A former skills minister has criticised the Department for Education for moving away from T Levels student recruitment targets.
Sir John Hayes, the Conservative MP for South Holland and The Deepings who held the skills brief between 2010 and 2012, said numerical goals are essential to making new programmes “credible”.
He said targets are vital to “gauge success” and that he’s “never bought the argument” that you cannot focus on both quality and quantity when rolling schemes out.
The Department for Education had originally set student number “estimates” for the first three T Levels but has since claimed they have no fixed targets.
Documents for a T Level awarding body tender from 2018 show the department estimated there would be 900 learners on the education and childcare pathway, 400 on construction and 1,200 on digital in the first year of the rollout in 2020/21.
An updated T Level action plan published by the DfE in January showed that, as of October 2020, 650 students were enrolled on the education course, 250 on the construction pathway, and 400 were on the digital.
Hayes was speaking at a Westminster Education Forum event this week during which Sue Lovelock, the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s director for professional and technical education, said the government chose not to “dilute” the quality of T Levels by setting targets.
She said: “One of the lessons that we learned from looking at previous reform programmes is that actually, if you have a sort of very numbers focused approach on ‘we need X number of providers, we need X number of students’, then you almost by consequence dilute the focus on quality.
“We’ve really tried to put quality at the forefront of all of our planning. So, we haven’t set targets for how many providers we want or how many students we want on particular courses.
“We want to work with providers that are really keen to meet our quality bar and for them to think about the number of places that they think are right for their institution as we roll out T Levels in the early phases.”
She added that this was a “conscious decision to put quality rather than quantity at the front of all of the work that we’ve been doing on T Levels”.
Sue Lovelock
But Hayes, who chaired the event, hit back. “I’ve never bought that argument, Sue, because when I was the minister, we put into place for the first time statutory standards for apprenticeships,” he said.
“We got rid of programme-led apprenticeships. And yet at the same time, we massively boosted the number. I’ve never bought the argument that there’s a trade-off.”
The former skills minister added it was “absolutely right” that reforms have “rigour” but warned “unless you have coverage they won’t be embedded in the consciousness of learners, of potential learners, of providers, of parents, of everyone else”.
He continued: “You have to have numbers in order to make the programme credible, it seems to me. I take your point about policy ̶ I just don’t think there’s a simple trade-off.”
In response, Lovelock conceded: “That’s completely fair.”
Asked whether the enrolment numbers had increased since October, Lovelock said: “I don’t think the number has changed significantly.”
The two awarding bodies delivering the first three T Levels – Pearson and NCFE – later confirmed to FE Week that there has been no big change in the numbers since October.
Colleges and training providers can now apply for funding to send students and apprentices to study or work internationally under the government’s new Turing scheme.
The programme, named after the famous mathematician, is intended to create 35,000 placements in 2021/22 and is replacing the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme.
As revealed by FE Week last week, Ecorys, the co-delivery partner with the British Council for the Turing scheme, has said the funding available will total £105 million: £35 million will go to further education; £60 million will go to universities; and £10 million to schools.
The Department for Education said today that the scheme will actually total £110 million, which is “inclusive of the costs of administering the scheme”, such as outreach and communications work.
The programme’s focus on social mobility and value for money will open up more opportunities for international education and travel
Ministers are promoting the potential for disadvantaged students to take advantage of the scheme, with prime minister Boris Johnson saying the project “seeks to help students of all income groups from across the country experience fantastic education opportunities in any country they choose”.
To promote Turing, schools minister Nick Gibb and skills minister Gillian Keegan are planning to visit areas which have previously not benefited from Erasmus+, the DfE said.
Education secretary Gavin Williamson has urged colleges, schools and universities to put in applications.
“The programme’s focus on social mobility and value for money will open up more opportunities for international education and travel to all of our students, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds,” who, Williamson said, were “less likely to benefit from the previous EU scheme”.
The idea that Erasmus+ did not help disadvantaged learners has been challenged, however. A spokesperson for Ecorys told this publication last week that one-fifth of vocational placements on Erasmus+ went to disadvantaged students.
The Turing scheme’s placements will last between two and 12 weeks and are due to start in September.
Learners can also use the funding to partake of international skills competitions, which can last between one and ten days.
Alan Turing
If a learner has special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), placements can start from five days, as long as that is justified in the provider’s application.
Providers that are successful in their applications will receive funding to administer the scheme while the students will receive grants to help cover living, tuition and travel costs.
FE and vocational education and training (VET) students will receive up to £1,360 for travel costs.
Living costs are being broken down into three groups: group one for a high cost of living, group two for a medium cost and group three for a lower cost.
So for living costs, FE and VET applicants will receive:
To group one destinations: £109 per day for the first 14 days, £76 per day after the 14th day
To group two destinations: £94 per day for the first 14 days, £66 per day after the 14th day
To group three destinations: £80 per day for the first 14 days, £56 per day after the 14th day.
FE and VET participants from disadvantaged backgrounds will receive actual costs for additional travel expenses, including for visas, passports and health insurance.
“We see this as crucial because travel-related expenses can often be a deterrent to potential participants,” the scheme’s website reads.
Learners with SEND will receive funding for up to 100 per cent of actual costs for support directly related to their additional needs.
Just over £118 million has been set aside to pay for the new “targeted level 3 adult offer” across England – but the cash will come from two different education budgets.
From next month until the end of July 2022, “core funding” of £100 million will come from the new National Skills Fund (NSF) along with £16.25 million to pay for an “uplift” for learners aged 24 and over.
The remaining £2.5 million, to pay for an “uplift” for learners aged 19 to 23 will not come from the NSF but will instead be funded from the adult education budget (AEB).
The uplifts are £150 extra for short qualifications (less than an indicative 360 hours) and £600 for long qualifications (360 hours or more).
It will fully fund around 400 short and long qualifications at level 3, making them free to learners aged 19 and over who do not already have a first full level 3 qualification.
The Department for Education has so far refused to say how much funding has been allocated for providers to deliver the new offer.
But the total NSF and AEB budgets for the level 3 adult offer were revealed in a letter sent by the Education and Skills Funding Agency to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
It explains how the complex budgeting arrangements filter through to an even more complex set of funding allocations for providers in both non-devolved and devolved areas.
The funding will be routed through the AEB funding formula and rates, but all the NSF funding is “ringfenced” and will be clawed back if not spent on the “level 3 adult offer”.
For learners aged 24 and over, their level 3 adult offer core funding and uplift would be funded from the NSF in this way.
But the letter reveals for the first time that it is much more complicated for those aged 19 to 23.
If a 19-to-23-year-old chooses a qualification “that is included in both the level 3 adult offer and the 19-to-23 level 3 legal entitlement” then both the course and uplift funding is not ringfenced and comes from the AEB budget and not from the ringfenced NSF.
In this example, just the £150 and £600 uplifts would be funded from the £2.5 million set aside for this purpose.
Sadiq Khan
But, if a 19-to-23-year-old chooses a qualification “on the level 3 adult offer list that is not included in the 19-to-23 level 3 entitlement, then the funding for the course and the uplift will come from the ringfenced NSF funding”.
‘The department is allocating this amount at its own risk’
The letter also says £23.75 million of the £118 million relates to April and July 2022 which “falls outside the current spending review period and the department is allocating this amount at its own risk.”
These highly unusual and complex budgeting arrangements are expected to be “transitional”, coming after publication of the FE white paper – but before a consultation on the new NSF.
Last week, on an FE Week webcast, Keith Smith, the DfE director of post-16 strategy responsible for the FE white paper, said the NSF consultation would be published in the spring.
The FE white paper promises “simplification and streamlining of funding” but Smith conceded that introducing programmes with brand-new funding rules and methodologies do add further complexity to an already complicated system.
As reported in FE Week he also said: “Please don’t take anything that happens in the short term as any sort of indication of where the future intent will be.”
Chambers of commerce are “not close enough to industry” to play a leading role in the skills system as set out in the FE white paper, an employer has warned.
Flannery Plant Hire director Paul Allman made the remarks at an FE Week webcast (watch below) on the Skills for Jobs white paper, which announced the creation of new “local skills improvement plans” when it was published in January.
These plans, which will force colleges and providers to align the courses they offer to local employers’ needs, are set to be piloted in a number of currently unknown trailblazer areas this year, with chambers and other business representative organisations leading the work.
The government is even intending to legislate to put employer leadership of the plans “on statutory footing”.
I don’t think they’re close enough to what industry needs
But FE Week understands chambers are still in the dark about what their exact role will be under the reforms, despite the government promising to announce the pilot areas in “early 2021”.
And Allman, whose company has helped develop apprenticeships as part of a trailblazer group, expressed his doubts about how effective the chambers would be in leading employer engagement.
“I don’t really see the chambers as being a good route to solving these problems,” he said. “I don’t think they’re close enough to what industry needs, particularly not in the construction sector. They don’t fit into the space, to be honest.”
Chambers ‘expected to play their part’
Education secretary Gavin Williamson’s foreword in the white paper said that local business organisations, chambers of commerce specifically, will “place employers at the heart of defining local skills needs”.
It is part of Williamson’s attempts to model England’s technical education system on that of Germany, where chambers provide a “one-stop shop” to register apprentices, supervise training, assess trainers and conduct examinations, the white paper says.
Membership of the chambers is compulsory for German employers, but this is not the case in England and there are no plans to change this.
There are 43 chambers across England which comprise groups of local businesses, with varying levels of staff. They typically offer their members opportunities for networking as well as advice on legal matters, health and safety and tax.
In response to Allman’s remarks, Jane Gratton, head of people policy for the British Chambers of Commerce, said the place-based, business-led chambers have the ability “to convene employers of all sizes and sectors, together with a wide range of skills providers and economic stakeholders, to discuss and agree local priorities”.
Gratton said they “look forward” to further announcements from the Department for Education about how the Local Skills Improvement Plans policy will be “brought to life” but are yet to have those conversations with ministers.
“We expect chambers across England will step forward to play their part in ensuring more people can train and retrain for new and emerging jobs in their local communities.”
Key organisations need to ‘focus’
Allman also warned that there is “a lot of apathy” from employers about getting involved in the skills sector that could dampen the government’s ambitions.
He said there should be “a drive within our sector to get the key organisations together and really focus on how we can work closely with the FE colleges to actually develop something that is fit for the purpose of what we need”.
Responding to the concerns, a Department for Education spokesperson said: “We want a wide range of businesses of all sizes and from all sectors to feed into local skills improvement plans so that technical education and training meets their needs.
“We therefore expect the business representative organisation leading the development of a local skills improvement plan in a trailblazer area to engage effectively with other relevant business representative organisations and sector bodies in the local area as part of their engagement with key local stakeholders.”
The DfE added that it will be running an open process to select the trailblazer local areas and that further information will be announced in the “near future”.
The government is considering making “adaptations” to exams in 2022 similar to those proposed for this summer’s assessments before they were cancelled, the head of regulator Ofqual has said.
Simon Lebus (pictured), the interim chief regulator, told MPs this morning that the “thinking at the moment is about adaptations along the line that had been originally contemplated for this year when exams were still to go ahead”.
The government proposed last year that grading for exams in 2021 would be as generous as it was in 2020, and that students would get advance notice of topics in certain subjects and be allowed to use exam aids.
Those plans were abandoned in January when exams were cancelled following partial school and college closures.
But Lebus suggested this morning that some of them may be resurrected next year in recognition that future exam students will also have been impacted by the pandemic.
“So far as 2022 is concerned, the thinking at the moment is about adaptations along the line that had been originally contemplated for this year when exams were still to go ahead,” he told the education select committee.
“And that’s based on the reality of the cohort taking exams next year will have suffered considerable disruption to their learning, though we would hope not on the scale and at the level that has been suffered by this year’s cohort, so that it would be a reasonable thing to carry out some form of public exams but that they would be adapted to reflect the learning disruption that’s taken place.”
Different approach may be needed for future exams
His comments come after MPs raised concerns about grade inflation being “baked in” to the system for years to come. Grades will be issued on the basis of teacher assessments this year.
Lebus said this morning said the process of recovering lost learning would take “several years”, adding there would “have to be policy initiatives in place to deal with that over a period of time”.
In terms of what happens after 2022, Lebus said there needed to be “reflection on what we do longer-term to the exam system to take account of the disruption that’s occurred over the last three years and the disjunct before and after”.
“And so you inevitably end up asking the question, do we in post-Covid times approach things slightly differently?
“And all sorts of issues have been raised about coursework, teacher judgment, there’s always been a dialogue going on about the weight you give teacher judgment as opposed to summative exams, though all those have been issues that have been surfaced by this and they will form part of the policy mix that is determined in order to address lost learning over the coming years.”
Dame Glenys Stacey
It comes after Dame Glenys Stacey, who served as interim chief regulator at Ofqual between September and December last year before Lebus took over, warned there would be a “long backwash to this pandemic in education”. She said the need for a “good and considered and open discussion about what the right thing to do would be”.
Stacey also previously warned that going “straight back” to standards seen pre-pandemic in 2022 “wouldn’t be fair”.
“We need to see how the pandemic washes through so we can have the broad discussion about where standards are set for 2022,” she told MPs last year.
Schools minister Nick Gibb also accepted in December that the government would need to “look again, as the pandemic proceeds, to see what happens about what we do in 2022, because again, the 2022 cohort will have suffered some disruption to their education as well”.
Progress monitoring visits of grade three and four FE providers will end from March 15 as inspections of new providers finally restart, Ofsted has announced today.
The watchdog has been carrying out remote progress monitoring visits to poorly graded colleges and providers since January in place of routine in-person inspections, which have been suspended during the pandemic.
But the inspectorate updated its operational guidance this morning to state it will “discontinue” the check-ups from next week other than in “exceptional cases”.
This could happen when, for example, “it has already been necessary to engage additional planning and resources for a visit and we believe that to be the most appropriate means of monitoring progress at this time”.
Ofsted said the decision was taken after reviewing its face-to-face inspection activity following the government’s announcement about the return to onsite education from March 8.
Full and short inspections will remain suspended for the time being.
But, as reported by FE Week on Friday, the watchdog will begin carrying out “new provider monitoring visits (NPMVs) to new providers that have not yet received a monitoring visit” again from March 15.
Ofsted said it considers this group to be the “highest priority for face-to-face inspection activity”.
FE Week understands the Education and Skills Funding Agency has grown increasingly concerned with new apprenticeship providers operating for prolonged periods without oversight from the watchdog.
Ofsted confirmed today that the ESFA will take into account the outcome of these NPMVs when making intervention decisions as usual, such as about apprenticeships starts and registration.
They will be carried out in the same way as before the suspension of routine inspection activity but the impact of Covid-19 will be taken into account in the findings and progress judgements.
Ofsted said it will not carry out an NPMV to any provider that has level 6 and/or 7 apprenticeships provision before 1 April 2021, from which date the inspectorate takes on responsibility for overseeing this provision form the Office of Students.
The inspectorate said it will give up to two working days’ notice of an NPMV and each visit will normally last for two days.
Providers can request to defer the inspection in “exceptional circumstances” and each case will be judged “separately on its own merit”.
Ofsted added today that it will continue to carry out emergency monitoring visits or inspections “if we have a significant cause for concern, such as about safeguarding or a breakdown in leadership and management”. These will be carried out onsite, “wherever possible”.
The Department for Education knew its flagship skills bootcamps could be flooded with male learners but has a raft of plans to tackle the issue, FE Week has learned.
An equalities impact assessment of the programme received by this newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act makes a series of recommendations to bring in more female and ethnic minority learners.
These include a targeted marketing campaign “to attract a diverse cohort” of learners to the programmes.
Also, to run monthly workshops with local authorities to “discuss the cohort the courses are attracting and share best practice on how to improve this,” the document reads.
The assessment warns the bootcamps – level 3 and above engineering, manufacturing and digital skills courses being launched with the National Skills Fund in April – “may require prior knowledge or experience in male-dominated career areas”.
FE Week published exclusive analysis in January which found the DfE is seeking a very narrow range of digital, engineering and construction-related courses, mostly studied by men, for bootcamps. For example, less than 20 per cent of level 3 IT courses were studied by women last year.
This was echoed in the DfE’s equalities impact assessment, in which data from the Office for National Statistics was quoted
showing just 16.5 per cent of employees in the IT sector are women.
The assessment admits that this “may result in a disproportionate number of men being able to access the courses”.
A number of them have reported a high amount of uptake among female learners, yet quite poor take-up by black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) learners in some areas.
The DfE published in January two tenders worth a total of £36 million for skills bootcamps to start in April: one for digital skills courses in nine areas, and another for a number in areas such as digital skills, electrotechnical, nuclear or green energy at a local or national level.
The bootcamps’ “service requirement” tender said the DfE wanted suppliers to have a minimum of 50 per cent female learners.
But Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes warned “it is very unlikely” the bootcamps will meet that target.
To ensure it does, the DfE’s assessment includes a string of actions, including collecting data on learners “to ensure the bootcamps are attracting a diverse cohort”.
For the bootcamp pilots, a DfE spokesperson said they are “collating data on both applicants to the bootcamps and participants on the bootcamps through monthly provider returns,” which include participants’ gender, disability or long-term health condition and ethnicity.
As the bootcamps are not using individualised learner records, the DfE has a spreadsheet that providers fill in. They do not plan to change this for the first phase of bootcamps, they said.
The assessment also calls for bootcamp advertising to use positive role models and feature a “diverse range” of people, including women, disabled people and those from different ethnic backgrounds.
Ensuring recruitment practices take account of unconscious bias and processes for learners who complain of unfair practices or treatment is also recommended to providers.
The DfE spokesperson said they want “everyone” to benefit from the bootcamps and the government “shares an ambition with employers to increase diversity”.
Big female uptake on pilots, but poor BAME results
When it comes to encouraging female learners, the pilot programmes have seen some promising results.
West Midlands Combined Authority has seen 1,500 starts on its bootcamp pilots, which started in the first wave and include dedicated digital skills training for women and other groups who are underrepresented in technology.
Of the pilot’s learners, 51 per cent have been female while 53 per cent have been non-white.
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, which has been running courses in digital marketing, cyber security and data engineering as part of the second wave of pilots, currently has 310 learners on programme and 48 per cent are female.
D2N2 local enterprise partnership, another second wave pilot provider, has seen 408 starts on programmes in network routers and switches, digital sales, and coding and software development – 51 per cent of which were female.
But just 11 per cent of Liverpool’s learners are from a BAME background, while multi-ethnic, Asian, black and other ethnic groups make up just ten per cent of D2N2’s learners.
The combined authority said that although this is “not a KPI for our pilot, we are actively promoting across a diverse range of platforms and stakeholders as we want as many people from all backgrounds to be able to access the opportunity the project offers”.
The Turing scheme will open for applications this month. We spoke to sector professionals to compare the newcomer with its predecessor, Erasmus, and to ponder the likely outcomes for students and staff
For those colleges that made use of the Erasmus+ scheme during its 25-year lifespan in the UK, Brexit in January last year started the clock on a nerve-shredding countdown.
Would the government keep us in the European Union’s £13-billion-pound support programme? Would they replace it with something else? Partner colleges across the continent fired off emails to their colleagues in England, who were unable to give an answer.
Just like the Brexit deal itself, the outcome was unclear until the last. In January last year education secretary Gavin Williamson voted against continued membership of Erasmus in any Brexit deal, but then Boris Johnson said there was “no threat”. However not long afterwards, Williamson said the Department for Education would develop its own “alternative arrangements” to Erasmus+, just in case.
By the date of the Brexit deal on December 24, the UK had lost membership of the Erasmus+ scheme, with Johnson saying it was a “tough decision” but the financial cost of remaining was too high.
On the same day, the Turing scheme was announced. Named after the famed computing pioneer, Johnson said the global replacement for Erasmus+ would involve “the best universities” all over the world, immediately prompting queries about whether vocational placements would also be funded as they are under Erasmus+. (The EU once called its vocational programme the Leonardo da Vinci scheme, after that other great inventor, but it was rolled into the rebranded Erasmus+ scheme in 2014.)
To clear things up, the government published its updated “International Education Strategy” last month – part of its plan to “strengthen the UK’s global leadership” – which said the Turing scheme is for learners “in universities, colleges and schools”. About £105 million would fund 35,000 placements anywhere in the world, ranging from two weeks to 12 months, for a year from September 2021.
FE Week has revealed the separate funding pots for the first time: £35 million for further education, £60 million for universities and £10 million for schools, according to Ecorys, the co-delivery partner with the British Council for the Turing scheme.
This roughly equates to about 10,000 further education placements, 20,000 higher education placements and 5,000 school placements, says Jane Racz, director of the scheme at the British Council. And on Wednesday, the Turing Scheme website published a “programme guide” with a few more details. So is the programme good? How can colleges get involved?
‘Colleges impressed with Erasmus’
First off, the Turing scheme has big boots to fill.
Unlike some headlines claiming Erasmus+ is “elitist” or “middle-class”, the colleges sector, when asked, had only good news to report. A 2019 survey of 31 colleges carried out by the Association of Colleges found three-quarters gave the programme a full 5 out of 5 score for its benefits to the institution, with only three per cent giving it a 3 and no scores below that.
Erasmus students from Dudley College
It may be to do with the sizeable proportion of poorer learners on the scheme – one-fifth of vocational placements have gone to disadvantaged students, according to Ecorys. The perception of the programme as only for higher education students is “misleading and exclusionary”, one witness told the House of Lords European Union committee two years ago.
And the positive view among colleges is seen in the numbers, too. In 2020, 57 colleges were awarded funding to send staff and students abroad on placements, up from 28 six years before.
Colleges won €25.6 million for those placements, again a huge increase from just €5.2 million in 2014.
And that’s just how much colleges successfully pitched for, not how much was available in total. Overall, €39.8 million was available to the UK in 2020 for vocational education placements – close to the Turing scheme’s own £35 million of funding for FE.
‘Staff left out in the cold’
“But that doesn’t include staff,” points out Richard Stratford, head of projects and partnerships at South Devon College.
Whereas colleges can apply for Erasmus+ placement funding for staff as well as students, the Turing scheme is for students only, with some extra funding to cover staff “accompanying learners abroad for safeguarding purposes”, according to the programme guide.
The college usually sends about 40 lecturers on staff placements a year to their partner institutions in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland or France. “They come back buzzing with ideas, absolutely buzzing. That will be a huge loss,” says Stratford.
Jodie Davis, a performing arts lecturer at Dudley College of Technology in the West Midlands, spent one week each in Cyprus, Sweden, Greece and Portugal observing dancing lessons, including in professional dance schools.
“We learnt a lot about their different cultural approaches to it, especially the technical training.” Back at home, she trained her students in alternative styles so they could adapt to an international dance company in future.
The experience also “invigorated” her,” she says. “I pushed myself out of my comfort zone again, as a practitioner too.” Since FE lecturers are intended to be industry experts as well as teachers, such placements fit with the ethos of the sector.
As Emma Meredith, international director at the AoC, says, “clearly, Erasmus was being used”. Eighty-five per cent of surveyed colleges were using Erasmus+ for learner placements – but 76 per cent were also using it for staff development.
Last year, 1,152 UK staff from further education went on these placements, according to Ecorys. It’s not a huge figure – but for an individual college, the insight potential is not insignificant.
Erasmus student and staff from Lancaster & Morecambe College learning to cook fish in Italy
Mathew Hayes, international projects lead at Lancaster & Morecambe College, says his principal was hoping to visit top-level apprenticeship provision in both Germany and Denmark, “where apprenticeships are treated on par with degrees”, he says. But such staff trips will no longer be funded.
FE Week interviewed a European Commission official for education policy about the shift.
UK further education colleges “could really lose resources to help them thrive,” he said. “Finland, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, the Basque country, these all have really top-notch further education and vocational training, and that’s now more difficult for UK institutions to learn from.”
‘No collaborative projects’
It’s worsened by the fact the second “strand” of Erasmus+ funding for partnerships and collaborative projects is also not replicated under the Turing scheme.
Colleges can currently partner with at least two other institutions across Europe to discuss and pilot new ideas around the curriculum or training, in order to create and disseminate new resources.
Lancaster & Morecambe College currently has 11 collaborative projects on the go – one former research project with Cyprus, Poland, Italy, Lithuania and Spain on careers advice produced new resources the college “uses to this day”.
Staff have also been involved in Erasmus+ “skills sector partnerships”, set up to identify and tackle emerging skills gaps across Europe, particularly digital skills.
Last year, UK colleges won bids worth €2.4 million for this second projects strand.
Crucially, this pot helps pay for Hayes’ salary, he says – which in turn allows him to do all the preparation, risk assessments and partnership building for the student placements.
I’m not sure there will be enough money under Turing to pay for my wage and for this office
“I’m not sure there will be enough money under Turing to pay for my wage and for this office to continue to exist. The role would have to go to a teacher, but they’re already stretched as it is. If you haven’t done it before, you can’t understand how much paperwork there is.”
He points out the Turing Scheme’s global offer is likely to involve even more paperwork, since the placements will be further away and potentially riskier; partnerships will need to be built from scratch; and the lack of reciprocal funding for students to return to the UK, as on offer under Erasmus+, might make it less appealing. “It doesn’t look good, in terms of friendship, does it?”
Returning students will also need to hurdle the UK’s new visa system.
Paul Harrison, an external evaluator for Erasmus+, says, “I predict some of these existing partnerships will die, because colleges in other countries won’t be able to find the funding to reciprocate.”
To top it all, the EU Commission has confirmed it is soon going to be expanding its vocational education placements to countries around the world – just like Turing, but with staff placements and project work thrown in too.
‘Some exciting opportunities’
It all seems quite galling, but colleges remain determined to see what the Turing Scheme can offer them.
Meredith at the AoC makes the good point that the two experienced partners for the UK Erasmus+ programme (the British Council and Ecorys) will be in charge of the new Turing scheme, thereby allowing “continuity of expertise” in the roll-out of the new programme – no randomly contracted, inexperienced private provider at the helm here.
Racz at the British Council says that although her organisation cannot “facilitate” new partnerships overseas, colleges unsure where to start can approach the British Council, which has offices all over the world, to “broker conversations”.
And there are exciting opportunities. South Devon College is situated in a global geopark, an area of special natural interest, says Stratford. “We’ve already got some great links with 147 other geoparks in other countries, such as Tanzania, so we’re exploring doing something exciting with those through Turing,” he says.
We’ve got great links with 147 geoparks abroad – we’re exploring doing something exciting with those through Turing
Similarly, the college will also now be able to fund its A-level learners to go abroad – Erasmus+ is just for vocational placements.
Another piece of encouraging news is that colleges will still have access to ECVET, the European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training. This is a benchmarking system that allows learners to have their hours on work placements abroad count towards apprenticeships and qualifications.
However, work still needs to be done about how to make work placement hours count all over the world. Madeleine Rose, director of programme management at Ecorys, says this “isn’t in train yet” but “is important and something we need to consider once the scheme is open”.
‘Get your applications in’
The Turing Scheme will open for applications this month. According to the programme guide, further education institutions will get £315 per participant in “organisational support” for the first 100 participants, and £180 for groups bigger than that.
For travel costs, colleges will receive a fixed amount depending how far away the destination is.
So it’s £165 for sending learners anywhere between 100km to 499 km away – while visiting Tanzania, for instance, at 11,000 km, would qualify for £905. Learners will also get £135 each to access language resources if they are going away to a non-English-speaking country for more than 19 days.
Thereafter, daily funds will depend on whether the learner (and accompanying staff member) is in a group 1, 2 or 3 destination country, which is ranked according to local living costs.
Learners in group 1 countries get £109 a day for two weeks, and £76 a day after that. Those in group 2 countries get £94 a day then £66 a day, and those in group 3 countries get £80 a day and £56 a day after that.
Erasmus was such a valuable scheme for staff too. That is a real shame
Meanwhile, colleges need to identify the “anticipated points of expenditure” when they will require the funds, and will be paid 80 per cent of costs at these points, with the final 20 per cent once a special report is completed showing all went to plan.
College will also need to undergo “financial capacity checks” before their application is accepted.
“I’m open to what the Turing scheme offers as an alternative,” concludes Davis, the dance tutor. “I think it will be interesting to see how we can do something a little bit different.
“But Erasmus was such a valuable scheme for staff too. That is a real shame.”
We can ask why Covid testing is delayed for those on work-based learning routes – but there is no good explanation, writes Jane Hickie
I guess we should be used to it by now.
Ever since the pandemic began, hundreds of thousands of apprentices and learners with independent training providers (ITPs) have been at the very back of the queue in terms of receiving government support.
The chancellor has without doubt proved to be an honourable exception on this front but it feels like a constant case of one step forward, and two steps back.
Just when you are hoping that ITPs can go back and do what they do best – that is, look after themselves – a new variant of the virus comes through an airport arrivals hall and you fear the worst. At least the rollout of vaccinations should make a big difference.
But in the meantime, my members have another hurdle to jump.
The education secretary wants learners aged 16 to 19 to return to their education settings on Monday. So the government is ensuring that students at schools and colleges will be given lateral flow tests for Covid twice a week if required.
Apprentices and the many young people on traineeships or study programmes in the same age group with ITPs will not, however, have access to testing in their place of learning until April at the earliest.
Why? We have asked the question many times but to no avail ̶ there is no explanation.
‘Plan for April testing still unclear’
After FE Week reported this latest example of unequal treatment, the opposition raised the matter at question time in the House of Lords on Monday. But the minister could only direct these learners to local community testing centres for the next three weeks.
The flaw in the response is that it doesn’t recognise the high levels of vulnerable and disadvantaged young people that ITPs support. Many are more susceptible to catching the virus, but will not have easy transport links to take them to test centres.
Before Christmas, ITP learners were not even in the Department for Education’s plans for lateral flow or home testing kits, and AELP had to lobby hard for a change.
However, it was then difficult to comprehend why the DfE didn’t simply use the same system for schools and colleges by sending kits to the ITP’s training centres or somewhere appropriate nearby.
In fact, we are still waiting to hear how the distribution will be managed from April.
In the meantime, the government’s guidance from March 8 requires that most of a learner’s programme hours should take place on site. This is nigh on impossible to do safely if there are no tests available.
‘Traineeships being delayed’
It is especially frustrating when the Chancellor is using the Budget to inject a further £126 million into traineeships on top of last July’s £110 million.
Providers are desperate to start young people as soon as possible on the new traineeships but are now having to delay until April.
April was meant to be the time of relief for providers after months and months of lobbying and debate.
They could finally unblock the logjam of learners who have not been able to take their functional skills tests or undergo their end-point assessment which may involve a practical element.
The onus on the provider and employer is to arrange an FSQ test at the workplace and this is another major reason why we need lateral flow tests as a matter of urgency.
Alongside the almost blatant disregard for the wellbeing of ITP learners, we must not forget the safety of provider staff and independent invigilators in all this.
While providers will put other safety measures in place again, the fear of Covid variants spreading will be a serious concern until everyone has been vaccinated.
Ultimately it is totally wrong for the government to be discriminating against the most disadvantaged young people who have chosen the work-based learning route.
