Five ways Michelle Donelan can grow degree apprenticeships without a cheque book

Remove a ton of restrictions and stop focusing on 18-19-year-olds, writes Mandy Crawford-Lee

In her recent evidence to the education select committee, Michelle Donelan was clear that the government wants more degree apprenticeships.  

The minister for higher and further education even went so far as to say she was looking at financial incentives to encourage universities to offer them.  

As the university representative organisation championing degree apprenticeships, UVAC is clear that financial incentives could have a useful role. But there are five actions the minister could easily take, without getting the cheque book out.

1. Open the ESFA Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers (RoATP) to all higher education institutions

Staggeringly, the ESFA has in recent years restricted the ability of universities to apply to the RoATP. 

It was only reopened to new applicants, including universities, in August. Even now universities not on the RoATP may only apply if they fulfil a gap in provision or have been named as a preferred provider in an employer business case.  

The ESFA should open up applications to the RoATP for all higher education institutes and make clear that any successful university applicant can deliver all approved degree apprenticeships.  

The reapplication process to RoATP for universities should also be simplified. 

2. Remove restrictions on who is eligible for degree apprenticeship programme

Unfortunately, in recent years there has been a very public debate on introducing financial measures to restrict the growth of degree apprenticeship. 

FE representative organisations and various think tanks have proposed the introduction of age restrictions, reducing the proportion of levy funds that can be used to fund degree apprenticeships.

They have also proposed reducing opportunities for employers to use degree apprenticeships for existing staff, or individuals who already have a degree.  

The latter proposal would mean a 25-year-old with an English degree was prevented from using a degree apprenticeship to train as a police officer or registered nurse. 

To avoid reducing confidence in the degree apprenticeship offer further, ministers must make a long-term financial commitment to their future.

3. Shift the focus away from just 18-19-year-olds 

I am concerned at the apparent focus on 18-19-year-olds’ awareness of degree apprenticeships. In many cases, these apprenticeships are most appropriate for older learners.  

In many cases these apprenticeships are most appropriate for older learners

The police constable degree apprenticeship is a case in point. It supports the professionalisation of police recruitment and training and has been successfully used to recruit more women and individuals with a minority ethnic background. 

Ministers should certainly challenge universities, but they should also celebrate the success of their existing degree apprenticeship policy, including targeting older learners.

4. Clarify processes

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education’s current review of degree apprenticeship policy provides an excellent framework.

There are, however, some gaps in the review. There is little information on how the Office for Students will deliver its external quality assurance role in degree apprenticeship end-point assessment, or what universities should expect.  

At the same time, the ESFA has still not outlined how the use of credit in the degree to deliver the end-point assessment complies with their funding rules.  

Such uncertainty acts as a brake on investment by universities and therefore the growth of degree apprenticeships.  

Ministers should confirm that the IfATE leads the apprenticeship agenda and instruct OfS and ESFA to clarify their processes.

5. Develop a degree apprenticeship growth plan 

IfATE, working with trailblazers and the HE sector through UVAC, should develop a degree apprenticeship growth plan. Such a growth plan, focused on skills needs and the net zero and levelling-up agendas, would identify where there was the most need and potential to deliver degree apprenticeships. 

Degree apprenticeships require upfront investment in developing programmes and end-point assessment systems; recruiting and training new staff; and promoting programmes to employers and learners.

UVAC looks forward to supporting the minister to realise her ambitions to substantially grow degree apprenticeship participation. We hope she finds the above suggestions helpful.

AEB business case outcomes delayed

Colleges will have longer to wait to find out whether their business cases against a controversial adult education budget clawback have been successful.

They had expected to receive the outcomes of the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s review of these cases this coming Monday.

Yet the ESFA has today confirmed there will be a “short delay” in communicating outcomes.

“We recognise the importance of notifying decisions to those providers who submitted business cases as soon as possible,” a spokesperson said.

“We have undertaken a comprehensive review of each case and want to ensure that our decisions are correct, as a result there is a short delay whilst we finalise those outcomes.”

The ESFA said it could not provide a new deadline for the outcomes.

Around 50 colleges submitted business cases, the Association of Colleges has said.

Providers resisted 90 per cent adult education funding clawback

The ESFA attracted a large amount of sector criticism when it announced in March providers would have to use at least 90 per cent of their 2020/21 AEB grant funded allocation or hand back cash up to that threshold.

At that time, officials ruled out allowing colleges to submit business cases.

Providers protested that having to hand back funding would affect cashflow, capital spending and future planning.

The Association of Colleges predicted the threshold put “tens of millions of pounds” in college funding at risk.

Leicester College, which was affected by a drawn-out lockdown in its home city, highlighted how it had been “impacted by the pandemic far more severely than 2019/20,” when the AEB reconciliation threshold was set at 68 per cent.

Following the pressure from the sector, the agency announced in September it would allow colleges which had not spent 90 per cent of their allocation to submit business cases explaining why they should be able to keep the funding. 

A deadline of October 7 was set for submitting business cases.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 369

Brad Rushton, Chief executive, SCL Education Group

Start date: October 2021

Previous job: Group managing director, SCL Education Group

Interesting fact: His father was a motocross racer and named his son after American former professional motocross racer Brad Lackey, who won the motocross world championship the year Brad was born.

Tim Balcon, Chief executive, CITB

Start date: September 2021

Previous job: Chief executive, IEMA

Interesting fact: He started his career as a British Gas apprentice.

Stephen Davis, Chief executive and group principal, United Colleges Group

Start date: November 2021

Previous job: Group principal, United Colleges Group

Interesting fact: He once looked after the Foo Fighters for a day when they were playing at the Glasgow Barrowlands. They wanted to play golf, even though they never had – he spent a long Saturday afternoon apologising to the other golfers.

The FE Week Podcast: Industry and FE, tertiary sector reform and Lifelong Learning Week

This week Shane is joined by Stephen Evans, chief executive at the Learning and Work Institute, and Lynette Leith, vice principal at Hull College – to discuss the hot topics.

What is the relationship between industry and FE in the context of skills shortages relating to Covid and Brexit?

Should England follow Wales in combining further and higher education funding?

And the guests discuss their reflections on the state of lifelong learning.

Listen to episode 6 below, and hit subscribe to follow the podcast!

Labour shortages: logistics, retail and construction on what needs to happen next

FE Week has spoken to industries hard hit by Brexit and Covid to find out what they want from the FE and skills system.

Labour shortages across a number of sectors in roles such as heavy goods vehicle drivers led to fuel shortages and empty supermarket shelves in September.

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation has reported that 95 per cent of its recruitment company members say labour shortages are the single biggest issue across all sectors.

Speaking to the Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee last month, the confederation’s chief executive, Neil Carberry, said logistics, for example, had shortages long before the EU referendum, after which the inflow of new workers was “cut off”.

Developed economies such as the UK, US and western Europe are also “trying to return to normal”, following the pandemic, Carberry added.

Following the disruption, FE Week has heard from the logistics, retail and construction sectors on what they want from the FE and skills system to help build their workforce and give their sector the necessary skills.

Logistics

Speaking alongside Carberry at the select committee was Duncan Buchanan, the Road Haulage Association’s director of policy for England and Wales. The association represents over 7,000 logistics companies.

He pressed upon MPs on the committee the importance of “looking at how we train people at level 2, because an awful lot of our training effort goes into people at level 3 and degree level.

“We need people trained well at level 2 to do a proper job, be those plumbers, lorry drivers or in refuse collection.”

The association’s skills policy manager, Sally Gilson, elaborated on this to FE Week, saying: “Our big frustration has been the lack of funding at that level 2.”

The National Skills Fund consultation, which ran from July to September 2021, was “centred around level 3 and up, which is so short sighted”, Gilson said.

Over 60 per cent of logistics jobs are at level 2, she said, yet apprenticeship figures for 2020/21 released last month show starts at level 4 and above increased by over a fifth on 2019/20.

On funding, Gilson complained a new level 2 urban driver apprenticeship currently under development and intended to train delivery drivers had been set a maximum funding band of
£4,500.

With driver salaries climbing up to heights of £70,000, providers were having to pay trainers more. As such, the RHA is asking for an extra £1,000 to be added to the standard’s funding.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education said: “We develop funding band recommendations using quotes from the trailblazer group based on the cost of training and assessment. Trailblazers can request a Procedural Review of our funding band recommendation in line with our published guidance.

“We remain absolutely focussed on recommending funding bands that support good quality and represent value for money.”

industries

One of the tentpoles of the NSF is the skills bootcamps, and after the supply chain disruption, the government announced these would be extended to cover training for heavy goods vehicle drivers.

The Department for Education wants the bootcamps to have up to 5,000 drivers ready as early as next March, but Gilson said it would be a “struggle to get people ready that quickly”.

She said there needed to be a long-term plan for training up drivers, which could mean a “long-term skills bootcamp”.

Another big reform planned by the DfE to the skills system are flexi-job apprenticeships, which would involve new agencies employing apprentices and placing them with multiple employers, so the training meets the 12-month minimum duration.

Gilson expects, with “a lot” of drivers coming into the industry to work on short-term jobs for agencies, the “sector will be able to make use of” the scheme, once it rolls out.

Retail

The British Retail Consortium, which represents nearly 200 major retailers, wants to be able to use apprenticeship levy funds for pre-employment and pre-apprenticeship programmes, such as traineeships and sector-based work academies, which both involve work placements.

This is “particularly important”, the consortium says, as research by the Education and Employers Taskforce found 85 per cent of 14- to 19-year-olds who had four or more engagements with employers (such as work experience or careers advice) were five times less likely to be not in education, employment or training than those who had no engagements.

The Confederation of British Industry has also called for the levy to be flexed to allow employers to pay for pre-apprenticeship programmes and short, modular courses.

Levy funds should be available to pay for “high-quality shorter courses, including functional skills”, the consortium said, “where a full apprenticeship is not necessary”.

Apprentices currently have to take functional skills qualifications in English and maths if they have not achieved a grade four, equivalent to a C, at GCSE in those subjects. But that is integrated with their training.

Running the functional skills qualifications on their own could “quickly upskill learners” and be helpful for a “fast-paced and dynamic sector” such as retail, the consortium said.

Levy funds should be available to pay for high-quality shorter courses

To “promote productivity gains” the body also wants to cover a portion of apprenticeship costs incurred outside of training, such as paying employees to cover for apprentices who are on training.

Politicians such as Labour’s Toby Perkins and the Conservative chair of the Commons Education Select Committee Robert Halfon have called for levy funds to be used to pay apprentices’ wages.

Yet the British Retail Consortium believes using the levy to pay other employees for the time they spend covering for apprentices on study days would increase “the ability of employers to take on more apprentices”.

Construction

The Construction Industry Training Board, which oversees training in the building sector, says three out of every five of the around 100,000 construction learners in FE do not work in the industry shortly after their training.

This, they say, represents a “vast, untapped potential”, but employers need “better routes” into industry from further education that “provide the right level of work-readiness”, a spokesperson said.

CITB’s policy and government relations manager Ian Woodcroft called getting more FE learners into construction jobs a “big priority”, for which they were working on solutions with government.

This includes a new traineeship programme they are currently piloting, which will mean learners can move on to “accelerated apprenticeships that recognise prior learning in specific construction occupations”.

They are also following the development of Local Skills Improvement Plans, which eight different chambers of commerce are trailblazing until next March and will eventually be rolled out around the UK in the hope that FE provision is brought closer to local employer needs.

Woodcroft also highlighted the apprenticeship levy pledge function, which allows levy-payers to transfer up to a quarter of their levy funds each year to other businesses, to pay for their apprenticeship training and assessment.

“This is already proving to be successful and will allow more construction employers to access apprenticeship levy funds to train their future workforce,” he said.

Smiley face for emoji project, as ETF reports on success stories in functional skills teaching

A project that used emojis in teaching and improved learners’ confidence with English, and another that used horror film trailers to help with handwriting, have been recognised for improving teaching and learning at their providers.

The Education and Training Foundation, which commissions training programmes for sector staff, has collated 53 reports of projects aimed at improving learners’ English, maths and digital skills.

Teaching projects ‘highlight the value of FE becoming research active’

One of these, Emojis in English and ESOL, involved tutors at Kendal College and South Lakes Community Learning annotating text for learners to read with emojis where the language would trigger an emotional response, whether that be angry, bored or pleased.

Learners later annotated their own work with emojis where they use emotive language, with one student saying this approach “really helped me engage more in my writing because I already have a much better understanding of the task”.

The anthology reports another learner became more confident speaking to neighbours and friends and eventually secured employment, thanks to the project.

Emojis in English and ESOL involved ten staff across the two centres, but it is not known how many learners from the GCSE, functional skills, and English as a second or other language (ESOL) classes this approach was tested on.

The anthology, entitled Outstanding Teaching, Learning and Assessment (OTLA) Anthology of Practitioner Action Research Reports 2020-21, is the latest edition in a project that has been run by the ETF since 2015.

The foundation’s national head of mentoring and practitioner research, Dr Catherine Manning, said it was “widely recognised there is little published research about effective practice in FE”, compared to schools.

“Over and over again, this anthology highlights the value of practitioners becoming research active, engaging with existing evidence, and generating further understanding of how to teach and learn effectively in our diverse, challenging and life-changing sector,” Manning continued.

Horror films helped improve learners’ handwriting stamina

Cambridge Regional College is also featured in the anthology for its A Toolbox of Horror project, which involved around 18 level 1 plumbing students taking a GCSE language resit course, and 11 staff.

The aim was to improve the engagement, attendance and writing skills of learners by looking at horror film trailers, talking about the structure and features of a horror movie or script.

The genre was chosen as the majority of learners loved horror and the project also drew on a technique known as “slow writing”, which involves teaching students to write text sentence by sentence.

The project, which also involved a writing competition at Christmas, led to a “vast” improvement in learners’ stamina in handwriting.

Handwriting is an “important challenge for our vocational learner”, staff said, as the GCSE English language exam is one hour and 45 minutes long.

The OTLA project is funded by the Department for Education, and project teams received grant funding to pay for teachers to take time out of working in a classroom to take part in training for the research they carried out.

They received mentoring from a group of post-16 education and research specialists who as teachers, managers, teacher trainers and researchers.

NHS trust apologises as it exits the apprenticeship market

An NHS trust has left the apprenticeship provider market following a highly critical Ofsted report.

Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust (TEWV) was branded ‘inadequate’ in its first full inspection report published this week.

Inspectors found a litany of problems at the provider, which was training almost 200 apprentices, including poor subcontracting oversight, a failure to take account of prior learning and weak on- and off-the-job training integration.

Sarah Dexter-Smith, director of people and culture at the trust, confirmed they will now stop delivery and apologised for the disruption it will cause apprentices who need to find alternative providers.

The trust will, however, continue to employ apprentices and train them with partner colleges and universities.

Ofsted’s deputy director for further education, Paul Joyce, told the Association of Employment and Learning Providers autumn conference last week it was “really concerning” that a number of new providers are being found to be ‘inadequate’ at their first inspection, particularly having had the benefit of a new provider monitoring visit prior to that inspection.

According to the watchdog’s latest published data, there are 12 independent training providers that were rated ‘inadequate’ at their first full inspection.

Another private provider – Freshfield Training Associates Ltd – was also given
a grade four in its first full inspection this week.

TEWV provides support services for mental health, learning disabilities and eating disorders. It was founded in 2006 and began offering apprenticeships within the trust in 2017.

Ofsted did praise apprentices for being “well motivated and keen to learn”, while the trust’s leaders provide them with a “wide range of helpful information on how to keep themselves safe”.

However, inspectors found that all apprentices on each programme study the same content, regardless of what they already know and can do.

Leaders and managers do not ensure that apprentices follow a programme that covers all elements of the apprenticeship standard, the report said. They “focus too heavily on the completion of the diploma qualification element of the programme, and do not plan a suitably integrated programme of on- and off-the-job training for apprentices”.

“Too many” apprentices are also “not informed well enough” about the programme to which they sign up. Some business administration apprentices enrol on programmes based on the grade band of their job role rather than their individual development needs, for example.

TEWV subcontracts the teaching of English and maths functional skills to Hartlepool College, The Education and Training Collective, and York College.

Ofsted found that TEWV leaders and tutors are “over-reliant” on subcontractors for the supervision of apprentices. “Too often, TEWV tutors simply check that apprentices who need functional skills qualifications have enrolled on appropriate courses,” inspectors said.

Responding to the report, Dexter said: “Following the Ofsted rating our focus is on our inhouse learners who will need to change provider. We have already started organising this with our local education centres and we’re meeting with each apprentice and their manager to support them through the change as seamlessly as we can and to make sure their learning continues. 

“We are really sorry for the disruption this is having on the apprentices affected by this.”

Centenary celebration of LWI sees Princess Royal back prison education reform

Princess Anne highlighted the importance of retraining and added her voice to calls for prison education reform in a speech at Learning and Work Institute’s 100th birthday party.

Her Royal Highness spoke in her capacity as the institute’s patron at its The Lifelong Learning Century event, which was held for an in-person audience at City Lit and also livestreamed.

This year marks 100 years since the formation of the LWI’s forerunner, the British Institute of Adult Education, and the event took place during Lifelong Learning Week, an annual celebration of adult learning.

“If we look at working lives today, you won’t be able to stay in the same job for your life, you will need to retrain. You’ll need to perhaps change your career altogether,” the princess said.

“Giving people the confidence that they can retrain is fundamentally important to those individuals and to the businesses they will continue to work with and want to be involved with.”

However, she believes preparing for careers should start early on in a student’s life, recalling a visit to a school where a teacher pointed out pupils “splashing paint around were becoming artists.

“The ones doing their figures were becoming mathematicians. And the other ones who were constructing and deconstructing with blocks in the corner were becoming engineers.

“She’s right. That is terminology which introduces you to the careers in life,” which the princess called “almost genius”.

Princess ‘despairs’ at how prisons removed career opportunities

The Queen’s daughter also used her address to speak out on prison education.

The quality of learning in the nation’s jails has come under the spotlight recently, with Ofsted launching a review with the chief inspector of prisons, while the education select committee has been carrying out its own inquiry into the matter.

“The justice system doesn’t encourage those on shorter sentences to actually get involved,” Princess Anne said.

She added: “I equally despair at the fact that areas of prison life which used to create the opportunities for careers were removed on the basis they weren’t seen to be relevant.” She did not disclose to which areas she was referring.

The princess finished her address with a rousing call to the attendees, saying of Covid: “If we truly believe in lifelong learning, then that is a hiccup which we as supporters of lifelong learning can help learners through, and put them on a path to do just as much good as they thought they could have done in the first place.”

‘Good quality’ careers education needed, says ex-SpAd

The centenary event also included a panel discussion, featuring City & Guilds Centenary celebration of LWI sees Princess Royal back prison education reform chief executive Kirstie Donnelly, Higher Education Policy Institute director Nick Hillman, and City Lit principal Mark Malcomson.

Hillman and Donnelly both talked up the importance of investing in “good-quality” careers guidance.

A former special adviser in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Hillman said: “When I was working in Whitehall, we found you got more bang for your buck in terms of social mobility by spending on good-quality careers, information, advice and guidance than you did on almost anything else.

This, he said, was because it “stops people making poor decisions the first time around”.

education
The panel discussion at the LWI event

Donnelly told the audience the UK has “simply just got to invest in careers advice and guidance. Without it, we have a broken system.”

But the advice and guidance must be done “in a much more modern 21st century way,” which is mapped to local labour market opportunities.

This week, the institute has also published its annual adult participation in learning survey for 2021, which showed an increase in the proportion of adults who have taken part in education in the last three years, going from 33 per cent in 2019 to 44 per cent.

But it also showed disadvantaged adults are almost twice as likely to have not participated in learning since leaving full-time education as those from a higher socioeconomic background: 37 per cent to 18 per cent.

Lifelong Learning Week runs until Friday November 12, 2021.

Why Ofsted’s new inspection framework may see ‘outstanding’ providers marked down

Some ‘outstanding’ colleges which have improved since their last inspection may still be downgraded because the bar has been raised under the latest Ofsted inspection framework.

That’s according to Chris Russell, the watchdog’s national director of education, who has said if a previously grade one college receives a ‘good’ grade, it “doesn’t mean that the school [or college] has declined in recent years. In fact, the opposite can be the case.”

He said this was because the top grade is a “challenging and exacting judgment to achieve” under the new education inspection framework (EIF).

The comments follow Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman saying a drop to around one in ten schools being ‘outstanding’, half the current rate, “might be a more realistic starting point for the system”.

There are currently 16 general FE colleges with a grade one, five of which have gone more than decade without inspection.

Asked whether the chief inspector expected a similar proportion of colleges as schools to drop from ‘outstanding’, an Ofsted spokesperson said: “We can’t know what the final picture will look like, and any judgments will, of course, be rooted in the evidence we find.

“Some providers may be found to be ‘outstanding’, but given the length of time that has passed, others may not.”

‘Outstanding’ education providers are being inspected this term for the first time since 2010, after an exemption was removed last year.

It will be the first time ‘outstanding’ providers are inspected under the EIF, which was introduced in 2019.

Russell, in a video posted this week, said there was “no doubt that under the current education inspection framework, ‘outstanding’ is a challenging and exacting judgment to achieve”.

“So it does mean, I think, that you need to be very careful, if, for example, a school [or college] that has been judged ‘outstanding’ a good many years ago is inspected again and judged to be ‘good’.

“That doesn’t mean that the school [or college] has declined in recent years. In fact, the opposite can be the case, so very important, I think, in those circumstances, to read the inspection report really carefully, to get a really good view of how good it is now and how well the school [or college] is doing.”

In a blog published on Wednesday morning he added that the drop in standards in some schools and colleges may have been several years ago, with schools and colleges now improving again. “So it’s important not to view the loss of an ‘outstanding’ grade too negatively,” he added.

Twenty-three reports relating to ‘outstanding’ schools were published yesterday. Of those, 19 were graded. Almost three in four, 17, lost their grade one.

Ofsted declined to comment on whether any ‘outstanding’ colleges have received an inspection so far this term.’