You now have until Friday 16 April (midnight GMT) to submit a nomination for the BTEC Awards 2021. 

We know this year has been filled with uncertainty and challenge, and we’re keen to hear how your centre has supported staff and learners through it. It’s quick and easy to enter the BTEC Awards – and you might just be our next winner!

Why should you submit a nomination? 

• • Recognise exceptional achievement
    • There will be some extra special stories to celebrate in 2021 and we want to hear about those learners, educators, schools and colleges that lit the way during an extraordinary year.
  • A great PR opportunity for your centre
    • BTEC Award winners will be offered many press opportunities and will also have a professional video case study created.
  • Looks great on a CV
    • A BTEC Award offers kudos and recognition on an international level.

BTEC Awards Categories

Learner Awards:

• BTEC Art and Design Learner of the Year
• BTEC Business and Enterprise Learner of the Year (we also accept Esports, Law and Marketing qualifications in this category)
• BTEC Child and Social Care Learner of the Year
• BTEC Construction Learner of the Year
• BTEC Creative Media Learner of the Year
• BTEC Engineering Learner of the Year
• BTEC Hospitality, Travel and Tourism Learner of the Year
• BTEC IT and Computing Learner of the Year
• BTEC Land-based Learner of the Year
• BTEC Music Learner of the Year
• BTEC Performing Arts Learner of the Year
• BTEC Public Services Learner of the Year
• BTEC Science Learner of the Year
• BTEC Sport Learner of the Year

Educator Awards:

• BTEC Teacher of the Year
• BTEC Tutor of the Year

Provider Awards:

• BTEC College of the Year
• BTEC School or MAT of the Year
• BTEC International Centre or Institution of the Year

To find out more about the BTEC Awards and enter, visit: btec.co.uk/awards

 

Over 9.4 million people are working in sectors excluded from the government’s new adult level 3 offer under its lifetime skills guarantee, analysis by Labour has found on the eve of the scheme’s launch.

FE Week was first to reveal that key economic sectors such as retail, hospitality and travel and tourism have been left out of the flagship scheme which prime minister Boris Johnson hopes will help people retrain after the pandemic.

The Labour Party has now analysed House of Commons Library data and found that over a third of all current jobs will be excluded from the training programme as a result.

This follows another recent FE Week investigation that revealed how the offer is being misrepresented.

The DfE and skills minister Gillian Keegan have repeatedly said the policy will enable eligible adults to achieve “their first full level 3 qualification”. However, this publication’s analysis found over half of the qualifications on offer do not meet the Department for Education’s own definition of a “full” level 3 qualification, with over a third below an indicative 360 guided learning hours.

Labour has also pointed out that adults who already hold a level 3 qualification are also excluded from accessing the scheme, which is due to rollout from April 1. The scheme is backed with £95 million from the National Skills Fund.

Shadow further education and skills minister Toby Perkins said: “You would be forgiven for thinking the Conservatives’ Lifetime Skills Guarantee is an April Fool’s joke, rather than a plan to help reskill our country after this pandemic.

“The Conservatives’ mishandling of the Covid crisis has led the UK to experience the worst economic crisis of any major economy. Their limited plans will now leave millions unable to access the skills they need to play their part in our recovery.”

He called on ministers to “urgently” widen eligibility for the level 3 adult offer to “ensure it reaches all adults who could benefit”.

The DfE declined to comment on Labour’s analysis, but in a press release about the launch of the scheme, education secretary Gavin Williamson said: “This offer will help give millions of adults the chance to gain the skills they need to secure rewarding careers in key sectors.”

And prime minister Boris Johnson added: “As we cautiously lift lockdown restrictions, the government’s focus is on recovering from the pandemic and building back better.

“The Lifetime Skills Guarantee is fundamental to that – with free courses giving adults the expertise they need to find new, better jobs.”

Ahead of the April 1 launch of the policy, the DfE said the government will pilot an extension to the length of time that people can receive Universal Credit while undertaking work-focused study, which is currently set at eight weeks.

They will now be able to train full time for up to 12 weeks, or up to 16 weeks on a full-time skills bootcamp in England, while receiving Universal Credit to support their living costs.

The qualifications that are on offer range from engineering to social care and are available to any adult who has not already achieved a qualification at level 3.

There are 387 currently available, but the list is still in its first draft. The list is expected to expand over time as the government allows mayoral combined authorities and awarding bodies to make requests for other qualifications to be added.

Employers have however branded the process for adding qualifications to the list “bureaucratic” and “frustrating”.

Independent training providers have meanwhile been given just a four-month window to start and complete the courses through the offer, while colleges have warned of a slow start owing to a lack of detail from the DfE and strict eligibility rules.

The scheme builds on a similar policy that has been in place since 2013 which allows adults up to the age of 23 to be fully funded for their first full-level 3 qualification from the adult education budget. Those aged 24 and over have since had to take out an advanced learner loan to pay for the course.

The current entitlement for those aged 23 and below spans 1,178 qualifications which are all classed as “full” level 3 courses.

Frances Wadsworth is set to be appointed as the interim FE Commissioner, FE Week can reveal.

The former college principal and one of six current deputy FE Commissioners will take over from Richard Atkins at midnight until his permanent successor is in post.

The government said this afternoon that an announcement on the new full-time FE Commissioner will be made “shortly”.

Wadsworth currently sits on the board of Ofqual and has worked in further education for over 20 years.

Her previous roles include principal of Croydon College, as well as principal of East Surrey College.

She became a deputy FE Commissioner in May 2018.

Today is Atkins’ last day as FE Commissioner after more than four years in post. You can read his final interview as commissioner here.

The chief executive of one of the country’s largest college groups has been appointed as the next FE Commissioner.

Shelagh Legrave, who has worked at Chichester College since 2003 and became leader in 2010, will succeed Richard Atkins on a permanent basis from October.

As FE Week revealed yesterday, current deputy FE Commissioner Frances Wadsworth will be in the post on an interim basis from today until Legrave takes the reins.

Legrave is a qualified accountant and currently chairs the Coastal West Sussex Skills & Enterprise Group as well as Bourne Community College and Stonepillow, a homeless charity.

She is also vice chair of the Collab Group and sits on the Chichester Festival Theatre board.

Chichester College has grown into one of England’s largest college groups under her leadership. She has led it through two mergers to achieve an ‘outstanding’ judgement from Ofsted in 2020.

Legrave, who was awarded an OBE in 2015, said it was a “great privilege” to be appointed FE Commissioner, particularly at “this critical time when skills will be vital to rebuilding our economy and communities”.

“As the FE White Paper has set out, colleges will be at the forefront of education and training that will enable social mobility and address the needs of employers,” she added.

“I look forward to supporting the Secretary of State and skills minister to ensure that further education and sixth form colleges across England are in the strongest possible position to change people’s lives for the better.”

 

‘I look forward to working with Shelagh to support and challenge the sector’

Education secretary Gavin Williamson, who announced the appointment today, said: “I am delighted to appoint Shelagh to this vital role. She is hugely experienced in the sector, with a track record of outstanding success and improvement.

“At this crucial time for the country, an outstanding further education sector will be more important than ever and I look forward to working with Shelagh to support and challenge the sector to be the best it can be.”

The FE Commissioner role was introduced in 2013 as a key adviser to ministers in the Department for Education. The commissioner intervenes in struggling colleges, where visits turn into published reports which assess quality and financial health, as well as the existing governance and leadership.

Its inaugural post holder was Sir David Collins, who was replaced by Atkins in 2016.

The FE Commissioner leads a team of around 18 deputy FE commissioners and FE advisers, made up mainly of former college principals or deputy principals and directors of finance.

The four-day week role will earn Legrave £135,000 per annum. It is a two-year term.

Williamson thanked outgoing FE Commissioner Atkins for his more than four years of service.

“He has made a huge impact in the role, which has developed significantly under his leadership and I wish him all the best in his retirement,” the education secretary added.

Colleges will not be allowed to submit a business case to avoid adult education funding being clawed back, the government has announced.

Sector experts had hoped grant-funded providers would be able to put forward reasons why they should cling on to the money if they did not reach the controversial 90 per cent threshold.

But in an update published this morning, the Education and Skills Funding Agency said there “will not be a business case process,” and the 90 per cent threshold will be “the final position for the 2020/21 academic year and will not be subject to change”.

Association of Colleges deputy chief executive Julian Gravatt said it seems “self-defeating” to have a “blanket line and not consider the context in which colleges got to the point where they under-delivered, especially when it’s evident that it was largely out of their control”.

“This does not help colleges, it does not help the government deliver its commitments, and it does not help our communities and businesses.”

Situation ‘still difficult’ for providers

FE Week exclusively revealed last week the threshold, much less generous than the 68 per cent allowed for 2019/20 allocations, was demanded by the Treasury.

This is after officials successfully argued colleges have had enough time to reorientate provision and run courses online, where needed, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

College leaders, and allegedly senior ESFA officials, were shocked by the decision, with many leaders saying they did not believe they could make the 90 per cent bar.

Leicester College said it forecasts using just 53 per cent of its allocation this year – and would lose more than £4 million to the clawback.

It is forecasting the clawback will set their finances back five years, and principal Verity Hancock said the college has already suffered consequences, having had to back out of a capital funding bid for T Levels. These are qualifications the provider is due to start delivering from September 2021. The bid was worth £6.6 million and would have involved the college match funding £3.8 million, which, Hancock says, “we can no longer afford”.

Leicester College, along with the rest of the city, has been in continual lockdown since March 2020.

So on the ESFA’s decision to rule out business cases, Hancock, a former Skills Funding Agency executive director herself, said she doesn’t “understand the basis for a decision that refuses to recognise the very exceptional position that Leicester College is in, given that it was the worst affected city in the country from continuous lockdowns, and has the largest AEB offer in the country, focused on those furthest from the labour market, who for very, very legitimate reasons have not been able to learn at Leicester College this year.”

Derby College Group has predicted it will use 65 per cent and lose nearly £1.8 million, and called the government’s decision “tremendously disappointing”.

The Association of Colleges has forecast most of its members will deliver between 75 to 85 per cent of their allocations, which would mean a total clawback of between £22 million and £62 million.

The ESFA said, when the threshold was announced, it was a “fair representation of grant-funded providers’ average delivery” in 2020/21.

Though they admit “the situation is still difficult for providers”.

Department hopes to recover money next financial year

Today’s update said the agency is “announcing this change now to help providers better plan their provision for the remainder of the 2020 to 2021 academic year”.

“Our primary aim is to support providers to continue to deliver as much quality provision as possible, including above the 90 per cent threshold.”

This provision can be face-to-face, online, or otherwise remotely, including through subcontracting in the case of AEB-funded provision.

The agency made clear that where providers deliver less than 90 per cent, they will recover the difference between their actual delivery and 90 per cent. For example, delivery of 85 per cent would result in a recovery of 5 per cent of the allocation.

Recovering funding will be scheduled from this December, and the agency will “preferably” recover money in full in the 2021/22 financial year.

It has promised to “work with providers that would like to request a phased recovery plan,” of up to four months.

“Where this would cause financial difficulties, we will consider cases beyond this with your ESFA territorial team.”

Also included in today’s update was confirmation the Covid-19 skills offer will have a 97 per cent threshold for 2020/21 – which is the usual adult education budget threshold.

The ringfenced offer includes funding for the new level 3 entitlement, which is rolling out with the National Skills Fund next month.

A college that has faced dire financial straits in recent years has appointed a qualified accountant as its new permanent principal.

David Alexander, currently vice principal at West College Scotland, has been named the new boss of Gateshead College.

He said the college’s “clear purpose to give students the employment edge is something I’m passionate about.

“And with such strong progress made towards its financial recovery, I’m looking forward to working with the board, colleagues and partners to develop an ambitious plan for the future.”

Gateshead College has been subject to FE Commissioner intervention, and recently escaped having to merge with neighbouring colleges, after discovering in October 2019 it had a £6 million hole in its 2018/19 accounts.

Forensic auditors were called in and the commissioner, Richard Atkins, set up a structure and prospects appraisal of the college.

Atkins and his team found Gateshead had been in deficit for years, but this had been disguised by a misstatement of certain bills. The college subsequently received more than £5 million in government bailout funding.

Then-principal Judith Doyle, once the highest-paid principal in the country, resigned in January 2020 shortly before the chair, John McCabe.

The college is currently being run by experienced principal Andy Cole on an interim basis. The college’s 2019/20 accounts are yet to be published.

Chair Sarah Stewart said of Alexander’s appointment: “We have a financial recovery plan that is well on track and, having been through a rigorous process which confirmed we will remain a standalone college, I am delighted we now have our new principal to lead us on the next stage of our journey.”

As well as being a chartered accountant, the new principal has held board positions for the Scottish Funding Council, Victim Support Scotland, and the General Teaching Council for Scotland.

The government’s commission on racial disparities has called for a new apprenticeship recruitment campaign “highly-targeted” at young people “facing discrimination or disadvantage”.

A report published today by the commission claimed ethnic minority families have a mixture of “ignorance and prejudice” about apprenticeships.

That contrasts with white families, who show “a mixture of stronger traditions of understanding and respecting the apprenticeship system”.

‘Evident’ race and age disparities in apprenticeships

In their report, the commissioners expressed concern about “evident disparities in the take-up of apprenticeships across age and ethnicity”.

They analysed data which showed young ethnic minority people “are under-represented in the apprenticeship system, including both school leavers and those who take up apprenticeships in their early 20s”.

The commission adds that in London, before the levy was introduced in 2017, those from the black ethnic group were “well represented in apprenticeships overall – however, they were also more likely to be clustered in lower level and lower paid apprenticeships”.

It quotes a survey by Youth Employment UK which earlier this year found that 33 per cent of black respondents had never had apprenticeships discussed with them, compared with 13 per cent of white respondents.

Exclusive analysis published by FE Week in October found that ethnic minority 16- to 18-year-old apprentices made up just 7.7 per cent of starts in the first three-quarters of 2019/20, a finding that sector leaders branded it a “national disgrace”.

The race commission, which was ordered by prime minister Boris Johnson and has been chaired by former schoolteacher Tony Sewell, recommends a new recruitment campaign to tackle this issue.

‘Highly targeted’ recruitment campaign for young apprentices

Its report says the campaign should be designed partly by the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions and delivered through colleges, Jobcentre Plus, and school career hubs.

It would use role models, employer testimonies, and data on potential earnings and progression, and would explore the factors which influence a young person’s career choices.

This includes parental engagement, peer influence, access to information, and employer links to students.

The campaign, the commission recommends, would be split into a pilot phase in “left behind” areas of England.

Followed by a national roll-out with a “well-evidenced, highly targeted” campaign, focused on getting young people into jobs in “growth sectors” as part of an apprenticeship.

There should also be “rewards” for providers for “successfully achieving this”.

DfE working to make role models ‘visible’ in campaigns

FE Week has reported over a number of years on the problems around, and the government’s efforts to rectify, the poor representation by ethnic minorities in apprenticeships.

The Department for Education’s public attempts to redress low ethnic minority take-up goes back to when Justine Greening was education secretary under Theresa May.

Greening was accused of being “all talk” after telling the Education Select Committee the government had a “big focus” on encouraging “a higher proportion of BAME [black, Asian and minority ethnic] young people going into apprenticeships”.

This was after FE Week found at the time just eight per cent of England’s young apprentices were BAME.

Since then, the DfE says it has “ensured that young BAME role models are visible in campaigns such as ‘Fire It Up’, and that we are hearing the voices of young apprentices (including BAME) through apprentice networks such as the Young Apprentice Ambassador Network, and the Apprentice Panel”.

And last month, the government has appointed former college lecturer and Grimsby MP Lia Nici as chair of the Apprenticeship Diversity Champions Network.

The Department for Education and Government Equalities Office, which is leading on the report, was approached for comment.