T Levels will get a boost this month with the creation of a cross-party group of MPs and peers to champion them.

Damian Hinds, who oversaw the qualification’s development while education secretary from January 2018 to July 2019, is behind the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) and has put himself forward as chair.

It is funded by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), The Gatsby Foundation, and engineering multinational AECOM.

MPs and members of the House of Lords are set to meet next Tuesday to elect a chair. Skills minister Gillian Keegan cannot be a member, but is set to attend the inaugural meeting.

 

Group focused on ‘bringing MPs to hear more about T Levels’

Speaking to FE Week, Hinds said parliamentarians had a “big interest” in how T Levels would be “increasing in geographical footprint around the country in the next few years, as well as getting into more subjects”.

On how the group came together, he cited his “very strong personal interest” in T Levels as an “important initiative” so he personally wanted us to have an all-party group for a while”.

Prominent parliamentarians who have signed up to join include former Labour education secretaries David Blunkett and Estelle Morris, and education select committee members Ian Mearns, Jonathan Gullis and Christian Wakeford.

The prospective group members have agreed to focus on: “Matching to the technical skills UK businesses need now and in future; the role T Levels can play in improving social mobility and workplace diversity; and the link-up with wider technical/vocational routes and career paths”.

Hinds said the group would particularly focus on events and “bringing parliamentarians together to hear more about T Levels”.

It also wanted to hear from T Level students and “critically we want to hear from industry”.

 

Hinds would not wish timing of T Levels ‘on anybody’

APPGs are informal groups that focus on specific countries or policy issues. External organisations typically fund a secretariat for an APPG.

They have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, with the Committee on Standards launching an inquiry last October into the “transparency and appropriateness of funding of APPG activities and secretarial support”.

Hinds said the funding organisations were “three very strong partners to have for this group and come at it from slightly different perspectives”.

Quizzed on the rollout of T Levels, he defended the government’s decision not to set fixed targets for student numbers.

FE Week previously reported the DfE had only set estimates, which its latest T Level action plan from January showed it had not met.

The lack of fixed targets was criticised by former skills minister John Hayes at a Westminster Education Forum webcast last month. He said targets were vital to “gauge success”. He had “never bought the argument” there could not be an equal focus on quality and quantity when rolling schemes out.

Hinds said “integrity is what this is all about”, but he was confident the numbers of students, providers, and subjects involved in T Levels would increase over time.

The East Hampshire MP “would not wish it on anybody for the timing to fall where it did”, as T Levels rolled out during the Covid-19 pandemic.

But he “100 per cent, absolutely” stuck by his decision to issue a ministerial direction in May 2018 committing the qualifications to roll out last autumn.

This was despite the DfE’s then-permanent secretary Jonathan Slater asking for a year’s delay, as a 2020 start date would be “very challenging”.

“If you are funded by government, you can’t use your voice in the same way, you’re influenced in a certain way,” says deputy chair Dawn Ward as she describes the “importance” of the Chartered Institution for Further Education (CIFE) becoming independent.

Supported by former skills minister John Hayes in 2013 to grant chartered status to FE providers, the institution was subsidised by the Department for Education to the tune of £1.7 million before financial support ended in 2019.

At that point its first chief executive, Dan Wright, stood down and with no replacement appointed, responsibility for running the institution fell to its council.

The body has since undertaken a “strategic review”, led by former college principal and independent council member Lesley Davies, who devised a plan for the institution to be self-sustaining for an “exciting new chapter”.

Speaking exclusively to FE Week, Ward, who has played a leading role at the institution since its conception, alongside her job as principal of Burton and South Derbyshire College, says that now the Covid-19 pandemic is easing, it is ready to officially “relaunch”.

Key to its operation going forward will be funding from industry to conduct research that “enables us to use our unified voice to influence at the highest levels of government and to collaborate and share best practice”.

Its first report, which was funded by property company St Modwen Homes and focused on the “importance of securing future skills” for the construction industry, launched this week on Thursday at London South East Colleges group at an event attended by skills minister Gillian Keegan.

The institution has several other potential research projects in the works, including in the hospitality sector, that they hope to launch over the next year.

Awarding of associate fellowships will also be key new feature of the CIFE.

In previous years, the institution has handed out a number of honorary fellowships, with recipients including Ann Limb, Sir Geoff Hall, Sir John Hayes, David Sherlock and Chris Humphries.

Ward says associate fellows are the “norm” in higher education and their introduction to the FE sector will help “better recognise the professional status of the many FE industry specialists”.

Individuals, such as college and training provider leaders and chairs, will be able to apply for the associate fellowships but will have to demonstrate they meet the criteria of a new framework.

The framework is currently being piloted with three members and five non-members to ensure it fits “what the sector needs”.

Ward explained that the framework has a “particular focus” on “dual professionalism” and it will “recognise the industrial updating of technical and professional educators in FE”.

Ward explains: “The pilot is now looking at what is needed to be put in place to recognise associate fellows, so what evidence will we need.

“So it’s not just about saying, tick, somebody has been into industry for a week, it will be looking at what evidence will they need within a framework to evidence that there has been an impact of what they’ve done. It will include a reflective piece.”

Ward said that both these elements – industry research and associate fellowships – will be “key features of the relaunched, independent Institution and will support the charter’s mission to raise recognition and esteem of FE within the wider education sector”.

Growing membership of providers with chartered status will also be key to the institution’s sustainability.

At Thursday’s construction report launch, chair of the institution Lord Lingfield said one of his top priorities is to become known as the “Russell Group of FE – a group of the most distinguished colleges and providers in the country”.

It currently has 15 members, who pay an annual subscription fee of £5,000. The latest member to join was the TEC Partnership, in summer 2019.

Ward says the institution has a number of other FE providers “looking to apply this year”. Interested parties must pay a £3,000 non-refundable fee to have an application reviewed.

The institution’s former chief executive, Dan Wright, previously said that it would need around 80 members in order to continue without government subsidy.

But with income now expected to also come from industry, the institution isn’t setting a membership target.

“Part of our business plan is obviously about growing membership. But in the same way, if you go back to when 157 Group started years ago, it’s not about having set targets, it’s about that evolution as it goes through,” Ward said.

“What’s really important is that we grow the value that we give.”

But Ward is hopeful that “every” college and FE training provider can achieve chartered status: “You have chartered engineers and accountants, it means something to industry, so it is really, really important for FE.”

The institution’s council is currently led by chair Lord Lingfield and deputy chair Ward. It is made up of nine other council members and has undergone a bit of a refresh over the past year.

New appointments include London South East Colleges chief executive Sam Parrett, Burton and South Derbyshire College governor Rajinder Mann, Working Men’s College principal Helen Hammond and Hawk Training managing director Crawford Knott.

But while the institution is being run by the council at the moment, with the assistance of a secretariat, Ward says they are looking to appoint a new chief executive to replace Wright. “Our plan is to grow incrementally, and we will look to appoint somebody to take us forward on the next steps,” Ward said.

“That will be about growing our strategies as an independent charter that has been developed by the new council.”

The institution is not planning a physical relaunch, but says it will announce further detail on its plans going forward in July, once its next council meeting has taken place.

They will also be holding another admissions and fellowship ceremony at some point, once applications have been reviewed and Covid restrictions allow.

England’s fastest growing apprenticeship provider has gone bust amid a government investigation into the speed and scale of its recruitment.

Logistics.com (UK) Ltd filed for insolvency last month with close to £1 million debts, after the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) banned new apprenticeship starts and stopped making monthly payments in November.

The company was unable to pay its 86 staff at the end of February and stopped trading. About 1,250 apprentices now need to find a new provider.

Logistics was a small freight company that became an apprenticeship provider in March last year. It changed ownership at the same time.

As previously reported by FE Week, the company recruited more apprentices in the following eight months than any other provider. The learners mostly worked in nursing homes and would have earned Logistics an estimated £5 million.

Begbies Traynor, a company specialising in corporate restructuring, has been appointed as the administrator.

Lead liquidator Scott Kippax told FE Week: “The key reason for liquidation was that the ESFA had stopped payments. They had employees that were due their salary at the end of February and they didn’t have any money to pay it. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back and brought us in.

“They [the owners] were trying to liaise with the ESFA to get it resolved, but they weren’t having it.”

The ESFA and owners of Logistics have remained tight-lipped about the specifics of the investigation.

Kippax continued: “I want to find out from the ESFA why they are being investigated. They do not do these things lightly because that brought the company down – there must be reasons for it with substantial evidence.”

The company’s books show it is owed more than £1 million from the ESFA, going back over four months.

A statement of affairs about the liquidation on Companies House shows that Logistics owes £915,000 to 32 creditors.

Kippax said he will investigate the conduct of the owners as part of the liquidation.

The company was taken over by Dominic Davies in March 2020 shortly after the provider’s acceptance to the register of apprenticeship training providers.

His then business partner, Stephen Banks – who, like Davies, worked at the well-known but now-liquidated training provider Middleton Murray – played a key role in its operation.

The pair incorporated several businesses over last summer.

Banks also became the new owner of the single employee 5 Stars Recruitment Ltd in October last year – three months after it was added to the apprenticeship providers’ register on July 29.

However, Companies House shows than he resigned from 5 Stars in February amid the ESFA’s investigation into Logistics.

Both Davies and Banks did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Logistics rapid growth followed the owners’ purchase of sales leads and their establishment of partnerships with at least one NHS trust to offer free apprenticeship training to large and small employers, funded from levy transfers.

Government policy is that large employers, such as councils and NHS trusts, can share up to 25 per cent of their unspent levy funding each year with training providers to deliver the apprenticeships to small employers – administered via the online apprenticeship system.

The use of transferred funding was key to ESFA fully funding Logistics.com (UK) as it released employers from the usual 5 per cent co-investment fee.

The ESFA said it does not comment on investigations, but confirmed it was aware that Logistics had gone into liquidation.

“The ESFA is working to support any learners affected to ensure the continuation of their learning in line with each individual’s progress to date,” a spokesperson said.

The government has been warned that many apprenticeship training agencies (ATAs) will close down under plans for new flexi-job apprenticeships.

A consultation launched on Tuesday about making all 111 ATAs apply to a new register of approved flexi-job apprenticeship schemes also has one agency boss worried that it could put learners at a disadvantage when seeking a job.

Humber ATA chief executive Iain Elliott said the government should “be very careful that you’re not throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.

Apprenticeship training agencies launched in 2009 to hire apprentices and then place them with a host company that would pay the agency to cover the salaries and administration costs.

Flexi-job apprenticeships were announced by chancellor Rishi Sunak in his Budget in March to help industries where project based employment is the norm.

This practice means employers, in sectors such as creative, agriculture and construction, struggle with the 12-month minimum apprenticeship rule.

 

New flexi-job schemes may ‘disadvantage’ job-seekers

But Elliott said the proposals, which include £7 million to start new agencies to place apprentices with multiple employers, could lead to ATAs “ceasing to exist”.

His agency operates a “more traditional model”, with apprentices assigned to one employer, so he worries that the new register could stop them working in their usual way.

“Is the DfE saying they need you to reapply because ‘we need a better register, we need more control. If you want to do flexi-jobs, great. If you just want to stick to the model that you’ve been operating, then that’s fine’?”

But “if they stop some ATAs from operating, what they’re probably going to end up doing is disadvantaging both employers and young people from getting a job”.

David Marsh, chief executive of leading apprenticeship provider Babington, also worries learners could lose jobs with ATAs in the switchover from the current, dormant register of agencies.

“I think the transition to this for current ATAs needs to be managed very carefully as apprentices are already employed by them, or have job offers to join them imminently,” he said.

He also warned the Department for Education (DfE) announcement will “raise a high level of risk for these learners that their ATA could not exist in the future due to the unknown register refresh”.

A formal launch of the new flexi-job apprenticeships scheme is scheduled for next January.

 

‘If you’ve got concerns about ATAs, take them off the register’

Both Marsh and Elliott voiced support for the idea of flexi-job apprenticeships, with Elliott saying: “Any scheme that gets more apprentices through those industries has got to be welcomed.”

Marsh has suggested it “would be sensible for the Education and Skills Funding Agency to automatically include any current ATAs into the new register to ensure consistency of employment for these apprentices and reduce more uncertainty”.

The register of ATAs has been in place since 2012 but shut to new applications in 2018. The DfE has since become concerned new and existing ATAs were running without monitoring or oversight arrangements.

The DfE’s consultation document reads: “We will also develop a process for monitoring and assuring the compliance of approved flexi-job apprenticeship schemes with the conditions of entry to the register.”

They will also consider if flexi-job schemes “should have to apply to alter the terms of their entry on the register – for example, if they wish to offer a wider range of apprenticeship standards”.

But the process ATAs underwent for the original register “was very stringent,” says Marsh, “so as long as their basics, like financials, are still in place”, then their place on the new register “needs to be confirmed very quickly to reduce uncertainty”.

Elliott added: “If you’ve got concerns about the way some ATAs are operating, then just take them off the register.”

Only ATAs on the new register will be able to access funding from the £7 million pot, the DfE has said. Applicants will be invited to join the register from July 2021.

A DfE spokesperson said: “We have launched the consultation precisely so we can hear views from existing ATAs about the future operating framework and we would encourage organisations to respond.”