To secure better funding for enrichment we need more robust evidence of its impact, writes Eddie Playfair
Students’ experience of college is so much more than just the courses they study. Colleges provide a hugely comprehensive range of additional opportunities which support student development in all sorts of ways.
These are often labelled “enrichment” and they aim to prepare students for progression, citizenship and employment and to support their wellbeing and develop their skills.
In the context of the Covid pandemic these opportunities have never been more necessary.
Despite the positive impact that enrichment can have, tangible outcomes are often more difficult to measure, and it can be hard to justify funding for these activities.
The Association of Colleges, working with NCFE and the University of Derby, is currently conducting a longitudinal study into college enrichment,
It’s to understand the relative impact of enrichment programmes on the lives of students, to evaluate the benefits of different models and to share this knowledge across the sector.
An AoC survey from 2019 asked colleges about their existing enrichment offers and showed a high level of commitment and breadth of activity, with many collaborating with external partners to design engaging programmes.
While some colleges had very broad enrichment offers, the overall picture was mixed.
The overall picture was very mixed
Without earmarked funding or structured models to support the work, some colleges struggle to deliver a full and effective enrichment programme for their students.
Part of the reason the outcomes can be difficult to measure is the sheer broadness of the activities. Anything from sport and fitness, creative and performing arts, campaigning and advocacy, or enterprise and economic literacy, comes under the enrichment umbrella.
There are also several reasons why colleges choose to embed enrichment into their offer for students.
Some offer voluntary activities that students choose to engage in, while others provide an entitlement, essentially a menu from which everyone must choose something.
Then there are the reasons behind the offer: some provide an opportunity to extend and deepen a student’s awareness, understanding or experience.
While others extend students’ horizons and allow them to explore their own interests and aspirations as well as develop new skills.
This ongoing research will build a stronger case for increased public funding for enrichment, understanding more about what works, and will use this to shape learning that makes a positive impact on people’s lives.
This ongoing research will build a stronger case for increased public funding for enrichment,
To secure better funding for enrichment we need to have more robust evidence of its impact, so that it is not seen as a “nice to have” element but recognised as a crucial contributor to student development.
We currently have responses from 84 colleges across England but we are keen to broaden the range of institutions involved; this could include GCFE, sixth-form colleges or specialist colleges.
The broader the evidence the base, the stronger our argument will be and will ultimately cement enrichment as core part of the educational experience in the new normal.
Disadvantaged adults are almost twice as likely to have steered clear of learning than their more advantaged peers, the Learning and Work Institute has found at the start of Lifelong Learning Week.
This year’s adult participation in learning survey found 37 per cent of adults aged 17 and over in socio-economic groups D and E – working class and lower-income workers – have not participated in learning since leaving full-time education.
This compares to 18 per cent of adults from groups A and B, which covers the upper-middle and middle classes.
The survey found the proportion of adults who have taken part in learning in the past three years has increased to 44 per cent, around 2,200 people, on the historic low in 2019 of 33 per cent.
Lower socioeconomic groups have seen a 14 percentage point increase in their number participating in education since 2019.
However, participation by the highest groups has risen by the same, meaning the gap between the two groups has not changed.
LWI calls for ‘collective effort’ to make this the lifelong learning century
Learning and Work Institute chief executive Stephen Evans said it was “good to see a rise in participation in lifelong learning after years of falls”.
But the “stark inequalities” in access mean “those who could benefit most from learning are least likely to participate”.
Evans called for a “collective effort to build a culture of learning and make this the lifelong learning century”.
The results of this survey of over 5,000 adults aged 17 and over have been released to mark the start of Lifelong Learning Week, the institute’s annual celebration of adult education providers and learners, which this year is taking place between Monday 8 and Friday 12 November.
Stephen Evans
In addition to the above, the survey also found 29 per cent of those who have not recently taken part in learning say “nothing” is preventing them from doing so.
Only four in ten adults are aware free basic skills courses are available, with 38 per cent of those who left full-time education aged 16 or below and 42 per cent of those who left aged 17-18 being aware these courses are available
This has triggered the institute to call on the sector to “actively promote the benefits of learning to encourage participation”.
Baroness Barran, the Department for Education minister in the House of Lords, told peers last week the department is planning to “launch a new campaign” to “raise awareness and boost understanding of skills offers among adults” in January 2022.
Chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak announced in last month’s autumn budget the government will have invested £68 million by 2024-25 to “level up the adult skills system”.
However, Evans reported shortly afterwards that this would still leave a £750 million black hole in adult skills funding, with the chancellor’s announced funding restoring only 60 per cent of cuts made since 2010.
Adults starting to move back to face-to-face learning
The effects of the pandemic on virtual learning can also be seen from the survey, with 52 per cent of respondents saying their main learning has taken place entirely online.
But those learning currently, the survey continues, are more likely to be learning face-to-face, compared to those who took part in learning in the last three years, 31 per cent to 26 per cent.
“This finding may reflect a gradual return to face-to-face learning as coronavirus restrictions ease,” the survey reads.
“However, the continued prevalence of online learning indicates that this will still be an important mode of learning in future.”
One-fifth of respondents who were asked what would encourage them to take up free English and maths courses gave “the option to take the course entirely online” as their answer.
The institute says this “provides lessons” for the government for the design of the £560 million Multiply adult numeracy programme which Rishi Sunak announced last month and is intended to benefit up to half a million people.
A spokesperson for Department for Education, which part-funded this survey, said: “It’s great to see that there has been a rise in adult learners since 2019, but we recognise there is more do to make sure more people from disadvantaged backgrounds are aware of and can access the training they need to progress.
“We want everyone to have the opportunity to learn and develop the skills they need to succeed at any age. That’s why we are continuing to invest in education and skills training for adults through the adult education budget and the National Skills Fund. Our Free Courses for Jobs offers over 400 free courses to help adults progress in a wide range of sectors, and our Skills Bootcamps are supporting more people to gain sector specific skills with a clear line of sight to a job. The Chancellor has also announced a new £560 million scheme, Multiply, to improve the maths skills of hundreds of thousands of adults across the UK.”
The adult participation in learning survey has been running almost annually for 25 years since 1996, save for 1997, 1998 and 2016.
This year’s survey the institute’s excludes findings from 2020 due to the “unique context” of the Coronavirus lockdown restrictions, meaning they are not comparable to 2021’s findings.
With the world’s eyes on the UK at COP26, Jess Staufenberg looks at who’s coming up with a proper net zero plan for the FE sector
With impeccable timing ahead of this and next week’s global climate summit in Glasgow, a report came out that cut through the hype.
Every corner of society is failing to make the changes needed to cut carbon emissions to zero by 2050, stated the report from Systems Change Lab, which monitors climate change transformations around the world.
It noted, “None of the indicators are on track to meet our 2030 targets” (which in turn are needed to meet the overall 2050 target). Three indicators were actually going in the wrong direction.
This was not a report on England alone, or on FE specifically. Happily, there are positive signs that the country is capable of concrete action: carbon emissions are down 40 per cent in 2019 compared with 1990, which is the largest reduction in the G20 (a group of the world’s largest economies).
Also in 2019, the UK became the first major economy to legislate to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
A Youth Strike 4 Climate protest in Parliament Square, London
And within FE, there is a plethora of initiatives, including admirable grassroots efforts in colleges.
But in this feature, FE Week will look at leadership from the top: government, representative bodies, associations and think tanks.
If the world is badly off track for avoiding disastrous climate consequences, then system-level intervention is needed. So, who has a sector-wide plan?
Full DfE strategy not due until April
Well, nobody yet. In its net zero strategy published on October 19, the government promises to “forward a strategy which will set out how our children’s services, education and skills systems” will help meet the net zero target.
A reminder: the overall goal is for net zero emissions by 2050, but some sub-targets are much closer. By 2035, the government wants the energy system to be “powered entirely by clean electricity”.
The Department for Education has yet to publish a comprehensive strategy on this, but has today at least published a draft. The final strategy will then be published in April 2022.
The draft sustainability and climate change strategy claims to have four aims: Preparing all young people for a world impacted by climate change; reaching net zero: ensuring resilience to climate change (through buildings and infrastructure) and a’ better environment for future generations’ (through biodiversity and increasing access to nature).
Unsurprisingly, publicity around the draft strategy is dominated by initiatives aimed at children and schools. This includes a ‘Climate Leaders Award’, which the Department for Education is comparing to the Duke of Edinburgh awards, and testing zero carbon ‘energy pods’ to replace school boilers.
At the time of going to press, the ‘flagship’ FE initiative in the strategy included sustainability within the new apprenticeship standard for FE teachers.
But we knew about this already, of course. It was part of the government’s net-zero strategy published two weeks ago.
So it looks like the sector will be waiting almost half a year to get a new full plan from DfE.
‘Still early days’
Perhaps this explains the impression of catch-up across the sector.
For instance, several organisations are just beginning to collect information or trial solutions to the climate crisis, focused on skills.
Rebecca Durber, director of public affairs at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, says the organisation is planning a “green skills summit” in February next year to get the net zero drive “to the forefront of members’ minds.
“We’ll be talking about the challenges and thinking about the real, practical things that providers can be doing.”
Next year AELP also wants to commission research on sustainability, says Durber, adding “it’s early days in terms of what we’re doing”.
One issue providers are facing is “that it’s an employer-led system, and employers and learners just aren’t knocking down the door asking for green apprenticeships,” emphasises Durber. “I think something really needs to be done by the government to stimulate that interest.”
Trying to get apprenticeships up to speed is the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE).
Following the government’s Green Jobs Taskforce (a group of skills and industry representatives) set up late last year, IfATE launched the “green apprenticeships advisory panel” in March this year.
Rachel Cooper, strategy director, says “the role of the panel has been to review the suite of apprenticeship standards and say which ones are supporting green industries, and where do they need adaptation”.
So far, 44 apprenticeships have been approved. For instance, the level 7 business sustainability specialist, originally tailored to the agriculture industry, has now been expanded to be applicable to more industries.
Students at a hybrid energy centre on campus at Wirral Met College
“It’s also about looking at where we may also need brand new standards,” says Jane Pierce, the institute’s deputy director for engineering, construction and transport.
A new standard, for example, is likely to be retrofitting in construction, putting high-efficiency energy systems into existing buildings. There are about 600 standards to review.
Similarly tackling the sustainability skills gap is Learning and Work Institute.
It won £2 million through the government’s Covid support fund to run five pilots across the north-east, south-west, Edinburgh, Belfast and Swansea beginning early next year until the end of 2023.
The pilots are focused on people whose jobs are affected by the pandemic, and the growth sectors they could move into, including in the green economy.
Emily Jones, head of research at LWI, says the pilots are “a great opportunity to test how to help people make that transition” into green industries. About 6,000 people are expected to benefit from the pilots, with FE colleges involved in the retraining.
Jones adds: “We’ve got some really big ambitions from the government, but we need to think about what this looks like locally.”
We need to think about what this looks like locally
Continuing with the skills focus is the Education and Training Foundation, the body for professional development and standards in FE – this time focused on staff, rather than workers.
The ETF’s research has found that sustainability “doesn’t get taught” if it isn’t in the college curriculum with guided learning hours, says Charlotte Bonner, national head of education for sustainable development.
So the ETF is about to publish 20 curriculum case studies, with “explanation on change management techniques”.
Meanwhile the ETF is also reviewing the professional standards for FE teachers, and is “recommending that the standards look at a teacher’s role in progressing the sustainability agenda”.
This echoes the government’s net zero strategy, too. In September the DfE launched a new FE teacher apprenticeship in which apprentices are “required to integrate sustainability into their teaching”.
This standard “will soon be incorporated into all future further education teaching qualifications”, says the strategy. Bonner welcomes the move, adding that upskilling existing teachers also needs to be a priority.
‘Introduce mandatory emissions reporting’
But while training and skills are important, what about actually cutting the FE estate’s carbon emissions down?
Leading the conversation here are three organisations: the EAUC (the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges, with 70 colleges and 150 universities), SOS UK (Students Organising for Sustainability) and the Association of Colleges.
“One of the best things the commission has done” is the climate action roadmap for FE colleges, says Iain Patton, EAUC’s chief executive.
It’s a document that presents a range of initiatives colleges can take to reach net zero emissions, with a scorecard. Launched in July last year, there are about 90 colleges using it.
The EAUC is also publishing a climate action guide for FE governors (the university governors’ one is already out) and has other initiatives, including the “green gown awards” to recognise the most sustainable colleges and universities, and the SDG Accord, a group for embedding sustainability development goals in post-16 education.
An electric zero emissions van at Craven College
But all the initiatives are voluntary, and colleges sometimes struggle to find the time to be involved, says Patton.
He points to Scotland and Wales for more established frameworks.
“In Scotland, colleges have to do mandatory reporting of their carbon emissions, and in Wales that’s just starting. We would like to see mandatory reporting. It would just make colleges sit up and be accountable.”
In Scotland, colleges have to do mandatory reporting of their carbon emissions
One attempt to do this is a website set up by SOS UK, called carbontargets.uk. Meg Baker, director of education at SOS UK, explains it as a “league table showing how ambitious university and college carbon targets are”.
Colleges lag significantly behind universities, according to the website, particularly around indirect energy and supply chain sources. “And of course, these institutions have self-identified on there, so that means there will be a skew on data,” continues Baker.
The AoC has been playing its part by disseminating the FE climate action roadmap to members, says Philippa Alway, campaigns and strategic projects manager.
It has also set up a special interest group for developing net zero and climate-change resilient campuses, and published a report called The Green College Commitment.
Among other recommendations, the report calls for £1.5 billion capital funding over the next three years so that college estates can meet net zero.
To be fair to the government, it has taken some actions. It offered a £1.5 billion pot to upgrade college estates through the FE Capital Transformation Programme – but only £200 million went to all colleges, with the rest focused on the colleges in the worst condition. It’s also not clear the main focus was on net zero design.
More promising, perhaps, is Education and Skills Funding Agency guidance, put out in August and entitledStreamlined energy and carbon reporting for college corporations, encouraging colleges to publish consecutive years of energy-use data on their websites.
However, again, the guidance is non-statutory.
‘Profoundly shocking that education isn’t leading’
Long-standing sustainability campaigners such as Patton, and famed environmental activist and artist Judy Ling Wong, who also chairs the IfATE’s green apprenticeships advisory panel, say time has run out.
Despite good work in many combined authorities and colleges, the sector and the DfE badly need a harder approach.
“Colleges must raise the social prestige of apprenticeships and green jobs in the community,” says Wong. “And government and local authorities should see it as their duty to get net zero experts out to colleges and the community.”
Judy Ling Wong, chair, IfATE green apprenticeships advisory panel and environmental activist
Personally, she is “keen for harder measures” around requiring colleges to publish carbon emissions data. “Scotland are doing it. Why aren’t we taking this on? What’s wrong with us?”
You can sympathise with her frustration. The Climate Change Act was passed in 2008 and the Paris Agreement made in 2015. Yet the government only produced a “Ten-point plan for a green industrial revolution” a year ago and its net zero strategy is its first ever.
Compare that to Patton’s organisation, EUAC, which has been around for more than two decades.
He is pleased the DfE has now set up a sustainability and climate change unit, which is meeting with EAUC monthly. But it’s all very late.
The experts are clear – mandatory targets on carbon emissions and environmental protection, linked to government accountability measures, are needed.
That might, by proxy, be one of the quickest ways to upskill staff and students in sustainability solutions – which could also prompt interest in the green jobs market in turn.
Patton concludes: “For us, it’s profoundly shocking that education isn’t yet giving the leadership on this that society needs.”
The government’s pledges in the net zero strategy:
Deliver the lifetime skills guarantee and grow key post-16 training programmes (such as apprenticeships, skills bootcamps and T levels) in line with the needs of employers in the green economy.
Reform the skills system so that training providers, employers and learners are incentivised and equipped to play their part in delivering the transition to net zero ̶ including by legislating for skills required for jobs that support action on climate change and other environmental goals to be considered in the development of new local skills improvement plans.
As part of the pathway towards the lifelong entitlement, trial short courses provision at levels 4-6 enabling learners to flexibly build towards a full qualification in subjects crucial for net zero.
The majority of strategic development fund pilots, announced in July 2021, include a project focused on green skills, covering areas including decarbonisation, renewable energy and electric vehicles.
Reform the adult funding and accountability system so that provider funding reflects value of courses to the taxpayer and introduce accountability agreements to encourage delivery towards national priorities, such as the green economy.
A refreshed FE teacher training curriculum and apprenticeship standard to embed and promote sustainability.
Introduce a sustainability and climate change strategy for education and children’s services which will include a focus on equipping children and young people with the knowledge and skills they need to contribute to the green economy.
While skills policy is devolved, the government welcomes close engagement with the devolved administrations, mayoral combined authorities and the Greater London Authority on this important agenda to ensure everyone across the UK has access to green skills and jobs.
This week Shane is joined by David Russell, chief executive at the Education and Training Foundation, and Fiona Aldridge, head of skills insight at West Midlands combined authority – to discuss the biggest stories.
Have the government’s special educational needs reforms failed – and if so, what should be done?
Who is providing solid, top-down leadership on sustainability in the FE sector?
And the guests discuss their reflections on the spending review after time to mull it over during the half-term break.
Listen to episode five below, and hit subscribe to follow the podcast!
The chancellor took some heat from FE leaders last week for his “clear as mud” approach to presenting the sector’s spending settlement, and it’s easy to see why. Big numbers and grand statements like “skills revolution” are designed to lead us in a particular direction; to be impressed or even grateful.
The problem is, though, it also raises expectations – and the sector’s expectations are high.
Chancellor accused of ‘smoke and mirrors’ in spending review
A week later, and despite the chancellor Rishi Sunak and the new education secretary Nadhim Zahawi appearing before the House of Lords’ economic affairs and Commons education committee respectively, we know little more than we did a week ago.
Sunak was challenged to confirm that he was not “guilty of smoke and mirrors” in presenting pre-existing spending commitments as something new as part of the £3.8 billion announced for skills.
In his reply, the chancellor admitted that “almost everything that I announced last week was a function of things that are already in train, and then new things for the next three years” going on to list apprenticeships growth, T Level and bootcamps expansion as examples.
“Those things are already in place and are being expanded over the [spending review] period,” he concludes.
In fact, the only new initiative the chancellor was able to mention was the Multiply scheme, which is set to be funded through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, not existing adult education or national skills fund budgets.
At the education committee, in replying to challenges about funding for a longer school day, the education secretary was at least a little clearer about where some of the extra £1.6 billion for 16-to-19-year-olds would be going, in confirming numerous times it is for the “extra one hour a week”.
Real skills revolution ‘would have empowered the sector’
So of course the sector’s scepticism is justified, not least in the face of Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis showing that, per-student, the spending review still leaves the sector ten per cent lower than 2010 levels. At the same time, providers continue to face risings costs, such as the rise in employer national insurance contributions, projected energy price rises and continuing pressure to increase staff salaries.
As budgets and spending reviews over the last ten years go, there was an undeniably larger further education and skills presence. But you can’t spend rhetoric on classroom upgrades or staff pay awards.
A real “skills revolution” wouldn’t have been so ambiguous and difficult to disassemble. It would have empowered a sector to be at the very least slightly more confident in its ability to invest in its chronically underpaid staff and provide the per-student rates to give adults and young people a globally competitive learning experience.
Previous job: Director of policy and operations, UVAC
Interesting fact: One of her first jobs was co-organising a fine art exhibition, celebrating the centenary of Leeds as a city, with baby Ed Sheeran’s mum and dad.
Ann Limb, Chair, City & Guilds Group
Start date: October 2021
Concurrent job: Vice chair, The Prince’s Foundation
Interesting fact: She loves skiing and was named #1 LGBTQ+ public sector role model OUTstanding List 2019, Northern Power Woman 2019.
Jennifer Rudder, Trustee, WorldSkills UK
Start date: November 2021
Concurrent job: Finance and IT director, Apollo Fire Detectors Limited
Interesting fact: She previously built sports cars in the Sports Car Club of America. This involved not only converting street cars to race cars, but also the maintenance and development of Formula cars.
Faried Chopdat, Trustee, WorldSkills UK
Start date: November 2021
Concurrent job: Director, EQUARIO8
Interesting fact: He loves reading and understanding the impact of numerology, and how numbers were used in lost civilisations.
The Department for Education has insisted it still has no T Level recruitment target, even though the Treasury has made funding available for “up to 100,000 students” by 2024.
The investment was laid out in last week’s spending review but the DfE has told FE Week this does not constitute a target.
A spokesperson said: “In developing and rolling out T Levels our focus has been and remains the quality of the qualifications, rather than chasing arbitrary numbers of students.
“The spending review document talks about ‘funding for up to 100,000 T Level students by 2024/25’. So while the funding to enable significant expansion is welcome, this does not constitute a target, either from Treasury or DfE.”
Shadow skills minister Toby Perkins said the government’s stance shows they “clearly don’t believe their own hype around uptake of T Levels”.
Around 1,300 young people started T Levels last year – the first year of their rollout. The DfE said figures for this year’s enrolments will not be available until “the end of the year”.
Former skills minister Sir John Hayes criticised the DfE earlier this year for moving away from T Levels student recruitment targets. This came after the DfE had originally set student number “estimates” for the first three T Levels but later claimed they have no fixed targets.
Hayes, Conservative MP for South Holland and The Deepings, who held the skills brief between 2010 and 2012, told a Westminster Education Forum event in March that numerical goals are essential to making new programmes “credible”.
He said targets are vital to “gauge success” and that he has “never bought the argument” that you cannot focus on both quality and quantity when rolling schemes out.
A panel of ex-prisoners shared their experiences of education in the nation’s jails to MPs on the education select committee this week.
During the session on Tuesday, the five witnesses covered topics such as the use of technology in cells and why prisoners should be allowed to become apprentices.
Here are six key things we learned from the session…
1. Witnesses critical of prison education quality
Committee chair Robert Halfon quizzed the panellists about the quality of education they received while in prison.
Kiri Jolliffe, who is now a case worker with the St Giles trust, told the committee she did “not have much communication” with PeoplePlus, the provider at her prison.
Ben Leapman, who now works as a journalist for Inside Times, said his provider was Novus and that it was “dreadful”, with “no education I could do, so I worked in laundry for two years”.
However, he believed this was more to do with the prison itself, saying the governor was “not supportive at all of education”.
There was no education I could do, so I worked in laundry for two years
Fellow witness David Breakspear, now a prison reform campaigner, said it was down to his tutor, rather than the provider itself, that he was sitting before MPs that day.
In response to the witnesses’ complaints about Novus, a spokesperson said ensuring high-quality provision is their “top priority” and 95 per cent of their provision passes the Ministry of Justice’s quality assurance mechanism. PeoplePlus declined to respond.
2. Work is accepted by the prison, but education can be ‘completely shut down’
Jolliffe also told MPs that when the prison was on lockdown, or if there was a lack of staff, education would be “completely shut down” and learners locked in their cells. However, prisoners who worked as gardeners or in the kitchen would be allowed out their cells. “So it was really hard to want to do something to better myself when I knew I’ll be spending more time in this room.”
Femi Laryea-Adekimi, a network coordinator for the Prison Reform Trust, said if a prisoner worked as a wing cleaner, for example, “the prison accepts it” and the person is let out. But “if someone achieves a qualification, maybe business studies, there’s no acknowledgement of that from the prison, except from the prison’s education department”.
3. More can be done for short-term prisoners
Prisons should “get people moving on to a course”, especially if they are on a short sentence, “because every day counts when you’re on a short sentence,” Jolliffe said.
She spent several months in prison on remand before being acquitted and was not sure if she would end up with a criminal record following her trial. But, in the meantime, “they weren’t prepared to give me any type of work or any type of education whilst I was waiting.
“A big thing if you are on a short sentence as a woman and you come out of prison, you’ve got a criminal record. You’ve lost some time, however long that is, so you’re facing quite a bit of discrimination already.”
4. Allow more technology in cells
Breakspear told MPs that prison education “has to move with the times” and “too much” of prisoners’ time in cells is being wasted.
Committee member Kate Osborne MP said “a lot of people were nervous” about prisoners having technology in their cells. But Breakspear responded: “We’re not talking about having access to the internet. We’re talking about having access to pads that are read-only that doesn’t have any access to the outside internet.”
He said it would be “great” to have proper access to the internet under supervision, but “everything is about technology these days”, so his point is about “providing skills for digital technology”.
A lot more prisoners would be able to move into employment from the education within the prison
Last month, the Prisoners’ Education Trust called for “major investment” in digital technology in prisons and criticised government plans to roll out in-cell technology in just nine of 117 prisons next year.
5. Prisoners could have local impact and should be able to start apprenticeships
Prison education could have a “local impact” and “react to what their area needs,” said Breakspear. “Why not utilise schools, colleges, universities and prisons” to fill their area’s skills gaps, he asked.
This comes as the Department for Education is preparing to roll out local skills improvement plans nationwide, with employer representative bodies being handed responsibility for orientating local training provision towards the needs of local employers.
The panel also pressed for prisoners to be allowed to undertake apprenticeships, with Laryea-Adekimi saying local employees should not “sideline prisoners,” as allowing them to take up apprenticeships would mean “a lot more prisoners would be able to move into employment from the education within the prison.
“100 per cent apprenticeships should be able to be started in prisons,” he said, raising the example of someone starting an electrician course: “What stops them from achieving the practical side within the prison – there’s electricity within the prison?”
The government proposed a “prisoner apprenticeship pathway” in 2016, with close involvement from the Association of Employment and Learning Providers – but in 2019 the association was still calling for the pathway to get off the ground.
6. National college for prison education should be created
Leapman used the session to speak about the idea of a national college for prison education, where prisoners can transfer to take higher education courses.
“I think it would be a really, really powerful incentive for prisoners, every prisoner all over the country who felt that they had the potential to do a degree level study.”
Pictured top, from left to right: Ben Leapman, Femi Laryea-Adekimi, David Breakspear, Kiri Jolliffe, Jonathan Gilbert
Brand new digital functional skills qualifications have already generated error messages, after the government warned special educational needs learners could be excluded from the “essential” courses.
Skills minister Alex Burghart last week heralded the launch of new subject content for the reformed entry-level and level 1 qualifications, following a consultation on the content in 2019. The old digital functional skills qualifications were shut down in July 2021.
However, an equalities impact assessment released alongside the consultation revealed the “design and delivery of digital FSQ assessments has the potential to negatively impact on learners with learning difficulties and disabilities or special educational needs”.
These learners “make up a significant proportion of enrolments on existing basic digital qualifications,” the assessment warns.
But it goes on to state officials believe: “We cannot change the subject content to the extent that assessment would not pose any potential barriers to learners with special educational needs.”
This is to ensure the qualifications can command the “full confidence” of learners, providers and employers, and to ensure “comparability across different awarding organisations and individuals”.
The need for digital FSQ subject content to reflect the “vast majority” of the skills government believes people will need for work, study and life “outweigh the need to ensure all learners can achieve a digital FSQ,” the assessment continues.
‘Essential’ that DfE ensure there are no barriers to digital skills
This is despite a new legal entitlement, introduced in August 2020, which entitled adults with little to no digital skills to a fully funded digital qualifications at entry level and level 1, on top of existing entitlements to English and maths training.
Respondents to the consultation had raised their concerns with the DfE about whether the subject content would be accessible for special educational needs learners.
After being shown the impact assessment by FE Week, Zoe Spilberg, head of education for BCS The Chartered Institute for IT, said “ensuring there are no barriers to participation in functional skills qualifications is essential”.
“Computing education and digital skills courses should be accessible by design and with the right support in place to meet the needs of every learner,” she added.
Fil McIntyre, manager of specialist provider network Natspec’s TechAbility assistive technology support service, said the organisation believes digital FSQs “should be as accessible as possible and that greater flexibility should be integrated into their design”.
He said it was “often the design of the content which can create an accessibility issue, asking learners to demonstrate a skill they would never be able to perform”.
‘Too many adults lack the know-how,’ says Burghart
Launching the new subject content on Friday, Alex Burghart said the Department for Education had reformed “essential digital skills so more adults will have the confidence and knowledge they need”.
In its consultation response, the department cited evidence from Lloyds Bank that one in five adults lack essential digital skills.
Alex Burghart
“From sending emails, to keeping our data safe online, digital skills are vital for navigating our everyday lives and getting on in work, but too many adults still lack the know-how,” said Burghart.
In addition to new digital functional skills qualifications, which are set to be rolled out in 2023, new essential digital skills qualifications (EDSQs) launched alongside the implementation of the digital skills entitlement in August 2020.
These replaced all low-level IT courses, which had been studied by over 100,000 people a year.
FE Week reported last July how just 270 people had achieved an essential digital skills qualification by June 2021, with the slow start having been blamed on Covid-19.
DfE insists SEND learners can be supported to take courses
A DfE spokesperson insisted learners with special educational needs are “not prevented” from taking digital FSQs, as “support is available through the adult education budget to meet the cost of putting in place a reasonable adjustment for individuals with an identified LDD to achieve their learning goal”.
Awarding organisations must make reasonable adjustments for their qualifications under the 2010 Equality Act, the spokesperson added, and must have “clear arrangements in place” and made public for such adjustments under Ofqual rules.
Awarding body Pearson, which took part in the consultation, told FE Week it makes every effort to make specifications and assessments accessible to all learners as far as possible.
But, the DfE spokesperson said, if a digital FSQ was “not appropriate” for a learner, they can also take one of the EDSQs.
The consultation opened on May 16, 2019 and closed on July 11, 2019, but the release of the results was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, the DfE said.
