Past and present FE students brought home more than a fifth of Team GB’s medal haul from this year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo.

FE Week has looked at the education background of our 189 gold, silver and bronze medal winners at both events and found 40 who went to an FE or sixth-form college.

College’s medal winners ‘give entire community sense of pride’

The college with by far the most medal winners was Loughborough, which educated six of this year’s successful Olympians and Paralympians.

Principal Jo Maher hailed the achievement, saying it “gives the entire community such a sense of pride to see our students and alumni competing on the international stage”.

She said it was “crucial for our sector to recognise and celebrate student success”.

Paralympic gold medal-winning sprinter Thomas Young (pictured top) went to Loughborough for a level 3 BTEC in sports coaching. Balancing his sporting career with study was “really fun”, he said.

The college based his lessons around his training schedule, which meant that he could still be part of the “friendly” environment.

Martyn Rooney, who won a bronze in sprinting at the 2008 Games in Beijing and now oversees Loughborough’s athletics academy, said the college offered “an opportunity for students to come to be a full-time athlete at a young age without as much pressure”.

The approach is “study first, with sport fitting in around that” and Loughborough’s coaches and tutors communicate from the start so that, when a student needs to attend a warm weather training camp, there is a “cohesive relationship” to make it work.

A former Loughborough student himself, Rooney said the situation is now much better than it was for him, as he “didn’t have the lifestyle skills to do both properly”.

He added: “The college has really been assisting athletes with their routines and scheduling.”

College helped medallist ‘reignite her interest’

Runshaw College in Lancashire was another big contributor to Team GB’s success, with three medal winners across both games: Anna Hopkin won gold in the 4x100m mixed medley relay while Holly Bradshaw took bronze in the pole vault. Olivia Broome was a bronze medal winning powerlifter at the Paralympics.

Head of sport Darren Zoldan said it was particularly good for the college as staff who taught the three were still working there.

Former A-level pupil Bradshaw and BTEC student Broome both went through the college’s gym academy programme for sports without an established competition series.

While the academy does not coach their sport, it does give students access to a strength and conditioning coach.

Hopkin, meanwhile, had begun to drift away from swimming before agreeing to represent Runshaw at the Association of Colleges’ national sport championships. Zoldan said this “reignited her interest” and provided a gateway back into competition and eventually the Olympics.

She is now inspiring the next generation of athletes, he explained, as his daughter had been encouraged by her success to push ahead with her own swimming.

‘Always have fun and enjoy sports

Olympic Taekwondo bronze medallist Bianca Walkden and Paralympic swimming bronze medal winner Ellie Challis both went to The Manchester College. Deputy principal Christine Kenyon congratulated them on their success.

She said the college was “fully committed to supporting students achieve their aspirational goals, both in terms of the careers they want and their endeavours that take place outside of the college time”.

This includes flexible programmes of study which fit around training schedules and ensure delivery “is tailored to support them to achieve their full potential”.

Ex-Loughborough student Young had a message for any student aiming for Olympic or Paralympic glory: “Always have fun and, of course, enjoy sports.”

He is planning a tour, including to colleges, over the coming months and is directing anyone interested in a visit towards his social media channels.

The Department for Education has promised free English courses for Afghan refugees as part of the government’s Operation Warm Welcome scheme.

Millions of pounds are being made available for specialist education support for families fleeing the Taliban.

Funding rules have also been clarified by the government to ensure the refugees can enrol on adult education courses in England.

We’re helping recently arrived Afghan refugees get school places for their children, as they rebuild their lives.

We are also providing English lessons and specialist teachers for those who need extra support settling in.https://t.co/iodxvf1Mf7

— Gavin Williamson (@GavinWilliamson) September 1, 2021

There is scant detail on how the English courses will be run for the up to 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan being welcomed to the UK.

It is not yet known whether mayoral combined authorities which have a devolved adult education budget will have the same offer to refugees who settle in their localities.

English courses will help families ‘integrate with their communities’

A number of people who assisted the British armed forces in Afghanistan have already relocated here under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP).

Today the DfE announced the refugees will be able to access English language courses free of charge.

“While many will speak English through their work with the UK government and British forces, and as translators, language classes will ensure all their family members can fully integrate into their local communities.”

The government is also funding 300 university scholarships and providing £12 million to prioritise school places and provide transport, specialist teachers and English language support for these families.

Refugees should ‘take heart’ from Britain’s ‘wave of support’

A weekly update from the Education and Skills Funding Agency today clarified that as long as Afghans covered by ARAP stay in England, they are immediately eligible for further education 19+ funding for courses in England.

HOLEX policy director, Dr Sue Pember, said, “adult community education providers have a vast experience and expertise in helping refugees and are pleased that the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy has recognised the importance of learning English.”

Prime minister Boris Johnson said the “immense debt” the country owes those who worked with our armed forces in Afghanistan means he is “determined we give them and their families the support they need to rebuild their lives here in the UK.

“I know this will be an incredibly daunting time, but I hope they will take heart from the wave of support and generosity already expressed by the British public,” he added.

Providers are warning they face “massive” legal and reputational risk because the Education and Skills Funding Agency continues to make students choose a sex rather than their gender to enrol on courses.

Currently, the individualised learner record, which providers have to fill in with a student’s information to access funding, mandates learners choose either male or female for their sex.

This means those who recognise as neither male nor female cannot have their decision respected.

ESFA’s attitude to gender could cause legal action

Speaking for Dynamic Training, an independent training provider based in London, finance director Emma Lambert says the issue poses a “massive risk” to providers’ reputations.

“The ESFA’s old fashioned attitude to gender identities not only risks damaging the provider reputation, but it will undoubtedly end up in complaints and possibly legal action, which will be left with the provider to deal with.”

The 2010 Equality Act includes protections for people looking to change their sex and a 2020 employment tribunal ruled those protections apply to people who are not comfortable with being either male or female.

While learners are prohibited from choosing their gender in the ILR, the new FE workforce data collection includes a question on gender which allows staff members to select either male or female, “identifies in another way” or prefers not to say.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency’s information on students’ sex also lists options for sex including male, female, other or not known.

The ESFA does acknowledge in the ILR data collection specification there is “interest to be able to receive protected characteristics of learners such as gender”.

But guidance published by the agency said it did not have an operational use for these characteristics which “justifies increasing the administrative burden”.

It instead insists the “onus” is on providers to collect this data.

Dynamic, which provides apprenticeships including for NHS nurses and functional skills courses for the Greater London Authority, believes enabling learners’ gender identity to be recognised is “one small step that can have a positive impact on apprentices”.

Lambert says they ask learners what pronouns they use and manually enter it into documents, “because there’s no way on the ILR system you can put anything other than male or female”.

She is “frustrated” by the lack of action from the ESFA, because of the risks to providers, but also because “I think it’s wrong anyhow” to not let learners select their gender.

The provider has raised the problem multiple times with the ESFA helpdesk, but has only ever received non-committal answers.

‘Wouldn’t be difficult’ to change ILR form

But it is not just providers who ought to be worried about legal action.

FE funding and data expert Steve Hewitt, who raised this problem with the ILR in an opinion piece for FE Week two years ago, says the narrow selection of options leaves the DfE open to a direct discrimination claim.

He supposes that if someone tries to enrol at a college but refuses to choose either male or female, the college could say they will have to charge them the full fee for the course.

“At which point, they are directly discriminating against somebody purely because of their gender identity.”

Though he doubts it will go that far, because a college would have to be willing to take the “bad publicity and strain to their relationship with the ESFA” to play ball with a court case.

He believes the ESFA has not changed the entry options because the field is an “anchor” for the rest of the form.

But Hewitt believes it “wouldn’t be difficult” to change the field to reflect a wider choice of gender options, as the ILR regularly changes fields for other characteristics such as ethnicity.

Yet there has been no “meaningful shift” towards such a change, and Hewitt says there is no process for requests to change the ILR apart from within the agency or other governmental departments.

Time for change, says AoC boss

Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes reasoned that the ESFA and Department for Education are “working within limitations,” but the challenges should not be “insurmountable”.

Eleven years on from the Equality Act, he said, “it seems timely for those characteristics protected by law to be reviewed and expanded in light of over a decade of societal change”.

The DfE told FE Week there is no legislation that would enable protected characteristics to be collected via ILR and the data is not needed for its purposes.

Whereas data for the FE workforce collection is gathered for different purposes and is covered by different regulations such as the public sector equality duty which gives the DfE a legal right to collect gender.

Sex and gender: What’s the difference?

Sex relates to the biological and physiological characteristics defining males and females, says the World Health Organisation, including sexual organs, chromosones, and hormones.

Gender covers the social expectations for men and women including, the WHO says, norms, roles and relationships between groups of women and men. People who do not use a gender identity of either male or female are described as non-binary

A data protection expert has urged colleges to revise their privacy agreements after a union raised concerns about the safeguarding and legal implications of reusing recorded lectures.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, when in-person provision was shut off and virtual delivery became the norm, the University and College Union (UCU) is worried that colleges and universities now have hours of tutoring recorded and stored.

This could see lectures repeatedly replayed for classes in future without updating the teaching or reimbursing the lecturers for using their work.

The union and the University of Exeter are in dispute about performance rights over recorded material for lecturers and UCU has produced guidance for staff members about their rights to their recorded work.

Online and recorded lectures present ‘potential’ problems

UCU negotiating official Jenny Lennox warned that recorded and online lectures could also “potentially” create safeguarding and quality problems for FE.

This is a particular issue in “income generating” areas such as apprenticeships, she said, where she could see “a college thinking they can recycle content a lot more in that sphere”.

Quality issues could manifest themselves, she said, in simultaneous online and in-person delivery: “Are people getting a decent learning experience? Can you genuinely offer something to students in a classroom and online at the same time? I suspect not.”

Safeguarding could also be a concern as recordings of the lectures could include sensitive information about students or identify vulnerable students and those who have yet to  reach adulthood.

While she believes that most higher education institutions have policies on recording students, Lennox has been told by FE members and representatives that “nobody has really even discussed this. There’s nobody saying, ‘you mustn’t do this’.”

The union is not opposed to recording lectures or running them online, as it can be of use to vulnerable learners who cannot get into classes.

“The genie is out of the bottle” on online and recorded lectures, Lennox said. “Let’s agree the ground rules, let’s make it a positive experience which works for staff and for students.”

Colleges must act to ‘stop this becoming an issue’

Joanne Bone, a partner at legal firm Irwin Mitchell specialising in data protection, urged colleges to look again at their privacy notices to “stop this becoming an issue in the future”.

However, she was unhappy with some of the “overly strict” UCU proposals.

When recording learners who are disabled or dressed in a certain manner, Bone said UCU fires warning shot over use of recorded lessons the data does not necessarily need to be protected as sensitive if it is incidental.

You need to be clear how you intend to use personal data going forward in the new environment

In terms of colleges reusing recordings of lectures, where the UCU has proposed that colleges delete personal data in recordings once lecturers leave, Bone countered that the provider does not have to delete every recording the lecturer has done just because they have left.

“It may well be reasonable, if the content of it is still relevant, to be able to still run it,” she said. “The UCU interpretation is very strict, overly so, in my view.”

‘You need to think about what has changed’

Before speaking to FE Week, Bone presented a webinar which will be going on a YouTube education service that she does not regard as being just for the people who registered for it.

She also thinks lectures could be used for more than one cohort of students, but added: “It is a question of being clear. Transparency is a key part of data protection compliance and employee privacy notices need to be clear.

“My expectation is that it is generally applicable. So, it’s all down to expectations and clarity.

“As things have changed through the pandemic, and teaching has gone more online, colleges should be looking to update their privacy notices.

“You need to think about what has changed with the new ways of working and reflect that in an updated privacy notice. You need to be clear how you intend to use personal data going forward in the new environment.”