Spending review: funding boosts for 16-19 and adult training

Boosts to college funding and T Level teaching hours are to be part of a £3 billion package for post 16 education and skills in next week’s autumn budget and spending review. 

The autumn budget and spending review will be taking place on Wednesday October 27. On the day, chancellor Rishi Sunak will release details of government spending for government departments for years 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25. This will be the first multi-year spending review since 2015. 

Part of the spending increase on skills will include £550 million for the national skills fund and has been earmarked to quadruple the number of places on the government’s flagship skills bootcamps, expand the level 3 adult offer and pay for 24,000 more traineeships per year.

Skills bootcamps were launched in Autumn 2020 and provide adults with a 16 week programme and job interview in a priority sector. They have quickly become a go-to skills intervention for the government, with an expansion announced earlier this year to help tackle the shortage of HGV drivers. 

The first evaluation of the rapid skills programmes was published last week but was unable to say how effective they were at supporting learners into jobs.

The spending review will also see more capital funding, with £830 million set to be allocated to “revitalising colleges in England” plus increases to the T Level capital programme. 

By the end of the spending review period, 2024/25, the apprenticeships budget will have increased to £2.7 billion, a £170 million increase. The Treasury says this will pay for “new improvements to support more small businesses to hire new apprentices”. More details are expected on Wednesday.

“Our future economic success depends not just on the education we give to our children but the lifelong learning we offer to adults.

“This £3 billion skills revolution builds on our Plan for Jobs and will spread opportunity across the UK by transforming post-16 education – giving people the skills they need to earn more and get on in life.”

Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer

16 to 19 education will see the biggest jump in funding with a £1.6 billion increase by the end of the spending review period. Part of that will fund additional hours for “up to 100,000 young people taking T Levels”, the Treasury says. It’s unclear at this point what the rest of the 16-19 spending rise will be allocated to. 

A Treasury spokesperson told FE Week: “The £1.6bn is the increase to 16 to 19 year old’s funding in 2024-25. This is double the investment the government has made over the last two spending reviews (£691million in total). Further details will be announced in due course.”

In their spending review submission, the Association of Colleges called for extra 16 to 19 spending to fund places for more young people, increasing the per-student base rate and removing the rate cut for 18 year-olds.

Though today’s announcement falls short of the £2.3 billion extra 16 to 19 spending the AoC called for, its chief executive David Hughes said it is “encouraging to see increased investment in skills and education” adding “we always expected the increased funding wouldn’t go far enough, but in the circumstances we view this as a good start in a tough spending round”.

The absence of specifics on education catch-up funding did not pass Hughes by, commenting “as an optimist, I am hopeful that the lack of mention of education recovery is because of a significant announcement on Wednesday at the dispatch box”.

The autumn budget and spending review will take place in the House of Commons at approximately 12.30pm on Wednesday October 27. 

Five urgent tips for the DfE on adult education

There are far too many barriers for the unemployed and low paid to get into learning, writes Chris Morgan

There is a critical need to help the 3.7 million adults in the UK in low-paid and insecure work. Sixteen per cent of adults have poor literacy skills, and one in three have no qualifications. 

One in three adults who have no qualifications live in poverty.

This week the WEA launched our 2021 Impact Report, which reveals the extent to which community learning helps adults improve their employability and life chances.  

The research highlights the importance of learning for both boosting career prospects and its physical and mental transformative effects. 

We have identified five areas for minimising these disparities ̶ and have written to the Treasury in advance of its spending review. We must:

1. Maintain the current level of funding for the adult education budget  


This comprehensive spending review is long overdue and is the first realistic opportunity for Treasury to set budgets for three years ahead. A budget maintained at current levels for three years would offer providers a level of stability that has been lacking from the funding system for some time.

As well as setting out its very ambitious plans for the funding & accountability framework, the Department for Education (DfE) has also consulted recently on the national skills fund.

 This all adds up to a period of considerable change for further education, including community learning.

  

2. Create a distinct fund for adults who need essential employability skills 

The DfE is proposing to create a single skills fund that combines the adult education budget and national skills fund. The thinking behind this is to give providers more flexibility and autonomy.

However, in adult community learning we already have quite a lot of flexibility and autonomy. What we lack is visibility.

Our concern is that the single fund will see level 3 provision eclipsing community provision at lower levels. This could result in a very top-heavy model that does not serve those furthest from the job market.

Rather than a single pot, we would prefer to see two distinct, but inter-linked funds, including an essential skills fund supporting those who need most help. 



3. Remove the economic skills trap that creates barriers to study

There are so many barriers to the unemployed and low paid. For example, many learners miss out because they are earning just above the threshold to qualify for financial support. If you need more than one level 3 qualification to enter a career, the national skills fund will not fund the second one.  

And to gain access to level 3 study funded by the national skills fund, you need to meet entry criteria that many do not have, such as level 2 English, a 4 in GCSE maths, subject knowledge and work placement experience.

We are encouraging the government to break these barriers down. Some devolved mayoral authorities, such as Liverpool and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority, are already starting to lift them, opening doors to opportunities for thousands of adults. 

4. Launch a national awareness campaign highlighting adult learning financial support

 
Visibility is one of the sector’s biggest concerns. Multiple studies have shown adults are unaware of the education provision available, or the funding support to cover fees and childcare.

A national awareness campaign would be especially effective in the most disadvantaged areas.

5.      Legislate for specialist designated institutions to have equal rights to grant funding

 
Since 1992, the WEA and other community learning providers have been classed as specialist designated institutions (SDIs). This status means that SDIs are eligible for grant funding in exactly the same way as general further education colleges.

With such root and branch reform of the funding system taking place, it would be easy to overlook the complexities.

So we ask that that the government legislates for SDIs to have equal rights to grant funding, or at least confirms on record that the current status still stands.

Then we can keep advocating for adults, arguing that it is critical they are not forgotten. 

The FE Week Podcast: Reaching net zero, careers guidance and research in FE

This week Shane is joined by college principal Ian Pryce and the chief operating officer of an independent training provider, Nicki Hay, to discuss the biggest stories.

How should providers respond to climate change in the run up to COP26?

Is anything actually going to be done about careers guidance, even with a Skills Bill amendment?

And what FE research projects badly need funding?

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

Skills Bill: More government defeats as Lords debate careers, universal credit and apprenticeships

The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill is one step closer to becoming law having completed its “report stage” in the House of Lords. 

Amendments, including a beefed-up Baker clause and focussing a proportion of apprenticeship levy funding on young people at lower levels, were passed into the bill against the government’s wishes.   

Lord Baker beat the government by 50 votes to make legislation requiring secondary pupils to experience “mandatory encounters” with technical training providers legally enforceable and prescribed within law.   

Baker once again commanded support from government and opposition peers for his amendment.   

Baroness Wilcox, speaking for Labour, said the government’s aim to use secondary legislation, i.e., regulations, to determine the frequency and content of technical education careers guidance wasn’t acceptable because it would mean that the government’s plans couldn’t be scrutinised. 

 The Lord Bishop of Durham, with the Green Party’s Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, won another vote to prevent benefit rules causing problems for adults seeking education and training opportunities if they are unemployed and/or in receipt of Universal Credit.  

Despite a defence from a government minister, who highlighted various ways in which Universal Credit claimants could be supported through learning loans, bursaries and various exemptions within Universal Credit regulations, a cross-party coalition of peers generated a government defeat of 16 votes. 

Commenting on the Universal Credit amendment, Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes said: “Cutting Universal Credit whilst blocking people’s ability to train and upskill their way into good jobs is just plain wrong at any time, but when employers are crying out for people with skills, then it is even more baffling. 

“This is an important moment as the House of Lords rejects the government’s muddled approach and forces them to think again. We need an urgent review into the system to make sure that the welfare and skills systems are working in tandem.” 

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Addington successfully passed an amendment that would require special educational needs training within FE teacher training programmes.  

Former MP Ken Clarke (pictured), now Lord Clarke of Nottingham, passed an amendment that would require employers to spend two-thirds of “apprenticeship funding” on level 2 and 3 apprenticeships for under-25s.   

Government amendments to outlaw essay mills and allow for the conversion of 16-to-19 sixth-forms with religious character to academies were passed without opposition.   

The House of Lords began proceedings at 12.30pm yesterday afternoon and were still debating at the time of going to press.   

The Lords will have a final opportunity to amend the bill on October 25. It will then begin its journey through the House of Commons. With a Conservative Party majority in the Commons, it is unlikely that all of the amendments passed by the Lords will be passed in to final legislation. 

Social background and college type can affect earnings and progression

New research from the Sutton Trust reveals disturbing gaps in progression and earnings following post 16 education. 

While qualified disadvantaged students in FE colleges are more likely to progress to higher education than those in sixth forms, the research also finds that the majority of students that leave compulsory education with a level 1 or 2 qualification had not gained any further qualifications a decade later. This was particularly the case for those that did not achieve 5+ GCSEs at key stage 4.

Researchers at the Centre for Vocational Education Research (CVER) followed the progress of two cohorts on young people to determine how their backgrounds and post 16 institutions impacted on their journeys to the workplace and higher education. One cohort completed their GCSEs in 2002/03 and the other in 2010/11 and students from both cohorts had their HE and employment status recorded at age 28. 

Students were tracked through the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) dataset, which links records from the National Pupil Database, the Individualised Learner Record and the Higher Education Statistics Agency with earnings and employment data from HMRC.

The report, ‘Going further: further education, disadvantage and social mobility’ defines ‘disadvantage’ as those entitled to free school meals. Findings compared and accounted for the larger prevalence of disadvantaged students attending FE colleges than sixth forms. 

When comparing the outcomes of disadvantaged students, the report finds that those that attended a further education college were more likely to progress to higher education than those similarly disadvantaged that attended a sixth form institution. 

Yet, regardless of setting, disadvantaged students were still less likely to progress to higher education than their more advantaged classmates. 

Sir Peter Lampi, founder and chair of the Sutton Trust and chair of the Education Endowment Foundation, said that “disadvantage continues after the age of 16. Further education colleges play a vital role in providing a bridge between school and university or the workplace.”

On employment and earnings outcomes by age 28, the research finds that FE colleges are less successful at closing the disadvantage gap. 

The gap in earnings between students that received free schools means and those that didn’t was larger for former FE college students than their sixth form counterparts. The earnings gap at age 28 was 11 per cent for those that attended a sixth form institution and 15 per cent for those who attended an FE college, the research finds. 

In response to these findings, the Sutton Trust is calling for a reversal of underfunding of post 16 education, extension of pupil premium funding to 16-19 year olds and investment in education recovery and extending National Tutoring Programme  to post 16. 

Lampi continues “it is crucial that colleges are well-funded so that they can give the best support they can, particularly in the wake of the pandemic.”

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 367

Bindu Arjoon, Chair, Exeter College

Start date: August 2021

Concurrent job: Deputy chief executive, Exeter City Council

Interesting fact: She started her career in further education, as an economics and business studies lecturer at City of Westminster College.

Cheryl Turner, Trustee, Central YMCA

Start date: August 2021

Concurrent job: Freelance FE specialist and senior research fellow, Learning and Work Institute

Interesting fact: She likes wild swimming and walking in Cornwall.

Brett O’Reilly, Head of innovation for construction technologies, NCG

Start date: June 2021

Previous job: Head of automotive and electrical installation, South and City College Birmingham

Interesting fact: He took three years out of his career in FE to be a full-time politician in Birmingham and spent a “brief spell” resolving a refuse workers’ strike in 2019.

Devolved subcontracting in the dark

Transparency of subcontracting deals in further education has “taken a step backwards” following devolution of the adult education budget (AEB), an FE Week investigation has found.   

The Education and Skills Funding Agency publishes a list of declared subcontractors annually for nationally funded provision and tells prime providers to refer to it for due diligence purposes.   

But a big chunk of subcontracted training is now hidden as eight of the ten mayoral combined authorities, which have taken control of the AEB for their region from the ESFA, publish no such information.   

Just two of them told FE Week they release equivalent subcontractor lists for their areas. The eight that do not account for almost £600 million of public skills funding.   

Those who don’t publish subcontractor lists include London, Manchester and Liverpool.   

An experienced auditor working in the FE sector, who wished not to be named, said: “Subcontracting is the provision at highest risk of fraud, so transparency is critical.   

“Oversight appears to have taken a step backwards since devolution and should be urgently addressed by all mayoral combined authorities.”   

While the agency does continue to publish a list of subcontractors, it has reduced in transparency. It used to break subcontracted deals down by apprenticeship provision and other funding streams, but now only publishes deals for post-16 provision in general.   

It also only publishes cumulative values of £100,000 and over.   

The ESFA has embarked on a series of reforms to substantially reduce the amount of subcontracting in FE in recent years to tackle “poor oversight and fraud”.   

They include a cap on volumes and a new externally assessed “standard”, which all providers will need to meet in order to subcontract agency funds.   

The ESFA is also creating a new list of independent training providers – any provider not on the list will not be granted funding agreements or be allowed to subcontract with another provider who is on the list.   

Six mayoral combined authorities and the Greater London Authority began taking control of their AEB from 2019, followed by three more MCAs in subsequent years.   

While they vary in the level of transparency, all require declarations for subcontracted delivery annually.   

The largest authority with AEB is London, which controls £323 million annually. A spokesperson did not explain why they do not publish a list of subcontractors, but said “less than ten per cent” of its provision in 2020/21 was subcontracted.   

The two MCAs that do publish lists of subcontractors are West Midlands and Tees Valley.   

Liverpool City Region said it plans to introduce its own list this year.   

Asked whether it plans to place any requirement on MCAs and the GLA to publish their own list of subcontractors, the ESFA said: “They are each responsible for the management of any AEB subcontracting arrangements in their respective areas.” 

Visibility matters – FE Week will do its bit

As the sector’s only dedicated newspaper, FE Week has an important responsibility to reflect the diversity of the FE and skills community. It’s my job as editor to make sure our readers can see themselves in our pages and that we do our bit to hold the sector to account for its diversity deficits, especially in leadership positions. 

That’s why this is the first of what will be an annual diversity audit of FE Week’s pages. This is our first step to show our readers how we are performing in reflecting the diversity of the sector. As such, I am reporting our analysis now as a baseline, and we will publish our performance at the end of the year to our readers.  

We are initially reporting how many women and people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) backgrounds were visible on our front page, as opinion columnists and as people on whom we write profile interviews. 

The number of BAME leaders in FE is ‘scandalously low’

The number of leaders from BAME backgrounds in our sector is scandalously low. Official participation statistics show that 23 per cent of FE students are from non-white backgrounds, and the Education and Training Foundation’s last published analysis of workforce data showed that BAME staff make up 15 per cent of the workforce. Despite that, it’s estimated that only 5-6 per cent of college principals and chief executives are from BAME backgrounds. 

In our last full year of publication, 35 editions between September 2020 and July 2021, 112 faces appeared on the front cover of FE Week. Of those, 55 per cent were women and 18 per cent were BAME people. 

Over that period, only 11 per cent of FE Week opinion columns were authored by BAME writers. We will work hard to increase that this year; however, this does reflect the significant under-representation of BAME people in positions across the organisations from which we typically source expert columnists. Those organisations include the sector’s national bodies, trade associations, political parties and think tanks. This year, we have introduced “The Staffroom”, a new space for the sector’s front-line to write for us, and we have set ourselves an internal target for a BAME “Staffroom” writer every fortnight. 

Our profile interviews are a great way of getting to know influential figures in our sector. Over our 2020/21 publication year, FE Week published 22 profile interviews. Four of them were BAME interviewees and 13 were women. 

‘Join us in the open and honest conversation FE needs’

Visibility in our pages matters, and so do the issues and topics that we cover in them. FE Week is in a unique place to report on and investigate the progress of sector leadership bodies at improving representation within their own organisations and the impact they are having on the wider sector.  

As well as being the place where the difficulties and challenges in diversifying the senior leadership make-up of FE and skills is properly examined and debated, FE Week can also be the place where progress and learning is marked and celebrated. 

The quality of official information on the diversity of the sector’s workforce is poor. We have only a rough understanding of the gender and ethnic make-up of senior leaders in colleges, and we know even less about the people running training providers, and even less about other diversity characteristics, such as disability, sexual orientation and gender identity. 

I hope others will join us in contributing to the open and honest conversation the FE sector needs to continue to have with itself to better reflect the communities we serve. 

Why so secret?: Skills and Productivity Board faces challenge on its silences

The Department for Education has been criticised for failing to release board minutes for a new group of experts who heavily influence skills policy.   

The Skills and Productivity Board was set up in October 2020 and has met seven times to date.   

It includes a chair and team of six “leading skills and labour market economists” who provide independent “expert advice” on how courses and qualifications should align to the skills that employers need post-Covid-19.   

Despite being launched 12 months ago, the DfE has not published a single set of board minutes for any of their seven meetings.   

A department spokesperson said minutes would be published in “due course” – a line they have told FE Week for the past six months.   

FE Week has attempted to contact individual members of the Skills and Productivity Board for information about their work, but they have been sworn to secrecy and told not to talk to the media by the DfE.   

Sue Pember, a former top skills civil servant in the DfE who is now the policy director of adult education network HOLEX, said she had “forgotten about the board” because it has “been invisible”.   

“I would have thought they would have asked us to contribute to the evidence on what is needed locally to support adults into new industries etc,” she added. “I’m surprised they are not publishing minutes or publishing interim reports.”   

Toby Perkins MP, Labour’s shadow minister for further education and skills, is concerned about the secrecy surrounding the board’s work.   

He said: “This is a government that has been plagued by insider meetings and crony contracts. This cannot be allowed to extend to other areas of policy making.   

“At a time when skills shortages and post-16 education has been at the forefront of the political agenda, transparency about government policy making should be paramount. These minutes must be published without delay.”   

Stephen van Rooyen, an executive vice president at international broadcaster Sky, was named as the first chair of the Skills and Productivity Board in September 2020, but he left the position because of “family reasons” in August 2021.   

He has been replaced by Angela Noon, chief financial officer and executive director of industrial manufacturing giant Siemens. Noon chaired her first meeting with the board last month.   

The board’s “remit for 2020 to 2021” was published in November 2020. It was told to prioritise answering the following questions over the next 12 months:   

  • Which areas of the economy face the most significant skills mismatches or present growing areas of skills need? 
  • Can the board identify the changing skills needs of several priority areas within the economy over the next five to ten years? 
  • How can skills and the skills system promote productivity growth in areas of the country that are poorer performing economically? 
  •   

Then education secretary Gavin Williamson said the evidence and analysis the board produces will play a “significant part in addressing the most pressing gaps in our knowledge and understanding of the labour market, helping to rebuild our economy post-Covid-19 and deliver a bold skills agenda”.