‘Inadequate’ apprenticeship provider accuses Ofsted of creating ‘state of fear’

An apprenticeship provider in Kent has accused Ofsted inspectors of creating a “state of fear” for its staff following an ‘inadequate’ result.

Art Providers Ltd, which mostly delivers adult care apprenticeships nationally, was hit with Ofsted’s lowest grade in a critical inspection report this morning.

But leaders at the independent training provider said they did not agree with the rating and alleged poor conduct from inspectors, including evidence being ignored.

A team of inspectors examined Art Providers’ apprenticeship delivery between July 15 and 18, when it had 154 apprentices on its books.

The watchdog claimed that “too few apprentices achieve their apprenticeship in the time expected”, adding that the “small minority” who do complete are “well prepared for their final assessments”.

A spokesperson for Art Providers told FE Week that the report did not reflect around 20 apprentices who are currently registered for their end-point assessment.

“We’re not claiming to be perfect but we’ve not had a single learner fail. We’ve had distinctions, people graduated with distinction merit so I don’t know where the inadequacy is coming from,” they said.

The ITP has been providing apprenticeships since January 2023 and has no published qualification achievement rate yet.

Ofsted said it found “consistently poor” attendance from apprentices and condemned leaders’ lack of planning of on- and off-the-job training.

The Art Providers spokesperson claimed that inspectors based their judgment on only seeing the one-to-one teaching delivered during inspection week and did not consider the monthly group teaching sessions.

The Ofsted report also noted leaders’ failures to mitigate “fundamental weaknesses” in its provision, poor oversight and poor sequence training.

Inspectors said: “[Leaders’] lack of a clear and accurate understanding of the challenges facing apprentices has significantly limited their ability to make improvements. As a result, too many apprentices fall behind or disengage from learning without getting the help they need.”

The ITP challenged Ofsted’s rating when they found out they had been awarded ‘inadequate’ in four out of the five areas.

Leaders told FE Week that they submitted “hundreds” of pages of evidence for Ofsted after they complained.

“Out of almost over 100 pages of evidence provided, the person they brought in to look at this matter agreed that they should just look at a single page, which simply means they didn’t look into the evidence we supplied,” they said.

They also raised conduct complaints about one of the inspectors “practically creating a state of fear in the staff”.

“When the inspectors were here, we actually complained against one of the inspectors, who was basically shutting people down when the inspection was going on,” they added.

Private providers judged ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted are usually sanctioned by the Department for Education, which can include contract termination.

The ITP said they had not spoken with DfE yet, but was positive the department would hear their case to retain their apprenticeship contract after the local DfE representative had been “quite sympathetic”.

Ofsted is currently overhauling its inspection process after a coroner ruled that an Ofsted inspection contributed to the death of headteacher Ruth Perry and amid wider concerns about the reliability of inspection judgments.

New-style report cards are due to be rolled out from November 10, with headline overall grades for FE providers removed in favour of sub-judgments in up to 16 areas using a colour-coded five-point scale.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 509

Laura Woods

Chair, Middlesbrough College

Start date: August 2025

Previous job: Former Director of Academic Enterprise, Teesside University

Interesting fact: Laura found a whole new world of interests after full-time work, from creative writing to swing dancing, cryptic crosswords and all things French

Robert Halfon

Executive director – policy, membership and external affairs

Start date: September 2025

Previous job: Former minister for skills

Interesting fact: Robert is an enthusiastic horologist and at one point had a collection of over 200 watched though, with a mortgage to pay, it’s now a more manageable 25

More than half of Turing trips turned down

A record-breaking number of applications to the Turing Scheme were rejected by the government this year following a spike in interest ahead of the programme’s expected closure.

Latest data reveals that bids from education providers to organise international trips for young people soared to 951 in 2025-26 – but just 454, or 48 per cent, were accepted.

In 2021-22, the programme’s first year, 91 per cent of 412 applications were granted. The proportion of successful bids fell to 61 per cent of 520 requests the next year, before hitting 77 per cent of 619 bids in 2023-24, and then 85 per cent of last year’s 755 applications.

The Turing Scheme was supposed to end last year but the government agreed to a one-year extension. However, the total funding pot was trimmed by nearly a third to £78 million as part of the Department for Education’s cost-cutting spree.

Figures published this week show the government even underspent this reduced budget by over £4 million despite record numbers of applications.

‘Shorter mobility’ for FE students

The data shows applications from further education providers rose to 318 this year, but half were rejected. It means just £24 million in Turing cash has been handed out to FE providers in 2025-26, a 28 per cent cut from the previous year.

DfE acknowledged the lower success rate of applications, but said it funded successful applications in full as well as appealed bids to ensure providers can deliver the projects they applied for.

The DfE also limited the maximum funding pot available per FE provider application to £205,000 and has almost halved daily living costs for students going abroad this year. DfE said it placed the limit to avoid stretching the available funding across many providers and increase the risk of providers not being able to deliver their intended placements.

It also said where providers applied for funding above the cap, the applications were scaled down to the cap.

This funding cut and low approval rate means around 11,000 FE learners and apprentices will go on a trip this year, a 6 per cent fall from last year.

Richard Lloyd, co-founder of Further Afield, an initiative that arranges trips with FE providers, said funding pressures were resulting in “shorter mobility” placements across the board. He said: “It can sometimes mean experiences feel more like short group trips rather than the longer, more independent exchanges traditionally associated with study abroad.”

Erasmus+ return?

Named after the mathematician and code-breaker Alan Turing, the DfE-funded initiative replaced Erasmus+ in March 2021 with a new focus on social mobility. The then education secretary Gavin Williamson also allowed trips to be made outside the EU.

Figures show FE providers continued to target more disadvantaged students despite dipping into a smaller funding pot. Two thirds of FE participants going on a Turing trip this year are from a disadvantaged background, compared with 59 per cent in 2024-25.

Schools have ramped up their social mobility efforts too, with around 82 per cent of all school placements being handed to students from deprived backgrounds, up from 56 per cent the previous year.

But universities bucked the trend with their share of disadvantaged students on Turing trips rising just 2 per cent to 52 per cent of all 18,826 participants.

No funding has been announced to continue the Turing Scheme next year. In May, skills minister Jacqui Smith said the government had begun negotiating to “work towards” rejoining Erasmus+.

The DfE was approached for comment.

UCU launches England-wide college strike ballot

Staff at 68 colleges will ballot on whether to strike over demands for a “serious” pay offer, action on workloads and national pay bargaining.

The ballot, which will run from October 13 to November 17, follows the Association of College’s non-binding recommended pay award of 4 per cent.

The University and College Union (UCU) calls this recommendation “disappointing” and alongside other education unions, has launched its “A New Deal for FE” campaign which demands a 10 per cent or £3,000 pay rise, whichever is higher.

Unions are also calling for pay parity with schoolteachers within three years, a minimum starting salary of £30,000, and a return to national bargaining.

But Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes said the 4 per cent recommendation is “strong” and warned that colleges cannot meet the 10 per cent pay claim under current “funding constraints”.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “It is unacceptable that following years of pay degradation, college staff are expected to stomach further real-terms pay cuts, while at the same time dealing with ever-higher workloads.

“The prime minister said this week that Labour wants to put further education on an equal footing with higher education, but this will be impossible unless the government tackles the issues causing half of college teachers to leave the sector within three years. 

“Our demands are reasonable. If they are not met, the sector will face serious disruption in the coming months’”.

Last week, the UCU said it wrote to 76 college principals to outline its demands ahead of confirming a formal ballot.

This total has decreased as active negotiations on pay and conditions are ongoing between UCU branches and college leaders, FE Week understands.

Hughes told FE Week: “The unions know that colleges cannot meet that 10 per cent pay claim given the funding constraints they are under.

“In our national negotiations, we clearly set out the financial position of colleges, alongside the ambition of every college leader to do the best they can on pay. 

“Our 4 per cent recommendation is a strong one and I would hope that college staff would see the enormous strides colleges are taking to achieve that, even though we all know it is not enough to ensure that college pay is fair. The reality is that we need the government to invest more in colleges.

“We will continue to work hard to ensure that the strong backing from the prime minister this week in Liverpool leads to a fully-funded, long-term solution to address pay and workforce challenges across the sector.”

News of the ballot comes days after prime minister Sir Keir Starmer told the Labour conference he will make it a “defining mission of this Labour government” to no longer ignore further education.

This includes a promise to pump “nearly £800 million” extra funding into 16 to 19 education next year.

The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.

DfE removes funding to develop HTQ courses

Subsidies to develop a set of flagship technical qualifications have been quietly ditched after ministers shifted resources as part of the spending review, FE Week has learned.

Higher technical qualifications (HTQs) – a suite of government-approved level 4 and 5 certificates launched in 2022 – offer learners one and two-year technical courses as a “true alternative” to the university degree route.

More than 280 qualifications, most of which already existed, carry the HTQ name, which signifies high quality, alignment with employer needs, and gives learners access to university student finance.

But ahead of the spending review, the Department for Education closed a grant programme to help colleges, universities and awarding bodies grow HTQ delivery.

The grants could be used for building refurbishments, equipment such as robots and virtual reality headsets, employer engagement schemes, staff upskilling and curriculum development.

News of the decision comes in the same week prime minister Sir Keir Starmer announced a new target for raising participation in higher technical courses.

Ambitions changed

The most recent data shows around 4,300 learners signed up to study HTQs in 2023-24, in subjects including applied computing, early years and animal welfare.

The DfE estimates about 850 signed up the previous year when HTQs were launched.

The qualifications are part of a wider set of reforms to English technical education prompted by the 2016 Sainsbury review, which recommended developing T Levels and apprenticeships which both align with employer-led occupational standards.

HTQs were designed to address long-running concerns about a lack of level 4 and 5 educational options and attainment.

The government has positioned them as a “practical and advanced next step” for T Level students and sees them as part of its offer of modular shorter courses available through the upcoming lifelong learning entitlement.

According to the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA), which scrutinises government projects, the government had concluded ministers’ ambitions were “no longer in place” and £23 million earmarked for this financial year was redeployed to “support wider and ongoing work to drive up quality in provision”.

The whole-life cost of the grant programme, which was planned to last until 2027, was estimated at £176 million.

A further £300 million was spent on 21 institutes of technology (IoT) centres that specialise in delivering HTQs through regional collaborations of employers, colleges and universities.

Losing interest

While Skills England continues to add to its list of approved HTQs, the early withdrawal of funding to develop the courses was seen by some as evidence that government interest had waned.

Former Dudley College of Technology chief executive Lowell Williams, a director of Black Country and the Marches IoT until this summer, said the government took a “disappointing and disjointed” approach to HTQs.

He praised the concept of offering young people a study route to higher education and work but believed the qualifications failed to “break the mould”.

By Williams’ final year, he had concluded the government had “given up” on HTQs and the IoTs they are often taught in, choosing instead to focus on new technical excellence colleges which are “at best overlapping and at worse competing”.

A review of the HTQ approval process funded by Lord David Sainsbury’s Gatsby Charitable Foundation voiced concerns that the qualifications lacked brand awareness from learners and employers, and the Skills England approvals process was “complex” and sometimes too slow to keep pace with industry.

One organisation said: “We’re trying to move quickly to meet the demands of industry and it becomes cumbersome. It can take 18 months [and then] another year after approval before you can run it. So three years from the idea to getting students on it.”

Graham Hasting-Evans, chief executive of awarding body NOCN, said HTQs were not a “phenomenal success” due to limited employer demand.

FE Week understands the government still views higher technical education as a priority but the development and delivery of HTQs should now be “business as usual”.

The DfE was contacted for comment.

CCC teachers begin strikes over sixth-form pay freeze

Strikes have started at a London college group over “intolerable” plans to freeze sixth-form teacher salaries until they equalise with the rest of the group’s lecturers.

About 60 teachers at Capital City College (CCC) sixth-form campus in Angel – formerly known as City and Islington College – walked out on Tuesday, the first of six days of strike action planned to run until Friday, November 17.

The dispute centres around plans to freeze sixth-form teachers’ pay for two to three years until a “discrepancy” between their salaries and the rest of the group’s general FE teaching staff is removed.

While CCC is a general FE college, many of its Angel sixth-form teachers are on more generous legacy sixth-form conditions.

The number of strike days will escalate in the next two weeks.

Next week, teachers will walk out on Friday, then again on Saturday to coincide with a college open day.

Strikes will continue from Wednesday to Friday the following week. About 60 of the staff body of 81 are understood to be taking part in action.

National Education Union (NEU) representatives said staff shared a “widespread concern” about the “sustained attack” on their pay and conditions, arguing that top-of-scale teachers currently received £1,100 less per year than the national sixth-form rate.

Nick Lawson, an NEU representative and teacher at the campus, said the plans to freeze pay were “intolerable” to members, with more than 98 per cent voting in favour of strikes on a turnout of more than 80 per cent.

Teachers on sixth-form contracts, subject to national bargaining, can expect to earn between £32,178 and £49,725 this year.

A CCC spokesperson told FE Week that its management respected the right of teachers and the NEU to strike over the “historic pay issue”.

They added: “Staff pay remains a priority, but any increase must be equitable for all our staff and financially sustainable so we can continue investing in the resources and services we provide for our students.”

Starmer swerves a deadline for headline ‘two-thirds’ target

Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of shirking accountability after Downing Street admitted his “bold new target” for two-thirds of young people to enter higher-level learning has no deadline.

The prime minister this week used his party conference speech to “scrap” Tony Blair’s target of getting 50 per cent of young adults into higher education, declaring this goal was “not right for our time”.

Starmer announced a new aim that includes apprenticeships after stating further education would be a “defining mission of this Labour government”.

Downing Street later confirmed the PM’s aim was for two-thirds of young people to be “participating in higher-level learning – academic, technical or apprenticeships – by age 25, up from 50 per cent today”.

It added a “sub-target” will ensure “at least 10 per cent of young people pursue higher technical education or apprenticeships by age 25 by 2040, a near doubling of today’s figure”.

But FE Week has now been told the 2040 sub-target date does not apply to the main two-thirds goal.

It was reported that Blair’s target, announced in 1999, had a deadline of 2010, and it was reportedly achieved in 2019.

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said not setting a deadline for Starmer’s target meant it was “not a target”.

“If there’s no date for people to work towards, then it’s just a vague aspiration,” he said. “That seems rather unwise, given that one common criticism of this government is that it has a tendency to make commitments but not see them through.

“For the prime minister to make a speech with a big new commitment in it and for that to fall apart the moment he gets back to London reminds me of an episode of Yes, Prime Minister.”

How far are we from the ‘target’?

Government data for participation in HE by age 25 is only available up to 2022-23, which relates to people who were 15 years old in 2012-13.

It shows 49 per cent of the 573,000-strong 2012-13 cohort entered some form of higher education, which covers all level 4+ qualifications including academic degrees and work-based learning such as apprenticeships.

This was an increase of 10.2 percentage points on the 2001-02 cohort.

Around 5 per cent of the 2012-13 cohort of 15-year-olds took a higher technical qualification or apprenticeship.

If Starmer’s sub target – 10 per cent of young adults pursuing higher technical education or apprenticeships – is met, this suggests the government is aiming to increase current academic higher education participation by around 13 percentage points to 57 per cent.

Tom Richmond, an education policy analyst and former adviser to DfE ministers, said Starmer’s target seemed “ambitious” but it was “frustrating” that it focused on participation instead of completions.

He said: “Given that there has only been a 10-percentage point increase in level 4+ participation over the past decade – almost all of which was driven by more students starting undergraduate degrees – an additional 17 percentage point increase from this point forward looks hugely ambitious. 

“That the target only focuses on participation, not completions, is also frustrating as the apprenticeship dropout rate remains stubbornly high.”

Hillman added he would “caution against” having 2040 as any sort of target date for Starmer’s technical education and apprenticeships sub-target.

“There will be three general elections – at least – between now and then, so it would be a date guaranteed to mean no accountability. There are good reasons why educational institutions tend to plan on a five-to-seven-year time horizon,” he said.

It will be today’s 10-year-olds, currently in either year 5 or 6 in primary school, who will be aged 25 in 2040 and judged for whether the sub-target was reached.

We’ve been here before

Multiple ministers have distanced their governments from Blair’s 50 per cent target since 2010.

WonkHE pointed out that the coalition government’s business secretary Vince Cable told the House of Commons in 2010: “We must not perpetuate the idea, encouraged by the pursuit of a misguided 50 per cent participation target, that the only valued option for an 18-year-old is a three-year academic course at university. Vocational training, including apprenticeships, can be just as valuable as a degree, if not more so.”

PM David Cameron said in 2012: “By making apprenticeships a gold standard option for ambitious young people, we are sending a message that technical excellence is as highly valued as academic prowess.”

And education secretary Gavin Williamson said in 2020: “When Tony Blair uttered that 50 per cent target for university attendance, he cast aside the other 50 per cent. It was a target for the sake of a target, not with a purpose.

“As education secretary, I will stand for the forgotten 50 per cent. From now on, our mantra must be further education, further education, further education.”

‘A welcome reset’

Ben Rowland, CEO of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said Starmer’s announcement was a “welcome and major reset of what aspiration should mean for young people”.

He added: “It could be transformative, for young people, for their families, for teachers and for employers. But delivering it will require a step change every bit as significant in how the skills system engages employers: we need those employers already involved to ramp up what they do, and many of those employers who are not yet involved to get involved for the first time. Otherwise it is just empty words.”

Mary Curnock Cook, education expert and former CEO of UCAS, said that together with maintenance grants, the lifelong learning entitlement and the “shift” to higher education including apprenticeships rather than just “university”, Starmer’s target signalled a fuller embrace of the recommendations of the Augar Review from 2019.

“If there is a settlement for universities in the forthcoming skills white paper, it will surely come with some level 4 and 5 strings attached,” she added.

“Perhaps we’ll finally see the foundations of a properly integrated tertiary education system where people can access a frictionless journey using multiple providers, levels, and credit, learning in the flow of life and work.”

Revealed: V Levels incoming as axe looms for BTECs

Plans for new “V Level” qualifications to sit alongside A-levels and T Levels are being drawn up, FE Week can reveal.

Multiple sources confirmed ministers are poised to set out plans for a new suite of vocational qualifications in the upcoming white paper on post-16 education and skills.

It follows nearly a decade of heated debates over vocational and technical options for school leavers, which saw the introduction of “gold-standard” T Levels in 2020 and the phased removal of applied general qualifications (AGQs), like BTECs, to direct students towards T Levels.

Ministers from the previous Conservative government and current Labour government have been lobbied heavily by colleges to maintain a third route for students that combines practical skills with academic learning.

Campaigners from the Protect Student Choice campaign, spearheaded by the Sixth Form Colleges Association, warned scrapping AGQs would create a “qualifications gap” for tens of thousands of students for whom a T Level either wasn’t suitable or available.

Popular AGQs like BTECs in subjects such as health and social care, applied science and IT are due to be scrapped in 2026, with “highly regarded” AGQs in business and engineering set to follow in 2027. 

There were over 277,000 students studying an AGQ last year compared to 41,500 T Level students. Protect Student Choice said removing those AGQ courses “risks reversing the recent progress made in widening access to higher education and could lead to an increase in the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET)”. 

Minister hints

Earlier this year, the government’s independent curriculum and assessment review, chaired by Becky Francis, said it would consider “what level 3 qualifications may need to exist alongside T Levels to ensure a simpler, high-quality offer that serves the needs of all learners”.

The review’s interim report said it was “clear” that T Levels “are not suitable as the only technical/vocational pathway” due to “many factors, including the high bar individual providers may choose to set for entry, the design of the programme, and the relatively low number of young people at age 16 who are confident about their likely career destination”. 

Francis’s final report is due to publish in the coming weeks, and is expected to inform upcoming white papers on schools and post-16 education.

Skills minister Jacqui Smith hinted at an announcement during the Labour Party conference this week.

Asked by FE Week if defunding plans were set in stone for 2026 and 2027, she said: “I’ve been completely clear that I think T Levels have got an important role to play. A-levels have got an important role to play. We have the need then for a third route in the middle.

“We’ll have more to say about that, and I think that will provide the sort of choice for those wanting to protect something they’ve got at the moment.”

Multiple sources told FE Week that V Levels would form the “third route” but details on the size of the qualifications, content, assessment and funding are yet to emerge.

The Department for Education declined requests for comment. 

V-A-T plan 

According to a government source, V Levels will be pitched as “sector-specific” qualifications next to T Levels, which are “occupationally-specific”.

They added: “But what we don’t want to see is a subsidiary route. We want everything to be of the same sort of quality provision, even if the assessment strategy is different, even if the content is different.”

Level 3 reform has been one of the most contested areas of education policy since the 2016 Sainsbury Review called for a streamlined system of A-levels and technical qualifications.

T Levels were introduced by the last government in 2020 and continued to be championed by Labour ministers. Developing and rolling out the qualifications to date has cost around £1.8 billion, but T Levels have been criticised due to high numbers of dropouts and over-optimistic student forecasts.

Another source told FE Week: “Schools, colleges and teachers are desperate for some certainty on post-16 level 3 options. There is some coherence to an A-level, T Level and V Level menu, but we’ll have to see what the V Level offer will be; how it differs from a T Level and how it will be better than the current offer of level 3 alternatives.”

On the V, A and T options, one college leader quipped: “More VAT in FE, just what we didn’t want.”

£100bn digital ID contract is a Blair faced lie, says Multiverse

Viral claims that Euan Blair’s apprenticeship provider will receive a £100 billion contract to create the government’s new digital ID app have been debunked.

Social media users were sent into a frenzy this week over rumours that Multiverse, England’s largest revenue-generating apprenticeship provider, had been selected to develop an app for the government’s proposed digital ID scheme.

The misinformation was shared online, creating conspiracies that Euan Blair, son of former prime minister Tony Blair, had been awarded the contract due to his family connections.

The flurry of online chatter came after Tony Blair’s organisation, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, backed the idea for a digital ID that proves the identity, age and residency for all UK citizens and legal residents.

Commenters began to buzz online about Multiverse’s connection to the proposed scheme, garnering over a million views and tens of thousands of reposts.

“No wonder Tony Blair wants Digital IDs… when his son is the owner of the company that’ll be paid £100 billion to develop and monitor them,” one X user said.

X user post spreading rumours of Multiverse/digital ID scheme

The training provider shot down the rumours.

“Just to reassure, we are remaining a training provider, not an app provider, even for £100 billion…” a Multiverse spokesperson quipped to FE Week.

Multiverse mainly delivers tech-related apprenticeships from levels 3 to 6.

FE Week revealed last week that Multiverse overtook Kaplan as the country’s largest revenue-generating apprenticeship provider for the first time, earning £58.9 million from apprenticeship training between April 2023 and March 2024.

Fact-checking website Full Fact published a report earlier this week debunking the digital ID myths.

The proposed digital ID scheme is being run by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and is due to undergo public consultation later this year.