The Department for Education cannot say when colleges will get promised carbon dioxide monitors after the first delivery schedule showed that none would receive them within the next three weeks.

Last month education secretary Gavin Williamson announced that his department would provide around 300,000 CO2 monitors to all state-funded education settings from September to help tackle poor ventilation.

He said on Monday that the first deliveries would start this week, with priority given to special schools and alternative provision in the first phase.

All eligible settings are “expected” to start receiving monitors during the autumn term, and the DfE said schools should get their full allocations in one delivery. But the picture is different for colleges.

The first official delivery schedule showed that, at present, 1,008 schools are due to receive around 13,241 monitors over the next three weeks.

When asked by FE Week why no colleges were on the list and when they could expect monitors, the DfE could not offer a date. It said colleges should expect to receive “at least partial allocations” this term.

The spokesperson added that the schedule sent out by the DfE provides a forward look of deliveries covering the next three weeks and that specialist FE colleges will be prioritised “in one of the next delivery schedules”.

As previously revealed by this publication, independent training providers are excluded from this Covid-19 safety scheme.

Analysis by Schools Week, FE Week’s sister publication, shows that the delivery of CO2 monitors in the first three weeks of this term will cover less than 5 per cent of the 21,602 state schools in England, and include just over 4 per cent of the total number of devices promised.

The news comes after unions questioned the government’s decision to wait until the start of the academic year to begin distribution.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “While we welcome the provision of carbon dioxide monitors, the fact is that this programme should have happened a lot earlier and it has taken an eternity to reach even this modest point on the issue of ventilation.

“The fact that this was only announced just before the start of the autumn term has meant many colleges and schools will not receive devices until deep in the autumn term, when they really need every possible mitigation in place as soon as possible.”

The chair of the Department for Education’s skills and productivity board has stepped down a year after being appointed to the role.

Stephen van Rooyen (pictured left), an executive vice president at international broadcaster Sky, has left the position due to “family reasons”, a DfE spokesperson said today.

He has been replaced by Angela Noon (pictured right), the chief financial officer and executive director of industrial manufacturing giant Siemens.

Van Rooyen was appointed to chair the skills and productivity board in September 2020 before six “leading” skills and labour market economists were brought onboard in November.

The team provides independent “expert advice” on how courses and qualifications should align to the skills that employers need post-Covid-19.

Despite meeting six times since its formation, the DfE has failed to publish any board minutes for the board. A DfE spokesperson said today that these would be released in “due course”.

I am excited by the opportunity to take on this role

Education secretary Gavin Williamson did not comment on van Rooyen’s departure but said he was “delighted” to welcome Noon as the board’s new chair.

“Angela’s respected standing within the business community will be of enormous benefit to the board,” he added.

“Her experience as a leader within a large technology company will also be of particular value to the board and its aims to promote stronger productivity growth for the future.” 

Noon said: “I am excited by the opportunity to take on this role and to contribute to the board’s work.

“Equipping people with the right skills is a key part of improving people’s lives and increasing productivity to ensure the country is ready for future challenges.”

The other members that make up the board are:

• Arun Advani – Assistant Professor University of Warwick, Fellow at the Institute of Fiscal Studies
• Claire Crawford – Reader in Economics University of Birmingham
• Andrew Dickerson – Professor of Economics University of Sheffield and Director of Sheffield Methods Institute
• Ewart Keep – Emeritus Professor in Education, Training and Skills Department of Education Oxford University
• Grace Lordan – Associate Professor at London School of Economics (LSE) and Founding Director of the Inclusion Initiative
• Ken Mayhew – Emeritus Professor of Education and Economic Performance at Oxford University

How learners can protect the planet is set to be bumped up curriculums, after teachers complained the lack of such content in syllabuses stops them promoting sustainability to students.

Over half of the respondents to a new survey by the Education and Training Foundation said they do not include sustainability issues in their teaching because it is not in the curriculum for qualifications.

Sustainability, as the ETF describes it, covers issues affecting the health of the planet as well as how to use social structures to promote good quality of life and economic prosperity for all.

Awarding bodies such as Pearson, OCR, City and Guilds and NCFE are looking at how to “weave sustainability as a principle into qualifications, in the same way that they do numeracy and literacy and digital skills and equality, diversity and inclusion,” the ETF’s national head of education for sustainable development Charlotte Bonner told FE Week.

“It’s on their agendas, but there’s definitely more work to be done,” she said, especially after 68 per cent of respondents told the survey the UK’s post-16 education system does not adequately educate learners on sustainability issues.

Funding has ‘limited creativity and innovation’ in teaching sustainability

While the survey was originally meant for the foundation’s own use, they hope making it public means it will be of use to providers for questioning what they are teaching about sustainability, and whether they are promoting a culture among staff and students to improve on sustainability.

How they are making their estate more sustainable, including with energy efficient technology, and how they can work with local stakeholders are two other questions Bonner hopes this report prods providers into addressing.

Another issue with educating learners is there has been a dearth of work on sustainability in the sector since the late 2000s, the foundation has realised.

Bonner attributes this to some “really big challenges” the FE sector has had to face over the past decade, including area reviews and funding cuts.

The report recognises funding and time constraints have “limited creativity and innovation” when it came to including sustainability in teaching, something which “needs to be recognised in any sustainability education programmes targeting FE and training practitioners or providers”.

The ETF has also highlighted how Ofsted no longer provides guidance regarding sustainable development in learning and skills inspections, with Bonner saying the inspection framework is “incredibly influential” on providers.

“People feel that there’s opportunity for other top down drivers, not just within the regulatory frameworks,” Bonner said.

Staff ‘need urgent support and training’ to tackle climate emergency

Training for staff is one such area which could help spread sustainability education across the sector, with the Association of Colleges’ climate commissioner and former president Steve Frampton saying all FE staff “need urgent support and training” to teach learners about tackling the climate emergency.

He said while staff and leaders are “developing significant pockets of excellence,” the sector “lacks the vital significant investment, training, and resources to tackle these global challenges”.

It feels like sustainability is a zeitgeist in the sector

Employers and business organisations can and are moving the needle on sustainability education, according to Bonner.

Organisations such as the Confederation of British Industry and Engineering Construction Industry Training Board have been discussing how firms can retrain existing workers, as well as bring on younger ones, to become recharging engineers, for example.

Which is helpful as existing employees “don’t need to go through a three-year electrician course to start doing that particular job,” Bonner pointed out.

“I think it feels like sustainability is a zeitgeist in the sector, it does feel like there’s a lot of interest,” she said, and hopes the research “will be of use to lots of people”.

An audit of sustainability education content in the most popular FE qualifications was carried out alongside this survey and will be released next month.

The Department for Education has been asked to find savings of “at least” 5 per cent, leaving it facing cuts that could amount to £4.5 billion and prompting fears of an impact on FE budgets.

The Treasury announced this week that the spending review, a plan for public spending over the next three years, will accompany the autumn budget on October 27 this year.

Ministers have announced plans to increase funding for health and social care in the wake of the pandemic by raising national insurance contributions, but are looking to find savings elsewhere.

Given the impact of Covid-19, the Treasury said spending plans would be “underpinned by a focus on ensuring every pound of taxpayer funding is well-spent, so that we can continue to deliver the highest-quality services to the public at the best value”.

Departments have “therefore been asked to identify at least 5 per cent savings and efficiencies from their day-to-day budgets as part of these plans, which will be reinvested in our priorities”.

The instruction, which is similar to one given in early 2020 before the pandemic began, has prompted unease in the FE community.

Spending on FE represents just 6 per cent of the Department for Education’s £89.6 billion resource budget, and a 5 per cent cut overall based on 2021-22 spending would leave the department having to find almost £4.5 billion.

‘Colleges have already made hundreds of millions of pounds of efficiencies’

Julian Gravatt, the deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, warned that colleges have already made “hundreds of millions of pounds of efficiencies” in recent years as a result of government decisions to fix funding levels in cash terms “regardless of cost” – at annual efficiency gain of 2 per cent a year for the past decade.

“We have said to DfE and Treasury for years that there are areas where the education system could be more efficient but government needs to be careful about using a fixed percentage target for these exercises,” he said.

Areas that the AoC highlights for savings include “administration, assessment and the duplication of A level provision”.

Sue Pember, a former director of FE funding in the DfE who is now the policy director of adult education network HOLEX, said the DfE will be considering what system they are going to use to make the savings.

They could, for example, “salami slice” – taking 5 per cent of everybody’s budget – or enforce targeted cuts such as removing “dead weight activity and letting others pick up the tab”.

“They will look at the non-statutory budgets, such as early years, the adult education and HE support, and trawl the work of their agencies and look at development funds like the £600 million qualification reform.”

However, Pember added, these budgets are “not big enough to give this level of saving so they will need to look at more radical solutions such as reducing the graduate repayment level or adding 1 per cent to the apprenticeship levy”.

‘We will see a lot of window-dressing in the spending review’

Tom Bewick, the chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, said the government’s decision to plan future tax rises on supporting health and social care does not “bode well for those of us who have consistently been calling for more investment in further education”.

He predicts the spending review will see a lot of “window-dressing, as we’ve seen already with the investments made in T Levels, bootcamps and the lifetime skills guarantee”.

While he had “no real idea” where the DfE might go for the efficiency savings, there is “no doubt in my mind that in recent years the quango state in skills has become rather bloated with over-the-top senior salaries and far too many non-jobs being created in areas like inclusion and strategy officers”.

Bewick suggests the department should “pair back the ambitions of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education which is planning to spend millions of pounds on a needless dual regulatory system of approving and managing vocational qualifications”.

He added: “You can also create a single funding council in England for all forms of post-18 tertiary education, replacing ESFA, Student Finance England and the Student Loans Company into a consolidated organisation.

“Given the dissatisfaction of many MPs and parts of the FE sector of the poor performance of the Careers Enterprise Company, I can’t really see that lasting out any major cull.”

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Jane Hickie said the “reported large skills shortages in certain key sectors mean that the DfE needs to have a sharper focus on how it spends its current budgets which includes adult education becoming more effective in retraining adult workers”.

She added that AELP would “strongly resist any opportunistic calls to divert the current apprenticeship levy underspend to other programmes because the underspend is simply a result of the lockdowns and workplaces being closed”.

The government is going to hand out around 300,000 carbon dioxide monitors to colleges in a £25 million scheme to help improve ventilation from September.

It follows pressure from unions who called for “urgent action” this week on ventilation before students return to classrooms next month.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed the announcement, but said the equipment should have been ready for the start of term and earlier in the pandemic.

“This is an important and reassuring step in the right direction. Now we reiterate our call for the government to ensure that high-quality ventilation equipment is made available to schools and colleges where it is needed as soon as possible.”

The “majority” of the monitors “will become available over the autumn term” DfE said, but a procurement exercise is not due to start until Monday.

‘All state-funded settings’ to receive monitors

All schools and colleges are expected to receive “at least partial allocations” during the autumn term.

When asked whether independent providers would be included in the scheme, a DfE spokesperson would only say: “It is all state funded education settings.”

DfE said the number of devices available to each setting will be dictated by the size of their estate and be in the region of one device per two classrooms and staff rooms.

Final numbers are subject to the completion of the procurement exercise and further details will be provided next month.

DfE says the monitors are portable so colleges can move them around and test the full estate “in a relatively short space of time” and will help staff to “act quickly” where ventilation is poor.

Meanwhile, the Department for Health and Social Care is funding a £1.75 million pilot project on the use of air purifiers in schools. However, the research only involves 30 primary schools in Bradford.

Ventilation help is ‘too little too late’

Paul Whiteman, NAHT’s general secretary, said earlier this week that the trial was “too little too late”.

“The government should have taken action on this much sooner – they have had well over a year to ascertain the situation and make improvements.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson said: “Providing all settings with CO₂ monitors will help them make sure they have the right balance of measures in place, minimising any potential disruption to education and allowing them to focus on world class lessons and catch up for the students who need it.”

Boris Johnson has defended Gavin Williamson for doing a “heroic job” in “difficult circumstances”, amid rumours he could be replaced as education secretary.

The prime minister gave his public backing to Williamson, who is one of several cabinet ministers tipped for demotion or the sack in the rumoured upcoming reshuffle.

The education secretary has faced heavy criticism for his handling of the pandemic’s impact on schools, colleges and training providers.

They include the way school and FE provider closures were planned, the confusion caused when BTEC and other vocational exams were told to go ahead in January before Williamson backtracked and left it to principals to decide whether they should run, and FE and skills providers originally being included, then excluded, then included again in catch-up funding.

Referring to Williamson’s net approval rating among Conservative Party members of -53, shadow schools minister Peter Kyle asked if the prime minister could “get to his feet, put his hand on his heart, and promise the country, this House and his own supporters that the education secretary is the right person for the job and he’s up to the job”.

Johnson replied: “I think the whole House will recognise that the education secretary has done a heroic job of dealing with very difficult circumstances,” which had led to education settings being closed.

“And never forget, I think the job of teachers, the job of parents up and down the land would have been made much easier if Labour and the Labour leadership in particular, had had the guts, and he’d had the guts, to say that settings are safe.”

Williamson makes ‘appalling’ mix-up

The prime minister’s defence of his education secretary comes as Williamson faces more criticism for mixing up two black sportspeople – Marcus Rashford and Maro Itoje – in a newspaper interview.

The Evening Standard reported today that Williamson claimed to have met Rashford, who campaigned for better free school meals provision during school holidays, on a Zoom call, describing the footballer as “incredibly engaged, compassionate and charming”.

But the paper reports that Williamson’s team later clarified that he had in fact met rugby player Maro Itjoe.

Shadow justice secretary David Lammy tweeted: “This is appalling. Gavin Williamson what was it about Maro Itoje that made you mistake him for Marcus Rashford?

“You must be the most ignorant, clueless and incapable education secretary in the UK’s history.”

Williamson has since clarified his remarks, but did not apologise: “Towards the end of a wide-ranging interview in which I talked about both the laptops and school meals campaigns, I conflated the issues and made a genuine mistake.

“We corrected this with the journalist before publication of the story.

“I have huge respect for both Marcus Rashford and Maro Itoje who run effective and inspiring campaigns.”