MPs have called on ministers to reveal how much of a £55 million pot earmarked for testing the new jobs and careers service has already been spent and how it plans to allocate the rest.
In a public accounts committee report into the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on jobcentres published today, MPs warned that it was not “fully clear” how the department is spending the money to merge the National Careers Service with job centres.
The PAC said it was already several months into the financial year and highlighted the urgency of allocating £55 million to develop and test the new jobs and careers service in 2025-26 instead of making “rushed decisions at the last minute”.
DWP announced this time last year that it would overhaul Jobcentre Plus to focus on career advice, one of the Labour party’s pledges ahead of the 2024 general election.
The merger also came in line with the government’s target to raise the employment rate to 80 per cent.
The 2024 autumn budget announced £55 million would be used for the merger. The ‘Get Britain Working’ white paper followed, which said the money would be used to trial a “radically improved digital offer” and creating a more “personalised” service for jobseekers.
It also said the government would introduce coaching academies to upskill jobcentre staff.
The overhaul is part of a phased approach to a new jobs and careers offer. The government told PAC officials that it had spent some money the first phase for 2025-26, comprising the coaching academy and developing the digital services.
“The department envisages a ‘pyramid’ of support where many people will be able to access and self-serve using digital services, what it called a ‘jobcentre in your pocket’,” the report said.
It has also spent funding on “pathfinder projects” in some parts of England. Last month, Wakefield was announced as the first area to trial the “pathfinder” scheme, which comprises working with local employers to provide a “pathway into good jobs”, according to West Yorkshire Combined Authority and Wakefield Local Authority.
However, leaders did not specify how much funding was allocated to the pilot.
Today’s report said: “It has not fully allocated the £55 million in extra funding, and that funding is still available for good proposals coming forward from different parts of the organisation. It also did not indicate how much of the £55 million has so far been committed and how much is left to be allocated.”
It added that the DWP investment committee “closely controls” how it will hand out the funding and will commits money for different proposals in “packets”.
DWP officials told the PAC that the second phase would be rolling out initiatives that have worked, such as a trial placing work coaches in GP surgeries and engaging people outside of jobcentres.
The report said: “The department referenced a success story from Poplar in London, where it has seen positive results of people having conversations with a work coach in a setting that is not the jobcentre and getting different types of support. It said that it has a presence in the GP surgery and community centre, and that it is running practical and skills classes. It stated that results in the Poplar example seems to be making a big difference for people who are long-term unemployed.”
However, the report detailed concerns from MPs on the government’s ability to rectify the shortage of work coaches caused by the DWP securing “inadequate funding” from the Treasury and by recruitment and retention challenges.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the committee, said the government’s “apparently complacent” assurances that the work coach shortage would be mitigated by redeploying 1,000 coaches in 2025/26 “held no water with this committee”.
“The support provided by work coaches in jobcentres is critical to help people find employment and progress in work,” he said.
He added: “DWP has not had the funding for the work coaches who are trying to provide support in the here and now, while being allocated £55m to test out new approaches. At the time of our report it was not entirely clear how this money was being spent.”
The PAC also said although it supports the government’s long-term ambition of an 80 per cent employment rate, it is likely to be “very challenging”.
It therefore recommended the DWP should within six months work with other departments to publish a roadmap for meeting the target.
DWP should also set out the specific contribution of jobcentres to this ambition, including the arrangements for monitoring their performance, MPs added.
“Our report suggests the approach taken by government to achieve this radical shift and help individual claimants access the jobs market is currently in a muddle,” Clifton-Brown said.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We are ending the tick box culture that has existed in Jobcentres by delivering the biggest reforms since the early 2000s, giving staff the flexibility to offer a more personalised service to jobseekers – so they can be helped into good, secure jobs.
“We are also trialling ways to bring Jobcentres into the 21st century, using the latest technologies and AI to provide up-to-date information on jobs, skills and other support and freeing up their work coaches to help them.”
A north east college principal and a deputy have unexpectedly left their posts.
Tyne Coast College principal Mandy Morris and vice principal Diane Turner were allegedly escorted off campus last week in what has been described as an “internal staffing matter”.
An email to staff, seen by FE Week, said: “The principal and vice principal will not be available for the foreseeable future.” [See update at end of article]
The college group has refused to give a reason for their departure or say whether the pair are under investigation.
A spokesperson for Tyne Coast College said: “We can confirm there is no police related issue involved. This is an internal staffing matter. It would not be appropriate to comment further.”
Jon Bryan, northern regional support official for the University and College Union, told FE Week: “UCU representatives learnt the news regarding senior staff at Tyne Coast College on Monday [July 23] afternoon, at the same time as all staff members via an email. We have no further information.”
He said that two hours after the Morris and Turner email, UCU was told about a “number of our members who were faced with redundancy and would have no job to return to next term”.
“We have concentrated our time and efforts on representing our members over the last few days, as this was a shock to some people, coming so late in the academic year,” Bryan added.
A spokesperson for Tyne Coast College said seven posts are up for redundancy “following completion of the curriculum plan and budget setting exercise”.
Tyne Coast College was formed in August 2017 following a merger between South Tyneside College and Tyne Metropolitan College.
The college, led by CEO Lindsey Whiterod, teaches almost 10,000 students, employs over 500 people and sponsors an academy trust. It is rated ‘good’ by Ofsted while financial health is rated ‘requires improvement’, according to latest accounts.
Morris has over 30 years’ experience in education, including at Stockton Riverside College and Redcar and Cleveland College. She joined Tyne Coast College as interim principal in December 2021 before accepting a permanent role in 2022.
Turner joined the college in May 2022. She previously worked at education providers including Redcar and Cleveland College, Education Partnership North East, Middlesbrough College and Learning Curve Group.
[UPDATE: On Monday July 7 the college emailed staff again to announce that Mandy Morris will be leaving Tyne Coast College on July 18, 2025, and that Diane Turner left Tyne Coast College on June 30, 2025. The college has not provided a reason for their departure.]
A Leeds-based training provider that recently celebrated its tenth year in business has abruptly closed, with its owner blaming theft of employer contact data and a backlog of unfunded apprentices passed their end dates for running out of cash.
Around 30 staff at Springfield Training were told on Friday morning that the provider would cease trading with immediate effect. Around 750 learners were on programme at the time of the closure.
CEO and owner Noel Johnson told FE Week his company “ran out of road” after personally propping up payroll “for some time”, despite being “months” away from completing outstanding assessments and being “within sight of being back on track”.
Springfield’s closure comes months after it was the only apprenticeship training provider to have had its 2023-24 qualification achievement rates (QAR) redacted from publication.
Department for Education guidance states this occurs when the data it holds “does not allow us to calculate a reliable estimate and therefore provides an unfair measure of performance”.
Johnson said the redaction was the result of a rapid improvement in the provider’s achievement rates, which was a “pants” 37.5 per cent in 2022-23 and would have been 60.1 per cent in 2023-24. This prompted Springfield to commission a controls and processes audit, but that wasn’t the cause of the closure of the business.
“I can say quite honestly that the DfE haven’t closed us and weren’t looking to close us. But they weren’t looking to support us financially either. But, I get that they can’t,” he told FE Week.
Johnson said the financial burden of ongoing costs for apprentices that were passed their planned end dates that ultimately proved unsustainable for Springfield. He described a cascade of backlogs going back to the pandemic which he believes would have been manageable by September.
“We made a conscious decision to reduce recruitment so we could focus on getting those learners through. But I think I was over-ambitious on the number I thought we could get through.
“With each cohort, you’ve got to support them with revision, check-ins, and motivation – and it all comes at a cost.”
Apprenticeship starts
Springfield Training has been listed on the government’s apprenticeship provider and assessment register as “not currently starting new apprentices” since around March this year, but Johnson claimed the company has been able to take learners on, only pausing in May because “we just don’t have space for them”.
The most up-to-date available DfE apprenticeship starts data shows 104 starts at Springfield Training between August 2024 and January 2025 on standards ranging from level 2 engineering operative to level 5 leader in adult care.
Springfield was last inspected in August 2022 and achieved ‘good’ grades throughout.
Johnson described his relationship with DfE as “quite positive, albeit frustrating at times”. He kept in regular contact with Springfield’s contract manager and highlighted scoring well on the apprenticeship accountability framework measures “except for out of funding learners”.
“Three or four years ago, we had to pay some additional learning support money back at the time when most people did. We had all the evidence there and thought it met the funding rules. They disagreed.
“We have paid some back since then, but that’s not what this is about.”
Data theft
Springfield’s income took a surprising hit earlier this year.
In March, Johnson discovered that two former employees had “unlawfully” accessed and shared Springfield’s employer database with staff at their new training provider.
Johnson claims the rival provider then use the data to approach Springfield’s clients, causing reputational damage and an immediate £400,000 drop in revenue.
Springfield started receiving phone calls from its employer clients who said they were being told by this other provider “we know you work with Springfield Training – don’t work with them, come to us’”.
Johnson’s team was quickly able to identify the leakers. One of them had forwarded the database to their own personal email address and access logs showed it had been widely shared.
“They admitted to unlawful access,” Johnson said. “There were 15,000 individual accesses to our systems. It wasn’t just the individuals – it was the company they went to. The managing director, the business development director – they all had their fingers in it.”
The incident was reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office and Johnson has initiated proceedings for damages after the police advised it was a civil matter.
Team Springfield
While Johnson was in regular contact with the DfE and had spoken to officials just one day before the closure, no financial support was forthcoming. “They just said, ‘if you were a college, we would – but we can’t,’” he said.
Despite being on the cusp of recovery, Johnson decided against going to the banks for help.
“Although I could see an end to it, I’d already committed our savings,” he said. “If I was going to commit to taking out a loan as well, my exposure was increasing… We’ve never taken debt. We live within our means. We live quite modestly. And I didn’t want to expose my partner to the risk.”
Johnson is uncertain over whether he will re-enter the education or training sector in the future and will now focus on his other businesses, one of which is a Yorkshire-based spirits company he says he can now work to make “viable”.
In his email to staff on Friday, Johnson said he “was fighting until the last possible opportunity to try and find a solution”.
He told FE Week: “I can’t speak highly enough of the Springfield teachers and support staff. They busted a gut, they worked like trojans to get this stuff done. It’s sad. It’s heartbreaking.”
Springfield Training was founded in 2015 and celebrated 10 years of delivery last week before closure was announced.
Sir James Cleverly, who was education secretary for two months during the downfall of Boris Johnson’s premiership, has joined Parliament’s education select committee.
Cleverly will replace Patrick Spencer, the now independent MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, who was suspended by the Conservative Party following sexual assault allegations. Spencer has pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual assault and faces a crown court trial next month.
A motion in the House of Commons this afternoon will officially discharge Spencer and appoint Cleverly to the education committee.
The Conservatives hold two positions on the committee. The other is held by Caroline Johnson.
Cleverly was appointed education secretary by Boris Johnson in July 2022. His appointment to DfE came in the wake of an exodus of ministers from Boris Johnson’s government in the summer of 2022, becoming education secretary after Michelle Donelan served just 35 hours in the role.
After two months, he was promoted to foreign secretary when Liz Truss became prime minister. And after last year’s general election, he stood unsuccessfully for leader of the Conservative Party. He’s kept a low profile as a backbench MP since Kemi Badenoch won the race.
This is not the first time the education committee has had members who were former DfE ministers. In the last parliament, Robert Halfon was appointed to chair the committee after a stint as skills and apprenticeships minister.
Committee Conservatives
Parliament’s education select committee has four live inquiries: children’s social care, further education and skills, solving the SEND crisis and higher education funding.
Schools minister Catherine McKinnell will give evidence to the committee tomorrow morning to answer questions on the government’s SEND reform plans. She will appear alongside DfE’s SEND director Alison Ismail.
Following Spencer’s suspension, the Conservatives have only had one representative on the committee, Caroline Johnson. In an evidence session for the committee’s further education inquiry last week, Johnson and the two Liberal Democrat members did not attend, leaving just Labour members scrutinising a Labour minister.
If the UK hits its net-zero target by 2050, it could be in part thanks to a little-known college-led network, the Green Skills Advisory Panel, set up to help solve the green skills shortage.
What began three years ago as a project led by Exeter College to bring together representatives from construction firms, colleges, training providers and government agencies for the south west, has morphed into a network extending as far as east Africa.
GSAP’s “changemakers” join forces at conferences and online in an attempt to decipher ever-changing net-zero policies and make the most of funding pots to get much-needed retrofitters, heat pump and solar panel installers trained up.
Eighteen UK regions now have their own GSAPs planned, with more in Malawi and Nepal. Discussions are taking place about launching one in Morocco.
Risky net ventures
This is mainly thanks to the work of GSAP’s chair, Exeter College executive director of partnerships and apprenticeships Mike Blakeley. He has lofty ambitions for GSAP to become “the leading voice of green skills in the country”, and adds: “I’d be massively proud because this country desperately needs it.”
Blakeley grew up in Torbay, where an imposing sea wall acts as a constant reminder of the grim consequences of climate change.
His passion for net zero is not puritanical, however. He still eats meat and travels regularly by plane. He once held a job with a different ‘net’ – crabbing on a deep sea fishing boat – and knows “what it’s like to be out there in a force eight gale with 20 foot waves crashing over”.
This speaks volumes about Blakeley’s appetite for risk, which is perhaps partly why he is so attracted to the notoriously high-stakes green skills agenda.
Part of the problem with ramping up green skills provision is FE is risk averse, he says.
While colleges in Sheffield, West London and South Wales have also boldly seized the mantle, some others “just don’t see it as their job to do this stuff”.
Electric dreams
But Exeter has “done the hard yards”. Blakeley says: “We know what it takes to set up a really good air-source heat pump or solar training centre, so people can learn from us.”
Exeter College’s proposed merger with Petroc College in north Devon is “exciting” for Blakeley as it would unlock opportunities to train workers for offshore wind farms being developed off the north Devon coast, part of a wider ‘Celtic flow’ scheme aimed at powering up millions of homes.
He has already written to one of the world’s largest offshore wind developers, asking for “insight” into its skills development plan. Blakeley believes the boats used to service the wind farms will be hydrogen-powered, so his team have also now begun work with partners to better understand that technology too.
“I feel privileged that I can look into some of these brilliant things,” he says.
Blakeley and I meet at the Voco Zeal hotel at Exeter’s Science Park, which recently opened becoming the first net-zero hotel in western Europe, and is almost entirely clad with vertical solar panels. Exeter College will soon be applying the technology at its own solar training centre.
Blakeley believes cladding all industrial buildings with solar roof and side panels would put the UK “ahead of the game” in hitting net zero and would remove the need for solar farms.
Not properly skilling up tradespeople for retrofitting can have dire consequences. Homes across the country have been rendered unsellable after being improperly insulated with spray foam. Blakeley puts such “bad news stories” down to the “underdevelopment of green skills,” which has led to those tasks being undertaken by “jobbing builders who don’t actually know what they’re doing, so it ends up as a disaster”.
Blakeley was inspired to take his GSAP movement national so regions could learn from other people’s mistakes in setting up green skills initiatives, as “the effort being put in to solve individual problems was immense”.
“With no national framework or network that sets out what we’ve actually got to do, you just get these initiatives whizzing like cheap fireworks – someone’s lit a match, and we’ve gone ‘bang’,” he says.
Beyond token gestures
Many building projects in the south west now have “some net-zero elements” such as a few solar panels, as “the token gestures are easy”. “We’re finding it harder to gain traction with the harder things,” Blakeley explains.
Labour shortages meant a retrofitting project in Exeter, intended to take six months, hadn’t been completed two years later, and no work can currently take place on a site in Plymouth designated for 50 affordable homes.
“There’s a tiny pool of labour that jumps between whoever wins the contract, but it’s never enough to deliver whole project areas. It’s an impossible challenge unless everyone works together.”
Exeter College has taken the initiative by launching a new construction innovation centre in an old industrial unit on the edge of town. It is also an overspill for its roofing skills provision, which has expanded by 300 learners since last year.
Part of the problem is that although skills plans are sometimes laid out in planning applications, because local authorities do not hold construction firms to account for them, many never happen.
Instead, Blakeley would like to see councils, contractors and training providers or colleges drawing up what he calls “skills plans plus” for large construction projects and green initiatives, to “create the formula for jobs”.
GSAP in action
Today I am attending one of the three networking conferences that his South West GSAP holds each year.
“This isn’t a talking shop – it’s about action,” GSAP’s chair, local consultant AJ Eaton, tells an audience of 80 people, mainly from the building trade, colleges and training providers.
“By bringing our FE providers on that journey with us we can make a massive difference,” he says.
The head of the south west’s net-zero hub, David Lewis, provides the lowdown on the latest government net-zero policy announcements.
Tidal energy is back in vogue.
Exeter College’s new retrofitting expert Paloma Hermoso laments how EPC (energy performance certificate) requirements are “no longer fit for purpose”, and there is an air of disgruntlement over how retrofit projects are subject to 20 per cent VAT but demolition is VAT free.
More positively, she talks through the new level 5 course in retrofitting the college is about to launch nationally.
It is one of 13 qualifications Exeter College has developed, including its own suite of insulation short courses in partnership with NOCN.
Courses include the UK’s first PAS accredited insulation courses (for retrofitting dwellings), allowing existing installers to upskill through a three-day practical course.
Eaton
Stop-start funding
Blakeley is hoping the college will be successful in its bid for £25,000 under the warmer homes scheme to offer a retrofitting course at a 40 per cent discounted rate. But that is still up in the air and the course starts in September.
It will be the sixth warmer homes-type scheme to have been rolled out nationally in the last five years, with its predecessors mired in red tape and supply chain bottlenecks.
Significant portions of pledged funding for retrofitting remain unallocated and are returned to the Treasury. Some £2.2 billion of the £6.6 billion pledged for building energy efficiency and heat decarbonization by 2025 remains unallocated, an E3G report found, including £1.5 billion specifically for the home upgrade grant.
This time around, an agency is understood to be planning to ensure the warmer homes scheme delivers its objectives, but that has yet to be formally announced.
“With no stabilised funding streams, it’s really difficult to plan and you can see the consumer confusion with the stop-start nature of warmer homes grants,” says Blakeley.
The quiet scrapping of the government’s public sector decarbonisation scheme which Exeter is a current recipient of, “seems counterintuitive” to Blakeley. “These confused, choppy waters that we’re in… means certain policies seem to be working against themselves”.
The college had been able to nurture “good business relationships” with the local tradespeople tasked with retrofitting its buildings under the scheme. “If they’re doing work for us, we generally strong-arm them into doing something else for us training wise,” he admits.
Devon and Torbay are in the early stages of forming a county authority without a mayor, but the lion’s share of net-zero funding is currently being channelled into mayoral combined authorities which, with a mayor, have a “very simple decision-making matrix”. “The drift to the red wall is massive, and everyone else gets left behind.”
Full tilt forward
It is hard to imagine Blakeley ever being left behind though. “Everything is absolutely full tilt forward” for him, and he admits that his “biggest mistake” with GSAP is “not allowing enough time to do everything”.
His own boundless energy also comes in handy as a dad of 17-year-old triplets. On a college staff dinner last week, he lost no time in pulling aside the restaurant manager to discuss apprenticeship opportunities, much to the amusement of his principal John Laramy.
Laramy and Blakeley
Scaling up nationally
When Blakeley talks to those in the construction trade about their skills shortages, he does so with the advantage of having had first-hand experience of their sector. He spent four years in ground work having left grammar school feeling disillusioned with academic learning.
“Had I been stood here 38 years ago, you would have found me knee deep in a trench, putting 50 meters of concrete in… my DNA is construction.”
He also worked for a pupil referral unit, an education charity, a land-based college and a training provider, and was chair of Devon & Cornwall Training Provider Network. His insight into different sectors came in handy when he set up GSAP in January 2022, initially as a “back of a fag packet-type activity”.
In November 2024, GSAP launched a national board with a focus on targeting key ministers and officials across Whitehall.
He admits other national sector bodies “probably” eye GSAP as competition with their offers. But the Department for Education has been “receptive”, and GSAP’s honorary chair, former skills minister Robert Halfon, “pushes us hard and says one voice has far greater impact”.
He feels fortunate he has “freedoms and flexibilities” to make things happen in the south west, including a sponsor (NOCN) to pay for its event catering.
GSAP does not charge for these events or for its training webinars, but the work “definitely pays for itself” by giving Blakeley’s team close access to “the biggest stakeholders in this game” to develop business with.
He sees the new industrial strategy and the clean energy workforce strategy as the “easy bit”, having seen many similar strategies go “by the by” over the years.
“It’s the implementation that’s the challenge. If this green skills agenda is as complicated and challenging as we know it is, working together will keep us inspired and make sure that we deliver an absolutely great product.”
Ofsted will not assess FE providers’ use of AI “as a stand-alone part” of inspections – but the tech’s impact on outcomes for learners will be looked at.
Guidance published by the watchdog this morning reveals how it will evaluate FE providers’ use of such tools during inspections.
The inspectorate has also released new research into so-called AI “early adopter” school and FE colleges – which revealed that some are developing their own chatbots.
Ofsted chief Sir Martyn Oliver said: “As the use of AI in education increases, we need to better understand how schools and colleges are using this technology to take advantage of its potential, as well as manage the risks it poses for pupils, learners and staff.”
AI not standalone part of Ofsted checks
The new guidance states inspectors will not look at providers’ use of the technology “as a stand-alone part” of their assessments and won’t “directly evaluate” its use.
Part of the reason for this is Ofsted does not “not have the evidence we would need to define good use of AI for the purposes of inspection or regulation”.
But Oliver stressed the watchdog “can consider the impact a provider’s use has on the outcomes and experiences of children and learners”.
Any evaluation “of the use of AI will ask whether the provider has made sensible decisions”.
As part of this, inspectors could ask how leaders ensure any use “supports the best interests of children and learners”.
Assessing AI’s risks
When any AI is used by learners at an FE provider, inspectors will assess if this is being done in their “best interests”.
If learners are deemed to be using it “inappropriately, inspectors may evaluate how the provider has responded and addressed the impact of this”.
The guidance says that while the risks associated with the tech “will not be evaluated separately in our inspections, they will be addressed when they have implications for areas that are already considered”.
This can include data protection, safeguarding and bias and discrimination.
“Any evaluation that Ofsted makes is about the provider’s decision-making, what they have considered, and the impacts on children and learners, not about the tool itself,” the guidance says.
“Inspectors only need to consider AI when it is relevant to something specific in their evaluations.”
‘Early adopter’ research
The guidance was informed by research, also released this morning, into how 21 “early adopter” schools, colleges and MATs are integrating AI into teaching, learning and admin.
Research suggested that FE colleges were “more likely” to permit learners to use AI unsupervised due to their age.
In total, four senior college staff spoke to researchers earlier this year – they had all started their “AI journey” in 2022 and 2023
Most settings had an “AI champion” charged with getting staff to “embrace” the tech. They typically created a “buzz” and “played a vital role in demystifying” it to address “anxieties and build confidence”.
In larger settings champions would bring “together their data management teams, IT systems managers and curriculum leads” as AI “requires skills and knowledge across more than one department”.
One champion, an FE college’s director of digital transformation, said a demonstration session was a “turning point” that convinced staff of ChatGPT’s significance in terms of both teacher workload and learning.
He told Ofsted: ““One of the first things the principal said was, ‘This is an employability skill I need students to have.’”
A critical lesson for staff was effective use of prompts. They added: “If you put junk in, you’ll get junk out.”
AI’s use was usually divided between those wanting to cut workload and those who wanted it to “directly” support learning. But the researchers found this “often shifted with time”.
A few of the leaders were already developing and testing “their own AI chatbot, while others were in the process of doing so”.
Some also highlighted how tools “allowed teachers to personalise and adapt resources, activities and teaching for different groups of pupils”, including young carers and refugees.
A ‘wild west’
However, most were “at the early stages of developing a longer-term strategy” on how to integrate AI into their curriculums as they had not yet considered how to combine it with pedagogy.
One of the reasons for this is there are “not many… tools tailored to individual school or college contexts”. Some bosses also had not thought “strategically about what success with AI looked like or how to evaluate its impact”.
One college deputy principal said it was difficult to envision a wider strategy as they were also learning “day by day”.
A principal said: “It’s the Wild West and all we are at the minute is the sheriff. What comes in and what goes out of the town is what we’re managing to deal with at the minute.”
Safe use
Leaders were said to be “clear about the risks of AI around bias, personal data, misinformation and safety”.
Some had a separate AI policy, while others added it to “relevant existing policies including those for safeguarding, data protection, staff conduct, and teaching and learning”.
But “the pace of change meant that many leaders were updating their AI policies as often as monthly”.
Earlier this month, the government published toolkits and guidance on how colleges should plan to use AI.
Governors for Schools has been handed a two-year £879,000 contract to deliver FE’s governor recruitment service.
The Department for Education contract win marks a return by the charity to the delivery of free FE recruitment services after it lost a similar contract in 2016 under its old name of School Governors’ One-Stop Shop.
The service helps colleges with difficult-to-fill governor vacancies and provides bespoke help for those in intervention.
Peridot Partners, an education recruitment firm, had delivered the scheme since 2020.
Governors for Schools already offers a free governor recruitment service to schools and academy trusts, and a paid “enhanced recruitment service” for all education providers, including colleges.
Its chief executive Hannah Stolton told FE Week it bid for the contract so the charity could deliver a free service for colleges.
“We have historically been able to offer it free to colleges, but we are having to charge now, so that was a key driver,” she said. “And we want to be able to offer it to all colleges, not just those that can afford to pay.
“We’re in the position now where we absolutely need to be sustainable going forward, like many charities so this contract came at the right time for us.”
Stolton said the organisation currently fills around 20 FE governor vacancies a year and has “quite a number” of vacancies on its books from colleges seeking the charity’s paid service.
The DfE service is only available to FE corporations, sixth-form college corporations and designated institutions that are referred to the scheme by DfE officials.
Colleges in intervention, receiving FE commissioner help, or that are located in remote areas will get a fast-track referral to the service.
Nominations for the referral can be made by the FE commissioner team, the DfE’s place-based teams, national leaders of further education or national leaders of governance.
Stolton said: “When we spoke to the DfE on Tuesday, they said, ‘some of these colleges are ones that we have put through the process before,’ so obviously, they are ones that have struggled historically.”
Governor recruitment targets
The contract, signed this week, will run for two years with the possibility of a one-year extension.
Stolton said the DfE has imposed a target of placing 20 per cent of roles with ethnic minority applicants and 50 per cent with women. Last year, Governors for Schools filled vacancies with 40 per cent of people from ethnic minorities.
“The service is designed to strengthen governance in colleges by supporting the recruitment of a diverse range of appropriately skilled and knowledgeable governors to key roles on governing boards,” the 2025 tender notice said.
The previous contract delivered by Peridot Partners was worth £458,000 and demanded the delivery of a minimum of 137 “well-matched, diverse and lasting” governor appointments across three financial years.
A pre-procurement notice, published in December, revealed the DfE was aiming “subject to budget availability” for the renewed service to recruit 210 governors over the contract term.
The official tender specified that the target was a minimum of 140 “appropriately skilled and diverse” governors across two years, with a minimum of 60 appointments in the first year.
Should the contract be extended for one year, Governors for Schools will have to place a minimum of 210 governors spread across the three years.
Stolton said she was “confident” they would meet the minimum targets as it placed 2,000 governors across the education sector last year and it has a team with FE college recruitment experience.This service replaced an earlier version called the inspiring FE governance matching service, launched by the Education and Training Foundation in 2017. The DfE had funded the scheme until 2021-22.
The introduction of foundation apprenticeships could place this year’s record apprenticeships budget under strain, a senior official has suggested.
Speaking on day two of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) annual conference in London this week, the Department for Education’s apprenticeships director warned of potential “savings” and “trade offs” if the new scheme, launching this August, became too popular.
Kate Ridley-Pepper highlighted that the DfE’s apprenticeships budget was “99 per cent fully spent” in recent years.
She told delegates: “As we look to the future, it is worth reflecting on the fiscal context. In 2023-24, 99 per cent of our £2.5 billion apprenticeship budget was spent, and that picture is likely to be very similar for 2024-25.
“And while thankfully not all large employers utilise all of their levy funds, which enables us to give 30 per cent of our budget and invest that in SMEs, the position is not sustainable in the long run”.
Ridley-Pepper cited rising demand for higher-level apprenticeships, which attract higher levels of funding than lower-level programmes, as the reason for “tough decisions” about how to fund the government’s new growth and skills offers, including new short courses in specific subjects from April.
Foundation apprenticeships, new eight-month programmes designed for young people, come online this August. Skills minister Jacqui Smith told MPs this week she hopes for 30,000 young foundation apprentices.
Other pressures on the budget could come from reduced duration apprenticeships and the removal of English and maths rules earlier this year, which the government believes could generate 10,000 new starts.
Then there is the widely anticipated rush to start level 7 apprenticeships before January when funding is removed for new entrants aged 22 and over.
Asked by AELP chief executive Ben Rowland about how one could convince the Treasury that spending on “loads of” youth foundation apprenticeships could help reduce rising NEET levels, Ridley-Pepper said she needed “compelling cost-benefit arguments”.
She added: “As I say, we’ve spent 99 per cent of our budget in the last couple of years. So there is a slight, not risk exactly, but if [foundation apprenticeships] were popular, that might cause pressures that mean we have to look elsewhere to make other savings and trade offs, unless we can provide that case for additional funding.
“But there isn’t a lot of additional funding in the system”.
The DfE’s apprenticeship budget has risen to £3.075 billion this year.
Apprentices should expect simpler and “streamlined” assessments under Ofqual’s proposed reforms, the chief regulator has said.
Sir Ian Bauckham gave a keynote address at AELP’s annual conference on Monday, days after the assessment watchdog published consultation proposals to scrap end point assessment requirements and allow providers to do some assessments in-house.
He claimed his reforms were “about adjusting and improving the system, making it more streamlined” and “increasing simplicity”.
End point assessments have brought “lots of benefits in terms of reliability, trustworthiness, rigor and esteem,” Bauckham said.
“But it’s also brought some problems, and those problems include complexity, levels of duplication, repetition and in some cases, too much burden and delays on getting assessments.
“All of that has accumulated to cause some levels of frustration among both apprentices and training providers.”
The regulator was keen to stress that reforms didn’t necessarily mean wholesale upheaval for apprentices, particularly on programmes where assessment is already working well.
Charlotte Bosworth, group chief executive of Lifetime Training and until recently managing director of assessment organisation Innovate Awarding, told the conference: “If the learner experience is where it needs to be, if the quality is right, if you believe the time, cost and effort that is being spent and if the assessment is absolutely right, don’t change it”.
Bauckham replied: “What these reforms are intended to do is put in a correction that brings things back to the middle and address some of those concerns, but absolutely not throwing the baby out with the bath water”.
One of those new principles was allowing training providers to do some of the assessment of their apprentices themselves. Currently, all assessments must be done by awarding organisations (AOs) and must take place at the end of the apprenticeship programme. New assessments will be able to take place during, rather than at the end, of an apprenticeship.
The current system of end point assessments has come under criticism in recent years. Training providers have complained about high costs and bureaucracy. And crippling assessor shortages in some sectors have left apprentices waiting months longer than planned to complete their apprenticeship, leading to dropouts and low achievement rate scores for training providers.
