Consortiums of colleges, businesses and employer representative bodies that failed to win “skills accelerator” funding earlier this year can now bid for an alternative pilot project.
Up to £50,000 is available per group that unsuccessfully applied for the two accelerator initiatives – local skills improvement plans (LSIPs) and the strategic development fund (SDF).
Only one bid per pilot area will be successful in this new project, which has been named the “skills accelerator progression fund”.
A briefing document published by the Department for Education states that the new fund is for consortiums to “maintain and further develop collaboration between providers, local employers and representative bodies to better meet local skills priorities”.
LSIPs and the SDF were first mooted in this year’s FE white paper. Winners were announced on 15 July. The improvement plans are being led by chambers of commerce and will aim to make colleges better align the courses they offer to local employers’ needs.
The DfE said the “skills accelerator progression fund” will pay for activities such as:
▪ Contributing to staff costs that further meaningful collaboration
▪ One or more small scale collaborative projects
▪ Events that foster and further collaboration on local skills priorities and transformational activity.
These could include:
▪ A formalised infrastructure to foster collaboration.
▪ Stronger relationships between employers and providers to address local priorities.
▪ Identification of the key building blocks to support change in provision to align with agreed priorities.
▪ Identification of, and removal of barriers to collaboration.
Establishing a “college business centre”, which the SDF can be used for, is not within the scope of the new fund.
However, the DfE said, funding “can be used to foster more effective engagement between colleges and employers in priority sectors to support local businesses to increase levels of innovation and productivity”.
In their bids, applicants are told to describe the “specific activity the funding will be used for, and how it will maintain and advance collaboration, and what outputs and outcomes will result”.
They should also “set out how you will monitor the spend and capture outcomes”.
Subsidised training for chairs of boards will be run by the Institute of Directors from next month, the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) has announced.
The Further Education Chairs Leadership Programme has been run by the Oxford Saïd Business School since 2018. The change reflects “an adjustment in the direction to meet the needs of those operating in governance today”, according to the ETF.
The Skills for Jobs white paper, published in January, said the government would be taking a “clearer position” on governance and leadership in the sector.
Provisions within the Skills and Post 16 Education Bill, currently in the House of Lords, include tougher laws that will require corporations to review education and training provision against local requirements, and gives the education secretary more powers to intervene if local needs are not being met.
The first cohort of at least 15 chairs on the new IoD programme will gather this October for a two-and-a-half-day residential course in Stratford-upon-Avon. Full IoD membership, usually costing £415, will also be included in the programme’s £750 fee.
Fiona Chalk, the ETF’s national head of governance development, told FE Week that the vision for the programme was to “enhance the value chairs add to the board and the wider organisation”.
Asked about the change from Saïd to the IoD, Chalk said: “The IoD is the only institution that runs internationally recognised qualifications for board members. Those involved in designing and delivering this programme will bring real-life business and FE practice.”
Gary Headland, group chief executive at Lincoln College Group and chair of IoD East Midlands, described the new programme as a “fabulous collaboration”. He added: “I have personally completed the IoD’s company direction programmes as well as the role of the chair course.
“The quality of these courses has been absolutely first class and I feel confident that this new partnership between the IoD and the ETF will add greatly to the capability and capacity of governors across the further education sector.”
The ETF commissions leadership programmes for sector providers on behalf of the Department for Education. A tender to deliver governance development programmes worth up to £600,000 for two years was issued by the ETF in June 2021.
A parallel IoD programme will also be offered for clerks and governance professionals, which comes with associate IoD membership, a two-and-a-half-day residential course and ongoing networking for £650. Both programmes are expected to attract cohorts of 15 to 20 chairs and governance professionals each per year.
How do you improve a college with a demoralised staff, a financial notice, a bad Ofsted and a haemorrhaging learner roll? Jess Staufenberg speaks to those with the huge task of college turnaround
Everyone can name the scandals in further education. Leaders who perhaps once gained recognition, but later had to step down as their college’s governance, finance or quality of education let down learners and staff alike, often with career-limiting consequences.
Failure is an important story to tell. It’s an attempt to learn from honest mistakes, complacency, incompetence or egotism and, by sharing, prevent its repetition.
But the failure story can be a relatively simple one. The most straightforward involve blatant bad practice and a failure of governance controls, such as a principal spending £40,000 on a corporate credit card (as at West Nottinghamshire College until 2018). Failure can be complex too, of course, involving funding changes and administrative oversights over many years.
But even more complex than failure, and often treated as less compelling, is the story of putting a college back together again. How exactly does that next Ofsted become a grade 1 or 2; FE Commissioner intervention lifted; financial notices to improve closed?
Now FE Week has looked at colleges which improved their Ofsted grades over the past three years and achieved closed financial notices in the past two. We also asked sector experts where the turnaround stories are. Here are lessons from the front line of college improvement – with the caveat that every college always has more to do.
‘Be place-based’
When Dame Asha Khemka resigned in 2018 after overusing a corporate credit card at West Nottinghamshire College, interim principal Martin Sim had to make tough decisions to deal with the college’s £22.5 million debt. A company owned by the college, BKSB, was sold off and 220 people were made redundant in 2018-19. By the time new principal Andrew Cropley arrived in May 2019, “people were at breaking point”.
Staff needed to feel clear on the college’s purpose again, Cropley says, and his team also needed to streamline its “busy business model”. It had become the country’s largest college provider of apprenticeships and subcontracted 80 per cent of its adult education budget provision.
“Our local communities needed a college properly focused on them again,” says Cropley. “Before, the local community was a lower priority than it is now.”
Since the end of 2017-18, the college has slashed its subcontractors from 44 to just nine, and now only subcontracts 38 per cent of its AEB provision (“and that’s dropping,” says Cropley).
Finance director Jon Fearon explains: “It’s just too easy to be distracted, when you’ve got this big England-wide business. The only priority we’ve got now is the local area.”
To that end, the college entered a new partnership with Nottingham Trent University whereby the university will offer nursing qualifications at the college from this month. Learners living in Mansfield will no longer have to travel to Derby, Sheffield or Lincoln to become a nurse, but can train locally.
Nursing students at West Nottinghamshire College
Cropley also became chair of the Making Mansfield Place Board, which brings stakeholders together, while vice principal Louise Knott joined the equivalent in Ashfield. Concerns around the impact of automation on jobs locally prompted the college to fund a new ‘automation and robotics centre of excellence’ in the existing engineering centre, and to offer a new pathway focused on robotics in the engineering BTEC from this month.
Its financial notice to improve, first issued by the government in July 2018, was lifted in June after 33 months. It’s longer than the average 18 months it took colleges to close notices across 2020 and 2021, but Cropley says his team chose to keep investing instead of trying to pay off the debt all at once.
“We’ve invested, even when we’ve had debt,” says Cropley. “It’s so easy in financial crises to get mired in the here and now, but people need a future to believe in.”
A focus on being place-based has also driven Wes Johnson, principal at Lancaster & Morecambe College since April 2017. The college got a grade 3 Ofsted report the year before, and Johnson had to contend with a second grade 3 report in March 2018, almost one year into his tenure.
But two years later in March 2020, Ofsted returned a grade 2, praising leaders’ “clear vision for the college” and how they had “reshaped many elements of the curriculum offer” to be more work-focused.
Johnson’s first move was to create a director of employer engagement and apprenticeships role, to get feedback about the college’s offer. He learned, for instance, that construction firms didn’t need learners with the level 1 bricklaying qualification as much as a multi-skills construction worker qualification, so the college altered the course accordingly.
Wes Johnson, principal, Lancaster & Morecambe College
Similarly, career possibilities at nearby Heysham Nuclear Power Station led the college to adjust its level 3 engineering qualification in 2020 “so it’s overlaid with a nuclear specialism”, says Johnson. “It’s about recognising that the specific skills needed locally aren’t necessarily going to be delivered by an off-the-shelf qualification.”
The college has also won an award from the Association of Colleges for setting up the ‘Morecambe Bay curriculum’. In response to a big ecology project, Eden Project North, planned in the area from January 2022, the college designed a cross-sector curriculum with primary and secondary schools around climate change, sustainability and eco-citizenship. It links to the college’s new “Eden traineeship”, which aims to help learners gain entry to “those green collar jobs emerging on our doorstep”.
It’s important to have a “place-based curriculum”, says Johnson. “The days of just putting out a nice prospectus in glorious isolation are over.”
‘Smoother, clearer processes’
Not to be underestimated in improving colleges is the power of clear, easy-to-use processes, according to leaders.
A failure to properly record safeguarding information was behind UTC Portsmouth’s grade 4 in February 2020 (in which ‘leadership’ got a grade 4 and all other categories were given a grade 2). James Doherty, formerly the vice principal, stepped up as principal the same month. By June this year, Ofsted gave the UTC a grade 1 in all categories.
The first thing Doherty did was consult others on safeguarding, he says.
“In March 2020 I spoke to a lot of FE colleges and secondary schools, and by April we’d adopted the new system. It was important to use new software as well, because there had been a loss of faith among staff in the old one.”
Like Johnson, he created a new post to ensure clear responsibility, appointing a safeguarding lead assistant principal. Not satisfied with the grade 2s in other categories, he and his team also designed a clearer process for employers, termed ‘Project Pipeline’.
“Before we didn’t have a model, but this shows employers exactly how to engage with students.” There are three ‘levels’ of engagement: executive partner, primary partner or associate partner. At the top level, employers set students an industry-related project and deliver face-to-face sessions and employability workshops.
Carpentry and joinery students at West Nottinghamshire College
The caveat to introducing smoother digital processes is not to lose the “small college feel” in which everyone still shares information face-to-face, warns Doherty. “The balance for me is how to keep that. We have an atrium where all staff each lunch together, and that really helps.”
Tighter digital processes were also introduced by Nichola Newton, principal at Warrington & Vale Royal College in Cheshire. She and her team were facing a hefty challenge: the college formed in 2017 from a merger of Warrington Collegiate, with a grade 3, and Mid Cheshire College, with a grade 4. An FE Commissioner report from 2019 warns of a “total reliance on the ability of the college to dispose of sites within a given timescale” to ensure financial stability. This in turn prompted unfavourable BBC coverage of selling off a campus.
However, by 2019 the college got a grade 2, and its financial notice to improve closed in March this year.
Nichola Newton, principal, Warrington & Vale Royal College
Newton was particularly trying to drive up attainment, which had been criticised by inspectors. First, the college moved to easier-to-use data dashboards.
Rebecca Welch, assistant principal for quality, says: “The implementation of the dashboards was a huge culture change. In the past, you’d have to remember to go and look at a report and it was often too late. Now it’s the first thing we look at in the morning and we can do something straightaway.”
Newton also appointed ‘directors’, which she says was the “biggest change” towards improving outcomes.
“Before we had curriculum managers, but now we have directors who are focused on cohorts and improving outcomes in those cohorts.” If the dashboard flags a particular issue, a director will be “deployed” to take a closer look, compare them to other cohorts, and report directly back to the senior leadership team, she says.
The college says it is now ranked in the top 10 nationally for pass rates.
‘Values and positivity’
Underpinning all these approaches is inspiring staff again, say leaders. They each consulted with staff to decide the values and purpose of their institutions, some of which, like Lancaster & Morecambe College, have been around for 200 years.
For staff, feeling listened to seems key. Michael Rhodes, tutor in creative media production at West Nottinghamshire College, said Cropley has introduced an “open door” culture in the college. “I’m not just saying this because he’s going to read this, but he’s a very positive character. He’s the kind of principal who will wander around the college and talk to the students, and knows all the members of staff’s names, which is really important to me.”
Welch, assistant principal at Warrington & Vale Royal College, says: “There was a big difference pre- and post-Nichola. It’s about visibility. She has an open door policy, and she always wanted to take on feedback.”
These are just a few of many stories of college improvement across England. The story of improvement is, even more than that of failure, complex and often slow.
“You can only improve at the speed which people can take,” concludes Johnson. “The most challenging bit about improvement is getting the balance right between driving performance improvement, and keeping the staff with you.”
Advice from the experts:
“A culture of joint accountability”
Sam Parrett, chief executive, London & South East Education Group, and a national leader of further education
“The single most important thing a leader has got to do is engender a new culture of shared accountability. Leaders have got to set a real tone around behaviour, expectations, communication and trust. It’s about creating a sense of order and priorities.
“It’s also important to find the good things and celebrate them. In most colleges labelled as failing you always find beacons of good practice – the challenge is often that practice is inconsistent and there aren’t mechanisms for sharing and celebrating good practice – this is the key to turnaround in many colleges.
“What stands out in our sector are the colleges where the existing staff and leaders who have been in a college where performance has dipped have then turned it around. The psychological and performance changes that you see in colleges that have been on this journey, owned the problem and delivered significant improvement are the most impressive.
“Know the FE inspection handbook”
Kate Hill, Ofsted HMI and specialist advisor in policy, training and quality
“The one thing we look at more than anything else is the quality of the education and training. I think for all those that have made the improvements they need to, they’ve been really clear about using the criteria in our handbook to do that – they have a copy of the Further education and skills inspection handbook. You know when you speak to them whether they’re fluent with the handbook or not, because of the language they use.
“The most important thing is that they’re getting the curriculum right, and it’s acting in the best interests of learners. It’s not just the same offer, year after year. It’s very important they’re responsive to increased interest or more opportunities in an area. And are there clear progression routes between courses too?
“Finally, it doesn’t come down to every single last lecturer. What we’re looking for is a strategic vision coming from the top with strong leadership and management, which has developed a positive and thriving culture not just for students, but for staff too.”
When the Cabinet is more ethnically diverse than FE leadership, the sector should be ashamed, writes Andy Forbes
Well, what a positive move from Boris Johnson! A big welcome to Nadhim Zahawi, England’s first education minister of BAME background, someone who fled Iraq as a Kurdish refugee and started school in a local comprehensive in London.
His rise to prominence is a remarkable story which will resonate with the thousands of FE students whose families have been through similar experiences.
But it’s not just him. Oh, my goodness! The new Conservative cabinet has seven BAME members, not just bland individuals making up the numbers, but leading figures, like Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel and Sajid Javid.
That’s 23 per cent of the total. And Labour’s shadow cabinet is not far behind – seven out of 32 members, including experienced heavyweights like David Lammy and rising stars like Thangam Debbonaire.
What amazing progress has been made in advancing equality and diversity in the political world.
But wait a minute, before we get too excited here on Planet Education.
Nadhim Zahawi will be overseeing a sector that is stuck way behind others in representing the diversity of England in 2021.
The university and school sectors are not much to write home about, but the FE sector, in terms of its staffing and leadership profile, remains an extraordinary island of white privilege. What’s more, it’s not getting any better.
The FE sector remains an extraordinary island of white privilege
I’ve worked in it for over 30 years and yet, in my most recent position as college principal, I found myself yet again the only Black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) representative in meeting after meeting of senior FE colleagues, internal and external.
And I was working for a college where over a third of the students are BAME!
Never mind the “red wall” up north, look around and see the white wall encircling England’s FE sector.
It’s as seemingly impenetrable as The Wall keeping out all sorts of nasties in the TV series Game of Thrones (which does eventually get broken down, but only with the aid of a dragon).
Of 76 FE specialist HMIs at Ofsted, four are BAME (that’s five per cent). Meanwhile the Ofsted senior team has one BAME representative.
Of 18 FE Commissioners, none are BAME.
Of the ESFA Management Board, only one is BAME, and she doesn’t have a background in the FE sector.
The Association of Colleges Board does slightly better, managing three BAME members out of a total of 18. But wherever you look, it’s the same picture, and not a good one.
If we had the same proportion of BAME leaders as the current cabinet – that’s 23 per cent, remember – over 50 college principals would be BAME.
I doubt if we even have half that number, although accurate data is still hard to get.
Meanwhile 17 FE HMIs would be BAME. Four of the FE Commissioner’s team. Four of the ESFA Management Board.
What a thought…
Shame on the FE sector, and on the governing bodies and boards, that have perpetuated this situation for decades.
Shame on the FE sector, and on the governing bodies and boards, that have perpetuated this situation
Perhaps we should put Boris Johnson in charge of appointing senior educational leaders, or Keir Starmer.
But hooray, at least, for the arrival of Nadhim Zahawi, and another loud hooray for the fact that one of his very first visits as education secretary was to an FE college.
How comfortable he looked talking to staff and students, and how promising his first words were, as he emphasised the vital role of education in the “levelling up” agenda.
So let’s hope he sees what needs to be done and challenges us all to level up ethnic diversity in FE leadership and management.
It’s well past time someone took a stand. With his remarkable personal background, Zahawi may just have the courage and determination to do so.
It is all change at the Department for Education after Boris Johnson’s reshuffle.
Of the six ministerial roles, just one incumbent remains – Michelle Donelan, universities minister.
Nadhim Zahawi was named as the new education secretary on Wednesday following the sacking of Gavin Williamson. Remaining ministerial appointments have been announced since then.
The DfE said their portfolios are yet to be confirmed. Meet the new team…
Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Zahawi was privately educated at King’s College School, in Wimbledon.
He co-founded the well-known research firm YouGov, where he was chief executive until 2010. He was also chief strategy officer for Gulf Keystone Petroleum until 2018.
Barran joins the DfE from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport where she was the minister for civil society, youth and loneliness.
She founded domestic abuse awareness charity SaveLives in 2005 where she was CEO until 2017. She is also a former trustee for Comic Relief.
She replaces Conservative peer Baroness Berridge who left her role yesterday in the prime minister’s cabinet reshuffle.
Barran tweeted yesterday that it was a “great honour” to be appointed to the Department for Education’s ministerial team and that she was “excited to get to work”.
Quince, the MP for Colchester, was a work and pensions minister.
He replaced Vicky Ford. who has joined the Foreign Office.
The politician has been an MP since 2015, and previously served as a parliamentary private secretary to Gavin Williamson when he was defence secretary.
As children’s minister he will cover the children and families brief at a time when many of the issues it covers are under the spotlight.
Over the past year, Quince’s predecessor Ford has had to respond to the free school meals crisis, preside of the extension of the holiday activities and food programme and steer the SEND review, which has been much-delayed.
Burghart, the MP for Brentwood and Ongar, was previously a parliamentary private secretary to the prime minister.
His website states he is a former teacher and son of two teachers.
Burghart previously worked at the Department for Education on the Munro Review of Child Protection.
He is also a former adviser to former children’s minister Tim Loughton.
In Parliament, he has been a member of the joint committee on human rights and the work and pensions select committee
Michelle Donelan, universities minister
Donelan, the MP for Chippenham, is the only surviving member of the former ministerial team.
A former member of the Parliamentary education committee, Donelan became an education minister in February last year.
As well as being minister for universities, Donelan has also previously held responsibility for the opportunity areas and Opportunity North East programmes.
However, it is not yet known if she will continue to preside over those policy areas as she takes on her new expanded brief and attends cabinet.
Clarification: Portfolio details have removed as the DfE said those published on its website are not confirmed and may be updated.
Adult residential courses will retain their funding uplift for at least the 2021/22 academic year, the Department for Education has confirmed.
Officials began reviewing the uplift, which multiplies funding for residential courses by nearly five times as much as the normal rate, in February 2020.
Four residential adult education colleges in England are affected by the decision and have been eagerly awaiting the outcome.
When asked for an update this week, a spokesperson for the DfE could not say when the final decision about funding in future years would be made, simply telling FE Week that it would be in “due course”.
However, they did confirm that the residential funding uplift will “remain in place for the 2021/22 academic year”.
The four colleges – Northern College in Barnsley, Fircroft College in Birmingham, Ruskin College in Oxford, and Hillcroft College in London – will technically be funded by their respective combined authorities if they are based in areas with devolved adult education funding.
Yultan Mellor, principal of Northern College, which was facing a battle to survive earlier this year partly owing to the national review, said: “Northern College is pleased to report that, through working closely with us over the last year, Sheffield city region have agreed to continue with the residential uplift for the next three years, and West Yorkshire and the Education and Skills Funding Agency for at least the 2021/2022 academic year.”
A Fircroft College spokesperson told FE Week that it was “working closely with the West Midlands Combined Authority to find a long-term solution for the sustainable funding of residential adult education in the West Midlands”.
Ruskin College and Hillcroft College did not respond to requests for comment at the time of going to press.
Let prisoners have a say in changes to prison education too, writes Jon Collins
Prison education has suffered more during the pandemic than education in the community.
Prison lockdowns and a lack of access to digital technology have led to an almost complete hiatus that is only now beginning to ease.
The new year-long review by Ofsted and HM Inspectorate of Prisons into prison education will be an opportunity to take stock.
It can explore how, as prisons recover from the pandemic, the education provided can better meet the needs of all prisoners.
This is not, however, the first review of prison education, even in recent years.
In 2016 a major government-commissioned review by Dame Sally Coates was published.
It set out proposals for radical change, intended to put education at the heart of the prison system. This review led to some limited changes, but not the overhaul that was anticipated.
That was the latest in a litany of reports and inquiries on prison education in this country. But real and significant change has been rare.
Until the early 1990s, prison education was funded by the Home Office and delivered under contract by mainstream local providers. This localised system gave prison governors significant discretion.
Then in 1992 external providers bid for contracts to deliver education in groups of prisons across a wider geographical area. Local flexibility had been traded for consistency.
To a large extent, structurally this is the approach that remains in place today.
In 2001, responsibility for prison education was transferred to the-then Department for Education and Skills, a move intended to shift prison education into the educational mainstream.
But following the publication of the Coates review this was reversed, moving responsibility for prison education back to the Ministry of Justice.
This was intended to enable the implementation of Coates’s recommendations, which had governor autonomy at their heart.
But, in fact, the four providers who in 2019 won contracts to deliver education in the 117 adult prisons in England and Wales under the new Prison Education Framework were the same four providers who had held the previous contracts.
They are committed to prison education and improvements have been made. But prison education is still not good enough.
So what changes are needed?
First, more resources are required, both for education provision and for prisons generally.
Good-quality education in an environment as challenging as a prison cannot be provided on a shoestring. Meanwhile, education provision will inevitably suffer if there aren’t enough prison officers to bring learners from their cell to the classroom.
More money is not, however, enough. Leadership is also key. Prison governors must prioritise education, not just in classrooms, but across their whole prison.
More money is not enough. Leadership is also key
If they demonstrate that education is a priority to them, its provision will be seen as a priority by staff throughout the prison.
A broader, more varied offer is also needed. At present most mainstream education in prison covers basic literacy, numeracy and IT skills. This is necessary for many prisoners, but is simply not enough.
GCSEs and A-levels should be made routinely available, as should a broad range of vocational and other educational opportunities.
To help deliver this, prisons need to move out of the digital dark ages.
In-cell technology and internet access must become the norm. This must complement, and not replace, face-to-face teaching.
Finally, this review and any ensuing reforms must draw on the expertise of former and current prison learners.
Prisons need to move out of the digital dark ages
The input of people with lived experience of prisons is vital for ensuring that any changes are informed by those who understand the system best.
Prison education is currently too limited, too cumbersome in its delivery, and often not of sufficient quality.
We need to put this right if we want a justice system that genuinely helps people to turn their lives around.
This review is another opportunity to set out a proper roadmap for much-needed reform – officials must make sure it doesn’t become another dead end.
Ethnic minority students on the construction T Level is above the industry average – but scrapping the BTEC could be a problem, writes Hassana Ahmed
Since the Department for Education introduced a move from BTECs to T Levels in 2020, there has been low uptake for construction.
Take June this year: the design, surveying and planning for construction T Level had the lowest uptake in comparison with the other pathways, including education and childcare and digital, production, design and development.
This is not entirely unexpected, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the construction courses, along with the other aforementioned courses, launched in September 2020. A further seven T Levels are launching in September 2021 and the remainder in the following two academic years.
This meant there was a tight timeframe for the new pathways to be marketed to students, and especially not face-to-face.
The phased implementation of these programmes also means that the current data is not representative of the initiative as a whole.
There is also a lack of funding for transport. Those students living in rural areas or at an economic disadvantage will struggle to access colleges running T Levels and work placements far away from them.
Another factor is the huge impact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the construction industry.
The industry overwhelmingly requires a physical presence, so the ability to take on apprentices has been greatly hampered as the number of actual workers on-site has fallen.
Of course 20 per cent of the construction T Level is placement-based, meaning that these courses have also largely been unviable while social distancing measures have been in place.
A document published by the DfE in July 2020 admitted that, due to the pandemic, “we may not be able to engage the employers needed to deliver the industry placements”.
Meanwhile, figures from this newspaper show that the percentage of ethnic minority backgrounds studying the construction T Level as of June 2021 stands at just above 14 per cent.
As FE Week has reported, Jeremy Crook, chief executive of the Black Training and Enterprise Group, said this reveals “low levels of ethnic minority participation” which “should ring alarm bells for the government”.
However, we must remember this figure is still marginally higher than the proportion that currently make up the ethnic minority average of the construction industry.
According to the ONS, in 2019 just 5.4 per cent of construction workers were from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds (BAME).
It is also higher than the overall percentage of BAME students in further education, which stands at 9.6 per cent.
But, while the figures are not a surprise in one sense, we hope that more is done to attract students of minority ethnicities to the sector.
The government also needs to think carefully about its moves to scrap BTECs.
The Social Market Foundation that found 37 per cent of black students enter university with only BTEC qualifications.
The government must look again into the impact of scrapping BTECs so soon after introducing T Levels, otherwise BAME students could suffer.
In the meantime, making sure that students are aware of T Levels is now vital. A survey from the Chartered Management Institute in 2019 showed that only 29 per cent of parents of 11 to 18-year-olds were aware of T Levels.
An advertising campaign was launched by the DfE but was suspended during the pandemic. The suspension lasted from March 2020 until two months before the launch of the construction T Level.
This decision will have had a critical impact on student awareness of T Levels.
Additionally, this route must properly equip graduating students for industry.
According to the Construction Industry Training Board, more people than usual are expected to start FE construction courses because of a lack of apprenticeship recruitment opportunities as the SMEs who employ 72 per cent of apprentices continue to recover.
So, to maintain access to a skilled workforce, industry will need to increase the number of learners it converts from FE courses.
Currently, of the approximately 36,000 students per year who undertake construction courses in FE, only 41 per cent move directly into an industry job or apprenticeship.
It is crucial that the government ensures there are diverse routes for BAME students to join construction courses and transfer into industry – and find they are in an inclusive environment when they arrive.
The boss of one of England’s biggest training providers has resigned with immediate effect.
Simon Rouse’s decision to quit as managing director of PeoplePlus comes weeks after the firm failed to win any funding in the government’s adult education budget (AEB) tender. It is also less than a year since the company sold its apprenticeships business.
PeoplePlus held the largest national AEB contract among all independent training providers last year, with an allocation of £5.6 million.
A spokesperson for the provider, which is part of Staffline Group, refused to say whether Rouse’s departure was directly linked to the unsuccessful AEB bid.
She said: “Simon Rouse has stepped down from his position as managing director of PeoplePlus. He will be seeking new opportunities outside of the group.
“Simon has been with PeoplePlus for four years and has supported the leadership and organisation over some challenging times, including the pandemic. PeoplePlus is now well positioned for further growth in its key service areas.”
Albert Ellis, chief executive of Staffline Group, will assume Rouse’s responsibilities until a successor is appointed.
The provider was delivering courses to around 8,000 adults and training to around 3,000 apprentices last year. It is also one of the largest providers of prison education in the country.
PeoplePlus’s latest financial statements show that it recorded turnover of £63.3 million and was paying Rouse £400,000 a year.
The accounts also show the provider sold its “loss-making” apprenticeship business to Babington Business College for “a nominal sum” in December 2020.
PeoplePlus was one of the many casualties from the ESFA’s AEB tender. As reported by FE Week last week, many other providers believe the procurement was the agency’s first step in shrinking the private provider market, which was described as “crowded” in this year’s FE white paper.
In total £74 million was allocated in the tender, which was down by a fifth on the £92 million in the last AEB procurement from 2017.
FE Week analysis found the number of private providers with a direct ESFA AEB contract has now dropped by almost 60 per cent, from 208 to 88. In total, 581 providers submitted bids.
