Ofsted’s review of sexual abuse will see the watchdog make on-site visits to a “sample” of colleges where abuse and violence cases have been highlighted.

The review itself will not report on “individual cases”, but identification of “serious and widespread” failures in safeguarding arrangements will lead to an immediate full inspection.

Ofsted has published the terms of reference for its review, which was commissioned by the government in response to allegations of abuse shared on the Everyone’s Invited website.

It was originally unclear whether colleges would be included in the review, however Ofsted has now confirmed to FE Week they will be.

The review will look at whether colleges and schools have “appropriate processes in place to allow students to report sexual abuse concerns freely, knowing these will be taken seriously and dealt with swiftly and appropriately”.

It will also seek to establish whether there is “sufficient” guidance for colleges on how to deal with allegations, and whether they implement it well.

The review will also look into whether the existing safeguarding framework and guidance for inspectors is “strong enough to properly assess how schools and colleges safeguard and promote the welfare of children”.

Joint working between colleges and “local safeguarding partners”, including local authority social care, the police, health services and other support will also be reviewed to see if it needs to be “strengthened”.

Visits to ‘sample’ of colleges planned

In its terms of reference, Ofsted said it would look into whether the current system of safeguarding in colleges listens to the voices of those reporting abuse, and what prevents them from reporting it.

It will also consider whether victims receive “timely and appropriate support”, and whether its own inspections have been “robust enough in relation to the issues raised”.

To do this, Ofsted will review a “sample” of recently reported evidence of sexual violence and abuse involving students, and then visit a sample of colleges and schools “where cases have been highlighted”.

These visits will “look at how well safeguarding is working and to discuss the wider issues raised by the evidence”.

During the visits, Ofsted will speak to college leaders and students.

Ofsted won’t report on individual cases, but visits may prompt full inspections

Ofsted has said the review will not report on individual cases, but “present a picture of good and poor practice across the country”.

However, if the watchdog finds “serious and widespread failures in a school or college’s safeguarding arrangements we will immediately carry out a full inspection which will result in a published report”.

The review will consider the “range, nature, location and severity of allegations and incidents, together with context”, the extent of colleges’ knowledge of specific incidents, their safeguarding responses to known incidents and their “safeguarding knowledge, culture and effectiveness”.

Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, said she had been “deeply troubled by the allegations of sexual abuse posted on the Everyone’s Invited website”.

“We hope that by listening to young people’s experiences first-hand, this review will provide much needed insight into what these barriers are and how they can be overcome.”

The review will conclude by the end of May 2021.

Talk about the “magic” of teaching, and less about structures and funding routes, to attract more people into the FE workforce, a leader in staff training has told the government.

Education and Training Foundation chief executive David Russell made the remarks yesterday at an FE Week webcast on the Skills for Jobs white paper, specifically its fifth chapter on “supporting outstanding teaching”.

The paper, published earlier this year, promised a national FE teacher recruitment campaign, and to introduce “employer-led standards” for initial teacher education.

Work would also go into enabling a “strong” relationship between employers and providers so industry experts can move into teaching, while lecturers can maintain “up-to-date” knowledge of their sector.

Government should ‘talk a lot more about teaching’

But Russell said improving the status and prestige of FE teaching is a “big” objective for improving recruitment into the sector, as it would “make it an attractive profession to move into for people who are coming at it for the first time”.

The “biggest thing” he thinks government could do to improve the status and the prestige of teaching is “to talk a lot more about teaching”.

“To talk a lot more about the process and the magic of teaching young people and adults to do new things, to discover new things, to empower themselves.”

Another part of improving status and prestige, according to Russell, is getting people involved early, such as at an undergraduate level.

The Education and Training Foundation has run a Talent to Teach in FE programme, giving students placements working with learners in local colleges or training providers, something Russell compared to “opening up this secret garden of further education”.

Existing recruitment programmes ‘really successful’

He talked up the success of several other government recruitment and retention programmes, which the Education and Training Foundation had delivered for the FE sector.

One of which, the Taking Teaching Further programme to attract industry professionals to the sector, had been “really successful”.

Russell said the programme “helps colleges recruit hard to fill vacancies,” but also funds timetable remission, mentoring, and links to professional networks, which he believes are “key” for recruitment and retention.

Another DfE-ETF programme, on Apprenticeship Workforce Development, is a “much-welcomed start” on improving the quality of teaching in that sector.

But it is “not just about CPD” – it is also about career pathways, as “rebuilding” the pathways, which are not “clear” currently, and having recognised professional status, is “really, really important”.

“At the heart of this” should be a “strong, diverse” professional membership body, he said.

Lack of action on teachers’ pay a ‘massive gap’

Another thing the white paper missed out on was pay, which Russell called “a really big problem”.

Teachers’ pay, which is set by individual colleges, has become a hot issue in the FE sector.

Trade unions were outraged late last year when the Association of Colleges, which gives recommendations on staff pay to principals, proposed a pay rise 1 per cent or £250, whichever was greater.

This, it said, was because of the unforeseen and “severe financial pressure” colleges were facing which have “forced many into deficit”.

But after the government injected £400 million into colleges this academic year, education unions said it was time for “an investment in staff” who would “provide the skills for a post-Covid recovery”.

Anne Murdoch, senior college leadership advisor for the Association of School and College Leaders, told FE Week in February government’s ambitions of bolstering the FE workforce “would be nothing more than a pipedream” without funding to raise pay.

This is after workforce research by the Department for Education, released earlier this year, showed teacher pay only increased from a median of £31,620 in 2010-11, to £33,750 in 2019-20.

Speaking today, Russell said the white paper “dealt with recruitment, with training, with development, but it does not deal with recognition or reward”.

“It’s like a chair with three legs: it’s pretty hard to sit on a chair with three legs, you’ve got to sit right at the edge really tense, so you don’t fall over.

“That’s what it’s like teaching in the FE sector right now. You’re perched on the edge, you’re really tense, and you might fall over.”

He described the paper’s lack of action on pay as a “massive gap” which the government and the Department for Education are aware of and have to return to, “otherwise the three legs won’t create a stable system”.

But Russell, a former national policy director for vocational education at the DfE, was not convinced the Treasury would step in with a blanket pay rise for the sector.

“They consider them to be dead weights,” he said, a Treasury term for “when you pay more for something, but you don’t get anything back in return”.

Watch the full webcast, run in partnership with NOCN, below:

Students should no longer be required to wear face masks in classrooms from 17 May, the Department for Education has announced.

But the government has said coverings will still need to be worn on providers’ premises once students return from the Easter holidays.

In an update to its ‘Face coverings in education’ guidance published the afternoon, the department said it “expects” it will no longer be recommended masks be worn by adults and students in FE providers’ classrooms, or by students in communal areas from 17 May.

This decision was made, the department said, as part of an “ongoing” review of evidence and data, and means dropping the requirement ought to coincide with the “next stage” of lockdown easements, including social contact indoors.

It will also allow time for everyone in priority groups one to nine to be offered their first vaccine dose, before any change is committed.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson said: “We obviously all want to get back to face mask-free classrooms and we will do this in line with the latest scientific data while balancing the interests of students, teachers and the wider community.”

This comes after his department announced last month, ahead of the full reopening of providers on 8 March, that masks would have to be worn in the classroom until at least Easter.

Under today’s update, students and teachers will continue to wear face masks in-class until step three of the government’s lockdown easing.

Those who are currently exempt from wearing face masks will remain so, the department has said.

As part of the full reopening, providers were supplied with between 5,000 and 7,500 face masks for contingency use.

College students also had to have four rapid Covid tests within two weeks of their return to class on 8 March; three on-site, one at home, then twice-weekly at home for both learners and staff.

While colleges were sent tests ahead of 8 March, independent training providers were told they would be able to request coronavirus tests from 31 March, but would need to apply to the Department for Education for the amount they need.

This decision was branded as “madness” by providers, with Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Jane Hickie saying it was “difficult to comprehend why the DfE didn’t simply use the same system for schools and colleges by sending kits to the ITPs’ training centres or somewhere appropriate nearby”.

 

The government body responsible for funding assurance appears to have lost confidence in itself.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency is requiring all external auditors to conduct a funding audit this year, before signing off on the annual college financial statements.

News of the significant change came buried in the Post-16 Audit Code of Practice for 2020 to 2021, published by the ESFA this week.

One of 19 “changes” stated the ESFA year-end funding statement “does not constitute assurance over the funds earned by the college”.

In previous years, external auditors signed off college accounts without checking the accuracy of income claims received from the main funding grants generated through the Individualised Learner Record (ILR) returns, because the ESFA provided the assurance.

Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive at the Association of Colleges and former college finance director, told FE Week the change “risks creating a last-minute scramble by colleges and auditors to carry out extra work in summer 2021.

“Colleges aim to comply with high audit standards but we don’t agree with the ESFA decision to introduce this change two-thirds of the way through the year.”

And in an email to all AoC members seen by FE Week, Gravatt says: “The implication of this change is that external auditors will now carry out more work this summer and early autumn to ensure compliance with funding rules.

“In effect this extends the funding audit to all colleges this year – at their own expense.”

According to several college accountants who spoke to FE Week, the responsibility for funding audit being passed from the ESFA to colleges presents a number of challenges.

Many accountancy firms that currently undertake external audit for colleges have never conducted a “funding assurance review”.

This is likely to present resourcing challenges announced so late in the year and raises the prospect of additional costs for colleges.

 

‘This extends the funding audit to all colleges this year’

However, Gravatt said he hoped external audit firms would “handle any extra work within agreed and fixed budgets”.

It also remains uncertain whether other funding bodies reliant on the ILR returns, such as mayoral combined authorities, will make similar demands.

And despite the move from the ESFA to require the extra assurance work, there has been no suggestion they will scale back the number of audits they conduct themselves.

Gravatt was also keen to point out that this late change appeared to go against broader government plans to reduce bureaucracy.

“The FE white paper promises simplification but, for colleges, the current audit code is a uniquely complicated custom-built framework involving internal, external, regularity and multi-year funding audits,” he said.

 

The former chief executive of Hull College Group received £219,000 last year, despite only being in post for 67 days. 

Payments to Michelle Swithenbank are revealed in the published accounts alongside external auditor findings that a £300,000 three-year deal she signed with a local rugby club breached the college’s financial regulations. 

External auditors reveal in the published 2019/20 accounts that the stadium naming rights and shirt sponsorship deal was “only signed by one authorised signatory who was the corporation’s accounting officer in office during the year [Swithenbank], and neither were the agreements approved by the corporation”. 

The college chair at the time, Dafydd Williams, confirmed to FE Week that the “contract [with Hull Kingston Rovers] was never brought to the board for discussion or approval and was signed off by individual executives without our knowledge”. 

The auditors also found the college “failed to discharge its duty of care with regard to the novel nature of these transactions” as they ignored legal advice and no evidence was found for any business case or value for money analysis. 

Swithenbank led Hull College Group until taking a leave of absence on October 7, 2019 when Williams commissioned an unrelated investigation into financial misconduct. 

Two months later, on December 20, Williams emailed all staff to announce that the investigation had found “no impropriety on the part of Michelle […] nevertheless, Michelle has informed us that she wishes to move on, and feels this is a good time to do so”. 

The true cost of the deal with Hull KR only came to light earlier this year following an FE Week freedom of information request and subsequent intervention from the Information Commissioner’s Office. 

After reporting the deal in FE Week, interim chief executive, Lowell Williams, then launched his own investigation with internal auditors, which is due to report later this month. 

Williams, who departs later this month when the first permanent chief executive since Swithenbank’s departure takes over, said “enquiries are ongoing” concerning the “irregular transaction” and he was “confident that the corporation will take appropriate action” – not ruling out the college could seek to recover some or all of the payoff.

The college accounts detail a total of £390,000 spent on the chief executive post in the 12 months from August 1, 2019 until July 31, 2020, compared to £140,000 in the previous financial year. 

This consisted of £162,000 contractual and £57,000 non-contractual payments for Swithenbank, with the remaining £171,000 spent on three interim chief executives. 

Hull College Group hit the headlines several years ago after requiring a £50 million bailout from the government as part of a ‘Fresh Start’ process that preceded several hundred staff being made redundant. 

And in recent weeks staff were informed the college would be disposing of their campus in Goole in July 2021, leaving the group with just their main campus at Queens Gardens in the city centre, a motor vehicle centre on Cannon Street (close to the city centre) and a construction centre in East Hull.

 

‘What is now revealed is unacceptable and inexcusable’

On hearing of the payoff and auditor findings, the University and College Union’s head of further education Andrew Harden told FE Week: “We can’t undo the events of the past but what is now revealed is completely unacceptable and inexcusable. 

“The levels of mismanagement and poor governance that have occurred leading up to and since the financial crisis at the college should not impact on students or staff in the way they have. Staff have worked extraordinarily hard for their students and are completely committed to restoring the reputation of the college. 

“It is unacceptable that further wrongdoing has continued since the ‘Fresh Start’ approved by the FE Commissioner and monitored and scrutinised by his teams. 

“Given the college acknowledges financial and audit regulations have not been followed, it is only right and proper that the leaders who have overseen these issues should be held to account.” 

Swithenbank was approached for comment.