principles behind the bill.
Unusually, this bill started its parliamentary journey towards becoming law in the House of Lords. This means that by the time MPs got to see it, it had already been significantly amended by the upper house. Unlike in the House of Commons, the Conservatives do not enjoy a majority in the Lords, so it has been widely speculated that many of the amendments that passed in the Lords would be unlikely to make their way in the final bill.
In total, 44 MPs had their say from both government and opposition benches in a debate lasting nearly three hours.
MPs push Zahawi with extra requests for the bill
In introducing the bill, the education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, announced the one-year reprieve to the defunding of some BTECs and level 3 qualifications, which was welcomed by MPs on all sides.
Nadhim Zahawi
Several MPs, including Labour’s shadow education secretary, Kate Green, urged Zahawi to support the Lords’ amendment for a four-year moratorium on level 3 defunding, rather than the one year announced at the debate.
In her speech from the opposition benches, Green said the one-year reprieve was still “a very short time for people to come to terms with the new T level offer.”
Zahawi also used his introductory speech to announce that current T level exit requirements to include GCSE English and maths would be scrapped.
Despite receiving a mixed reception from sector leaders, this policy change was welcomed by Mansfield MP Ben Bradley, who said “we should not be preventing people who want to do a T level in early-years education from accessing it because they were not very good at trigonometry”.
The Commons education committee chair, Robert Halfon, came to the debate with a list of requests for the bill, including a “skills tax credit to revitalise employer-led training” and directing some of the £800 million currently spent on widening access to universities towards supporting students from disadvantaged backgrounds to do apprenticeships.
BTECs, local skills plans and devolution also debated
The “BTEC issue” was by far the most commented-upon topic throughout the debate.
However, the design of local skills improvement plans also featured heavily.
Zahawi committed to a government-backed amendment that would place the role of mayoral combined authorities in the development of local skills improvement plans on a statutory footing.
A similar amendment was proposed in the House of Lords and received cross-party support.
Tom Hunt, Conservative MP for Ipswich, wished to see this go further, saying in the chamber that there “should not be an arbitrary distinction between an area that happens to have a mayor and combined authority and an area that does not. I do not see why Suffolk should not benefit from devolved adult education in the same way as Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, which happen to have a mayor.”
There was little insight into any further government amendment, or which specific amendments from the House of Lords the government wants to change or delete.
Toby Perkins, the shadow skills minister, said: “The government have indicated that they will be seeking to overturn Lord Baker’s amendment on careers guidance, which would have allowed a range of educational and training providers access to every student in years 8 to 13.”
Perkins, alongside several other MPs including Conservative Peter Aldous and Liberal Democrat Munira Wilson, also argued that the government should support a Lords amendment that would allow universal credit claimants more access to training without losing benefits.
The bill “leaves out apprenticeships and is silent on the role of independent training providers”, Perkins also said in his remarks.
MPs will next debate bill at the end of this month
In summing up, skills minister Alex Burghart defended the government’s proposals to create designated employer representative bodies, but was careful not to over-define what they would look like. Throughout the debate, several MPs had questioned the suitability of chambers of commerce alone to fulfil that responsibility to lead on local skills improvement plans.
A committee of MPs will now be formed to debate each clause of the bill in detail and make decisions on amendments from MPs. This process is expected to begin at the end of this month.
After leading an academy trust founded by former academies minister Lord Nash, she set up her own – Turner Schools, in Kent – from scratch. Not just that, it took over two schools in need of major rehabilitation after they had been failed under one of the sector’s biggest scandal-hit trusts, Lilac Sky.
Then in September she became chief regulator of Ofqual, an organisation in need of major change after it was nearly brought to its knees by the 2020 exams fiasco.
The ask of Ofqual is very different now
So what draws her to such challenges?
“It could be that I’m the fourth of five children,” she says. “It could be that I hate, hate low expectations… I suppose I’ve said yes to things where there was a chance to do something about raising expectations, particularly for the disadvantaged.”
She cites her own school experience where teachers had “low expectations of me. That made me cross.
“I was really slow learning to read. OK, I probably have mild dyslexia. And my secondary school, which sent loads of kids to Oxbridge, didn’t think that I was in that pile. I was determined to prove them wrong and managed to get myself to Cambridge.”
But how does she prove the (growing) Ofqual doubters wrong?
The regulator’s own survey earlier this year found trust in GCSEs had plummeted after last summer’s exams fiasco. Just 27 per cent of respondents agreed that ‘GCSEs are trusted’ when asked about 2020, compared to three-quarters in a normal year.
‘What can I do for struggling providers?’
“Ofqual tried really hard to listen to the sector,” Saxton says. “But I’m going to try even harder.”
Robert Halfon, the education committee chair, even accused the regulator of “hiding away in the Ofqual attic” while the fiasco exploded.
The government U-turned on plans to award standardised grades after nearly 40 per cent of teacher grades were hauled down by an ill-fated algorithm.
Was Halfon right?
“It definitely felt like that. I don’t think Ofqual was trying to hide away in the Ofqual attic. But how I’m going to work no one will be able to say that.”
Saxton has started to visit schools as part of a “listening tour” that will see her reach every region in the country.
She says the “penny really dropped” while speaking to a parent governor during a recent school visit in Bristol.
“Policymakers and regulators are really good at talking to sector representative bodies, government and other policymakers. But I want to spend more time with the people who these qualifications are for, who our regulation affects.”
And she doesn’t just want to see the “lovely perfect bits. I’m not talking about kind of tokenistic visits. I want to talk to learners about the challenges that they face with the qualification system.”
It’s fitting we meet at the National Gallery, where Saxton fell in love with paintings at the age of 12. The former professional art historian says the location signifies her desire to make the “inaccessible, accessible” (she often brought both university and school students here).
“Due to the pandemic, the assessment blackbox has been opened – and I want to keep doing that.”
‘It’s a question of when, not if, on exams technology’
She says it’s also a response to the shifting purpose of the regulator. “Ofqual was founded to control grade inflation and [create] technical rules for exam boards. The ask of Ofqual is very different now.
“Now it’s having to work hard to deal with general qualifications and public confidence – and whether they are fair. It’s definitely taken a knock in the pandemic.”
While calls to reform exams are not new, that “knock” has amplified the arguments of dissenters. Do any reform proposals have merit?
“Lots of people are saying, and I agree with, ‘let’s get more tech in qualifications’.”
This could benefit exam security and make the system more environmentally friendly, she says.
“Think of the tonnes of paper … in the different delivery trucks that take papers to and from centres. There’s a big sort of green agenda.”
Saxton says one likely change could be making more use of online, multiple-choice elements (think driving test theory) in GCSEs and A-levels.
Jo Saxton (centre left) on a panel at this week’s Association of Colleges conference
“If you have a myriad of questions that lived in a wonderful database, and it can spit them out to candidates in a totally random order (obviously they will relate to the exam), yes, that could work really well.”
It would help spread the “benefits” from some vocational qualifications, such as functional skills, of being able to “test when ready”.
But she would want a “hybrid approach” that did not “undermine other skills. We shouldn’t lose the importance of writing.”
Talks will start soon with the department, while Nadhim Zahawi is said to be “very keen” to look at technology in exams.
“The pandemic has accelerated the involvement of technology. It’s not a question of if, it’s where might we involve it more, and when.”
‘It’s not comparable outcomes that have failed children struggling to write’
Another problem on her desk is criticism over the use of comparable outcomes. Ofqual’s “mutant” algorithm took much of the blame for the 2020 failures.
About a third of children leave school without a ‘standard’ pass grade 4 in GCSE English and maths. An independent inquiry into the “forgotten third” by the Association of School and College Leaders says this is “not an accident, but the product of the system of comparable outcomes whereby the spread of GCSE grades is pegged to what cohorts of similar ability achieved in the past”.
Technology? It’s not if, but where and when
Saxton does not buy it – she says comparable outcomes just make sure there is inter-cohort fairness. And she has some choice words for the sector.
“The exam system is not intending to set anybody up to fail. The question you have to ask is what has happened in the ten years of education before that point that children fail?
“If you look at [those] candidate scripts, it’s just so dispiriting. There are children who are struggling to write. It’s not the GCSE that has failed them, or comparable outcomes.”
Saxton also isn’t worried about potential issues with future cohorts having no key stage 2 data to feed into the comparable outcomes machine, saying that the national reference test does the job just as well.
The nerdier aspects of regulation don’t seem to bother her, in fact she delights in it.
Working in the academy system ignited a passion for regulation (she has an “embarrassingly large” number of books about regulation on her bedside table).
Specifically, it was the academy scandals – and seeing the consequences at the “grassroots” – that drew her in.
When Turner Schools took over the Lilac Sky schools Martello Primary and Morehall Primary, she arrived to find one hadn’t had functioning heating for years. Staff and pupils would wear coats in certain rooms as it was “just what they did”.
A government investigation into Lilac Sky academy trust is still unpublished. But annual accounts have shed some light on what went on – from leaders spending public money on “luxury alcohol” to handing staff severance pay-offs before rehiring them the next day.
“The DfE has not got the powers it actually needs to be the champion for the vulnerable that it wants to be,” she says.
The solution? “It needs a bit of legislation, so that it could deal with abject cases of failure at school quick.”
‘I believe in my DNA that qualifications open doors for people’
She describes Williamson’s job during the pandemic as “unwinnable, just an impossible task”.
What did she learn from working with him?
“The importance of being nice to people even when something is really difficult.
“At the height of the most stressful days, with incredibly long hours, he always took the time to ask people how they were, and meant it. It was difficult being on the other side of it, and seeing the grilling that he was getting because he cared about learners having a high-quality education.”
The task of changing perceptions is still high on her agenda, but rather than pushing the benefits of a new system her biggest challenge is restoring confidence in a shattered one.
“I completely, totally, believe in my DNA that qualifications open doors for people. Once you’re armed with them – the world is your oyster.
“I want people to be able to fulfil their aspirations. And I firmly believe that the pursuit of qualifications contributes to that.”
The government is set to allow people on low wages to take multiple level 3 qualifications available through the prime minister’s lifetime skills guarantee for free.
Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi announced at the Association of Colleges conference the extension of the policy would be trialled from next April.
He said: “In a trial from next April any adult in England who earns a yearly salary below the national living wage will also have the chance to take these high-value level 3 qualifications for free.”
Since April 2021, any adult aged 19 and over who does not already have a level 3 qualification or higher has been allowed to access hundreds of fully funded level 3 courses.
The AoC has been calling on the government to allow people on low wages to take repeat level 3 qualifications, insisting that the current policy is too restrictive.
A spokesperson for the Department for Education said further details about the eligibility expansion will be made available to the sector “in due course”.
Nadhim Zahawi claims to have seen evidence that shows enough employers will offer 45-day work placements to tens of thousands of students each year when T Levels are fully rolled out.
The education secretary’s claim, made in an exclusive interview with FE Week, comes despite college leaders who are delivering the first T Levels warning they can’t even find enough placements now for their small number of learners.
“My team has shown me early evidence that they’ve done on this [and] there’s plenty of scope for those placements for real delivery at scale,” Zahawi said.
“I’m confident we’ll have the placements. The evidence is there. I want to now make sure we are operationally ready.”
The Department for Education refused to share the alleged evidence with the sector when pressed, saying all “internal advice” to ministers is not made public. FE Week has submitted a freedom of information request for the evidence to push for its release.
Just hours after Zahawi’s claim, FE Week spoke to principals delivering the first and second wave of T Levels, who said they currently have students on the flagship programme who cannot find industry placements.
The college leaders, who did not want to be named, said the issue was particularly acute for the digital pathway if the college is in a rural area.
And speaking on this week’s FE Week Podcast, outgoing chief executive of T Level provider Activate Learning, Sally Dicketts, said the government faces a real “problem” in this space. “For most of England, employers are small and medium size. They can barely provide you with three weeks of work experience, let alone 45 days of it,” Dicketts, who is also the Association of Colleges president, added.
Ministers and sector leaders have become increasingly worried about convincing enough businesses to host students for the 315-hour, or 45-day, placements, a concern exacerbated by Covid-19.
The DfE has watered down the policy for 2020 and 2021 starters by allowing a chunk of their placement to be conducted remotely – but this flexibility is only temporary.
Other short-term flexibilities include £1,000 cash incentives for employers running the placements.
Some colleges, including Scarborough Sixth Form College, attended by former education secretary Gavin Williamson, have pulled out of delivering some T Level pathways after finding it too difficult to secure sufficient work placements to meet demand.
But Zahawi, the former vaccines minister, is not fazed. He told FE Week he has made it his top target to make T Levels a success. “As I did with vaccines, I’m going to deliver on this. I will make T Levels as famous as A-levels by the next election.
“What that means is I hope everyone will know someone, family member or friend, who will have heard or have done a T Level. So it’s a huge scale-up. We are brilliant at doing a lot of evidence and thinking and reviews. We’ve had the Wolf review, we’ve had the Sainsbury review, it’s about delivery now.
“I am not the world’s greatest think-tanker. But I think I’m pretty good at delivery. And I will deliver.”
FE Week also asked Zahawi whether he had further plans to bring FE and HE closer together, following the Augar review and appointment of two joint ministers – Michelle Donelan and Alex Burghart – to cover both sectors.
The education secretary would only say: “Loads, and you have to wait until I talk about that at a later stage.”
Less than half of the £30 million earmarked for the government’s 16-to-18 traineeships market entry exercise is set to be awarded, FE Week understands.
Sixty training providers have won contracts of between £100,000 and £300,000 in the procurement that was finally launched at the end of September.
Outcomes are being communicated to bidders this week with delivery due to start at the beginning of December.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency has remained tight-lipped about the total number of providers that submitted bids and contract values, but FE Week understands only £13.7 million will be allocated.
It is not clear at this stage whether the underspend will be put back into the traineeship programme.
The ESFA said it would not comment on leaks when approached for comment.
The market entry exercise was launched in a bid to rapidly ramp up the number of young people taking part in the pre-employment programme, which has experienced low engagement since its launch in 2013.
To be eligible for this round of funding, training providers needed an ‘outstanding’ or ‘good’ Ofsted rating unless they hold an existing contract for 19-24 traineeships.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak set a target to triple the number of starts in both the 2020/21 and 2021/22 academic years, backed with almost £250 million.
A progress report for Sunak’s Plan for Jobs was published in September and revealed there were 17,000 traineeship starts last year – 46 per cent of the government’s 36,700 target.
Ministers hope to achieve 43,000 starts on the scheme this year.
Two weeks ago, at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers autumn conference, the ESFA’s director of FE Kirsty Evans admitted the government will “not quite” achieve its starts ambition again this year, as she expressed “frustration” at delays to the programme’s expansion.
Officials had been promising a 16-to-18 traineeship market entry exercise all year but it was slow to get off the ground. This is despite the agency running a procurement to expand the 19-to-24 traineeship provider base, although that was beset with delays.
Axing the requirement for T Level students to achieve GCSE-level English and maths by the end of their course risks devaluing the brand of the new qualifications, sector leaders have warned.
Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi revealed the move this week, saying it has been made after the Department for Education “consistently” heard of some students being put off taking a T Level because of the rule.
It will bring T Levels in line with other qualifications, including their academic equivalent A-levels.
But former DfE director of FE funding Sue Pember believes the decision “sends the wrong message” to young people.
She told FE Week that removing English and maths GCSEs as the entry criteria for T Levels was “bad enough” and stopping the exit requirement will make their appeal to universities and employers “suffer”.
Ruth Spellman, former chief executive of the WEA, added: “Devaluing T Levels by reducing entry requirements will boost the take-up but risks increasing the fall-out. Can this be the right way to address skill shortages and build credibility with students or employers?”
Shadow education secretary Kate Green has also questioned what other support will be put in place to “ensure students do achieve these essential skills”.
Until now T Level students have been required to achieve either a grade 4 in English and maths GCSE or level 2 in functional skills in order to pass their programme.
The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, which has responsibility for T Levels, has been told to remove it with immediate effect for all pathways. The Education and Skills Funding Agency said it will provide guidance “shortly” on how this will be implemented.
The DfE hopes the moves will boost T Level take-up. Around 1,300 young people started T Levels last year – the first year of their rollout.
Starts figures for this year’s enrolments will not be available until “the end of the year”.
While there is some scepticism about the removal of the exit requirement, colleges that deliver T Levels have welcomed it.
Deputy chief executive at Luminate Education Group and principal of Leeds City College, Bill Jones, said the rule “might have created an unnecessary barrier to otherwise technically highly able and competent students”.
Luminate’s deputy chief executive for curriculum and quality, Gemma Simmons-Blench, explained that the requirement had “prevented a number of students from accessing the provision”.
“Enabling more inclusive access to T Level programmes can only serve to cement their importance and relevance in the curriculum landscape,” she added.
Corrienne Peasgood, principal of City College Norwich, described this as a “welcome announcement because of the parity it puts in place between T Levels and A-levels, given that students are able to achieve three A-levels without having passed GCSE English and maths”.
However, she doesn’t believe this change will affect large numbers of T Level students, “simply because having a good level of literacy and numeracy is essential to access the T Level curriculum”.
Pember, who now leads adult education network HOLEX, warned that this country has a “history of poor English and maths skills which results in lower productivity and poor economic performance” and said that making GCSEs an integral part of T Levels was a “robust way of showing their importance”.
She told FE Week that although English and maths have been removed as an “exit requirement” for T Levels ,“they are being transferred to being a ‘condition of funding’.
“So where a 16-to-19-year-old does not have grade 4 or above GCSE, they will be required to study towards a GCSE or level 2 functional skills.”
