Colleges face “severe financial penalties” if they exit gas contracts with Russian-firm Gazprom, with warnings they face “jumping out of the frying pan into the fire” as energy prices soar.
At least one college and several academy trusts began seeking urgent legal advice this week on whether they can cut ties with the energy firm following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
One council leader said it was “immoral” for public bodies to financially support the Russian “war machine”.
But sector experts warn backing out of contracts is “difficult”. Even if they do, schools and colleges face potentially taking millions of pounds away from education to pay for new deals at much higher prices.
Unions are urging the Department for Education to make “emergency funding” available to cover cancelled contract costs.
Gary Smith, GMB general secretary, said: “Gazprom contracts are morally indefensible. Every pound spent on heating classrooms could end up fuelling Putin’s war machine.”
Colleges face Russian gas moral dilemma
At least one college is attempting to navigate legal quagmires over cutting ties with Gazprom.
The college confirmed it is in the process of reviewing its contractual obligations in light of the war in Ukraine.
But a financial penalty for leaving the contract early is one “potential issue” which is being weighed up, a spokesperson told FE Week.
Graham Burns, education partner at law firm Stone King, said the “current situation in Ukraine would not be a lawful reason to terminate contracts”.
Organisations would have to “consider carefully the terms of their contract and any breakage costs which would apply”.
Tim Golding, head of strategic partnerships at Zenergi, which supports 3,000 schools and 25 colleges to find energy deals, said there are particular problems for those on fixed-term contracts.
“In most cases, it is not possible to come out of given the contractual obligations that were agreed at the point the contract was secured.”
Termination charges would run into the thousands, he added. Organisations on flexible contracts have a “higher chance” of being able to cut ties without huge fees.
Golding estimates that around 20 per cent of colleges in England use Gazprom as their energy supplier.
Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive at the Association of Colleges, said colleges spend 2 per cent of their budgets on energy “so this just adds to a financial problem”.
“But obviously the war in Ukraine and Russian sanctions are at a higher level of seriousness,” he added.
‘Frying pan into the fire’
Chris Felgate, director at Ginger Energy, said cancelling gas contracts in the current market “is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire”.
As well as termination penalties, the price of gas is now “multiple times higher than it was even this time last year” – enough to have a “seriously detrimental financial impacts on any institution”.
Academy trust United Learning told FE Week’s sister publication Schools Week it secured all of its energy for 2021-22 and 50 per cent for 2022-23 and 2023-24 when prices were “vastly lower than they are now”.
The trust said the remainder of this year’s gas contract will likely be £500,000. However, if repurchased at yesterday’s price, it would cost £4.7 million.
“This money would therefore no longer be spent on educationally valuable activity but would instead go back to the oil and gas industry,” a spokesperson said.
“More money would be returned to the Russian state, since the gas we are securing now at a low price would be sold at a much higher price.”
Gazprom supplies 20.8 per cent of non-domestic gas in Great Britain. Golding said they have historical been “very competitive”.
‘Give schools and colleges emergency funding’
Hayley Dunn, business leadership specialist at the Association of Schools and Colleges said, education providers may feel they are “stuck between a rock and a hard place”.
“It is very hard to see how schools and colleges can address this problematic situation on their own and the government needs to step in with sanctions and practical guidance or assistance as soon as possible.”
Gazprom has been banned from raising debt in the UK and accessing its capital markets – but the firm said “nothing has changed” for its customers.
Russian natural gas makes up less than four per cent of the UK’s supply. But business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said he is “exploring options to end this altogether”.
Last week, health secretary Sajid Javid said the NHS in England must stop using energy supplied by Gazprom, PA Media reported.
Students are still much more likely to get good quality careers guidance and advice on going to university than they are about apprenticeships according to the Sutton Trust.
In a new report on the state of careers guidance in secondary schools, the social mobility charity has found that only 10 per cent of 17 and 18 year olds surveyed had received a “large amount” of information about apprenticeships, compared to 46 per cent who said they had received the same amount about university routes.
Published today, ‘Paving the Way’ compiles a survey of 3,140 secondary school teachers and 1,083 pupils and students aged between 11 and 18 from schools and colleges.
Researchers were able to compare results received from state and private schools. They found that 39 per cent of pupils in state secondary schools said that they were not confident in their next steps in education and training compared to 29 per cent of pupils in private schools.
This isn’t the Sutton Trust’s first venture in to researching the effectiveness of careers information, advice and guidance in schools and colleges.
Back in 2014, the trust highlighted how there were significant differences in the quality of careers provision that pupils had access to across the country. The report from eight years ago recommended a stronger national strategy and more effective incentives and statutory duties on schools and colleges to provide high quality guidance on vocational education options as well as university routes.
Today’s report makes depressingly similar recommendations but recognises some of the shifts in spending and policy priorities that have, albeit with questionable success, attempted to improve the careers information offer to young people.
For example, researchers found a positive correlation between engagement with the Gatsby Foundation’s careers quality benchmarks and measures around a student’s career readiness.
On the other hand, the report notes that the Department for Education’s attempts at statutory guidance in 2015 and 2021, the Baker Clause and the work of the National Careers Service and Careers and Enterprise Company still leaves major gaps and variations across different types of schools.
Almost a third (32 per cent) of teachers in state schools said that they don’t have enough funding to deliver good quality careers education and guidance, compared to just 6 per cent in private schools. Whereas around half (51 per cent) of teachers in state schools think there isn’t enough staff time to do so, compared to just over a third (34 per cent) in private schools.
The Sutton Trust’s chief executive, James Turner, is using today’s report to argue for a more differentiated approach which recognises the differences in access to good quality advice and guidance found in state compared to private secondary schools:
“As the government looks to make further changes to the qualifications and funding landscape, it is more important than ever that young people have the information, advice and guidance that they need to feel confident in their next steps.
“The government must urgently develop a new national strategy on careers education and all schools, especially those serving the poorest communities, should be supported to offer the highest-quality provision” he said.
As well as differences in the quality of careers advice and guidance on offer, researchers also found that less than a third of sixth form age students – specifically 17 and 18 year olds – had completed work experience activities.
Further, students in private were more likely than students in state schools to have received careers information in their usual curriculum, dedicated careers conversations with teachers and sessions with a careers adviser. Private school pupils were slightly less likely though to have received advice on local job or career opportunities.
Responding to today’s reports, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) makes the case for career advice as a specialist service undermined by more than a decade of unsuccessful reform and pressures on funding.
ASCL’s general secretary, Geoff Barton, said:
“The main reason that there is variation in careers advice is that the government dismantled the national provision about a decade ago and transferred the responsibility to schools while also squeezing their funding. Since then it has endeavoured to make up for lost ground with only partial success.
“This report draws attention to the need for more information on apprenticeship options, for example, which would certainly be helpful. However, the apprenticeships landscape is complex and difficult to navigate and is a case in point where extensive knowledge of a variety of workplaces and apprenticeship vacancies is needed to deliver this sort of guidance.”
A 60-year-old specialist construction college has appointed its first-ever woman principal.
Nikki Davis was today announced as the next leader of Leeds College of Building, taking the reins from Derek Whitehead at the end of the current academic year.
Peter Norris, Leeds College of Building’s chair of governors, said: “The college is passionately committed to inclusivity in construction and promoting diversity in the workforce, and so we look forward to Nikki commencing her role as principal and chief executive.
“Not only will her appointment ensure seamless continuity, but she also has outstanding knowledge of leadership in the further education sector.”
Davis is currently the college’s vice principal for teaching, learning and quality. She was previously a vice principal at York College, head of department at Kirklees College, and programme manager at Leeds City College.
“I’m delighted to be appointed to the role of principal and chief executive at Leeds College of Building and to build on its previous successes and first-rate tradition of delivering exceptional training to learners from across the UK,” she said.
Leeds College of Building, established in 1960, currently has around 5,500 students and offers more than 200 courses related to construction and the built environment. Over half of the learners are on apprenticeships. In 2019, the college was graded ‘good’ by Ofsted.
Whitehead will be retiring after 37 years of working in FE and skills training. He has worked at Leeds College of Building since 2004 and became principal in January 2019.
He said: “I have genuinely enjoyed all 18 years spent at Leeds College of Building. I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved and being involved in leading such a great team of talented, agile, and responsive staff, together with stakeholder and governor support. I’m delighted to be leaving the college in such good shape at the end of a very rewarding career in further education.”
With more pressures on college costs and teacher starting salaries set to rise to £30k in schools, the gulf between staff pay in schools and colleges will only get wider without DfE intervention, writes David Hughes.
Last week we published a report on the unprecedented challenges facing colleges in recruiting and retaining staff. We did that because college leaders have been telling us that this is their top challenge, hindering their capacity to meet learner needs and to develop their offerings on government priorities such as higher technical qualifications, T Levels, apprenticeships and the lifetime skills guarantee.
Our report highlighted the pay gap between school teachers and college lecturers of over £9,000 as well as the wider gaps in some sectors with industry pay – digital, construction, engineering and health are particularly difficult. The report also set out how student support and other college staff roles are now central to the challenge, with many people leaving good college jobs for higher pay in other sectors such as retail and warehousing.
With inflation now over 5 per cent and pay in some sectors exceeding that, we were concerned that the challenges would get even tougher this year and next.
That was before we started to hear about the eye-watering increases in energy costs that colleges are facing – one college is looking at a threefold increase in gas costs from £106k to over £330k this coming year.
With costs soaring, it is sobering to reflect that college income is likely to modestly increase from August. The spending review last autumn did increase 16 to 18 funding rates by around 8 per cent, but that needs to pay for a 7 per cent increase in hours.
Around half of college income; for adults, HE and apprenticeships, has no funding rate increase at all.
All of that puts colleges once again between a rock and hard place. They know that pay needs to increase, but they also know that the government has not invested enough and at the same time is hawkish on college financial viability. It is a brave college leader who sets a deficit budget, even in such trying times.
That all summarises where our thinking was when we pressed the button to launch our report last week.
Then we saw the DfE’s own submission to the School Teacher’s Review Body (STRB) and we realised that the challenge was even bigger than we had envisaged. In a very detailed and evidenced report, the DfE has asked the STRB to set a new starting salary for school teachers of £30,000, honouring the Conservative Party election manifesto commitment from 2019.
To do that, it expects the STRB to increase pay for new entrants to teaching by 8.9% in 2022/23, followed by a further 7.1% increase in 2023/24 to reach £30,000 within two years. Those sorts of increases are far out of reach for colleges, where starting salaries already are way behind the totemic £30,000 figure.
I’ve written to the Secretary of State asking for a similar analysis of college pay and for a discussion with him to set a similarly ambitious path for college staff. I’ve said that the absence of a mirroring ambition for colleges will hinder the deliver of the Government’s ambitions on skills and levelling up. I’ve also made it clear that it will be increasingly difficult to show college staff that they are valued as much as their counterparts in schools.
None of this is rocket science. The DfE’s own submission to the STRB puts it succinctly: “….targeting pay awards at early career teachers through the £30,000 starting salary commitment therefore remains the best opportunity for supporting recruitment and retention overall.”
I couldn’t agree more; and what is good for schools and school staff surely has to be good for colleges and their staff?
A multi-award winning college on the remote border with Wales has flung its doors open to the public in every possible way. Jess Staufenberg explores the grounds
It would be easy to see Derwen College as a hidden-away, far-flung provider which even its own locals might forget was there.
First off, it’s by far the most remote FE provider I’ve ever visited. I actually have to travel through another country – Wales – on the train, before crossing back into England and finally reaching my destination village, the amazingly named Gobowen. I’m disoriented enough to wonder vaguely why the train conductor keeps translating everything into a mystery language, before realising how far west I’ve come and that it is, of course, Welsh.
In fact the journey is so long (and the wifi so unenthusiastic) that my languages app has me practically fluent by the time I arrive (“rwy’n ar goll”, should you ever need it, means “I am lost”).
Then the route to the college itself is a good 20-minute walk along a stretch of road to reach a modest gate announcing ‘Derwen College’. Residential housing has ended, and only the occasional car shoots past.
But the special educational needs provider benefits hugely from its remote location. Step through the gates, and it becomes clear the college has vast amounts of space: 52 acres in total.
On a tour I go past orchards, a walled garden, commercial greenhouses, a garden centre, a period drama-esque building plus restaurant, a “nurture centre” for learners with profound and multiple learning difficulties, huge games pitches and a fully functioning hotel. Yes, a hotel. Oh, and a vintage shop.
The college’s vintage shop which opened this year
It’s more like arriving at a self-sufficient village than a college. Of the 150 students, 75 are residential, arriving from all over the country (and 22 learners are from Wales, according to Ofsted inspectors in 2021).
Learners achieve well, with a 100 per cent pass rate on average for those on accredited courses, according to the college data team.
Currently 83 per cent of learners are doing an accredited award in one of the college’s four specialisms: horticulture, hospitality and food, retail, and performing arts.
Other learners are on study programmes to develop independence. Three learners with the highest needs attend the specially equipped nurture centre, which opened in September.
The institution itself was founded 95 years ago by Agnes Hunt, later to become a dame for setting up the college and a nearby hospital. Back then, using the language of the day, it was called ‘Derwen Cripples’ Training College’.
Offensive terminology aside, Hunt was determined that disability should be no barrier to opportunity: she herself had brutal personal experience of it, living in terrible pain from a condition called osteomyelitis (inflammation of the bones).
But that history is hidden away on the college website, just as the college is hidden away geographically; and the provider could have chosen to remain closed in on itself, self-sufficient and self-contained.
Yet the staff team, led by principal Meryl Green, has been seriously putting Derwen on the map. Last year it won ‘specialist provider of the year’, it’s currently shortlisted in the Association of Colleges’ Beacon Awards for 2021/22, and its sports and leisure coordinator, Steve Evans, recently won Pearson’s ‘excellence in special needs education’ award.
Meryl Green, chief executive at Derwen College
I sit down to lunch opposite Green, who exudes a powerful and reassuring college matriarch vibe. Just as in the garden centre, it is students who are serving us in the Walled Garden café, overseen by catering staff.
It’s at this point I realise what’s been unusual so far: I’ve yet to see anyone sat behind a desk (bar the receptionist).
“The way we deliver, we have very few classrooms. You’re sitting in one,” nods Green, gesturing around us. “Our classrooms are our vocational areas. It has evolved like this over time.”
During lockdowns, when many organisations were just trying to keep afloat, Derwen College managed to open two more of its “classrooms” – The Vintage Advantage Charity Shop and a food takeaway service.
“Lots of our external work experience placements had to close, and we had to close the Orangery too,” continues Green, referring to the college’s restaurant which, like the café, shop, hotel and garden centre, are all open to the public.
“So we set up an on-site takeaway!” Students designed the menu, emailed it out to staff, staff said what they wanted, and students prepared the food. “It was a very neat way of still giving them those skills development opportunities.”
The same issue was facing the college’s retail students, and so the vintage shop was launched. Reader, I can only say that if it was in north London, it would be gutted in a single day.
Two more warehouses on site are filled with donations, a staff member tells me. FE Week can confirm the quality was so good, it bought itself a dress.
“Everyone at home during lockdown was having a sort out, so it was the right timing, too,” smiles Green. The college plans to open another vintage shop if possible, with all proceeds going to teaching and learning.
It even turns out that the café in the waiting room at Gobowen train station, where I arrived earlier, is run by Derwen College students.
“It’s very good training for students – it’s all rush, and then it’s all quiet,” explains Green. “We will always look for a creative solution to a problem if we can, and see everything as an opportunity.”
The public-facing approach is perhaps most impressively demonstrated by Hotel 751, which has three bedrooms and was set up in partnership with Premier Inn about seven years ago (it takes its name from being the 751st in the chain).
Natalie and Nathan, hospitality students at Hotel 751 on campus
Even more ingeniously, the college has co-developed a video app that can take students through every step of their jobs.
This enables them to gain independence while training, rather than losing confidence and having to continually ask for help, explains teacher Katie Roberts.
One video, for instance, shows somebody knocking on a bedroom door and saying “housekeeping”, before going through the next steps, with verbal instructions overlaid. It’s a simple, brilliant idea.
Building self-esteem is central to Steve Evans’s work as sports and leisure coordinator at the college, who now oversees about 20 sports and activities at the provider. Back in 2014 he piloted the Duke of Edinburgh scheme with 11 students.
“We’d never done anything like that before. They’d never been away from college overnight, and I guess because of additional needs and medical conditions, it could have been a daunting prospect,” he tells me.
Some parents challenged him on whether he should be “taking my child canoeing down the River Severn,” he says. He gradually won them over, and today 60 students are doing the DofE award.
A more recent innovation has been to offer students a variety of activities to start their day at 9am, he continues. These range from high-intensity training to more gentle swimming, depending on whether they would benefit from “becoming more energised or feeling calmer” ahead of study.
It’s a hackneyed phrase, but for Evans there’s evidently no limit on what’s possible. The activities he hopes students can try are often out of the comfort zone of most able-bodied, neurotypical people, for instance.
“We’re looking at a climbing wall, and I’m looking at open water swimming, too. I like breaking down barriers. It is incredibly inspiring seeing what they can achieve.”
Orla, a hospitality student, at check in for Hotel 751
This message is led on by the students themselves. I’m back in reception, and Amy, a performing arts student, dances through the double doors (she most recently played the lead role of Belle in Derwen College’s production of Beauty and the Beast.
By the way, the college also has a signed dance group, and a ‘DC Narrators’ group – students who deliver storytelling in schools).
Amy, who is partially sighted, is clearly pleased at having got her DofE gold award, and brilliantly blunt about the bits she’d have happily skipped: “I came home smelling like the woods,” she grins. “But I’m happy, because now all my relatives are fighting to take me to Buckingham Palace.”
What does she think of Derwen College?
“My primary school was horrible. In high school I never really developed my confidence, and my other two colleges ̶ they were good but there wasn’t enough drama.
Here, there’s lots of drama, and I really like being residential.” Her next project at college is a play dealing with ‘acceptance’. “Just because we’re different, it doesn’t define us.”
Horticulture and agriculture students in the greenhouses
Through its huge efforts, Derwen College is helping prepare more students with additional needs for properly independent lives.
Last year 28 per cent of students went on to get jobs, both paid and voluntary, and 28 per cent went to their local college or training programme, including supported internships.
Meanwhile, 44 per cent went into other settings outside their family home, such as supported living.
They’re good outcomes, but it shows the world has a long way to go in offering these students full roles in society. Only at Derwen have I been perfectly served lunch or shown into a hotel room by someone with Down Syndrome. Why never before?
To bring that better world into being, Derwen College is modelling it here. That’s why its huge emphasis on bringing the public into its spaces matters so much.
Amy concludes for me with a grin. “Derwen has been the final and most craziest chapter of my childhood I can remember.”
A training provider that received an ‘inadequate’ rating in its latest Ofsted inspection has accused the regulator of conducting a “procedurally flawed” inspection and a report that contains “factual inaccuracies”.
Quest Vocational Training Limited (QVT) was inspected by Ofsted on November 9, 2021. Inspectors published their findings last week, saying that the provider was inadequate in three out of five areas.
Ofsted said that leaders at QVT had not made sure that all apprentices received their entitlement to off-the-job training and that in some cases, apprentices had to complete their studies in their own time, contrary to funding rules.
Inspectors also found that “far too many QVT apprentices, particularly the majority who work in adult care settings, are not making good progress at learning enough new knowledge or participating wholeheartedly in their programmes of learning”.
However, the provider has hit back, saying it will challenge the findings of the report as it faces being kicked out of the apprenticeships market under government rules.
“We are currently engaging with the formal processes set out by Ofsted with regards to challenging this report, the contents of which we vehemently dispute,” a spokesperson for QVT told FE Week.
“We are disappointed with the comments made within the report, the factual inaccuracies contained within along with a disproportionate emphasis on matters which were beyond our control through the pandemic.”
QVT is a training provider based in Ferndown in Dorset. It provides training for apprentices employed in health and social care, residential care, early years practitioner and, most recently, information technology technical sales (IT technical sales).
At the time of the inspection, QVT had 675 apprentices, around two thirds of whom were studying an adult care programme at level 2 to 5.
Some 148 apprentices had self-declared learning difficulties or disabilities and almost all apprentices were adults over 18 years of age.
Ofsted said that too many QVT apprentices are not making good progress with their learning.
“For example, apprentices are not consistently improving their English and mathematics skills, largely because they do not have enough direct support from trainers to enable them to use the online learning system effectively,” the report said.
Ofsted inspectors claimed that apprentices’ knowledge of fundamental British values, and the risks associated with radicalisation and exploitation are not routinely revisited by trainers during the apprenticeship.
“This means apprentices do not always remember or understand fully, such knowledge. Young apprentices have an insufficient knowledge of what sexual harm is and what constitutes a healthy relationship. Apprentices do not recall being provided with information, advice and guidance about their career paths during their programme.”
Inspectors found that leaders at QVT do not ensure that they meet the principles and requirements of an apprenticeship.
“They have not made sure that all apprentices receive their entitlement to off-the-job training. In some cases, apprentices must complete their studies in their own time, contrary to funding rules,” the report said.
According to the report, leaders have not ensured that the training for adult care apprentices is good enough.
“While QVT staff are passionate about the adult care sector and understand well the challenges faced by apprentices and employers due to Covid 19, they have not planned, adjusted, or implemented the curriculum well enough,” the report added.
Ofsted said that training for care apprentices is “based too much on training them to pass units of their qualification, rather than developing new knowledge, skills and behaviours over time”.
“Too many apprentices who already have extensive experience of the care sector are not learning anything new,” inspectors said.
One issue identified in the report was that most care apprentices do not enjoy learning online, which is their main form of teaching.
The report added that trainers provide apprentices with online learning because employers are not providing them with sufficient time off work to participate in face-to face learning sessions.
Ofsted’s findings were rejected by QVT.
“The report follows an inspection that we consider was procedurally flawed and on that basis the report is an inaccurate and unfair reflection of the services that we provide,” the QVT spokesperson told FE Week.
“Our staff and the employers we work with will not recognise us from the comments made within the report. We will continue to challenge the report through the appropriate legal mechanisms and until such time as the challenges have been satisfactorily concluded, we are not in position to comment further.”
An Ofsted spokesperson told FE Week: “We do not comment on individual complaints, but we take all complaints received seriously and carefully consider whether any action is required before we publish our inspection report.”
Director of Teaching, Learning and Quality Improvement, Basingstoke College of Technology
Start date: January 2022
Previous Job: Learning, Development & Quality Lead (Apprenticeships), Fareham College
Interesting fact: Louise is a qualified wedding celebrant and gained a love for travel and culture after living in Italy and Australia
Cheri Ashby
Deputy Chief Executive, Activate Learning
Start date: March 2022
Previous Job: Group Executive Director, Activate Learning
Interesting fact: Cheri spent her childhood in the land-locked country of Zimbabwe dreaming of life on the ocean. She is now a qualified sailor, though prefers fair-weather salining and spending winter months on dry land
Karen Carroll
Operations Manager, 1st for EPA
Start date: February 2022
Previous Job: Head of Quality and Assessment, GBS Apprenticeships
Interesting fact: Karen is a reflexologist and loves to upcycle furniture
Adam Goldstein
Chief Operating Officer, NCFE
Start date: February 2022
Previous Job: Chief operating officer, Astrea Academy Trust
Interesting fact: Adam is a huge supporter of volunteering and he is currently the chair of Barnet and Southgate College and a trustee for the learning disability charity, Macintyre
Ray Olive
Chair, T Level Ambassador Network
Start date: February 2022
Concurrent Job: Assistant Director of People and OD, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust
Interesting fact: Ray is a qualified sailing instructor and has sailed in every ocean on the planet
The ESFA is an executive agency of the Department for Education and is responsible for funding education and skills for children, young people and adults.
They said they are looking for somebody to lead what they called “one of the most high-profile and high-performing agencies in government”.
The job pays £125,000, and whoever takes the role will be able to do flexible working, full-time or a job share, and will be able to work from a number of locations across the UK.
“This high-profile and high-impact role requires someone who is visionary, inventive and rigorous,” the job advert said.
“You must not be afraid to advocate ideas and exploit new opportunities; and will have the ability to build trusted relationships to secure practical change.”
Whoever takes on the role will be personally accountable to parliament for safeguarding public funds and ensuring value for money for the taxpayer.
“As Accounting Officer, the CEO supports the permanent secretary at the Public Accounts Committee and engages directly with the National Audit Office,” the job advert said.
Other key responsibilities include leading the establishment of the new agency following the recent review of the ESFA and the Future DfE reorganisation of the department.
The new chief executive will be expected to develop a commitment to a “renewed vision for the ESFA” and harness the “strong pride that ESFA staff exhibit in their work”.
It was recently announced that the DfE is taking back policy responsibilities from the ESFA.
The DfE said that it will absorb post-16 policy and delivery functions from the agency from April 1, 2022.
The recent review of the EFSA said that the agency should focus on it’s “core funding role” and that that the DfE should form a single “consolidated” unit for all post-16 skills policy.
The new chief executive will replace John Edwards who was appointed interim chief executive and accounting officer of the agency in July 2021.
When Milner left, she sent a letter to staff saying there was an “important role for me to undertake in the area that I call home and that feels important to do, to try and make a contribution, most especially in the context of recovery from the pandemic”.
She had joined the ESFA from the Care Quality Commission, where she was an executive director.
College students are having their Turing and Erasmus international placements cancelled in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine, FE Week has learnt.
The British Council told FE Week that trips to Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are suspended for the time being and wouldn’t be eligible for funding. Trips planned to the broader region have also been affected.
FE Week spoke to one college who said they have cancelled Turing trips for 12 students, who were travelling to the Czech Republic, due to parents’ fears about safety.
However, the exact number of cancellations across international placement schemes is uncertain, and the Association of Colleges stressed it is too early to say whether there will be widespread mobility cancellation as a result of the crisis.
Emma Meredith, international director at AoC, told FE Week that some planned trips are not going ahead, and that others will “no doubt need to be cancelled – particularly to the broader region”.
“It is a concern for colleges trying to plan visits about whether they can go ahead. In many cases, they may decide to postpone or cancel trips, if they feel it’s too risky for that to go ahead, because they wouldn’t want to compromise student safety.
“It’s about being mindful of what the partners on the ground are saying as well. They may say, ‘Look, even if we are 1,000 miles from the border, it’s not a good time’.”
Meredith stressed that colleges should follow Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office travel advice when making decisions on whether trips should go ahead.
She noted that some mobility trips may be scheduled for later in the spring or summer and not necessarily due to take place immediately.
She also said that FCDO travel advice can change quickly and colleges will adapt accordingly.
At the time of publication, FCDO advice was that travellers should not visit Ukraine, Russia or Belarus.
“We advise against all travel to Ukraine and that British nationals should leave Ukraine immediately if they judge it is safe to do so,” a spokesperson from the FCDO told FE Week.
The Department for Education told FE Week that all Turing Scheme participants should comply with FCDO travel advice.
The British Council, which currently helps runs the Turing scheme, told FE Week that the scheme is the UK government’s programme and so the delivery partner will always follow their guidance on such issues.
The delivery partner’s guidance to participating organisations states that FCDO travel advice must be adhered to.
This will mean that Turing Scheme trips to the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are suspended for the time being and wouldn’t be eligible for funding.
FE Week asked the DfE for data about how many placements would be cancelled as a result. They said they were unable to provide this information, in part due to the sensitive nature of the situation.
Trips to the broader region cancelled
The Turing scheme is a student exchange programme established by the DfE in 2021 as a replacement for the European Union’s Erasmus Programme following Brexit. Last year, when it opened, 110 colleges and training providers were awarded funding under the scheme.
Greater Brighton Metropolitan College confirmed they had taken the decision to cancel an upcoming trip to Prague through the Turing Scheme in response to concerns from students’ parents about their safety. This affected 12 students on travel and tourism and business courses.
“In terms of Erasmus, we have a two-year transnational project with a college in the Czech Republic and one in Finland. In collaboration with the principals of these two colleges, we are assessing whether we should delay the remaining activities for this academic year to next year,” a spokesperson for the college said.
Other colleges said they are keeping a close eye on the situation and prioritising student safety.
“Oldham College has plans for a group of digital students to visit Aachen in Germany as part of the Turing Scheme,” a spokesperson from Oldham College in Greater Manchester, told FE Week.
“We are not planning to cancel anything at this time as our learners are not due to visit until June. However, we are watching the situation closely as their safety is our top priority.”
Sheffield College said it had two Turing Scheme trips planned to the Netherlands and Portugal which are due to take place this summer.
“We will continue to monitor the wider situation. The safety of our students and staff is our utmost priority,” they said.
The Turing Scheme recently opened registrations for schools, colleges and universities for the second year of the scheme.
The opening of registrations for the 2022/23 academic year, enables organisations to begin planning their applications to secure funding that enables students, learners and pupils, including those from disadvantaged and non-traditional backgrounds, to undertake study or work placements around the world.
