Bids for the UK’s new £110 million Turing Scheme will open to universities, FE providers and schools next month.

The Department for Education has today announced the “next phase” of the international student exchange programme by launching a website which outlines its funding rates and eligibility criteria ahead of a six-week bidding process in March.

The scheme, named after scientist Alan Turing, was unveiled in December as the replacement to the UK’s participation in Erasmus+ following Brexit.

It will allow students to study and work abroad from September 2021, and will target those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The DfE said bids for a slice of the funding will open next month and it plans to issue funding decisions in July.

FE learners, including apprentices, can take part in the scheme which will see placements range from between two weeks and 12 months. Placements can start from just five days for learners with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

Funding for the scheme will go towards delivering the placements and exchanges, including grants to help cover travel expenses and costs of living and administrative funding for delivering the projects.

The rates provided will be “broadly in line” with what was on offer under Erasmus+, according to the DfE.

Under each project to cover administrative costs, £315 will be provided per participant for the first 100 participants. From the 101st participant onwards, £180 will be provided per participant.

An amount of funding will then be provided to go towards the direct costs of travel for a placement, which will depend on distance. Grants for this will range from £20 to £1,360.

For costs of living, there will be three rates available: Group 1 (high cost of living), Group 2 (medium cost of living), Group 3 (lower cost of living).

In terms of learners on an FE and vocational education  placement, they will receive:

    To Group 1 destinations: £109 per day for the first 14 days, £76 per day after the 14th day

    To Group 2 destinations: £94 per day for the first 14 days, £66 per day after the 14th day

    To Group 3 destinations: £80 per day for the first 14 days, £56 per day after the 14th day

For FE students from disadvantaged backgrounds, including those in care, on universal credit, or in receipt of free school meals, they will receive “actual costs for additional travel expenses, including costs of visas, passports, and health insurance”.

Students with SEND will be funded “up to 100 per cent of actual costs for support directly related to their additional needs”.

‘We will open up the globe to our young people’

Universities minister Michelle Donelan said: “We are committed to making sure our students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, can benefit from studying and working abroad. Working with the British Council, we will open up the globe to our young people, and I look forward to seeing the exciting and enriching opportunities the Turing scheme will bring.”

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, added: “The Turing scheme opens the world’s door to work and study placements for college students. This is an important part of ‘levelling up’ the life chances for all of our young people – whatever their background.

“International mobility motivates and inspires young people to understand their place in the world, develop their life skills and build confidence and ambition. I strongly encourage colleges new to international exchanges to consider participating in Turing and hope that those who have been involved before can use this to extend opportunities for students.”

Providers will be stuck paying for external quality assurance (EQA) for even longer than planned, as the process of transferring responsibilities to exams regulator Ofqual has slowed to a crawl.

EQA duties for just one standard, accident repair technician, were transitioned from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) to Ofqual last month.

That is despite the watchdog telling end-point assessment organisations (EPAOs) in August that EQA for 54 apprenticeships in construction and engineering, handled by the institute through contractor Open Awards, would move over from January.

Each standard will be taken on a case-by-case basis

Sixty-nine apprenticeship standards, where the EPAOs were all formally recognised by Ofqual, transitioned last November.

Ofqual has said standards will be transferred “on a monthly basis”, and when each apprenticeship transfers will depend “on a number of factors”, such as how many EPAOs are delivering it, and whether they have Ofqual recognition.

“Each standard will be taken on a case-by-case basis,” a spokesperson said, adding that the regulator is continuing to talk to EPAOs to transition the remaining 245 standards that were originally planned to transfer over the summer.

For standards that have not transferred over, providers will continue to have to pay charges for EQA on each apprentice who takes their end-point assessment. IfATE controversially charges £40 for EQA, but awarding bodies have had to stump up almost £200 per apprentice by certain EQA bodies, leading Federation of Awarding Bodies chief executive Tom Bewick to brand it a “Wild West” market.

FE Week was first to report last September that charges would end once a standard’s EQA was moved to Ofqual.

An IfATE spokesperson said they are “working hard” to support EPAOs with their transition to Ofqual and “realise the benefits this offers”.

“We will continue to listen carefully to the sector,” they added.

What is happening with EQA?

EPAOs were told last year the transition of EQA would be a two-year process, with standards where IfATE carries out EQA transferring by the second quarter of 2021 and apprenticeships where an alternative employer body runs EQA transferring in year two.

Under the new system, all EPAOs will need to be “recognised” by Ofqual, meaning their qualifications can be considered for public funding to be taught in schools, colleges and other FE providers, and its certificates can carry the Ofqual logo.

When applying to be recognised, organisations have to be able to prove they have “adequate financial reserves which will support the organisation through the lifecycle of a qualification” as well as accounting and financial monitoring systems either in place, or in development if it is a new awarding organisation.

It was first revealed in February that Ofqual would be taking over EQA from IfATE and assorted employer bodies, with the Office for Students taking over apprenticeships with integrated degrees, when a consultation on the proposals was launched.

The decision to bring in Ofqual and the OfS was made, according to an IfATE report into external quality assurance published last December, because the other EQA bodies “lack the regulatory powers to enforce changes from EPAOs” when the EPA plan or conditions of the register of end-point assessment organisations have “not been complied with” by EPAOs, “and where the independence or validity of assessment has been compromised as a result”.

England’s fastest growing apprenticeship provider is under investigation by the Education and Skills Funding Agency and faces going bust, FE Week can reveal.

Logistics.com (UK) Ltd only became a government-approved apprenticeship provider in March 2020, at which point it swiftly changed ownership. In the following eight months during a pandemic more than 1,100 apprentices, mostly working in nursing homes, were recruited, worth almost £5 million.

FE Week understands the provider was forced to pause starts in November while also having payments suspended as the ESFA launched an inquiry amid concerns at the speed and scale of enrolments.

The agency and the provider have remained tight-lipped about the specifics of the investigation, but it is understood the owner is now looking to sell the business or face going into liquidation following the ESFA’s decision to stop releasing funding.

A total of 86 staff would be affected.

The managing director of a brokerage company that sold employer contacts and worked with the provider for a period described how learners have now been left “high and dry” because the owners’ “eyes were clearly too big for their belly”.

Small freight company until March 2020

Logistics.com (UK), which is rated by five employers as an “excellent” “national” provider on the government’s Find Apprenticeship Training website, was incorporated as a small “freight company” in 2014 with no training delivery history and its latest accounts show just £609 of assets, according to Companies House.

Dominic Davies joined as a director in March 2020 shortly after the provider’s acceptance to the register of apprenticeship training providers. His then-business partner, Stephen Banks – who, like Davies, previously worked at the well-known but now-liquidated training provider Middleton Murray – played key roles in its operation.

The pair incorporated a number of different businesses over the course of last summer.

FE Week analysis of the government’s published statistics shows that Logistics.com (UK) recruited more apprenticeship starts than any other provider in the country in the eight months it was allowed to recruit.

To achieve this huge volume of enrolments the owners purchased sales leads and established partnerships with at least one NHS Trust to offer free apprenticeship training to large and small employers, funded from levy transfers.

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

The use of transferred funding was key to Logistics.com (UK) being fully funded by the ESFA to deliver free courses, as it meant employers would not need to pay the usual five per cent co-investment fee.

Logistics.com (UK), for example, worked with the Humber, Coast and Vale Health and Care Partnership to encourage GPs to take up a level 3 clinical coder apprenticeship.

An email advert seen by FE Week, sent last November by the partnership to a Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust mailing list, states that the usual cost is £5,000 but “working in partnership with Logistics UK Training” they would “look to cover the cost of the qualification from levy transfers from other organisations”.

Among the councils from whom FE Week is aware that Logistics.com (UK) applied for levy transfer funding include North Yorkshire County Council.

The council and NHS Trust did not respond to requests for comment at the time of going to press.

There is no suggestion of wrongdoing through the use of levy transfers.

Davies explained to FE Week that his strategy since taking over Logistics.com (UK) has been to “support the health and social care sector with apprenticeship training throughout the pandemic by utilising levy transfer funding”.

“Our team of 86 employees ensures we have an average caseload of 35 to 40 learners providing good-quality delivery via blended learning allowing us to react to lockdowns,” he said.

“This ensured learners would remain on track with their progression. We have and will continue to support our learners and employers ensuring impact on delivery is minimal.”

Davies added that his provider does have a number of learners on breaks in learning due to the pandemic and that it has “withdrawn learners as appropriate to ensure no funding overclaims have been made”.

FE Week spoke to Stephen Banks briefly and he claimed he had cut ties with Logistics.com (UK) in December despite personally seeking buyers for the provider in recent days. He put the phone down when more questions were asked and has not responded to various follow-up requests.

Companies House shows that Banks became the new owner of a single employee firm called 5 Stars Recruitment Ltd in October 2020 – three months after it was added to the apprenticeship providers register on July 29, 2020.

Lack of Ofsted oversight

Despite the significant number of apprentices, Ofsted has never paid Logistics.com (UK) a visit.

A spokesperson for the inspectorate said: “Since March 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic, we have been unable to complete our intended new-provider monitoring visit schedule. We will return to conducting new-provider monitoring visits as soon as it is possible to do so. We take serious account of any information received that suggests there is a cause for concern about a provider, and this may give rise to an earlier inspection or monitoring visit.”

The ESFA investigation into Logistics.com (UK) comes as the agency looks to tighten up their register of apprenticeship training providers – a key policy in last month’s FE white paper.

The white paper said the government will undertake a “full refresh” of the register, commencing in April 2021 and will adopt “more stringent entry criteria for both new and existing providers, to better determine whether providers have the capability and capacity to be able to deliver these higher-quality apprenticeships”.

This will be the second time the register has been “refreshed”, after it was first launched in March 2017, relaunched in January 2019, only to be closed to most new applications since April 2020.

The Department for Education is left with unanswered questions as to why an earnings limit policy has yet to be implemented for new apprenticeship providers and how, given their lack of relevant or significant trading history, both Logistics.com (UK) and 5 Stars Recruitment Ltd successfully applied as ‘main’ providers last year.

When asked what the DfE is doing to protect apprentices during the investigation being led by the ESFA counter-fraud team, a spokesperson said: “We do not comment on investigations ongoing or otherwise.”

Intense negotiations are taking place within government to determine the extent to which colleges will again be allowed to keep funding for courses that did not take place amid disruption from the pandemic.

In a typical year, colleges are allowed to keep 100 per cent of the national adult education budget funding if they achieve a threshold of at least 97 per cent of their allocation.

Last year this 97 per cent threshold was lowered to 68 per cent owing to the impact of Covid-19, and with the national lockdown continuing, it could be even lower this year.

FE Week understands the Department for Education is trying to persuade the Treasury to allow for significant under-delivery, which could include a different threshold between March and July, when lockdown is expected to end.

The Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes told FE Week it is “imperative that colleges find out soon how their AEB budgets will be dealt with”.

The ESFA said it is “reviewing their end-of-year reconciliation position for grant-funded adult education budgets for 2020/21”, and any changes to published arrangements will be communicated in “due course”.

Mayoral combined authorities with devolved adult education budgets will also need to consider what, if any, allowances to make for their colleges and training providers.

The Greater London Authority, for example, was planning to introduce a 90 per cent threshold. This is likely to change as the mayor signed off on the proposal from GLA staff last November before the latest lockdown.

Concerns over colleges’ ability to recruit against their AEB allocations have heightened during the third national lockdown, where educational settings have been forced to close to most students since the turn of the new year. The government’s current plan is to reopen colleges from March 8 at the earliest.

Leicester College, for example, is in a city that has been under continuous lockdowns since March 2020.

The college told FE Week it is likely to deliver less than 74 per cent of its £11 million allocation this year.

That is after it went from being on course to deliver 108 per cent last year, to actually delivering 87.6 per cent once they “lost” the summer term.

Ninety per cent of their AEB offer comes from ESOL, Skills for Life and re-engagement provision, where it is “not possible for the majority of students to learn online” when they are at lower levels and when outreach centres are closed.

Additionally, the college told FE Week, it has been unable to recruit in the spring term, and moving all enrolment online makes it “more difficult for adult students to access”.

If the threshold is not lowered, many colleges will need to make redundancies very soon

Hughes said 100 per cent delivery for colleges in 2020/21 was “extremely unlikely, despite best efforts” as many students cannot take part in remote learning, particularly those on lower-level, ESOL and practical courses, and because workplaces that would recruit learners have shut down.

This “needed to be accepted and comfort given to colleges” by lowering the delivery threshold, he argued, as otherwise, many colleges will need to make redundancies “very soon” for staff who will “be needed next year when skills for jobs and for recovery are going to be even more important”.

FE Week has contacted all of the mayoral combined authorities with devolved AEB funding, and while a couple have introduced expanded tolerances for under-delivery, others are holding fire.

For its grant-funded adult education providers (typically colleges), the Greater London Authority has set a 90 per cent performance threshold. However, when asked whether this could change, a spokesperson said mayor Sadiq Khan’s team “will consider the impact an extended lockdown will have on adult education funding later this month”.

Liverpool City Region has said, for 2020/21, it “has relaxed the tolerance levels” to allow providers to “re-profile potential under-delivery”.

West Midlands Combined Authority said it will be “finalising our approach for 2020/21 in the next few weeks”, and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough said it was “currently modelling our reconciliation approach for 2020/21”.

Tees Valley has not made any changes to tolerance levels yet, but is monitoring the situation; and Greater Manchester is meeting its providers to understand where they are with 2020/21 delivery, before coming up with a plan on how to handle reconciliation.

North of Tyne Combined Authority said it is “currently in discussion with its provider base to inform its approach and to ensure people in Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland have continued access to the courses they need to progress in learning and employment”.

For 2019/20 and following a number of U-turns, the ESFA allowed a 68 per cent performance threshold for grant-funded providers. But 33 colleges still failed to meet that target; 27 faced having funds clawed back, while six submitted business cases to try and reduce or avoid claw-back.

The DfE has said they will publish further details on actual delivery last year, in March.

FE Week understand that unless the Cabinet Office-approved Covid “supplier relief” scheme is utilised, independent training providers will continue to be paid only for their actual delivery each month.

Training providers are “disappointed”, “extremely frustrated” and predict a “disjointed and likely stuttering start” to the government’s lifetime skills guarantee.

Funding for starts on the new fully funded level 3 offer for 24-year-old learners and above, announced by the prime minister last October, will be allocated to training providers as part of the adult education budget allocation from April 1 to July 31, 2021.

This means providers would need to both start and finish the mostly large full level 3 qualifications in a maximum window of just four months.

Typically, monthly AEB funding would be made available for courses continuing into the next academic year, but there are to be no AEB contract extensions this year.

FE Week understands the highly unusual limitation is a result of the Department for Education funding the scheme from a Treasury-specified National Skill Fund budget that starts in April, but routing payments to providers through AEB contracts that finish just four months later, in July.

And devolved mayoral authorities, such as the Greater London Authority, say they are still waiting for guidance from the government, but will likely have to follow the same policy for the end of this academic year.

The news was buried in version five of the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s AEB funding rules for this year, published last week.

For “contract for services”, it says in paragraph 403: “Learners must complete their programme by July 31, 2021. Funding will not be allocated beyond July 31, 2021.”

The guidance goes on to say colleges, funded from a “grant” rather than a “contract for services”, will not face a four-month window for both starts and completions, as they will continue to receive funding for the next academic year.

The Department for Education confirmed colleges will not need to complete delivery of the qualifications by July 2021, but declined to comment on whether this competitive advantage over private training providers was fair.

‘It’s a wasted opportunity’

Brenda McLeish, chief executive of the training provider Learning Curve Group, said: “We are disappointed to learn that the National Skills Fund funding allocations [routed via the AEB] are only available until July 31, 2021.

“These timelines make it almost impossible for us to be able to deliver under this offer. They are substantial level 3 programmes, for which four months is not enough time. We have huge demand from learners. However, providers will need to be given access to funding for learners beyond July 31. 

“It’s a wasted opportunity to have such a great initiative damaged by poor planning and contracting arrangements that will impact on learners.”

Jane Hickie, chief executive at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, hit out at the way AEB contracts were limiting the access to the level 3 Lifetime Skills Guarantee scheme.

 “Training providers and the learners they will be supporting face an unhelpful, disjointed and likely stuttering start through no fault of their own,” she said.

“This is especially disappointing considering the new level 3 adult offer is expected to play a key role in supporting disadvantaged adults without a prior level 3 train for careers in priority sectors such as adult care, construction and engineering.”

The DfE procurement team has yet to launch a promised £65 million tendering round for national AEB funding contracts starting August 2021.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has today revealed a new in-year growth funding calculation for 16 to 18-year-olds to support “modest growth”.

The news comes after mounting pressure for greater support for an estimated 20,000 students who are currently going unfunded in colleges due to FE’s lagged funding model and a surge in young people choosing to continue education rather than enter work amid Covid-19.

In-year growth is usually only awarded to those colleges that have “significantly” oversubscribed but the ESFA said today that colleges with “more modest levels of over-delivery” will “also receive some growth funds” this year and has published a spreadsheet for institutions to use.

The ESFA explained that this process will be “purely data driven” and they will not accept business cases like in previous years.

The calculation includes lower and upper thresholds, depending on the number of students originally allocated prior to the year starting. It also takes into account any under-delivery in the previous year.

Most sixth form colleges and large FE colleges have been set the highest lower threshold of 100 students, but with a minimum growth increase of at least 10. This means if they over-delivered by between 100 and 109 they would not receive extra funding but if they over-delivered by 110 they would receive extra funding.

For colleges with a small number of 16 to 18-year-olds it is possible under the model for them to have recruited just 35 more students than allocated and still receive in-year growth funding. For example, with the lowest lower threshold minimum for colleges set at 25 and a minimum growth set by the ESFA as 10, a college could be funded for 10 extra students if they had an allocation of 300 and actually recruited 335.

For specialist post-16 institutions the lowest lower threshold minimum has been set at just five, with no minimum growth value. So a specialist post-16 institution would be funded for one extra student if they had an allocation of 50 and actually recruited 56.

Colleges with larger allocations and more significant growth increases would still only be funded this year for up to half the value of the growth, as has been the case in previous years.

The ESFA says growth payments will start to be received from March 2021 “in most cases” and will be profiled across the remainder of the current academic year.

James Kewin, the deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said this announcement was a “welcome move”.

“The threshold for securing in-year growth funding has always been very high, and as a result, very few institutions have been able to access it,” he told FE Week.

“Reducing the threshold will make this funding available to more colleges and relieve some of the short term financial pressure that can accompany growth. It is particularly welcome this year given the sharp increase in student numbers experienced by many institutions.”

Kewin added that he would like to see similar arrangements put in place for future years, particularly as the demographic increase in the number of 16 to 18 year olds is set to continue in many areas until the end of the decade.

Today’s announcement did warn that the agency has not yet made a decision on in-year growth for 2021/2022 and colleges “should not assume that the 2020/2021 rules above will be continued next year”.

This process does not apply to independent learning providers for whom there is a separate reconciliation process.