The government’s FE policy is dangerously wishful thinking

Government rhetoric not rooted in reality will cause colleges to choose the easy options, writes Ian Pryce

As a fan of country music, the untimely death of Nashville-based singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith gave me an excuse to play all her old albums. She never achieved great fame because she championed traditional American folk music, rather than court a wider audience.  

I wish government could show a similar appreciation for, and pride in, the long and quiet tradition of further education.

To quote from my favourite Nanci song, “If wishes were changes we’d all live in roses”. This wonderful line points out the harsh truth that you cannot wish away reality. 

Much current FE policy-making at the moment seems rooted in wish rather than reality. And if colleges believe they are being set up to fail, it is inevitable they will retreat and hunker down, rather than take risky bets.

It seems pretty clear that government wants fewer people going to university full-time and many more taking sub-degree higher education or degree apprenticeships.  

It seems equally clear government wants young people to stop doing applied general courses and do T Levels instead. 

The former education secretary also said “the future is further education”. This rhetoric seems to wish more young people would choose technical and vocational courses over A-level equivalents. Carpenters not classicists, as Mary Beard might say.

Unfortunately, this bumps up against awkward reality. Numbers taking traditional degrees are at record levels. Colleges are struggling to maintain even their relatively tiny higher education enrolments. 

Covid has battered apprenticeships and, based on 2020 starts, the average apprentice is now a thirtysomething advanced business administrator. Last year fewer than ten per cent of starts were young people aged under 19.

Meanwhile, teacher-assessed GCSEs have resulted in more students taking A-levels, a trend that Ofqual is not planning to reverse quickly. 

At the same time, whether down to Brexit or Covid, pay rates in jobs with relatively low qualification thresholds in areas such as retail and hospitality are shooting up. It makes these jobs, rather than apprenticeships and VTQs, attractive as a choice for those aged 16 to 18. 

To top it off, the “fingers in ears” assault on BTECs only adds to the risk. A switch to T Levels involves sourcing a 500 per cent increase in work experience hours.

Meanwhile at policy level, the Skills for Jobs white paper makes clear a college’s offer will be heavily determined by bodies with no skin in the game. There is no evidence that skills panels will share, let alone fully underwrite, the risk of colleges doing the panels’ bidding and finding no demand.

In such circumstances, and faced with more years of low funding, surely the logical behaviour is for a college to shrink to a stable set of popular bestsellers. In other words, to enrol low-maintenance students and show good financial margins.  

If a college wants to take risks, then logic would dictate looking to expand academic provision for those with good GCSE grades, rather than moving too fast towards qualifications like T Levels (which depend on third-party employers and are little understood by parents).

In The Crisis of the Meritocracy Cambridge University academic Peter Mandler shows that democracy and social change trumps political ideology. His study of the success of the comprehensive system shows that, in education, the government follows, rather than leads, the public.

So the British education system is built on what parents want – not politicians, not employers.

We’ll find student numbers falling and finances crumbling

The fact that 70 per cent of young people change institution at 16, most don’t study A-levels, and more post-16 young people are in college than schools, shows that colleges have been right to focus on serving their public, sometimes for over a century. 

If we start to move away from what the public wants, we’ll find student numbers falling and our finances crumbling further. 

So the danger of wishful thinking is that we end up with fewer students. As well as Nanci, we’ll all be channelling Pink Floyd’s “Wish you were here”.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 366

Julie Sizer, Managing director, Prepare to Achieve

Start date: September 2021

Previous job: Head, DART Training and Apprenticeships

Interesting fact: She organised the first international Guide camp in Warwickshire in 1991.

George Clark, Chair, Tyne Coast College

Start date: August 2021

Previous job: Performance specialist, Audit Commission

Interesting fact: In his spare time, he is treasurer of his local scout group and local non-league football team.

Mary Curnock Cook, Chair, Pearson Education Limited board

Start date: October 2021

Concurrent jobs: Council member, Open University; Non-executive director, Student Loans Company

Interesting fact: She sailed the notorious Sydney-Hobart ocean race in 2008 and said of this feat: “Never again!”

WorldSkills Squad UK meet in person for the first time since Covid struck

The skilled young professionals vying to represent the UK at the next WorldSkills international competition met in person last weekend, for the first time since Covid hit.

Members of Squad UK met at Loughborough University with just a year to go until they are whittled down to Team UK to fight for medals at WorldSkills Shanghai 2022.

Digital construction competitor and former New College Lanarkshire student Mona Nawaz said the two-day bootcamp was “amazing”, but it was also “really weird” to see her fellow competitors again after the pandemic.

The squad’s team leader, performance psychology lecturer Stephanie Tibbert, said the aims of the weekend were firstly to create a “safe environment” for squad members to talk about how difficult it has been to access training.

worldskills
Squad UK members

It was also about developing them as a team and preparing them to be away from their families when they will “need to have social bonds within the team”.

How competitors become world-class, not just in terms of their technical skills but also their mindset to deal with distractions and noise, was also covered.

High-performance workshops engaged competitors in building social networks and explored what their motivations were for competing.

WorldSkills bootcamp about ‘resetting focus’ of Squad UK

Nawaz said the weekend was “very enjoyable,” and got squad members used to “a bit of normality again” after many of them have had to train online during much of the pandemic.

“It was a wee bit of a better experience,” she says, as “being surrounded by people is a lot easier than seeing everybody through a screen”. She felt being in-person helped her learn better as well as concentrate more.

There was “fantastic feedback” on the weekend, says WorldSkills UK’s head of skills development and international competition Parisa Shirazi.

“But really, it was around how we reset the focus among our squad and trainers.”

Calum Knott, WorldSkills UK’s training manager for mechatronics, attended the weekend after visiting the EuroSkills competition last month.

The UK pulled out of the Europe-wide event, this year held in the Austrian city of Graz, in February owing to uncertainty around Covid.

Yet Knott says he has come away from EuroSkills feeling “confident we’ll still be competitive” at Shanghai.

Tibbert found this Squad UK was “more mature” than others had been at this stage, having developed “a little bit of resilience” through Covid.

National finals next month will complete squad

One unfortunate consequence of the long wait between tournaments has been squad members pulling out of the running for Team UK.

Knott has had two people drop out of mechatronics, and with another on a work placement abroad, he has just one competitor.

The mechatronics competition, based on the trade for building and maintaining automated equipment, such as assembly lines or bottling equipment, requires a team of two.

It is hoped the squad can be filled out from next month’s national finals, which this year will take place across the country, rather than at Birmingham’s NEC.

Squad members will find out if they have made Team UK in the spring.

For now, WorldSkills UK will continue running virtual competitions, known as “pressure tests”, pitting UK competitors against those from other nations.

These are intended to sharpen competitors’ skills, as well as benchmark their performance against the other countries.

The plan is for WorldSkills UK to compete in a virtual pressure test, having competed in ten so far. These will cover most of the circa 30 skills competitions in which WorldSkills UK is looking to participate in Shanghai.

Colleges reintroduce Covid measures as cases spike

One college has called off its freshers’ events while another has brought back mask-wearing a week after relaxing the restriction, as they respond to surging coronavirus rates.

Cornwall College Group, which has around 1,000 staff and 12,000 learners over nine sites, has postponed its freshers’ day and open events after its local authority requested it bring in extra Covid prevention measures.

Trafford College Group and Derby College have both asked staff and students to start wearing masks in communal areas in response to local Covid rates.

College group bans travel to campus with high Covid rates

Cases in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly rose by 12.9 per cent in the seven days to October 8, from 332 to 2,896. The area is in the government’s second-highest category for its case rate, 503.2 per 100,000 people.

Nearly 78 per cent of its population aged 12 and over have had both doses of a vaccine.

Cornwall College Group’s measures, which also include mask-wearing in communal areas, are running until at least the beginning of November.

“Unessential” travel by staff to and from the group’s Camborne campus has also been banned, after the case rate for this particular part of Cornwall hit 872.5 per 100,000 people – placing it in the highest of the government’s categories.

A vaccination centre has also been set up on the Camborne campus, along with two others at the group’s Bicton and St Austell sites.

“Our top priority is making sure our students can enjoy their college experience and continue their studies safely,” a spokesperson said.

Provider’s area put in highest category for Covid cases

Trafford is another area in the highest “black” category for its Covid case rate, which is at 845.6 per 100,000 people. The number of cases there has risen by 59.2 per cent (747) to 2,009.

After relaxing a requirement for masks just last week, Trafford College Group brought back in the measure for its Altrincham and Stretford campuses on Tuesday.

Social distancing measures are also in place, affecting the provider’s around 10,000 students and 600 staff.

The college has teamed up with Trafford Council to set up a vaccination centre on campus next week.

Total cases in Derbyshire rose by 17.6 per cent (673) to 4,498 in the seven days to October 8, bringing the case rate to 557.2 per 100,000 people. Eighty per cent of its population are fully vaccinated.

Derby College, which has four campuses, more than 12,000 students and 1,000 fulltime staff, insisted reintroducing masks is a “temporary control measure based on case numbers, which will be closely monitored and reviewed”.

Other colleges are keeping a cautious eye on their Covid rates in case they need to
implement measures.

Covid
Liz Bromley

The executive team of NCG, which runs seven colleges across the north of England and London, is meeting weekly to monitor the Covid situation and “ensure that we have appropriate plans in place to continue to safely deliver education on campus”.

It also has a contingency framework in place, “ready to react to any change in operational guidance which would result in a move to hybrid or remote teaching or any other relevant actions to mitigate any local or national increase in the risk of transmission,” chief executive Liz Bromley says.

Large swathes of northern England have a Covid case rate above 400, though most of London has a much lower rate in the hundreds.

Schools already told to reintroduce coronavirus measures

The situation in colleges mirrors what is happening in schools, where pupils and staff have had to mask up and re-enter bubbles.

Earlier this month, Staffordshire Council recommended the over 500 schools in its area, which includes former education secretary Gavin Williamson’s constituency, bring back Covid measures.

Its Covid cases increased by 7.8 per cent (337) in the seven days to October 8, having surged by 28.8 per cent last week.

Colleges in the area to whom FE Week has spoken say they have not received similar recommendations from local authorities.

The Department for Education’s Covid-19 guidance for FE providers states measures should be considered if positive cases at the setting or in the local area “substantially increase”.

Local public health directors can advise colleges that face coverings should temporarily be worn in communal areas or classrooms.

However, they ought to “only ever be considered as a last resort, kept to the minimum number of settings or groups possible, and for the shortest amount of time possible”.

FE’s new ministers hit the road for first college visits

Skills minister Alex Burghart has made his first trip to a college since being appointed, in one of a number of visits by politicians to further education and skills providers this week.

The minister, who was appointed last month, took a tour of City of Wolverhampton College on Thursday after having previously visited a T Level school and a skills bootcamp provider.

“Great outing to Wolverhampton, thank you City of Wolverhampton College and [Conservative MP] Stuart Anderson for having me,” Burghart posted on Twitter afterwards.

He also visited Walsall College yesterday, with the provider tweeting: “Some excellent conversations have taken place this afternoon, with Alex Burghart listening to everything we had to say about T Levels, apprenticeships and vocational course opportunities.”

Gove visits college to see ‘levelling up in action’

college
L-R Matthew Burgess, Madeline Howard, Michael Gove, Jo Dally, Rowena Hay, Tim Atkins, Bruce Gregory

On Wednesday, minister for further and higher education Michelle Donelan visited Swindon and Wiltshire Institute of Technology to launch a wave of 65 short and modular technical courses.

Levelling up and communities secretary Michael Gove was another political leader who went to college this week, visiting Gloucestershire College’s new Advanced Digital Academy on Tuesday.

The former education secretary met with cyber degree apprentices, T Level students and staff on Ada Lovelace Day, which commemorates the famous mathematician and is intended to celebrate women in science, technology, engineering and maths.

“It’s exciting to see levelling up in action,” Gove said of his visit.

Starmer makes first visit to an independent provider

Labour leader Keir Starmer attempted lorry driving at apprenticeship provider Mantra Learning’s National Logistics Academy on Tuesday.

Starmer made headlines during the visit when he hit a fence while reversing a lorry, causing the instructor sat next to him to remark: “You would have failed your test.”

He tweeted following his scrape: “It takes weeks of training to drive an HGV. Thanks to Mantra Learning for showing me how it’s done.”

Donelan’s visit was intended to publicise the free courses, which are being offered through ten of the 12 institutes of technology.

However, she faced questions during the trip over the government’s decision to pull funding from level 3 applied general qualifications such as BTECs, in favour of the government’s own T Levels.

This week, a cross-party group of 118 MPs and Lords wrote to the new education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, calling on him to “recalibrate” the government’s “disastrous” plans to scrap the majority of BTECs.

“One thing you can be sure of is we will ensure there is a good range of courses, these are high quality, and young people have those opportunities to go into whatever career they want,” Donelan told the BBC.

In addition to this week’s outing, Donelan paid a visit to Bury College last week to speak to staff and students about the provider’s new T Level courses.

https://twitter.com/SW_IoT/status/1448298731825152012?s=20

The new education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, has already visited a college, making the trip to Barnet and Southgate College a couple of days after he was appointed in September.

DfE and mayors speed up efforts to tackle HGV driver shortage

Routes to turn learners into lorry drivers are being opened by the Department for Education and mayoral combined authorities in response to national driver shortages.

The government last Friday published a £17 million tender for bootcamps for 5,000 learners either looking to earn their heavy goods vehicle driving licence, earn a different type of licence or refresh their skills.

This is an increase on the £10 million budget and 3,000 target the government originally set for the bootcamps.

DfE running bootcamps and flexing funding rules to fill driver shortage

Suppliers will need to ensure each bootcamp is completed in 16 weeks, starting in December and ending in March 2022, “with a preference for compressed timelines where possible”.

However, bootcamps for “new drivers who have no prior experience” can continue beyond this deadline, but learners must be “road ready” by November 30, 2022.

Bidders had until October 13 to tell the DfE whether they intended to participate; the tender will close to bids on October 22.

Contracts will be officially awarded on November 19, with learners starting from December 6.

The department has also introduced a flexibility for the five goods vehicles driving qualifications fundable from the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s adult education budget.

Providers will be able to pay for medical tests and HGV driving licences for learners.

This applies for learners who started one of the qualifications on or after August 1, and the flexibility will be included in version three of the ESFA’s AEB funding rules, due to be published shortly.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education is also fast tracking the development of a level 2 urban driver apprenticeship for people to drive other types of lorries and collection and delivery vehicles over short distances.

Training requirements and the end-point assessment plan have been approved, so the standard ought to be available in the “near future” to “help resolve driver shortages,” says the institute’s deputy director, Jane Pierce.

The large goods vehicle driver standard was also revised in August, when its maximum funding band was increased to £5,000 to £7,000 and an HGV driving licence was included as a mandatory qualification, the institute added.

MCAs hoping to turn the out-of-work into HGV drivers

The shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers in the UK has left retailers and businesses short of stock for weeks.

Research by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation representative body has found high numbers of vacancies for HGV drivers are widespread, rather than concentrated in one area.

The five areas of England with the highest number of shortages are, in descending order, the Black Country, West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire and Leicestershire.

FE Week also approached the ten mayoral combined authorities with DfE and mayors speed up efforts to tackle HGV driver shortage a devolved AEB to find out what they were doing to meet the driver shortage.

Peterborough and Cambridgeshire Combined Authority has commissioned Peterborough College and independent provider System Group to train more drivers and tackle the critical shortage.

The courses will be free for people out of work or earning less than £20,000 per year.

It is hoped an extra 45 drivers will be trained through this scheme.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority is meeting with logistics sector representatives to see what it can do through training initiatives.

Several other combined authorities, including Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the Greater London Authority, were already running HGV driving courses through their AEB provision before the immediate crisis

Editorial: ‘Scrap the blasted landscape’! Passions ran high in the Lords’ Skills Bill debate

Dusty. Sleepy. Antiquated. Three words used regularly to describe a) how I feel on a Monday morning and b) the House of Lords.

But Tuesday night’s Skills Bill debate was quite the opposite. The noble lords and ladies found their voices, blood pressures were raised and papers were emotionally waved about.

Quite right too. There’s important stuff in the Skills Bill.

Early on in the debate, their lordships debated how far the government should go in dictating the contents of local skills improvement plans. It was Labour’s Lord Andrew Adonis who critiqued “generations of [local skills] plans” that have seemingly not made enough of an impression to become permanent fixtures. “Consultants are salivating,” he mocked – but only half-jokingly.

“The people who will actually do these skills improvement plans are not all the big employers… they will be consultants.”

But it was the matter of the government’s level 3 reforms that really ignited passions on government and opposition red benches alike.

T Levels an attack on individual choice, say Lords

For Conservatives like education veteran Lord Ken Baker and former universities minister Lord David Willetts, the government’s plans to withdraw qualifications that rival T Levels was seen as an attack on traditional Tory values of individual choice and, in Willetts’ words, “trusting the judgment of the people”.

lords
Lord Baker

Baker was characteristically less subtle.

Waving around a copy the DfE’s equalities impact assessment on the level 3 reform, he emotionally quoted how BAME students and students with learning difficulties would be “more strongly negatively impacted by being unable to achieve level 3 in the reformed landscape.

“Scrap the blasted landscape!” he cried.

Skills Bill amendments must get past MPs

Sparky rhetoric aside, the Lords executed its function as the revising chamber impeccably on Tuesday. The Skills Bill is arguably better now; with new requirements on LSIPs to engage with local and combined authorities and have a focus on green industries – thanks to the group Peers for the Planet.

The bill now also includes a four-year moratorium on defunding technical qualifications so that T Levels can prove themselves.

The Lords reconvene on Monday to complete their “report stage debate”, with 39 remaining amendments to debate, including on careers guidance in schools, the lifelong learning guarantee and abolishing the equivalent or lower qualifications funding rule.

Readers must be mindful though, as FE Week reported last week, that government defeats are easier to achieve in the Lords than in the Commons.

Without an equally direct and, crucially, cross-party campaign in the Commons later this year, it is entirely possible that Zahawi can do as Williamson did, and ignore everyone, including 86 per cent of DfE’s own consultation respondents, telling him he’s making a BTEC blunder.

DfE throws new lifeline to City College Southampton pending final verdict

A struggling college has secured more financial life support from the Department for Education as it awaits a critical report which will determine its future.

City College Southampton revealed in its last financial accounts it was set to run out of cash in November 2021, after a string of possible mergers were torn up by the DfE.

The college, the accounts revealed, had “adequate resources to continue in operational existence” until next month, then it would “require additional financial assistance” from the government.

A report by Southampton City Council, published last month, also warned that City College’s “future beyond this academic year is not known” and the “life outcomes” of its students “are at risk as a result”.

Despite the lengthy nature of the process to agree on a positive long term future for City College’s provision, we are very grateful that the DfE continues to support the College

Sarah Stannard

The college this week confirmed to FE Week it had received an undisclosed amount of extra emergency funding from the DfE, which is still “supporting the college and working on a long term solution”.

‘Lengthy’ process has been ‘unsettling’ for staff, says principal

The FE Commissioner and accountancy firm Deloitte are currently working on a city-wide solution for Southampton’s eight sixth-form and general FE colleges.

City College Southampton expects this will recommend it merges with another college, something leaders “believe is the right way forward”.

Principal Sarah Stannard (pictured top) bemoaned the “lengthy nature of the process to agree on a positive long-term future for City College’s provision”, which she said had been “unsettling” for staff.

But they are “very grateful the DfE continues to support the college”, which has seen a 16 per cent rise in student applications and a doubling of apprentice enrolments this year.

During 2019/20, the college received £3.46 million emergency funding from the government. This is being treated as a grant but could be turned into a loan in the future.

The previous year, it received £1.97 million as a bailout, including a £770,000 grant and £1.2 million, which is being treated as a loan.

City College applied for the exceptional financial support from the Education and Skills Funding Agency in 2017/18 after its financial health rating dropped from ‘satisfactory’ to ‘inadequate’.

It had already implemented a recovery plan the previous year to arrest a decline in its rating, but several factors led to it being dragged down.

This included a 15 per cent decrease in total apprenticeship income as the ESFA slashed funding for frameworks.

A decline in English and maths students, combined with over £2 million in interest and depreciation costs from a campus redevelopment programme, also hit the college’s finances in 2017/18.

College has had three merger proposals fall through

The college’s first proposed merger was with Southampton Solent University, as recommended in the FE Commissioner’s 2016 area review.

However, this was rejected by the DfE in February 2018, because of “concerns about the suggested governance model and value for money”, Stannard said previously.

Jan Edrich

Following a “rapid” structure and prospects appraisal, supported by the ESFA and the FE Commissioner and concluding in June 2018, City College selected Ofsted grade two Eastleigh College as a merger partner.

The DfE pulled funding for this move days before it was due to be completed, just as Stannard was preparing to step down in favour of Eastleigh’s then principal, Jan Edrich.

Without the government’s support, Eastleigh withdrew from the merger.

A later proposal to merge with neighbouring grade three Itchen Sixth Form was also rejected by the ESFA in September 2020, owing to what it called “too much uncertainty” around the merged college’s financial viability.

The college now hopes to have merged by January 2022.

DfE refuses to say if Southampton report will be published

Stannard wrote for FE Week in October 2020 that a “major issue” had been “the very slow pace of the proposal process and decision-making” with staff and students suffering “years of uncertainty”, wondering: “Will they be here next year, they wonder. Governors, leaders and staff have been astonishingly resilient. But it must not be assumed that this precariousness hasn’t had an impact on us.”

In addition to over 200 staff, the college has over 4,000 students, among whom are the “most deprived” learners in the city, the college says.

The latest available deprivation data for England shows Southampton is the 55th most deprived local authority area in the country (of 317).

The DfE said it is currently working with colleges and partners, such as the local authority in Southampton, to look at the current FE offer and ensure it meets learners’ needs now and in the future.

A spokesperson stressed that no decisions have been made on whether any of this work, which is being led by the ESFA with input from the commissioner, will be published.