Lifetime Training has continued its dominance of the apprenticeship levy market for the past two years – but the gap between its competitors is closing, FE Week analysis of new government data shows.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency this week published the final funding allocations for training providers in 2019/20 and 2020/21, which included the values for how much each provider was paid by apprenticeship levy funded employers.
The agency published levy allocations for the first time in 2018/19. At the time, Lifetime Training topped the list after it was paid £51.5 million – almost double the next closest provider, QA Limited, on £26 million.
Since then, Lifetime has retained its top spot, earning £50.6 million and £43.3 million in 2019/20 and 2020/21 respectively.
Kaplan took second place in 2019/20 with £34.2 million, while the British Army took the position in 2020/21 with £38.4 million.
The college with the largest amount of levy-funding in 2019/20 was The Sheffield College, which earned £5.3 million – placing it in 33rd place overall. Bridgwater and Taunton College took the top college spot in 2020/21 with £5.5 million – 40th place overall.
The total amount of levy funding handed out in 2019/20 was £942.4 million, shared between 1,272 apprenticeship providers.
This increased to £1.3 billion shared between 1,355 providers in 2020/21.
Students across the country could face delays in receiving their exam results this summer, a union has claimed, as staff at England’s largest exam board are balloted to strike over a pay dispute.
Unison and Unite unions are rejecting a three per cent pay increase, plus a £500 payment, for staff at AQA – claiming the charity is “failing its staff and students by holding down pay”.
Workers now have just days to accept the offer, or could face a “fire and rehire” scenario, Unison claims. New data this week showed inflation at 9.1 per cent, a 40-year high.
Unison said more than 160 AQA staff are now being balloted to strike at the height of the exam marking period this summer.
Lizanne Devonport, Unison north-west regional organiser, said AQA is “letting down not just its staff but students too, by holding down pay.
“No one wants to cause disruption to students and teachers in the first summer back in exam halls since the pandemic, but the employees feel like they’ve been left with no choice.”
But AQA said “threats of disruption are nonsense” and “designed to needlessly frighten students and teachers”. The board has plans in place to ensure industrial action wouldn’t impact results day, a spokesperson said.
Many of the 160 staff are not involved in setting and marking exam papers, they added.
The threat of disruption follows two education unions – with a joint membership of over 750,000 – vowing this week to consult on strike action in autumn unless the government gives teachers inflation-busting pay rises.
Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi said a strike would be “unforgivable and unfair”.
AQA said its pay offer comes on top of additional incremental increases for staff not at the top of their pay grade, meaning the average rise is 5.6 per cent – their biggest pay increase for two decades.
But AQA staff say they have had below inflation pay rises of between one and two per cent in recent years.
Staff were told those who do not opt into the changes, which also include a new pay framework, by June will face consultation meetings in July.
AQA told staff this month there could then be “two extremes” – allowing staff to remain on the current pay framework with a 1.67 per cent rise, or “dismiss and re-engage”.
The unions claim this is a “fire and rehire” process. AQA said it has not made any decisions about what to do with staff who choose not to opt into the new framework.
The two-week ballot for strike action closes next week. If staff vote ‘yes’, strike action would take place this summer.
Unite is also considering an industrial action ballot. The union would not say how many AQA staff were members.
One AQA worker, who wished to remain anonymous, told FE Week staff are “in tears” about what to do, as they feel “very let down” with “no option but to accept”.
Another said: “Many of us have done our jobs for a long time and are dedicated to public service. Exam board employees work miracles silently in the background to ensure that results are issued on time year after year. But we’ve reached the point where enough is enough.”
Another accused the board of being “content to watch its loyal, long-serving employees fall further and further behind on pay to the point where some of us are struggling to survive”.
Devonport called on AQA to “come back to the negotiating table, make a serious offer and stop threatening its dedicated staff”.
The charity saw its income drop by 28.9 per cent in the last financial year. Its net income before investment gains and losses was £2.9 million, down from £20 million in 2020. It equated to an operating margin of two per cent, a “considerable reduction” on the previous year.
While AQA’s charity funds decreased overall by £7.5 million, they still hold £112 million.
“Rather than using its cash reserves to help employees cope with the spiralling cost of living, it has provoked an unprecedented strike ballot,” Devonport added.
An AQA spokesperson said the pay rise was “affordable and higher than many organisations – so it’s disappointing we haven’t been able to reach an agreement with the unions, who don’t speak for the vast majority of our staff.”
They have “already made exceptional concessions” and “after already exhausting the dispute resolution process, arbitration would only delay things further”.
The exam board, which has 1,200 staff, provides 62 per cent of GCSEs and 45 per cent of A-levels.
The government will rebrand its school and college performance website to “reduce the emphasis on comparison” after a backlash from leaders at resuming league tables despite Covid’s impact.
The Department for Education said last year key stage four and post-16 performance data would return this year, defending it as an “important” measure to help parents and students choose schools and colleges.
But it has now advised those using 16-18 data not to compare colleges without considering Covid’s impact – and should ask colleges for this context.
The site will be renamed
Leaders’ union ASCL said earlier this year members felt “thrown to the wolves” by the decision, given the level of Covid upheaval faced by students and impact on “careers and reputations”.
The DfE has always pledged to put messages alongside data to “advise caution drawing conclusions”, but has now set out how it will do so over the “coming months”.
It will remove coloured bandings to “discourage simplistic conclusions being drawn about a school or college”. Results are currently colour-coded through a traffic light-style scheme, with “well below average” figures in red.
Comparison tables for local authorities and all schools and colleges nationally will be removed. But the site will “continue to show local authority and national averages for each performance measure on the individual school or college page” – and national and local data will still be available to download. FE Week asked the DfE for more detail.
Data from 2018-19 and earlier will no longer be displayed on school or college pages, but it will remain at “the usual archive with a link on the website”.
A survey of ASCL’s members earlier this year found 82.6 per cent disagreed with plans to resume KS4 performance tables. Some highlighted significant national variations in student and staff absence, as well as disadvantaged students being more negatively affected by Covid.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of leaders’ union ASCL, welcomed steps to “reduce the potentially damaging impact”, calling it a “step in the right direction”.
But publishing the information at all is “hugely disappointing”, as the varied impact of Covid makes for an “inherent flaw”.
It would still result in data being published that “affects public perceptions”. He called for a further year’s suspension to “allow some sort of return to normality before returning to the full barrage of accountability measures to which educational institutions are subjected”.
Its efforts will “advise caution when comparing a school’s performance” with averages, and it is “vital” parents and others talk to schools and colleges to “understand the broader context” and Covid impact.
Users are urged not to draw “firm conclusions” and advised “strongly” against direct comparisons of schools and colleges without taking context into account.
Meanwhile Ofsted will be “sensitive in their use of this data” and it should not be used “in isolation” for staff performance management.
But the DfE said publishing data is key “for transparency and as a starting point” for choosing which schools and colleges pupils attend.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency has announced a one-year increase to the threshold for over-delivery of the national adult education budget.
Colleges and training providers will be paid for any over-delivery up to 110 per cent of their contract value for 2021/22 – up from the usual threshold of 103 per cent.
The ESFA said this is “in recognition of providers’ efforts to focus on delivery following the coronavirus pandemic and accommodating additional eligible learners recently resettled from other countries including Ukraine and Afghanistan”.
Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said this is the seventh year in a row that the core adult education budget has been fixed in cash terms, so it is “helpful that DfE is providing money for those colleges who are exceeding their 2021-22 targets”.
But, he added, it is important to explain that these funds are being taken from other colleges which have missed targets by more than 3 per cent.
Jane Hickie, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said she was “delighted” that the over-delivery threshold will apply to all providers, and not just those that receive grant-funding.
She added that by providing notice a month before the year-end, this will offer “some head room for additional adult learner starts, that might have otherwise had to be pushed into next year due to capped funding”.
The ESFA also confirmed today that the threshold for under-delivery has reverted to 97 per cent following two years of lower thresholds – 68 per cent in 2019/20 and 90 per cent in 2020/21 – prompted by the coronavirus pandemic and associated lockdowns.
In an update to the sector, the agency said: “We recognise the challenges providers have faced because of the pandemic. But we also know that many providers have been able to continue deliver successfully and have adapted the way that they teach.
“We consider the time is now right to return to the pre-pandemic reconciliation threshold.”
Gravatt said the AoC was “disappointed” that the ESFA is sticking to the 97 per cent threshold, first announced 12 months ago, because this will “compound the financial difficulties facing colleges”.
“Covid lockdowns and uncertainty resulted in £60 million being taken from college budgets in the 2020-21 academic year,” he added. “While things are tentatively more normal today, this wasn’t the case last September or even in January.”
Sue Pember, the policy director at adult education provider network HOLEX, welcomed the over-delivery increase but took issue with the return to a 97 per cent under-delivery threshold.
She said: “Many providers are disappointed the ESFA hasn’t recognised that Covid has continued to impact on attendance and participation.”
“There is a cost to keeping open and providing classes for small numbers,” she told FE Week, adding that she is keen to hear what support the agency is going to offer to “overcome financial hardship”.
The over-delivery threshold increase applies to the national AEB administered by the ESFA only. In areas where the AEB has been devolved, mayoral combined authorities or the Greater London Authority set their own thresholds.
London’s over-delivery has been brought in line with the ESFA’s normal threshold of 103 per cent for the first time this year, for example.
Come and inspect the inspectorate with The FE Week Podcast!
Education journalist Jess Staufenberg speaks to former inspectors, current HMIs, FE providers and staff about the role and relationship of Ofsted in FE.
A fresh pay offer for college staff has been rejected by union bosses today, who branded the 2.5 per cent recommendation “totally unacceptable”.
The Association of Colleges (AoC) upped its 2.25 per cent offer from last month to 2.5 per cent in a meeting with the University and College Union (UCU) on Monday.
The UCU was quick to condemn that offer, calling it “beyond insulting” while the cost-of-living crisis bites.
But college principals have since told FE Week that the AoC’s revised recommendation is “simply unaffordable” due to inflationary pressures on budgets.
The UCU, along with the National Education Union, Unison, Unite and GMB, has been holding out for 10 per cent pay rise, with a minimum uplift of £2,000.
It said that since 2009 staff had suffered real terms pay cuts and staff pay had fallen behind inflation by more than 35 per cent.
On Monday, the NEU, which represents teachers in sixth-form colleges, wrote to education secretary Nadhim Zahawi warning it will urge its members to support a ballot on industrial action unless he approved an “inflation-plus” pay rise for teachers.
The AoC, which represents college leaders, said existing funding pressures and soaring inflation meant a larger rise was not viable.
It prompted AoC chief David Hughes to write to education secretary Nadhim Zahawi last month to plea for emergency funding that would allow it to increase its pay offer. Last month’s 2.25 per cent offer and one-off £500 payment was the highest it has made since 2014.
Prior to its 2.25 per cent officer, the AoC has consistently recommended a 1 per cent pay increase.
The stand-off has led to a threat of strikes at 33 colleges. Industrial ballots in England went out last week, and close on July 15. Plans for strike ballots have been announced for a further two colleges over that past few days.
Jo Grady, UCU general secretary, said: “Employer representative the Association of Colleges continuing its refusal to offer further education staff anything close to fair play is totally unacceptable. While our members are more overworked than ever, going above and beyond to keep colleges running, they are facing an unprecedented cost of living crisis.
“One college staff member recently told us they have had to consider calling in sick to work because they cannot afford transport – nor can they afford the energy required to cook for longer than twenty minutes. It is beyond insulting in this context for AoC to continue degrading the pay of college staff.
“It’s not too late for AoC to avert disruption by giving further education staff a proper pay rise. Our members can’t afford another deep real-terms pay cut, and will fight for what they deserve.”
The UCU said it estimated that an extra £400 million in extra funding was available to colleges in order to pay staff more, with potentially more on the horizon with an 8.5 per cent increase to the 16 to 19 base rate in 2022-23.
Households across the country have faced increasing bills over recent months, including for food, petrol, energy and council tax among others.
David Hughes, AoC chief executive, said: “I am disappointed, of course, but not surprised that our revised offer to the unions was rejected because it fell short of their 10 per cent claim and will be judged by college staff in light of their own personal costs rising.
“I have said many times before that college staff deserve better pay, but that can only come if Government invests fairly in colleges.
“We will continue to pursue additional funding and support from DfE over the coming weeks and have also met with Treasury to press for support.”
Hughes added that unions had been asked to delay strike action “until after the critically important recruitment period to limit the impact on students and on student numbers”.
The AoC’s offer included a one-off £500 payment, with a recommendation that it is increased to £750 for those on less than £25,000.
Speaking to FE Week anonymously, one principal described the cash payment recommendation from the AoC as “simply unaffordable”, and added: “We always pay as much as we can responsibly, but this will be the first time in many years we won’t be able to at least offer what the AoC has recommended.”
EDITORIAL: A hard-one freedom or a failed experiment?
As FE Week went to press this week, the GMB and Unite unions announced that upwards of 700 British Airways workers could walk out over the summer over cuts to jobs and pay.
Strike action and industrial unrest are, literally, in the air.
This comes in the week that thousands of rail users, including students with crucial exams and assessments, have had travel plans disrupted or cancelled due to strikes called by the RMT union.
The NEU has told the government that it will ballot its members for walk-outs this autumn unless an “inflation-plus” pay award is put in place.
And the number of colleges facing autumn action is rising, with UCU announcing this week that teachers in another two colleges, on top of the 33 colleges we reported last week, were balloting on strike action.
Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi has, somewhat uncharacteristically, described the NEU’s proposed actions as “unforgivable” and “irresponsible”, while his cabinet colleagues deliver combative performances on the airwaves denouncing the “union barons”, proving that politics is at play over pickets.
The AoC, still with its responsibility to negotiate a non-binding recommendation on pay awards, is in an impossible position – and UCU must know it. It’s hardly the case that colleges have been quiet about the unexpected inflationary costs hitting budgets this year and next. We’ve been reporting on it for weeks.
Continuing to paint college bosses as the enemy is easy ground for UCU, but they must know that even if public sector unions win a small concession on pay over the summer – ministers still, for now, have colleges’ private sector status to get out of providing them with anything extra.
And if, as is widely expected, colleges are reclassified as public sector by the ONS in September, there’s no sudden automatic guarantee to national pay bargaining arrangements or nationally set pay scales.
The harder debate for AoC and its members, and the unions, is what should happen next if reclassification happens. For some, setting your own pay and conditions was a hard-won freedom, but for others, a failed experiment that has led to a race to the bottom for FE staff.
There are political choices to come this autumn, and it’s in that longer-term interest of their members that the AoC and UCU should also be focusing on now.
Director of Corporate Services, Education and Training Foundation
Start date: June 2022
Previous Job: Director of Finance and Resources, The Early Intervention
Interesting fact: Charlotte relaxes by writing science fiction stories for her children
Grant Glendinning
Chief Executive Officer and Group Principal, Education Training Collective
Start date: August 2022
Previous Job: Executive Principal, NCG
Interesting fact: Once a keen guitarist, Grant played in a couple of failed, never-signed bands in the 90s, and has played alongside Craig Gannon (Smiths), Sean McCann (Audioweb) and once jammed with Tony Burnside (Yargo)
Elliot White
Head of Adult Skills, Leicestershire County Council
Start date: June 2022
Previous Job: Senior Adult Learning Manager, Leicestershire County Council
Interesting fact: Elliot caught the travel bug after starting his teaching and education career in Kazakhstan
Guy Ballantine
Chief Executive Officer, Skills Training UK
Start date: June 2022
Previous Job: Chief Operating Officer, Thomas International
Interesting fact: Guy’s career highlights include running a 400-student art and design college in Cambridge and being interim CEO of a global psychometric testing business for 12 months during the height of the pandemic
Schools, colleges and FE providers have been told to raid their own coffers to support exams students affected by this week’s train strike.
The RMT rail union confirmed yesterday that industrial action over pay, jobs and conditions will go ahead as planned today, on Thursday and on Saturday. There will also be a strike on the London Underground today.
The strikes coincide with GCSE and A-level exams, with several papers scheduled to be sat on Tuesday and Thursday.
Although the vast majority of students travel to school or college by car, bus or on foot, many use trains, especially in urban areas.
In an email to education leaders, the DfE said students and staff who travel by train “may be understandably concerned about the impact of the industrial action – particularly if they are due to take or oversee exams”.
The DfE said schools and FE providers should draw on “existing contingency arrangements to manage any disruption, including late arrival of staff or students”, and referred leaders to Joint Council for Qualifications guidance on exams.
This outlines existing “additional flexibility around invigilation numbers and published start times, which could be used if an invigilator is delayed by transport disruption”.
Use ‘core funding’ to help exams students, says DfE
For students who will “struggle to afford” alternative travel for exams, the DfE said schools and FE providers were “best placed to prioritise their spending to support their pupils and students and can consider making available funding for pupils and students who may require it”.
“For example, by using core funding or, for post-16 students, using the 16-19 Bursary Fund to support alternative travel for pupils and students.”
It comes as two teaching unions renewed warnings that they would ballot for industrial action if larger rises are not offered.
Chief secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke appeared to rule out inflation-related rises for public sector staff in an interview with the Today programme today.
The Consumer Prices Index rose by 7.8 per cent in the 12 months to April 2022, and there is some suggestion inflation could climb as high as 11 per cent.
But Clarke said it was “not a sustainable expectation that inflation can be matched in payoff”.
The Association of Colleges made a recommendation for all college staff to receive a 2.25 per cent pay rise in 2022/23. FE unions have rejected the offer and have threatened to strike unless their demands for a 10 per cent increase is met.
Despite an impressive history of wins for FE students, is it now time for a radical shake-up of the NUS in FE? From 1922 to 2022, Jess Staufenberg looks at where the NUS might go next
The NUS is no stranger to crises, lack of resources and restructures. Its latest crisis – accusations of anti-semitism – is one in a series of storms the students’ union has faced.
As Mike Day, veteran NUS historian, tells me: “The NUS will always represent the students of the day, and so it is always changing. And it can only really thrive when there is a government that listens to it. If there isn’t, there’s not much it can do.”
So far, so expected. Student activism is no easy arena to organise and get right.
But is NUS at a turning point in its relationship with FE? When the government announced last month it was ‘cutting ties’ with NUS over the concerning anti-semitism allegations, the question was not whether FE students’ unions would survive the blow. Instead, FE Week asked, would FE even notice?
To see whether NUS remains relevant in FE, and what to do if not, let’s take a whistlestop tour down memory lane.
A brief history
The NUS starts out as a respectable, establishment-aligned organisation, it seems. The founder was a Scot studying in London called Ivison Macadam, whose focus was less on influencing policy than on producing solid graduates to serve their country overseas. All the leaders of the political parties of the day were honorary presidents, and the Prince of Wales held a fundraising dinner (just imagine!).
But in the 1930s, NUS shifts to the left, as many university students look to the Soviet Union, and at the 1940 Leeds Congress, NUS votes against war with Germany ̶ to the distaste of its former establishment supporters.
These pro-communist and pacifist leanings threaten to leave the union out in the cold, and after the war NUS “moves more towards the centre, and makes a serious attempt at getting around the table again”, according to Day. Engagement from FE learners has been building slowly since the late 1930s, until in 1945-51, Stanley Jenkins is elected president – a learner at Cardiff Technical College. Although he’s an HE student, it’s a first step.
Then in 1947, FE students get more involved by inputting on the NUS ‘student charter’ calling for better student grants. And in the 1950s, a college in the south-east tries to shut down its students’ union, causing the NUS, led by Fred Jarvis (later a teacher trade union leader), to leap in. “This action makes other colleges think: the NUS is bothered about us!” says Day.
The 1960s and 1970s involve vibrant student activism, and by 1970 the Department for Education and Science is advising colleges to ensure student representation in their institutions, bolstering students’ unions further. (Not every principal is delighted, given the 1968 student protests around the world.)
By 1986, the NUS takes the important step of appointing a full-time officer for FE. Then in 1988, an education bill threatens to ban anyone under 18 from being on an FE governing body, and again the NUS fights this. By 1994 an education act is passed requiring FE colleges (but not other FE providers) to have some mechanism for representing student voice, setting the requirement in law.
However, by 2005 the union finds its finances are almost £700,000 in the red. It launches the NUS ‘extra’ student union card for an additional income stream, and pulls through this financial crisis. With FE funding fairly strong under New Labour, “lots of colleges commit to a paid student leader” in the 2000s and early 2010s, says Katie Shaw (she was a students’ union assistant at City College Plymouth in 2009, and worked in the NUS FE team from 2010 to 2017).
At the same time, LSIS (a predecessor to the Education and Training Foundation) was providing funding for learner voice and other enrichment activities, until it closed in 2013.
NUS Membership Card,1977
But hit by crisis once more, in 2018 the NUS finds it has a £3 million deficit and is facing bankruptcy. A major reform and downsizing process took place, and the NUS split into three, explains Peter Robertson, director of NUS UK. NUS UK oversees the union’s policy and lobbying work (raising around £2 million a year from membership fees); NUS charity supports and develops students’ unions (raising about half a million pounds a year); and its commercial arm, NUS services, is a purchasing company (raising around £1.5 million).
Meanwhile in colleges, “budgets became more and more squeezed, and student voice in colleges began to feel like a nice extra,” concludes Shaw.
What happens on the ground?
The majority (about 64 per cent) of students’ unions in the NUS’s membership are in FE providers. But their voices are getting quieter, say former NUS insiders.
Steve Coole, now director of a company working with students’ unions across the UK and Ireland, worked for the NUS for 12 years from 2006, and was NUS Wales director in 2015.
He says that despite the 1994 act – and a 2005 FE bill which also promoted learner voice – there was “never any real fallback on colleges for non-compliance with the act”. Instead, the success of FE students’ unions has always rested “a lot on personality ̶ of both the college principal and the FE student leader”.
So the most effective SUs had colleges that paid for several student support liaison officers ̶ members of staff that acted as a kind of “civil service” to the student leader, helping them get to grips with the role, says Graeme Kirkpatrick, a former NUS vice president for Scotland.
This support is especially important for FE students, who are often younger than HE students too, he continues.
Larissa Kennedy, outgoing NUS president
“The elephant in the room is college students are just as talented as HE students, if not more, but they often have more going on in their lives, such as caring responsibilities, and they may not be used to that level of formality of a governor board meeting,” says Kirkpatrick.
“So college student officers may need way more support than HE ones, but historically it’s university officers who have got way more staff support.” Without paid staff support in FE, he adds, “when the president quits at the end of the year, the student union will almost die with them”.
The need for staffing resources explains why austerity in colleges – even as HE fees increased – were particularly devastating for FE students’ unions. “With the funding for FE reduced year-on-year, we’ve gradually seen an erosion of a lot of the work that we did,” Coole says.
Some students’ unions were so well-established they survived the cuts, he adds, picking out SUs in Cornwall, Bradford and Derby colleges, but these are exceptions.
The government’s area reviews of FE from 2015 to 2017 were also a “missed opportunity” to restate the importance of student voice and students’ unions, he adds, with that topic virtually unmentioned in the resulting recommendations.
It means that prioritisation of students’ unions has plummeted, agrees Ben Kinross, who currently works in the NUS charitable branch leading its National Society of Apprentices (more on that soon).
One college he knows used to provide £15,000 a year to its students’ union, plus pay for a part-time member of staff – but now only has one apprentice as support.
Others used to fund £5,000 a year, but now offer their SU just £500 a year, adds Kinross. “Really you’re just covering some pizzas at a student event.”
Shakira Martin, former NUS president
The nature of youth political activism has also changed, points out Shaw, who worked in the NUS FE team until 2017.
“The idea of collective action and mobilising through your union has been on the downturn for a long time,” she says.
Instead, recent youth movements have focused on ‘small p political issues’ such as racism and other equality movements, rather than ‘big P’ political issues involving governance.
“Youth movements, like the Black Lives Matter movement, is being driven outside students’ unions.” By contrast, “so much of the stuff we did at NUS was so policy focused, it didn’t lend itself to mass mobilisation in the same way”.
Meanwhile, the sheer number of policy issues NUS had to respond to during the austerity era also resulted in “movement fatigue”, Shaw adds.
A worthy legacy
It isn’t all bleak: the NUS has done great work for FE, points out Larissa Kennedy, the current president, who is stepping down at the end of this month.
A 2015 research report on apprentices called ‘Forget Me Not’ began the debate on apprentice pay far ahead of the current heated debate.
And another, in 2017, made the case for paid work experience, “which really changed the tone of how work experience is perceived,” she nods.
Other instances of great collaboration between FE and HE students also followed. “The level of organising around protests to EMA cuts in 2010 set a really powerful precedent for the strength of FE students in NUS,” continues Kennedy (even though EMA was eventually scrapped).
Similar FE student protests around the 2020 A-level marking algorithm were also well supported by the students’ union.
Meanwhile, Shane Chowen (now FE Week’s editor) paved the way for FE students by running for NUS president as an FE student representative in 2011, and later Toni Pearce and Shakira Martin became presidents from FE, raising the profile of the sector within the union.
Shane Chowen, former VP for FE at the NUS and now FE Week editor
Perhaps most impressive of all, the NUS supported the establishment of the National Society of Apprentices, led by Kinross, in 2010. He says it speaks face-to-face with 2,000 apprentices each year and reaches 10,000 more, bringing their voices and feedback to policymakers.
But since the 2018 restructure, the NUS is just not the same organisation it once was. There are now just seven people on the national executive team: Kennedy, her vice president, a VP for FE, VP for HE and three officers for the nations, plus a small staff team.
Prior to austerity, there were eight people on the FE team alone, points out Kinross.
Looking to the future
So how can FE students be re-engaged on a national scale?
A new model is needed to better suit FE student leaders, says Kirkpatrick, the former NUS vice president for Scotland. The one year “sabbatical” model for student leaders was meant for HE, he says.
“Most university students know they are going to be there for three or four years, but for college students it could just be a year, and they are looking for a job afterwards. It makes less sense to take a year out.
“I would be keener on a part-time student leader model, with full-time staff, and perhaps embedded into an apprenticeship.”
Former NUS president Zamzam Ibrahim at a rally
Jim Dickinson, who worked with NUS from 1999 to 2013, says the issue goes even deeper. Ultimately, the FE section of NUS should become its own organisation, focused on vocational student representation, he recommends.
“The problem now is the NUS is broadly on its knees, and it’s not in a position where it can be creative. I would separate the two, and have a separate organisation.”
Kirkpatrick strongly agrees. “I think that would be a tremendous idea, if you could sort out the funding. At the moment, it’s just not working.”
Others call for much closer collaboration with other sector organisations such as the AoC, UCU, Learning and Work Institute, WEA and AELP to build a united political front on issues to government. They also ask college principals to strongly consider how much they support student voice.
“Being in a students’ union teaches you to be a citizen,” concludes Coole. “You’ll be dealing with multi-million-pound budgets and it’s about thinking about society, not being individualistic. It can be genuinely transformational. It transformed my life.”
