“We were not able to award the contract for the development of this T Level to an awarding organisation during the recent wave four procurement exercise,” it said.
The agency added that it cannot commit to a date when work on the human resources T Level, which was due to be rolled out in September 2023, might start again.
The qualification has now been removed as an option for 2023, meaning the number of T Levels has dropped to 23.
“We will publish an update when there is more information on this T Level in the future,” the agency promises.
The cultural, heritage and visitor attractions T Level was the last to be removed, which also happened last July, due to there being “insufficient employer demand” for a new technical qualification in that field.
Rollout of T Levels began last September with three qualifications in the first wave: digital, construction and education and childcare.
In September 2021, a further seven will start being taught in classrooms; while an extra six will rollout in 2022.
2023 is set to a big milestone in the rollout, with a further seven qualifications being introduced and providers at Ofsted grade three and four being allowed to start delivery, though only of the digital, construction, education and health and science T Levels for the first year.
The remaining new T Levels being delivered from 2023 are legal services; hair, beauty and aesthetics; craft and design; media, broadcast and production; catering; animal care and management; and agriculture, land management and production.
A new apprenticeship provider has expressed its “frustrations” with the validity of an Ofsted report that now threatens its ability to recruit.
MRG Services UK Limited’s 76 apprentices were found to “not develop substantial new knowledge, skills and behaviours” among a litany of criticisms, in a monitoring report published on Tuesday that resulted in ‘insufficient progress’ judgments in every area.
Inspectors discovered “too many cases” where the apprentices, studying the level 5 operations/departmental manager, level 2 fenestration (glass-fitting), or level 3 and 4 business and teaching standards were “simply deepening their understanding of topics and consolidating existing skills”.
Inspector had ‘very limited contact time’
But the Merseyside-based provider has hit back, saying that while it accepts the inspection process is “vital” to ensuring improvement, “our frustrations, which have unfortunately continued through the complaint process, centre on the validity of evidence in the one-and-a-half-day visit”.
Inspectors, the provider said, visited while many of the staff were still working from home or furloughed, which “inevitably led to very limited contact time”.
The inspector covering themes one and two of the inspection – ensuring that the provider is meeting all the requirements of successful apprenticeship provision, and ensuring that apprentices benefit from high-quality training that leads to positive outcomes – did so from home, allegedly.
As such, they did not have direct access to any observations of teaching and learning, MRG’s enrichment programme, session evaluations, or action reports, the provider claimed.
Ofsted comments ‘not based upon fact’
The report says leaders “do not have an accurate oversight of apprentices’ progress”, so do not adequately support learners who fall behind.
A lack of challenge from the governing board meant apprentices receive a “poor” standard of training.
Tutors do not teach the curriculum for the level 5 standard in a “logical order”, with apprentices attending monthly management workshops and having to choose online topics to learn in between them.
Yet MRG says the comments regarding its delivery “are not based upon fact”.
Ofsted also found the provider did not have “effective safeguarding arrangements in place”, and do not carry out “appropriate checks” when hiring new people.
Apprentices did not know who to report safeguarding concerns to at MRG, and only knew how to keep themselves safe in the workplace because of training by their employer, Ofsted said.
MRG Services said they take safeguarding “very seriously”, adding: “We must seek to maintain a robust system.”
However, they also said they would challenge the overarching judgments.
“Thankfully, the due process is for a repeat visit to take place within a very short period of time, when we believe that our frustrations over the validity of this monitoring visit will be vindicated.
“We welcome this further visit at Ofsted’s earliest convenience.”
Provider was praised for up-to-date learning
The inspectorate did say apprentices nearing the end of their programme understand the requirements of their assessment.
Leaders were also praised for providing subject-specific training for staff, so tutors attend leadership development webinars on “agile leadership”.
Tutors develop their occupational knowledge and provide learners with up-to-date learning.
The board is made up of civil servants and its role is to “provide oversight, decision-making and assurance across the skills reform portfolio to ensure that the key aims of the reform are delivered”, according to a Department for Education spokesperson.
It is intended to be the “key governance mechanism” for the skills reform delivery portfolio. The board is meant to thrash out solutions for any problems that arise with the portfolio and advise on decisions that cannot be resolved by individual civil servants.
DfE wants to ‘best possible selection’ for skills board chair
But the hunt for somebody to become the independent chair for this “high-profile” and “exciting” opportunity has proved problematic.
The role, offering a three-year term with £400 per meeting for 12 90-minute meetings a year, was originally opened for applications in April, with a deadline of May 10.
Asked why they had gone back out to advert, a DfE spokesperson said: “Given the importance of the role, we want to ensure that we have the best possible selection of candidates available. We have therefore extended the advertisement application period to allow for this.”
The DfE refused to disclose how many people, if any, had applied in the first round.
Chair has to be able to think ‘independently’
Last year, the DfE appointed Sky executive Stephen van Rooyen to lead its new Skills and Productivity Board, advising the government on how courses and qualifications should align to the skills that employers will need following the pandemic.
Richard Pennycook
The Skills Reform Board is different and is being chaired on an interim basis by the DfE’s lead non-executive board member, former Co-Operative Group chief executive Richard Pennycook. It has met three times since its formation three months ago.
The government has been recently rolling out a multitude of new skills and further education programmes and reforms.
Further reforms, such as new intervention powers for the education secretary and a local skills improvement plans, will be coming in future years once the Skills Bill is put into law.
Applications for the Skills Reform Board chair will close on July 18, and the DfE hopes to announce the appointment in September.
An advert on the Cabinet Office’s Public Appointments website reveals the department is looking for “someone who is confident and constructive in their approach, and who can think both broadly and independently”.
Candidates have to show experience of working at a high level in business or at another organisation, with senior-level management in addition to, or in place of, board experience.
Extensive experience of risk management is also essential, as is an understanding of how to deliver “complex and board programmes/ portfolios” and an ability to think strategically.
Roger Taylor, the former chair of Ofqual, who oversaw the grades fiasco last summer, has spent much of his life thinking about transparency and data. Here he says no algorithm would ever have worked ̶ and why BTECs were not the main focus
“An unsolvable problem.” That is how Roger Taylor, former chair of Ofqual, describes what the regulator was tasked with in 2020. To devise a statistical model for awarding grades when nobody was sitting exams that was accurate, did not cause inflation and was acceptable to the public. “An unsolvable problem,” he repeats.
Since resigning at the end of last year, Taylor has kept quiet. But from last week he has been talking. Because he was not an employee, he is not forbidden by contract from speaking out – a rare privilege among ex-top decision-makers.
It’s a power Taylor has wielded before. He publicly demanded that the education secretary Gavin Williamson stop taking credit for Ofqual’s decision to switch to teacher-moderated grades (which worked). Taylor also published the non-disclosure agreement Ofqual was asking algorithm experts to sign, after being criticised for its contents. In contrast to ex-chief regulator Sally Collier, who has been almost silent, Taylor has been free to speak up, and even call people’s bluff.
But why speak now? It’s six months since Taylor resigned. No one has been blaming him much for last year’s grading fiasco, including BTEC results being delayed for weeks. Williamson has taken most of the blame.
Yet Taylor has taken the rather unusual step of publishing an essay last week with the Centre for Progressive Policy, titled: “Is the algorithm working for us?”. Chapter One looks at “The 2020 exam debacle: how did it happen?”. Of course, by producing a defence, Taylor risks bringing criticism back on to his head. It’s a bold move.
When we meet virtually this week, Taylor is sitting at a desk behind which hangs a tasteful painting and two shelves packed with vinyl records. He has a lively, intelligent face and unpacks his ideas rapidly. He’s a PPE graduate from Oxford, with an MSc in economics, and is a former Financial Times journalist who reported on tech before moving into data technology businesses.
“It was very, very intense,” he says of the period when Ofqual started to design a grading model. “There was an incredible effort made by everyone to try to make something that was workable.”
With Sally Collier, speaking at the select committee discussing Ofqual’s role in T-levels
The uproar about the moderated results meant Ofqual switched, last minute, to school-based assessments for GCSEs and A-levels. This in turn meant that Pearson followed suit at the 11th hour with BTECs – pulling all their results the night before to bring them in line with the higher grades being handed to schools. BTEC students faced losing their places in further and higher education, as the clock ticked on for weeks until all results were issued.
Taylor’s point is that policymakers didn’t realise how much students would feel the government had risked their futures.
He points out Ofqual “is constitutionally obliged under law to prevent grades from inflating”. Education ministers were adamant: no grade inflation.
But “from the point of view of the individual citizen, the problem looks different. They see that the government has denied them the chance to demonstrate that they deserve a university place […] It has put their future at risk.”
With regards the BTECs delay, he adds: “We could have worked out early on that this approach was not an acceptable route and planned accordingly – which would have avoided the distress to students, including BTEC students, as well as the problems for university.”
On the BBC discussing death rates in hospitals as part of his work with Dr Foster
Policymakers assumed they should offer the same number of higher education places as normal, and fill them as accurately as possible. Instead, Taylor says inflation (inaccuracy) should have been allowed, and more places made available.
His argument is essentially one about the difference between accuracy and legitimacy. “People are not willing to accept their lives being affected by a decision-making process driven by predictive algorithms,” says Taylor. “We risk missing this very basic lesson, if we comfort ourselves with the idea that the algorithm malfunctioned.”
In a way, Taylor is saying the mistake was basically a PR one; a failure to understand human psychology. “Teacher-assessed grades are in many ways more biased than the moderated grades,” he continues. “Their advantage is not that they are less biased; the advantage is that they allow for a significant amount of inflation.”
So why didn’t Ofqual spot the PR problem sooner?
“That is something everyone involved needs to reflect on.” He points out Ofqual’s consultation showed a degree of consensus. When asked about “the relative weight that the model should place on historical evidence of centre performance” (a bone of contention for many) 54 per cent agreed, with fewer (33 per cent) against.
Yet even if Ofqual didn’t spot the problem earlier, they were told about it later. The education select committee published a strongly worded warning in July, but still Ofqual persisted. Why not drop the model?
Taylor has a curious answer to this. “My view on that is you very quickly risk the regulator getting involved in what are properly political decisions. My own stance on that is quite conservative: politics is for politicians.” The answer is a tricky one, as Ofqual is an independent body, accountable to parliament – not a blind executioner of DfE will.
The question of Ofqual’s independence continues, as Williamson has appointed his own policy adviser to become chief regulator. Meanwhile, the government’s go-to person to lead expert reviews, Ian Bauckham, is now the chair.
Another big criticism levied at Ofqual was a lack of transparency. If Taylor draws a line on how “political” Ofqual should have been, he also draws a line on how transparent.
He himself is an author of a book on transparency, which he self-deprecatingly says “about three people have read”. Published in 2016, it is called Transparency and the Open Society. It makes the case, says Taylor, for transparency with certain limits. In a sense, it’s the same approach Taylor took with the algorithm itself.
Why didn’t Ofqual share the algorithm model?
“If you tell everyone about it, there is a risk of it leading to gaming,” responds Taylor. But surely sharing it with expert statisticians is not the same as sharing it with “everyone”? Yet Taylor holds that no standardisation model would ever have worked. They are simply unpalatable to the individual.
If you tell everyone about it, there is a risk of it leading to gaming
He is frank, meanwhile, about the focus on GCSEs and A-levels rather than BTECs. He says that at a political level in 2020 “there was a lot more focus on general qualifications” than on vocational qualifications “primarily because of the consequences around university admissions”.
Across government, “we are not on the whole focused enough on getting vocational qualifications working the way they need to”. It’s “not a problem that Ofqual can fix on their own.”
Then there was the delay in communicating what to do about qualifications for occupational competence, such as licences to practice. General qualifications are mostly used to “rank candidates”, explains Taylor, while licences to practice must ensure someone has an exact skill set. So estimating grades would have meant “exposing people to risks”. The regulator decided these exams should be sat later.
The licences to practice are an example of assessments that Ofqual saw as outside what the algorithm could responsibly do – although in the end, of course, this turned out to be the case for all qualifications: general, vocational and occupational.
Overall, Taylor deserves real credit for trying to make us think about the possibilities and limitations of algorithms, and the difference between accuracy and legitimacy.
He cares about digital technology in public services. He previously founded a company, Dr Foster, which drew data together about hospitals, and he has worked for the Careers and Enterprise Company. He becomes passionately frustrated as he explains the DfE should ensure every student has a “digitised record” of their achievements and qualifications.
It would allow students to keep their qualifications in one place (the biggest request from students to Ofqual are for copies of certificates, he says) while allowing others to “look at students in context”. It could particularly help disadvantaged learners, who often have a “thinner file”.
If people had richer individual education records … it might be a less pressurised situation
It might even alleviate the 2020 situations of the future, says Taylor, because “if people had richer individual education records and realised their fate didn’t hang on a single grade, but a more nuanced judgment, it might be a less pressurised situation”.
His belief in the smart use of data made the grading fiasco “quite painful to me personally”, Taylor reflects.
“I’ve spent most of my life looking at […] how do we use data that is fair to people and particularly in ways that empower individuals.” Instead the “government was using data in a way that was deeply and massively insensitive to individuals”. The son of a philosophy academic, Taylor seems to have been genuinely mulling the philosophical problems – and opportunities – of statistical modelling in education since he departed.
There are some holes in his answers. There is also a hole in his solution: this week, teachers warned that students with top grades had got no higher education offers, because universities had awarded too many places last year. In a way it goes to show, algorithm or no algorithm, every solution was deeply flawed.
I ask Taylor why he stepped down.
“Whatever you think about 2020, my view is that Ofqual is a world-class organisation. There’s not many organisations that understand assessment.” He laughs. “2021 is going to be a difficult year. It wasn’t going to help Ofqual’s case to have the same grey, old bloke in place.”
Perhaps, however, Ofqual has lost one of its most open communicators.
Providers are being blocked from offering traineeships to 16- to 18-year-olds as the government drags its feet on a “market entry exercise” that was promised last October.
Sector leaders are warning that the issue, described as “barmy”, will put the nail in the coffin of chancellor Rishi Sunak’s target to triple the number of starts this year.
While recruitment of 19-to-24 traineeship learners is reportedly seeing a boost following an albeit delayed tender, the growth of 16 to 18s is faltering as no such exercise for this age group has been forthcoming.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency is understood to be relying mainly on colleges with 16-to-19 study programme contracts to ramp up delivery but is now conceding they will need to expand the independent training provider market to achieve significant growth.
A 16-to-18 “market entry exercise” was promised last year but it is still yet to get off the ground. The ESFA continues to tell FE Week that it will be launched in “due course”.
Let Me Play Ltd, which won a £3 million contract to deliver 19-to-24 traineeships this year, is one provider pleading with the agency to give it the opportunity to deliver the pre-employment programme to 16 to 18s.
Its co-founder and director, Matthew Lord, said: “We work with 16- to 18-year-olds on NEET contracts in London. We are keen to develop pathways for young people to progress and enter the world of work – traineeships would be one of those options, along with our apprenticeship provision.
“It would make sense to be able to offer them the same opportunities as we can for the 19- to 24-year-olds.”
The Association of Employment and Learning Providers claims there have been instances where providers have had to turn 16 to 18s away as a result of having no contract for this provision and no way of getting hold of one.
GTA England, a membership organisation for group training associations, also told FE Week several of its members want to expand into the 16-to-18 traineeship market to fill current vacancies.
Time is of the essence
Chief executive Mark Maudsley said: “Our challenge is market entry opportunities at 16 to 18 as we have many with vacancies that can’t be filled. Opening access would enable those members without traineeship contracts to capitalise on their excellent links with employers and create life opportunities via traineeships to progress on to the apprenticeship programme.
“With the trebling of the traineeships target for starts, members remain very keen and able to respond, but time is of the essence.”
There needs to be more than 43,000 traineeship starts between August 2020 and July 2021 to meet Sunak’s tripling target, which was set in July 2020 as part of his plan for jobs.
Latest government data only spans the period August to January but shows a total of 8,800 starts.
Compared to the same period in 2019/20, starts for 19 to 24s went up 44 per cent, from 1,600 to 2,300, but starts for 16 to 18s dropped four per cent, from 6,800 to 6,500.
The sluggish take-up comes despite the government reforming the funding rules for traineeships in September, which included increasing the funding rate for 19 to 24s by 54 per cent, from £970 to £1,500, and opening them up to people who already hold a level 3 qualification.
Employer cash incentives of £1,000 for each traineeship learner they take on were also introduced.
A big chunk of the starts needed in the last half of 2020/21 – around 20,000 – are hoped to come from a £65 million tender for 19-to-24 traineeships.
The procurement was originally planned to get under way last summer but was beset with delays – an issue that FE Week understands personally annoyed Sunak, as it hindered his expansion plans.
Steve Latus, the ESFA’s head of traineeships, spoke at last month’s AELP conference and told delegates that growing 16-to-18 starts numbers was now his “big concern”.
Rishi Sunak
“In theory we have got enough capacity to deliver because we have the colleges. But actually, all the evidence says that we will need to grow the programme outside of just colleges.
“That is why we will be looking at coming out in the near future with an announcement about growing the 16-to-18 programme. I can’t go any further than that today…but unless we grow the programme with more independent providers, we won’t achieve the target.”
Simon Ashworth, the AELP’s chief policy officer, claimed his organisation is “seeing providers with demand for young people but they can’t get hold of any funding to help them”. He said opening up the market should a “no-brainer”.
He told FE Week: “The ESFA is trying to go to colleges with study programme contracts which allows them to move into traineeships and encourage them to do more 16-to-18 traineeships. But they’re not going to triple the numbers with that as a strategy.
“It seems barmy that you open up the 19-to-24 market, you’ve got providers with young people and good links to employers but nothing on 16 to 18. Unless they open up the market quickly, they’re not going to hit the target on their backs.”
Ashworth believes the ESFA should give providers that passed the 19-to-24 procurement automatic ability to deliver to 16-to-18 traineeships and then run a “mini market entry event for those that didn’t bid”.
In a message to bidders this afternoon, the agency said the results of the £73 million procurement will be issued “very shortly” but not today as planned.
The agency had told FE Week earlier this week they were “on track” to announce the winners this week. Today’s message provides no reason for the delay.
It said: “We previously communicated that providers would be notified on the outcome of their bids on or around 24 June 2021 via the e-Procurement portal Jaggaer.
“We wish to update you that award decision notices will not be issued on 24 June, but will follow very shortly.”
Bids for a slice of the funding initially up for grabs in 2021/22 opened in February and closed in March.
The ESFA had originally planned to launch the tender in July 2020 but it faced a number of setbacks. It is a “re-procurement” exercise, and follows roughly the same scope as the controversial AEB tender that caused havoc in 2017 – the contracts for which expire this year.
The procurement includes caps depending on the type of provider applying for the funding to “mitigate significant oversubscription and speculative bidding”. A minimum contract value has been set at £150,000 and a maximum of £3 million.
Priority courses for this tender includes the new first full level 3 qualification offer for those aged 24 and over as per the prime minister’s lifetime skills guarantee, as well as sector-based work academy programmes (SWAPs) – both of which were key features in the chancellor’s Plan for Jobs.
For “new” providers, they will have bids capped at £1 million, subcontractors will be capped at £2 million, and “existing” providers will be capped at £3 million.
The total AEB procurement could potentially reach £157 million if extensions are granted in future years, but these are not guaranteed.
The service start date is set for 1 August 2021.
This tender is just for the national budget, not for devolved combined authorities which run their own procurements.
The Ofsted chief inspector appears to have changed her view on using education to direct learners into work, after years of attacking arts courses for their minimal job prospects.
Speaking at the Festival of Education today, Amanda Spielman said inspections should not focus on a “utilitarian” view of education.
“We do children a great disservice if we see them only as economic units, with education as the path to work-readiness, important as that is,” she told the event.
She went on to say: “Back in 2017, I said that education should be about broadening minds, enriching communities and advancing civilisation. About leaving the world a better place than we found it. That’s what I believed then – and that’s what I believe today.”
Ofsted chief had attacked ‘mismatch’ between courses and jobs
This argument sharply contradicts the litany of comments she made in the past, pushing for skills provision to be targeted at job opportunities.
She cited course adverts listing potential jobs in the arts, which were “in reality, unlikely to be available to the vast majority of learners but underplay the value of other skills these courses develop”.
This suggested the students taking these subjects outnumbered the job openings, she argued.
“Ultimately, there have to be viable prospects at the end,” she said, much to the consternation of audience members.
Spielman later clarified her remarks by assuring delegates the courses were not “bad,” just that: “When so many people opt for them with little or no prospect, there is a risk of setting up problems.”
She later followed up on this theme at the launch of Ofsted’s 2018/19 annual report in January 2020, warning providers in a speech against “flooding a local job market with young people with low-level arts and media qualifications, when the big growth in demand is for green energy workers”.
This approach would lead to “too many under-employed and dissatisfied young people and wind turbines left idle.
“We need a clearer focus on matching skills to opportunities.”
The report itself argued the apprenticeship system needed to target levy money “more directly at skills shortages”.
This was because of a “gap between the knowledge and skills required for our economy and future and current provision,” particularly affecting low-skilled workers.
Therefore, the further education and skills sector “needs to work much more in tandem with the government’s industrial strategy,” which set out plans to invest in skills to guide people into employment.
The strategy, published in 2017 and now being replaced with the government’s Plan for Growth, identified four grand challenges, including pivoting government and industry to being at the forefront of emerging trends such as artificial intelligence, clean growth, and the future of mobility (such as self-driving cars).
Challenged on the contradiction after her speech, Spielman said providers had to “balance” developing young minds while also setting them up for work: “What matters is making sure the path you steer young people is properly suited to their skills, but you don’t risk trapping them in a dead end where they suddenly find they spent several years studying a thing, and it’s really hard for them to get from that to employment.”
She said inspectors had visited providers where the balance had “tilted too far towards collecting funding or stacking up performance table points,” where the interests of young people had gotten “lost”.
“It’s about making sure that that young people are well advised and do the kind of education programme at every stage that both keeps the broadest set of opportunities, but creates some coherent path towards a plausible future for them.”
Williamson thinks education is for ‘fulfilling working life’
Gavin Williamson
Education secretary Gavin Williamson, who recently handed Spielman another two years as chief inspector, today told the higher education think tank HEPI’s conference universities ought to “follow the lead of further education colleges” and offer more higher technical qualifications and apprenticeships, which should be “geared towards real jobs and the actual skills needs of local employers and the economy”.
While insisting he was not attacking arts courses, Williamson continued: “We must never forget that the purpose of education is to give people the skills that will lead to a fulfilling working life.”
WJEC Eduqas will discount exam entry fees by 42 per cent this summer – making it the first exam board to confirm the level of savings for schools and colleges.
However the sum is unlikely to go down well in the sector, with the majority of leaders expecting 75 per cent of entry fees back this year.
The exam board, which has entries from 3,800 English centres, said the discount will put around £9 million back into schools and colleges in England.
WJEC Eduqas had yet to invoice for fees, but will in the coming weeks with the discount applied. Last year, the board discounted fees by 23 per cent.
Schools and colleges are still waiting for news on entry rebates from the largest exam boards: AQA, OCR and Pearson. These exam boards have mostly charged schools and colleges already this year, and will instead provide rebates.
Ian Morgan, WJEC Eduqas’ chief executive, said they “appreciate the continued patience and support from our centres as we finalised this year’s fees arrangements”.
“As a charity, we would never seek to take advantage of the current circumstances and are committed to re-investing in continuously improving the support we provide to schools, colleges, and learners, as we do every year.”
Morgan said they have had to develop a “range of new systems” this year and “invested significantly in a new and extensive package of support” to help schools and colleges this year.
In Wales, the Welsh government has committed to providing an additional £1.6 million of support to centres, meaning the overall discount will be 50 per cent.
Education secretary Gavin Williamson told MPs yesterday that he is expecting exam boards to deliver a rebate to schools this year.
Last year, just a quarter of exam fees were refunded to schools by AQA, Pearson and OCR. All have said they would again pass on savings to schools and colleges.
Geoff Barton
Geoff Barton, ASCL’s general secretary, has previously said there is a “real strength of feeling for something more significant” than 25 per cent this year.
An investigation by FE Week’s sister title FE Week last year revealed how three exam boards had hiked their fees earlier this year, despite exams being cancelled.
AQA later opted to ask schools and colleges for just 50 per cent of fees upfront, OCR delayed invoicing for three weeks while Pearson extended the payment deadline to the end of June.
But the Joint Council for Qualifications has defended boards, saying they are working harder than normal too.
