The Skills Bill: inadequate to deal with years of neglect and a pandemic

This Skills Bill reveals an approach that remains inadequate to tackle the scale of the skills challenges we face post-Covid, writes Toby Perkins

After a decade of funding cuts and neglect of further education, the sector has understandably welcomed the government’s new-found interest.

But the much-heralded Skills Bill contains less than meets the eye, and we fear it will fail to meet the scale of the challenge that years of neglect and the impact of the pandemic have caused. 

While this Bill was not expected to solve all funding challenges, the government is failing to even recognise the role their spending cuts have played in the decline of further education.

The Conservatives have overseen a sharp fall in apprentice numbers since the introduction of their apprenticeship levy, at the same time as claiming to be the party of small business and excluding those very businesses from the levy.

The sector is understandably sceptical when it comes to big new promises. 

The heady claims that this was a government that believed in localism and devolution of power are clearly consigned to the history books. This Bill contains a Department for Education power-grab with little expectation of a role for metro mayors and confusion around the role of shire authorities in setting skills priorities.

Nor does there appear to be any enthusiasm for Local Enterprise Partnerships to play a central role in bringing together the needs of businesses and educators.

Many smaller colleges will also be looking nervously at the government’s expressed right to merge colleges without recourse to local circumstances or consultation. 

I have never heard anybody suggest that a more hands-on role for Gavin Williamson was needed

In the many hundreds of meetings I have held during my year in this post, I confess I have never heard anybody suggest that a more hands-on role for Gavin Williamson was needed for ensuring Britain is equipped with a well skilled workforce.

Yet here, the education secretary awards himself new powers to intervene in ‘failing’ colleges, to merge or replace colleges, to select or to sack ‘employer representative’ bodies, and to dictate whether colleges are fulfilling the requirements these bodies lay down. 

This is a government that has consistently created oblique structures and been surprised when they fail to deliver, yet there is again very little evidence of a robust, systematic approach to underpin the government’s desire for employers to take the lead in skills reforms.

Poorly defined local skills plans risk shutting out metro mayors and combined authorities, many of which have democratic accountability for local skills and economic regeneration. 

Given the continued decline in apprenticeship numbers, and unspent levy funds, supporting businesses to utilise more of that pot and spend the money as intended on boosting skills should be a key priority for this government.

Yet again there is inaction. Silence in the face of Labour’s call for a wage subsidy policy which could have created 85,000 new apprenticeships for young people last year, giving them their first step on the ladder. 

There are measures here that we welcome – the moves to create learning accounts and expand learning entitlements are both positive steps.

However, even here there are gaps, the lack of support for living costs risks closing the door to potential learners, in contrast to the Labour-led Welsh government’s Education Maintenance Allowance, which supports young students to invest in themselves. 

The government’s proudest boast in this Bill seems to be a reversal of their own move in 2013 to scrap the right for adults to study a level 3 qualification.

Yet the renewed commitment is more limited than what existed before, and crucially won’t allow someone qualified to level 3 in one field to receive funding to retrain in another, which, given the needs of the post-Covid world, is a remarkable failure.

Its introduction in 2024 is also disappointingly slow. 

It is also concerning that supported internships, which can play a huge role in supporting learners with learning difficulties to prepare for and enter the world of work, are missing from the Bill. We would like to see them specified as an intrinsic part of local skills plans.

This Bill is itself an acknowledgement of this government’s 11 years of failure on FE policy and funding. Many measures, such as the Lifetime Skills Guarantee, are undoing previous mistakes or going over old ground to finally deliver promises such as employer-led skills.

Yet at a time when the need for the sector has never been greater, the over-riding first impression is one of a government seizing powers for itself, to introduce policies dictated from an out-of-touch Conservative government in Whitehall, instead of a genuine partnership of local learners, elected officials, providers and employers.

This amounts to a huge, missed opportunity and an approach that remains inadequate to tackle the scale of the skills challenges we face post-Covid.

 

The Skills Bill is not about taking back control of colleges

Instances of serious failure are rare and the government wants to reduce interventions with the Skills Bill, writes Gillian Keegan

This week we introduced the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill in Parliament.

Not only did this mark an historic moment for education, it also signalled how serious we are about skills reform.

While the Bill is just one part of our wider reforms to post-16 education and training, many of which are being consulted on separately or are already in train, each of its nine measures will be vital in making sure we can progress this work.

I’ve been delighted at how much genuine support there is for our reforms, but I wanted to take this opportunity to set out why we need this legislation and why now.

First of all, I want to make clear this is not about taking back control of colleges.

This is about ensuring we can continue to sustainably offer high quality education and training to as many people as possible, and that the training on offer meets the needs of employers and local communities. This is central to our levelling up agenda.

This is about ensuring we can continue to sustainably offer high quality education

There are skills shortages throughout our economy, holding people back from working in highly skilled jobs and stopping employers getting the workforce they need. 

We are also still recovering from a global pandemic, which has significantly impacted opportunities for many people.

In 2019 employers reported that they were unable to fill a quarter of all vacant positions, due to not finding people with the right skills.

Skills shortages accounted for 36 per cent of all construction vacancies, and 48 per cent of all manufacturing and skilled trade vacancies.

We need to act now to make sure everyone can gain the skills they, employers and the economy need to thrive. 

If employers say they need more engineers or web designers, then it is crucial that we offer more training that will meet that need.

This will support more people into work, including locally, so they are not forced to leave their hometowns to find well-paid jobs if they don’t want to.

There are many colleges and providers that are doing a fantastic job and who are already collaborating successfully with employers to do this. We want to build on this and make sure this is replicated everywhere.

We will do this through our local skills improvement plans.

The Bill will allow us to designate employer representative bodies to lead this work and make it a legal requirement for providers to collaborate on developing these plans, and to pay due regard to them, ensuring skills provision meets local training needs.

An employer-led system needs an employer-led approach, and this is the framework that will make that happen.

It will also offer colleges and providers an opportunity to take a more proactive role in shaping future skills need; and to use their expertise to support employers to make the incremental innovations that are needed to drive demand for higher level skills and boost productivity.

Most colleges are well run, and instances of serious failures are rare. We are already developing a more strategic and supportive relationship with colleges so that problems can be identified sooner and so we can reduce the numbers needing intervention.

The Bill will ensure that when there is failure, we can intervene, such as by requiring a restructure, to support colleges and to protect the interests of learners, employers and taxpayers.

Statutory intervention is only expected to be used as a last resort where it is not possible to secure improvement through other measures.

Statutory intervention is only expected to be used as a last resort

Finally, I want to reiterate that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. That’s why we have put our reforms and this Bill at the heart of our recovery plans and our levelling up agenda.

As colleges and providers, you will all play a vital role in making sure this happens.

I’m excited for the future. With government, employers and providers all working together we will bring about the change that is needed and that will make a huge difference to people’s lives.

 

£250m of apprenticeship funding went back to Treasury in 2020-21

Apprenticeship funding to the tune of £250 million was handed back to the Treasury in 2020-21, FE Week can reveal.

The Department for Education said it had to surrender the money as demand for apprenticeships from employers was “lower than expected” partly due to the impact of Covid-19.

Government statistics show that apprenticeship starts were down 18 per cent in the 2019/20 academic year compared to the previous year, falling from 393,400 to 322,600.

AELP chief executive Jane Hickie said with workplaces closed, the pandemic was “always going to have an impact on starts and spend” but she sees no reason why “every penny” of the apprenticeships budget should not go to levy- and non-levy payers in future years as the economy recovers.

As per levy rules, businesses with a payroll of £3 million or more pay each month into the pot and have a rolling 24-month deadline to spend the funds.

The levy policy was designed so that large employers wouldn’t use all of their funds. The unspent money is meant to be recycled and made available to small businesses who do not pay the levy to use to train their apprentices. Unspent funds are also used to top up levy funds by ten per cent as well as pay for English and maths teaching for relevant apprentices, among other things.

But because government refuses to share annual spending data, there are many misconceptions in the sector and national media that all apprenticeship funding that expires from levy accounts goes back to the Treasury.

The actual sum of apprenticeship funding surrendered to Treasury each is year is published in the DfE’s annual “estimates memorandum”.

The memorandum for 2021/22 was published this week and states: “Unspent funding of £250 million was surrendered at the 2020/21 Supplementary Estimate (as the demand for apprenticeships from employers was lower than expected during 2020/21, partly due to the impact that Covid-19 had on employers’ recruitment plans).”

A DfE spokesperson confirmed the funding was returned to the Treasury, which is “usual practice” for “any underspends in overall departmental budgets by the end of the financial year”.

This isn’t the first time the DfE has handed back lumps of apprenticeship funding to the Treasury. In 2017/18 – the first year of the levy – around £300 million was surrendered.

The DfE claimed it did not surrender an apprenticeships underspend in 2018/19.

But £330 million was sent back to Treasury in 2019/20, despite concerns at the time that small employers had struggled to find providers with sufficient non-levy funds to train their apprentices, with some being turned away.

There have been numerous calls over the past year for unspent levy funding to be redistributed to other parts of the skills system or reinvested into apprenticeships.

The Labour Party, for example, wants any unspent levy funding to be used to subsidise the wages of apprentices as a way of boosting the number of people taking up the programmes.

Hickie said making use of the full apprenticeship budget in future can be “easily done if the government steadily lifts the limit on each small employers’ starts but more likely we can anticipate levy-payers spending their entitlements again so that we end up with a repeat of the ‘hard choices’ planning”.

“It is a major reason why AELP agrees with FE Week that there should be much more transparency surrounding levy funding,” she added.

Right2Learn campaign to host inaugural conference tonight

A new campaign that argues for a lifelong statutory right to fully funded learning for every adult is holding its first conference tonight.

Former education secretary Lord David Blunkett will be the opening speaker for the Right2Learn campaign, which was founded in December 20202 by a steering group including ex-shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden (pictured).

Blunkett’s lecture will be given in honour of Bob Fryer – a well-known champion of lifelong learning who worked with Blunkett on The Learning Age green paper at the turn of the millennium – who died in December.

Other speakers leading the conference include director for education and skills at the OECD Andreas Schleicher, City & Guilds chief executive Kirstie Donnelly, founder of the Helena Kennedy Foundation Ann Limb, President of the Further Education Trust for Leadership Ruth Silver, and WEA general secretary Simon Parkinson.

The Right2Learn campaign took its inspiration from Labour’s 2019 Lifelong Learning Commission which called for everyone to have a statutory right to learn whatever their age or background.

Their aim is to “show how important properly funded lifelong learning is to the life chances of millions”.

Since its launch, the campaign has created an online platform which features regular blogs, discussion and comment.

It also published a manifesto following a consultation in January, which produced five principles they believe should underpin government policy: break down barriers; integrate and coordinate; devolve and empower; tackle inequality and meet community needs; invest and promote.

 

‘Tonight’s conference comes at a crucial time’

Right 2 Learn’s steering group founders – Graeme Atherton, VIcky Duckworth, Gordon Marsden and Matt Waddup – said tonight’s conference comes at a “crucial time as we try to emerge from lockdown and the pandemic but with a sobering legacy of thousands of lost jobs, stalled careers and life chances across all ages and sectors, and the disruption right across the UK in further and higher education, skills and employment.”

The conference will also identify key issues and areas to focus on in the next 12 months.

These include “maximising initiatives to learn, both formally and informally, to up skill and reskill across all ages, especially for disadvantaged groups and areas; and the roles of government, local government, mayors and combined authorities, plus businesses, unions, third, public and private sectors, in delivering those goals”.

Titled ‘Right2Learn is Right for Now’, the conference will be held from 6pm to 8.30 pm virtually on zoom.

You can register for free here https://www.educationopportunities.co.uk/events/right2learn-conference/.

New powers in Skills Bill point to radical loss of autonomy for colleges

Government is taking more control but the Skills Bill will only be a success if young people are kept at the heart of it, writes Angela Donkin

The new Skills Bill has been published with a legal requirement for employers and colleges to work together to fill local skills gaps.

The DfE’s press release does a good sell – it cites a skills shortage and research illustrating that 26 year olds with level 4 or 5 technical qualifications can earn more than those with a degree.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting development. It has long been my view that too much emphasis is placed on the A-Level, degree route.

Indeed, I walk the walk. One of my children has been studying a range of BTECs and GCSEs since she was 14 in a university technical college.

That choice was made precisely because the curriculum is linked with the needs of the creative industries in which she is interested in working.

This Bill should make it easier for other young people like my daughter to take that pragmatic step where it suits them.

However, as with any piece of legislation, the devil is in the detail. Let’s look at carrots and sticks.

The incentives include an £83 million fund to build facilities in areas where there are shortages of places given the demographics. There’s also a flexible grant to allow people to afford to be trained.

This makes sense – we need the buildings, and the demand for the courses.

There appear to be more incentives for level 3 or higher qualifications, so we must ensure the Bill does not hinder the availability of alternative level 2 routes where needed.

How will this be achieved?

Firstly, a power to sanction FE colleges for not delivering a local skills plan and, secondly, a power to intervene when colleges are failing to deliver good outcomes for the communities they serve.

These are interesting new powers as they point to a quite radical loss of autonomy for FE colleges.

While the importance of training young people with necessary skills is obvious, it’s vital that young people are at the heart of this, and that they have choice.

For this bill to tackle issues such as social mobility it still requires one vital legal requirement.

While colleges will have sanctions for not delivering, what about employers?

And if sanctions aren’t possible or realistic, what about meaningful and relevant incentives?

There is nothing in the bill regarding sanctioning employers should they fail to offer purposeful opportunities for young people.

As it stands, in local areas with many low paid workers, we could get to a position where we are sanctioning colleges for failing to train young adults to join the 4 million who are in work but also in poverty.

No one wants that to happen.

We know that opportunities for young adults are not evenly distributed across the country

So that takes us to the issues of local jobs. We know that opportunities for young adults are not evenly distributed across the country.

This means that in areas with poor prospects, we first need to improve the quality of work available.

Second, we must ensure there is a wider range of courses at different levels to accommodate everyone’s different career ambitions. These might not be linked to skills needed in local areas where there are poor prospects.

Third, we must ensure students can afford to travel further away for opportunities to study or work if needed.

I’m hoping that this is a really important step change in skills education. However, we must ensure that young people are kept at the heart of this and that colleges and employers work together for that reason.

We know there are issues around existing apprenticeships, particularly at level 3 and above, currently favouring large employers with subsidised higher level training courses.

Meanwhile lower level apprenticeships have reduced significantly in number. This has had a disproportionate impact on young adults from more disadvantaged areas and on small employers.

So we must ensure we look carefully at the detail and avoid stumbling into a situation where we have inadvertently exacerbated inequity.

International partnerships announced to boost post-pandemic skills recovery

WorldSkills UK is signing up to a host of partnerships with overseas counterparts which will mean greater sharing of skills expertise and more pressure testing for our competitors.

Today will see the UK formally sign its first partnership with Chinese Taipei, which will lead to representatives from Taipei speaking at the WorldSkills UK International Skills Summits, the latest of which was held this week, as well as other events.

There will also be more opportunities for pressure testing the UK’s competitors; such as when Isaac George represented the UK against 23 competitors from 15 other nations at an IT test this month.

The UK’s experts, who train our competitors, will also receive professional development as a result of the international partnership with Chinese Taipei which will feed into the WorldSkills UK Centres of Excellence programme.

WorldSkills UK chief executive Neil Bentley-Gockmann said the new partnerships “harness our global network and sharing international best practice, and will enable us to build on our work to boost standards in higher technical education, supporting young people to develop the high-quality skills needed by employers and investors in key sectors”.

WorldSkills UK is set to sign more partnerships in the coming weeks with countries including South Korea, Japan, Russia, India and France. 

It is expected a total of 11 partnerships with WorldSkills members will be agreed by the end of the year.

WorldSkills Chinese Taipei’s official delegate Chen-Yang Shih called the partnership a “win-win situation,” adding: “The agreement symbolizes a great step towards closer collaboration and stronger partnership.

“It provides a fantastic opportunity to work closely to mainstream innovation and excellence in skills development to help the youth build and strengthen their capacity and explore their potential.”

WorldSkills UK says the partnerships will have a “key role” in shaping the work of its new, independent Skills Taskforce for Global Britain, announced earlier this week.

worldskills
John Cridland

Chaired by former Confederation of British Industry director-general John Cridland, and supported by accountancy firm EY, the taskforce will put together a ‘Roadmap to 2030’ to drive the use of skills in “levelling up” and attracting investment to the UK economy.

It will be answering questions such as how our skills compare with competitor countries, what are international investors looking for in terms of skills in the UK, and are all parts of the UK able to attract inward investment.

In the absence of international skills competitions, owing to the pandemic, WorldSkills UK has launched the pressure tests with other nations – several of which have ran already – and its International Skills Summits.

This week’s summit featured a keynote speech by Labour’s shadow education secretary Kate Green, while the previous one in November heard from Commons Education Select Committee chair Robert Halfon and former skills minister Anne Milton.

The UK will next compete in person at WorldSkills Shanghai next year.

Pictured: Neil Bentley-Gockmann and Chen-Yang Shih signing the partnership documents.

Reverse adult education clawback plans, says cross-party group of MPs

A cross-party group of MPs has called on the education secretary to reverse his adult education budget clawback plans to give colleges “financial security” amid the pandemic.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on FE has also urged ministers to give students leaving college a fully funded extra year of study and introduce a new fund to support disadvantaged 16 to 19-year-olds to help make up for lost learning.

The members state that these shorter-term decisions are crucial to support the government’s overarching goals on skills reform as outlined in the Skills Bill this week.

Led by chair and Conservative MP Peter Aldous, the group has penned a letter to education secretary Gavin Williamson with the demands and urging him to announce his Covid catch-up plan.

It comes after Education Policy Institute research claimed it will take £13.5 billion to make up for lost learning.

The MPs’ letter states that colleges are currently facing “a number of challenges” in delivering the catch-up support needed, which is “in no small part due to the fact that college finances have been hit hard as a consequence of the significant disruption caused by the pandemic, and compounded by the recent decision by the EFSA to clawback adult skills funding from colleges”.

Announced in March and forced by the Treasury, the clawback decision means that any college that delivers less than 90 per cent of their national adult education allocation must repay the difference between that threshold and their actual delivery.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has also ruled out a business case process whereby colleges could put forward reasons as to why they should cling on to the money if they did not reach the threshold.

Research by the Association of Colleges suggests that this decision will be in effect nearly a £60 million cut to adult funding, announced eight months into the academic year it applies to, giving colleges little time to reduce costs.

The APPG is calling on Williamson to revise the approach for the ESFA to take a business case approach.

Last month, colleges called on the prime minister to intervene in the “devastating” clawback plans, warning that they risk courses being scrapped and redundancies.

To go with this, the APPG has said a new “simple, flexible” fund should be introduced to give students a free extra year of college. The fund would allow colleges to “design programmes lasting between six months to one year to meet needs and outcomes, with a bursary to support some of the most disadvantaged learners to participate”.

A school and college leavers scheme was introduced last year by government, which gives 18 and 19 year olds who are struggling to find work due to Covid-19 the opportunity to study “targeted” level 2 and 3 courses for a third year free of charge. The fund was only available for the 2020/21 academic year.

Lastly, the APPG wants Williamson to provide colleges with “targeted support for the most disadvantaged learners through a 16 to 19 student premium”, just like the pupil premium in schools.

“We ask that the student premium be paid to 16-, 17-and 18-year-olds to reflect the government’s commitment to supporting the needs of young people, the skills agenda, and the wider governments social mobility goals.”

This student premium would cost around £100 million using the secondary school eligibility criteria and funding level, the group added.

The letter is undersigned by Peter Aldous MP other members of the group including Lord Blunkett, Baroness Garden of Frognal, Stephen Farry MP, and Emma Hardy MP.

Speed read: Skills and Post-16 Education Bill published

The first draft of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill has officially been laid before parliament.

It outlines the legislation behind the government’s planned reforms for FE, including local skills improvements plans, strengthened intervention powers for the education secretary, and a flexible lifelong loans system.

There are also new regulations for independent training providers, FE teacher training, and an expanded role for the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education.

You can read the 38-page document here and explanatory notes here.

FE Week has the pulled out the key things you need to know.

 

‘Duty’ to have ‘regard’ for local skills improvement plans

A statutory underpinning has been placed on local skills improvement plans, introducing a power for the Secretary of State for Education to designate employer representative bodies to lead the development of the plans.

A “duty” has been placed on all colleges and training providers to co-operate in the development of and then “have regard” to the plans.

There will also be a duty introduced for all FE providers to review how well the education or training they provider meets local needs, and assess what action the institution might take to ensure it is best placed to meet local needs.

Each college and provider will be required to publish their review on their website.

 

New powers to force mergers

Government plans to extend the statutory intervention powers currently applicable to colleges under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992.

This measure will enable the Secretary of State for Education to intervene where there has been a failure to “meet local needs”, and to direct structural change such as mergers in order to secure improvement.

It is not clear at this stage how the government will determine when a college is not meeting local needs.

Read FE Week’s full story on these powers here.

 

New list of private providers which can restrict subcontracting

A new list of independent training providers will be launched to “indicate which providers have met conditions that are considered to prevent or mitigate risks associated with the disorderly exit of a provider”.

It will be separate from the register of apprenticeship training providers and require ITPs to register.

Any provider not on the list will not be granted funding agreements or be allowed to subcontract with another provider who is on the list.

Conditions to get on the list may relate to whether a provider has a student support plan; insurance cover; willingness to give access to information about the owners; and those relating to the relevant provider taking action specified in directions given by the Secretary of State.

The government said there were 64 unplanned provider exits in the academic year 2019/20, and there are delays in the current system finding a new provider which affects learner experiences.

This legislation is hoped to address gaps in these requirements.

 

 

Additional functions for IfATE

A new job is being given to the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to define and approve new categories of technical qualifications that relate to employer-led standards and occupations in different ways.

The quango will be required to cooperate with Ofqual to create a “single approval gateway” for technical qualifications.

The institute’s new powers will allow it to charge a fee as part of the qualification approval process and introduce a moratorium on the approval of further qualifications where there is evidence of proliferation.

It will also have a requirement to review approved qualifications, withdrawing their approval where they are no longer performing as expected.

 

Introduce a ‘lifelong loan entitlement’

The government plans to introduce a new loans system that allows people to study more flexibly and space out their studies across their lifetime.

Named the “lifelong loan entitlement”, learners will be given four years’ worth of loan funding and be able to transfer credits between FE and HE providers. The goal is to encourage more modular provision and part-time study.

A full consulation on this new entitlement is expected to run this year.

 

Regulations to improve FE teacher training

The government describes the quality of initial teacher training (ITT) as an essential ingredient in the FE sector.

An “enabling clause” to bring about required changes and improvements to the current system if they cannot be achieved through non-legislative means has been handed to the education secretary in the Bill.

Regulations may include making provision for accrediting an institution as a provider of specified ITT of FE courses; accrediting specified courses; prohibiting the provision of specified ITT FE courses by an institution.

 

Forced college mergers – and other Skills Bill revelations

New powers are set to be handed to the education secretary to force college mergers, an impact assessment of the Skills Bill has revealed.

The document has been published ahead of the actual Skill and Post-16 Education Bill, which has been laid in the House of Lords today.

It lists off 12 measures included in the Bill, which are predicted to cost around £112 million over the next decade.

In terms of intervention, the impact assessment explains that the education secretary can currently issue a direction to a college’s governing body and remove or appoint members of the governing body in certain circumstances.

But those powers “cannot be exercised in circumstances where there has been a failure to meet local needs, and cannot be used to direct structural change including mergers”.

Skills Bill
READ MORE: Queen’s speech 2021: What was promised for FE and skills

Government proposes to “extend the existing intervention powers, enabling the Secretary of State to: exercise their statutory intervention powers in circumstances where there has been a failure by a college to adequately meet local needs; and direct structural changes (such as mergers) where use of the powers has been triggered under any of the thresholds in the legislation”.

The legislation will also “exempt any structural changes directed by the Secretary of State from the statutory merger control regime provided for in the Enterprise Act 2002”.

The impact assessment also reveals plans for a new “list of post-16 education or training providers who meet certain conditions”, as well as “the power for the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to charge fees to awarding organisations for qualification approval”.

And for the insolvency regime, the Bill says it will give “power for the Secretary of State to amend legislation to expressly provide for Company Voluntary Arrangements to be available in education administration”.

The breakdown of the £112 million cost is as follows: “Cost of producing local skills improvement plans to employer-representative bodies  (£25 million), FE providers (£11 million), and local stakeholders (£1 million). Cost to FE providers of having due regard to local skills improvement plans (£0.5 million).

“Statutory FE colleges to comply with duty to review provision in line with local needs (£5 million). Cost to employers of familiarising with new qualifications (£17 million). Awarding Organisations of new Institute qualification approval fee (£5 million) and additional qualification development to meet approval criteria (£46 million). Cost to employers of familiarisation with a new student finance system and the processing of new loans under the lifelong loan entitlement (£5 million).”

 

List of Skills Bill measures in the report’s own words:

The wider set of powers in the Bill and their relevant measure are as follows:

  1. The Lifelong Loan Entitlement: Modifying existing regulation-making powers in primary legislation to make specific provision for student finance in respect of modules of courses.
  2. Statutory Further Education intervention: Powers for the Secretary of State to intervene in the statutory FE sector in circumstances where there is failure to meet local needs, and for the Secretary of State to direct structural change (such as mergers) where use of statutory powers has been triggered.
  3. Technical Education qualification regulation: The power for the Institute to charge fees to Awarding Organisations (AOs) for qualification approval is an enabling power for regulations to be made by the Secretary of State.
  4. Insolvency regime: The power for the Secretary of State to amend legislation to expressly provide for Company Voluntary Arrangements (CVAs) to be available in education administration. 
  5. Teacher training quality: The enabling clause will allow the Secretary of State to make secondary legislation to regulate initial teacher training courses in the FE sector as deemed necessary.
  6. List of post-16 education or training providers: The power for Secretary of State to make regulations to set up a list of providers who meet certain conditions.

 

However, there are some changes that will be directly introduced by the passing of the Bill. These include the following parts of the listed measures:

  1. Local skills improvement plans: The duty on providers to co-operate with ERBs, and the duty placed on providers to have due regard to local skills improvement plans when making decisions about the provision of post-16 technical education and training.
  2. The duty placed on colleges and designated institutions to keep provision under review and consider what actions they might take to align provision with local needs.
  3. Measure improving the FE insolvency regime brings minimal direct change to the process of education administration, cementing existing policy on transfer schemes into legislation for those providers which enter education administration. 
  4. The Institute and new categories of technical qualification: The Institute will be given the power to define new qualification categories, approve qualifications in these categories, review the efficacy of approved qualifications and where appropriate withdraw their approval.
  5. Institute and Ofqual: This measure will require these two bodies to cooperate with one another when exercising their functions with respect to technical qualifications and will create a single approval gateway for technical qualifications. 
  6. OfS quality assessments: The clarification of the OfS’s methods of assessing quality as part of its regulation of higher education providers in England.