Instead, poor mental health is increasing exponentially, currently affecting around one in six young people. It means the role of tutors and other staff is having to extend well beyond teaching.
This is recognised by Ofsted, with inspectors reporting on students’ mental health and wellbeing under the key judgment area of personal development.
As education professionals, we invest ourselves and our lives in supporting students, and pastoral care has become a key priority. But to provide this effectively, staff need to be well supported to look after their own wellbeing.
The aviation analogy of “fit your own oxygen mask before helping other people” is entirely apt here. And this applies to senior leadership teams, too. We need to lead by example ̶ looking after ourselves to ensure we are fully able to support others.
More effective wellbeing strategies needed
Working in a college can be stressful for many reasons. The start and end of each academic year are particular pressure points, with the pandemic bringing constant challenges.
Meanwhile, the mental health and wellbeing of staff and students can be affected at any time for many different, personal reasons. So it’s essential that effective support networks are in place. But much more work is needed to implement effective wellbeing strategies into day-to-day college life.
As a leader, I have never shied away from sharing my own, personal experiences with staff. We are all human and we all experience times of stress and anxiety. I want people to know that if things get too much, you must stop.
To help establish this message, it’s vital to normalise discussions around mental health.
Suggestions for improvement
The appointment of mental health champions in every curriculum area is an effective starting point.
Staff often feel they can approach their peers more easily than HR or SLT – not for specialist advice, but as a vital first point of contact, who can signpost more specialist support.
Colleges can have a dedicated staff development day or regular staff forums – people need a safe space to talk about their experiences and this needs to be an integral part of college life.
This allows specific support to be implemented, aimed at taking a preventative approach. That might range from seemingly small things, such as encouraging positive daily gratitude affirmations and encouraging people not to send emails after 6.30pm or at weekends.
Colleges may also wish to introduce a proactive mental health and wellbeing committee, and training for staff.
Meanwhile, getting a specialist to develop a mental health action plan for your college can be hugely valuable. This helps to establish your starting point, strengths and what needs to be done.
There are also many free training opportunities available. I’ve accessed mental health first aid training in the past for myself and a group of staff volunteers.
This helped to show that no hierarchy exists when it comes to mental health.
Find advocates in college
Importantly, mental health and wellbeing should be articulated to staff as a collective responsibility. I’ve been asked in the past “What is the college doing?”, but I think it’s important to turn this round and ask staff “What do you think we should do?”.
Seeking out and empowering the most passionate people in your organisation to be advocates for staff mental health will positively impact the overall wellbeing of your workforce.
FE has many challenges (from being underfunded to tough workloads), but it is also an incredibly compassionate and caring sector.
The review seems unaware of the sell-by dates of its proposals – and that’s only the beginning, writes Gordon Marsden
As a founder member of the Right to Learn group, which advocates for a statutory right to learn throughout life, I was struck by a number of issues as I ploughed my way through the Department for Education’s level 2 and below qualifications review.
I noticed how little was said in the 90-plus pages about unintended consequences, and the concerns of many in FE that in a rapidly changing world, doors should not be closed.
There was also little mention of what credibility this review might have with employers, wearied by a decade of government “initiatives”.
For example, the review says: “In future, all technical provision including work-based study, such as apprenticeships and classroom-based study, will fit within a single framework built from employer-led occupational standards.”
Easy to say but difficult to do.
Previous ministerial attempts to implement the 2012 Richard review, which called for employer-led apprenticeships qualifications, have been dogged by delay, poor definition and exasperation by employers.
This review also shows scant recognition of the possible “sell-by” dates of these proposals, given the unprecedented transformation across multiple sectors and skillsets in the next decade.
Nor does it pay attention to the huge increase in people who will be self-employed, sole traders and working in co-operatives, which the 2018 Taylor report on the future of work spelled out.
Getting the pipeline right for would-be learners to progress into level 2 and beyond is critical. They need a direction of travel in qualifications that are flexible, not micromanaged by Whitehall.
So while observing that “some adults may struggle to access larger qualifications”, the review proposes qualifications that “focus on the essential knowledge, skills and behaviour for that occupation… They will not include the breadth of route-wide content or transferable skills that are included in the larger qualification”.
So learners risk being stuck in the slow lane on narrow qualifications, with the ghost of Mr Gradgrind in the wings (the cold-hearted school leader created by Charles Dickens who sees people only as machines). It could also mean they only access jobs likely to become obsolete.
Learners risk being stuck in the slow lane
The review talks positively about funding progression for young people in “pre-technical groups”. But the example given is hideously complex: “An entry level 3 qualification providing for an introduction to hospitality and catering will lead directly on to a level 1 hospitality and catering, which in turn will support progression to a related level 2 qualification in hospitality and catering or professional cookery.”
The questions pile up. How long will this take? What might the potential drop-out rate be? How might employers, particularly smaller businesses, respond to such a tortuous process?
Proposals for qualifications supporting cross-sectoral skills are welcome. But restricting them for 16- to 19-year-olds ignores those needing a second chance in the 19-to-24 age range and beyond.
Meanwhile, a large number of older people have exited the workforce since the pandemic, research from the Learning and Work Institute has found. A bonfire of entry-level qualifications could exacerbate that exodus.
Another danger is that proposals to link classroom-based qualifications with apprenticeships risk repeating the sorry history of the past decade and the apprenticeship levy, where we have seen big problems with recruitment and retention.
In early March, FE Week ran a front cover stating “1000s of level 2 and below qualifications face the chop”. The story said 72 per cent of level 2 qualifications for 16-to-19-year-olds, and 61 per cent for adults, could go.
But in 2018/19, 21 per cent of 16-year-olds were studying at level 2 and below. Meanwhile, 57 per cent of ESFA funding went to adults at level 2 and below.
The “far-reaching impact” of colleges on their students and communities was celebrated today, as part of the Association of Colleges’ Beacon Awards.
Some twelve colleges from across the country were honoured during a ceremony in Westminster, with nominations in eleven different categories.
This year’s programme also includes the inaugural winners of the brand new AoC Award for Widening Participation.
“Colleges are brilliant – and the winners of the Beacon Awards are some of the best of the best. Every day colleges are innovating, leading and making change happen,” said David Hughes, chief executive of the AoC.
“If you want to see the further education sector at its best, I recommend you check out the work of the Beacon Winners.”
Winners at the awards included South Devon College, who won The Nous Group Award for Education for Sustainable Development.
Other winners were Burton and South Derbyshire College, who won the British Council Award for Internationalism and Exeter College, winners of the City & Guilds Award for College Engagement with Employers.
“I am always blown away by the work being done by colleges across the country to invest in their local communities, and to equip people with the skills and experiences needed to meet the needs of the economy and get on the path to a good career,” said minister for skills, Alex Burghart.
“These deserving winners are truly changing lives, and it is fantastic to see them being recognised for their work.”
Full list of winners:
The Nous Group Award for Education for Sustainable Development:
South Devon College
The Copyright Licensing Agency Award for Excellence in Supporting Creativity:
Grimsby Institute of Further & Higher Education (TEC Partnership)
The National Centre for Diversity Award for Inclusive Learning Leadership:
Cardiff and Vale College
The AoC Award for Widening Participation:
South Eastern Regional College
The NOCN Group Award for Mental Health and Wellbeing:
Chichester College Group
The British Council Award for Internationalism:
Burton and South Derbyshire College
and Isle of Wight College
The Careers and Enterprise Company Award for Innovation in Careers and Enterprise:
Weston College
The City & Guilds Award for College Engagement with Employers:
Exeter College
The Edge Award for Excellence in Real World Learning:
Walsall College
The Jisc Award for Effective Use of Digital Technology in Further Education:
The Department for Education has set aside £20.9 million to create local skills improvement plans in 38 areas over the next three years as part of its national rollout of the scheme.
First proposed in the FE white paper, the plans aim to make colleges and training providers align the courses they offer to local employers’ needs.
Pilots with eight employer representative bodies (ERBs) were run in 2021, with the first batch of trailblazer local skills improvement plans being published last month.
Now the government is calling on ERBs to express an interest in becoming the designated ERB for a specific local area. The deadline to do so is June 6, 2022.
“The skills for jobs white paper set out an ambitious employer-led approach aimed at making FE provision more responsive to local skills needs and ultimately local economic needs,” the DfE said in a guide for ERBs published today.
“The aim is to forge a stronger and more dynamic partnership between employers and FE providers that will enable provision to be more responsive to skills needs of employers in local labour markets.”
Some £20.9 million has been set aside for 38 areas (10 mayoral combined authorities, plus the Greater London Authority, plus 27 local enterprise partnership areas) over three years.
The DfE said they expect to be able to designate ERBs for specific areas of the country from early autumn 2022 onwards.
It is hoped that “most” of the country will be covered by an LSIP by summer 2023.
Those who can become ERBs include body corporates that are both independent of government and not a public authority or undertaking the functions of a public authority.
The government also announced a new local skills improvement fund being introduced in 2023-24. This funding will be for providers to “collaborate and collectively respond” to the skills priorities their LSIP says is needed.
Each designated ERB will be able to apply for up to £550,000 to support the development, implementation, and reviews of an LSIP for the period up to March 2025.
There will also be £50,000 start-up funding available immediately upon designation, which will be deducted off the final agreed total funding.
The DfE told FE Week that they will set out further details of funding “in due course”.
DfE guidance makes clear that while its intention is for the LSIPs to have traction, ERBs are not being asked to take a direct role in funding or commissioning skills provision. Those powers will “remain with the ESFA and bodies with devolved powers, including MCAs”.
The geography of a specified area for an LSIP will be largely based upon “current functional economic areas” that providers and other relevant stakeholders operate across to ensure LSIPs have traction and can fully achieve their aims.
This means that in areas that already have devolution, LSIPs will mirror the boundaries of combined authorities, MCAs and the GLA.
In other areas of the country, the LSIP specified areas will follow existing LEP geographies except for the south-east region which will form three areas – Greater Essex (Essex, Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock), Kent and Medway and Sussex (East and West Sussex and Brighton and Hove).
Government plans to reform and simplify level 2 and below qualifications risk adding further confusion to the landscape, Ofqual has warned.
The exams regulator has also flagged “significant risk” with the timeline for implementation as the proposals overlap with changes to level 3 qualifications and could “overwhelm” educators.
The DfE claims the current landscape is “confusing” with around 8,000 technical and academic qualifications available at these levels, many of which cover the same or similar subjects.
Ministers now plan to axe thousands of the courses. Sector leaders previously called the proposals “devastating” and a “full-frontal assault on the very idea of lifelong learning” which “fly in the face of the ambition to level up the country”.
Under the plans, the surviving qualifications would be placed into 17 new “groups” – eight at level 2; five at level 1; and four at entry level.
Ofqual has now warned: “At present, there is a risk that the large number of proposed groupings are not sufficiently clear or straightforward for students and others to differentiate between.”
The watchdog said its “expert opinion” is that it would be helpful to “segment, and define, the provision based on aspects such as qualification purpose – in effect, combining those of the 17 proposed groupings that have common features”.
Not only will this aid navigability for students, but also provide “clarity with respect to purpose” which is “critical” to supporting good assessment design by awarding organisations.
“This will help ensure that students are tested on the right things, in the right way, to support them in taking their next step, whether this is into work, an apprenticeship, or further academic or technical study,” Ofqual said.
“School and college leaders will, in turn, have a clearer basis on which to design the associated programmes of study.”
The level 2 and below consultation follows a separate contentious review of level 3 qualifications which proposes to remove funding for most courses – including Pearson’s popular BTECs – that overlap with T Levels and A-levels from 2024.
The DfE said it expects the process for deciding which level 2 and below qualifications will remain to be done in a phased way from 2024 to 2027.
Ofqual pointed out that the proposals at level 2 and below – which were originally intended to follow those at level 3 – will now largely be implemented at the same time.
This poses “significant risks in terms of system capacity, which may impact on students’ ability to engage with the new provision”, according to the regulator.
It will also entail challenges for qualification design as, based on the present timeline, some level 2 qualifications are expected to be developed and approved before the corresponding level 3 qualifications – to which in some cases they are intended to progress – are available.
Ofqual pressed that a more phased implementation process of the plans is required to help secure the quality of the provision and the ability of students, and school and college leaders, to engage with it.
The DfE’s level 2 and below review impact assessment estimated that about a third of those aged 16 to 19 who enrol on the qualifications in scope of the reforms are in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged group.
Ofqual said it is important that aspects of the proposals, such as certain sizes of qualification being available only to certain age groups, “do not remove legitimate choices and opportunities for the students who depend on these qualifications”.
The DfE’s response to the consultation, which excludes GCSEs, functional skills and essential digital skills qualifications, is expected to be published later this year.
Nicki Hay is the second ever chair – and its first female chair – of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers in its history. Can her messaging make the government credit ITPs at last?
“I like to get things done,” Nicki Hay, the new chair of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, tells me. “I’m very much about bringing networks of people together to talk to each other.”
So far, so expected. FE Week first interviewed Hay in 2016, and since then she has gone on to be appointed chair of an organisation representing about 800 independent training providers. It’s a not insignificant role – ITPs now deliver seven out of ten apprenticeships. She’s taking over from long-standing chair Martin Dunford, who has been in post for a mindboggling 18 years, and as such is ushering in a new era for AELP.
Alongside Jane Hickie, chief executive, and Alex Khan, vice chair, Hay is all about connections ̶ improving member links with employers and ministers. Networking is in the blood of the organisation.
And Hay has a great track record on this. Back in 2016, she voluntarily began linking up job centre coaches with training providers, unprompted and with no government contract.
She’d spotted that many coaches in London’s job centres didn’t know too much about apprenticeships, and many unemployed people appeared to be missing out on opportunities.
“So I worked with the National Apprenticeship Service [NAS], and we trained up ‘apprenticeship coaches’ in every job centre across London,” explains Hay, evidently proud. “We educated them about apprenticeships and how to network with providers.”
It’s not as if Hay wasn’t busy herself ̶ she was running a training provider she had founded at the time. Spearheading the project alongside her was Carolyn Savage, then at the NAS and now head of apprentice participation at the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
They approached job centre leads across London to find an “apprenticeship champion”. Hay estimates that over a year and a half, apprenticeship starts from job centres in London rose by ten per cent.
But the pandemic, and trying to do it all voluntarily, led to the initiative “fizzling out”, warns Hay. She is trying to get it back off the ground now.
It seems a no-brainer, I comment. Shouldn’t there be a proper national contract or funding to train apprenticeship coaches in job centres?
Hay nods. “The Department for Work and Pensions and Department for Education need to make sure there’s a policy to make that happen. It shouldn’t be that someone from the National Apprenticeship Service and an ITP come in and run that.”
Hay with her family
It’s not the only area where Hay has stepped in directly to make changes. In 2018 she began working with headteachers and students aged 14 to 19 in Hounslow, west London.
She and a group of training providers devised a free “calendar of activities” for the schools, which aimed to increase exposure to and the status of vocational education among staff, students and parents.
A particularly successful initiative was introducing students to at least ten apprentices.
“We took the apprentices from different industries along to the schools, and the students got cards with questions to ask the apprentices,” smiles Hay. “We had a bell, and the students moved around each of the ten apprentices, asking them questions.
“So when they came away, they knew at least ten different industries, and how they got into the apprenticeship.”
Of course, the programme benefited the training providers too – Hay says the project was partly prompted by ITPs struggling to get young people in the capital into apprenticeship vacancies. But it’s an all-round win-win. Again it’s just a shame that some of Hay’s ideas are not turned into a national programme.
Rolling up her sleeves to juggle multiple plates is a lesson Hay learned from her mum. She was born in Surrey, and her dad was a draughtsman who designed oil rig infrastructures. Her mum a senior manager for Parity Training, a big project management training organisation. She was a key influence in Hay’s life.
“My mother was a real advocate for having a career and a family, and I got that ethos and work ethic from her,” she tells me. “My parents were on a par as breadwinners.” Her own daughters have proven ambitious too, with one completing a level 7 CIPD apprenticeship (an HR strategy qualification) and the other taking the higher education route, studying neuroscience.
After A-levels in PE, English and geography at Farnborough Sixth Form College, Hay went to work at the Co-Op bank. After that she became an insurance underwriter, sitting the exams at 22 years old. “I was the third woman to take the exams,” she tells me. “On the underwriting floor I operated on, there were only two women among a couple of hundred men.”
I was one of two women among a couple of hundred men
She moved on to become a senior manager with ASM, a membership organisation for the freight-forwarding sector (now known as logistics). Age just 26, she was helping provide services to companies moving goods through customs. “And that’s how I got into apprenticeships!” she tells me happily.
She and her team realised there was an ageing workforce, so they worked with a sector skills council to design a youth training scheme (or YTS), a kind of semi-apprenticeship first introduced by Margaret Thatcher in 1983 (and sometimes criticised that they amounted to cheap labour for employers).
But soon ASM – later sold to Quantica Training – was running the largest contract in London for apprenticeships.
Then in 2009 Hay went solo, starting her own provider, Outsource Training and Development.
Again, she showed a flair for business. Focusing on apprenticeships for the aviation sector, the company expanded to 140 staff and worked with British Airways, Virgin and easyJet.
It taught about 800 learners annually, according to Hay, and in 2016 she sold the business for £3 million to Seetec Group (now Seetec Outsource). She stayed for three years, before being headhunted in 2019 for her current role as chief operating officer at Estio Training, a sub-contractor of Seetec Outsource that she knew well.
Interestingly, Estio Training, which specialises in digital apprenticeships, was bought by BPP education group in 2021 – which is the only training provider to hold university status, says Hay. It means the provider can offer apprenticeships from level 2 to level 7.
“They’re really unique – it’s really exciting. With the future, there’s obviously a massive focus on higher level skills,” she says, before adding: “But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten my roots, and how important it is we have level 2 programmes available.”
Hay receiving her MBE from Prince Charles
Now, big policy challenges are on Hay’s plate. She’s worried about the impact of the pandemic on apprenticeship starts, and the fact that small and medium-sized enterprise sector have “disengaged” from the apprenticeship levy, because of the “clunky” digital accounts they must use.
This in turn is impacting on ITPs, who try to sort the issues “on behalf of SMEs,” says Hay. It’s not sustainable, so AELP will be “lobbying to make the digital account simplified for SMEs to use”.
Other priorities include lobbying the DfE to ensure its review of level 2 and below qualifications (the deadline for responses is April 27) does not “negatively impact on sectors, or on opportunities for learners”.
Another interesting point she makes is about the ITP market (already slimmed down on the adult education budget last year by almost 60 per cent).
Overall, she says, 80 per cent of ITPs are currently grade 1 or 2 under Ofsted – for colleges it is 81 per cent (however, almost double the proportion of colleges hit a grade 1: 18 per cent as opposed to ten per cent of ITPs).
But Hay warns: “When the market was opened up under the apprenticeship levy, a lot more providers entered the market. If you split out the new providers from the existing providers, you’d see there’s really high quality with the existing providers operating in that space, which has been a bit distorted with some of the new providers coming in.”
This seems to be backed by the data. Ofsted’s annual report showed that 24 per cent of providers that had a new provider monitoring visit in 2020-21 had at least one ‘insufficient’ judgment. While not strictly comparable, that’s much higher than the three per cent of ITPs to receive an ‘inadequate’ overall judgment for full inspections.
Just this year chief inspector Amanda Spielman said, “We would be very keen to see that proportion decrease, and ideally disappear.”
So what’s to be done? Hay says AELP will support all members to improve, but adds “sometimes it’s about exiting that provider out of the market”.
It’s admirable honesty.
However, as with many ITP bosses, Hay remains fundamentally frustrated at “the lack of recognition for the good work of ITPs” by the DfE and media, who she says focus on colleges (one whole section in AELP’s latest report is called “inequitable treatment”).
There’s a lack of recognition for the good work of ITPs
But there is an important point to press back at AELP here. FE Week has sent out various round robin missives to ITP bosses, as well as college bosses, asking for contributions to its ‘Staffroom’ column and podcast. College leaders usually reply enthusiastically, putting forward staff and students to discuss tricky topics, often within a day.
But with a couple of exceptions, ITPs FE Week has contacted have largely said they either cannot think of anyone to put forward, or have not replied. Similarly, FE Week has requested sector data from AELP that it does not have, while the Association of Colleges has its equivalent.
A charity walk across the Sahara in aid of the Lupus UK charity
However FE Week understands most independent training providers do not have large dedicated marketing and communications teams, making press responses at short notice challenging. This does not, of course, indicate a lack of interest in doing so from providers!
Hay also says she wants to “get ministers to understand independent training providers better”. Yet she got her well-deserved MBE for improving the lives of learners through her job centre and school initiatives.
If ITPs start banging on about learners, rather than themselves, I suspect they will be listened to more often. Having an important message to shout is a lot more powerful than asking to be taken notice of.
It’s a challenge I will leave with Hay. Ultimately, it’s clear that AELP have a super-competent pair of hands at the wheel.
Whatever suggestions she gives the DfE about apprenticeships, they’d be fools not to listen.
Combined authorities might favour ‘bricks and mortar’ provision so training providers need to be ready, writes Jane Hickie
On Thursday next week, large parts of the country will get to vote in this year’s local elections. Many areas will elect their councillors, and in South Yorkshire there will also be a metro mayor election.
While most people are aware that local government is responsible for delivering a range of our local services, we sometimes forget that councillors and mayors are also in charge of a growing amount of post-16 education.
More devolved powers to come
In recent years, there has been more political will to devolve skills policy and funding decisions to local and combined authorities.
This means – at least in theory – that those making decisions about skills provision understand the needs of local learners and labour markets.
We currently have ten devolved city regions across England, each with a directly elected mayor.
Every area has a different ‘devo deal’, meaning varying powers and funding, but all share the commonality of control over the devolved Adult Education Budget (AEB).
This is significant funding for adult skills to the combined tune of £788 million per year, and city regions are in line for more powers, as the government reveals more about its plans for ‘levelling up’ the UK.
The recently published levelling-up white paper sets out plans for every part of England – that wants one – to have a devolution deal in place by 2030.
At least nine more areas are expected to announce devolution deals by the autumn.
This would take the percentage of AEB devolved locally from around 60 per cent to 80 per cent. This in turn casts significant doubt on whether there will ever be an Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA)-led procurement on AEB again.
After last year’s farce, this is perhaps welcome news for many training providers.
What’s the landscape?
In line with ambitions in the white paper, even more skills policy and funding is heading local. Local and combined authorities have just been informed of their allocations for delivering the £270 million for the Multiply programme, which is due to come in from spring this year.
Furthermore, a high proportion of the £1.6 billion national skills fund – including free level 3 adult qualifications and skills bootcamps – is now in the hands of combined authority commissioners, many of whom are already undertaking commissioning exercises.
Despite limited details, we do know that local areas will be administrating the £2.6 billion UK shared prosperity fund.
In short, there are now billions of pounds of skills funding in the hands of local and regional decision-makers – funding that was previously controlled by the ESFA.
Risks and rewards for training providers
It’s clear that there are some risks to further devolution. A diverse approach to commissioning can mean that providers are having to bid for multiple different funding pots, each with different nuances compared to a centralised and uniform system.
There is also the age-old issue of combined authorities favouring ‘bricks and mortar’ provision in localities, putting national providers at a disadvantage in certain areas.
But there are also some great examples of best practice in devolved commissioning. Tees Valley Combined Authority has adopted a 100 per cent commissioning model, treating colleges, local authorities and independent training providers (ITPs) with parity.
However, many others tend to commission in a similar way to the ESFA – with far too much AEB going straight to grant-funded providers, and the scraps being commissioned or subbed out to ITPs.
Regardless of how any of us feels about skills devolution, the horse has well and truly bolted the stable and training providers should be fully aware of the opportunities and challenges that devolution brings.
There is a great opportunity here to demonstrate what they can offer learners and employers up and down the country.
Without doubt, local government now has significant powers to make decisions that reflect the needs of local communities.
So, when we go to vote next Thursday, we should remember it’s not just bin collections, potholes and libraries at stake – but our local skills priorities too.
The Department for Education spent more than £11,000 on canapés and booze for the launch event of its climate change strategy – but civil servants were barred from the buffet.
Nadhim Zahawi launched his education sustainability vision – which included a new natural history GCSE – at the Natural History Museum on Thursday evening last week.
Attendees included adventurer Bear Grylls and Doug Gurr, the museum’s director. While the museum waived its fee for hosting the event, the DfE had to cover catering for the 200 to 250 guests, a spokesperson said.
Taste Studios, trading as “The Recipe”, was given a £11,480 contract to provide the food – about £46 a head. Taste describes itself as a “premium caterer” for “some of the largest and most prestigious events” in London.
Canapés listed on its website include seared duck breast served on sweet potato polenta cake, decorated with comfit cherries.
Or rolled wing of skate with summer truffle stuffing and crispy celeriac sticks. The government said it had to use a caterer from the museum’s list of accredited suppliers.
Staff were “asked not to eat or drink [at] the event” as they were there for work and not as invitees. The Civil Service Code says officials must carry out their “fiduciary obligations responsibly”, making sure public money is used “properly and efficiently”.
The launch “brought together individuals and organisations who can help us implement our strategy in order to galvanise support from them – whether through funding, resources, driving public support and awareness, or encouraging youth engagement”, said a spokesperson.
The government has been on a money-saving mission in schools and colleges – sending in experts to help leaders cut costs. One adviser told a school in 2019 to limit lunch portions for pupils.
