The government’s £50 million rollout of the skills bootcamps policy has come under fire for only funding sectors heavily dominated by men.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the extension of the bootcamp pilot as part of a “refreshed Industrial Strategy” at the launch of the Lifetime Skills Guarantee, last September.

Paid for from the new National Skills Fund, this month the DfE launched two tenders for level 3-plus “bootcamp” courses.

The courses will run for up to 16 weeks and will be free to unemployed people, or where employed, their employer would pay a 30 per cent cash contribution.

An FE Week investigation into the tenders found the DfE is seeking a very narrow range of digital, engineering and construction related courses mostly studied by men.

When asked whether an equalities impact assessment for the bootcamps policy had been undertaken, the DfE appeared to not know, saying they would “respond through the Freedom of Information Act process”.

The “digital skills bootcamps” tender, known as lot 1, is seeking bids for courses in IT subjects such as “Cloud Computing, Data Engineering and Software Development”.

Analysis by FE Week of FE enrolment data for last year found less than 20 percent of level 3 IT courses were studied by women. In the case of the Award in Cloud Services qualification, for example, just 42 (8 per cent) out of 507 enrolments were female.

The “technical and cross-digital skills bootcamps” tender, known as lot 2, is seeking bids for courses in subjects such as “electrotechnical, welding, engineering, construction and electronics”.

FE Week analysis found on one electrotechnical qualification last year women represented just 83 (1.6 percent) of 5,098 enrolments.

The DfE bootcamps “service requirement” tender document says there are “seven key performance indicators” in a spreadsheet which “potential suppliers must complete” and “which will apply to each lot and will be included in contract terms.”

The document then goes on to lists what appear to be 11 indicators, including: “Gender diversity must be encouraged, we will be aiming for a minimum of 50 per cent female learners.”

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges said: “FE Week analysis shows that it is very unlikely that the bootcamps will achieve participation of at least 50 per cent women.

“The sectors and skills chosen are clearly in high demand in the labour market and yet we know they are male dominated.

“We would encourage the DfE to recognise that and work with us in the sector to achieve greater equality of access and outcome on these bootcamps and in choosing future sectors and disciplines.”

He added: “It’s worrying that this flagship programme might not cater for the thousands of people losing their jobs in sectors like retail and hospitality because the distance to achieve in these disciplines might be far too big.”

Susan Pember, former director at the DfE and leader of a membership body for adult education providers added her concern, saying: “I would hope that any successful bidder will have to detail in their bid the proactive measures they are going to take to encourage more women on to these programmes.”

But FE Week found the DfE “tender response document” included no questions about how the applicant would attract more female learners to the courses they were hoping to run.

The 50 per cent female enrolment target now also appears to be watered down.

Following a question about how seriously the DfE was taking the 50 per cent target, they responded formally to all applicants on the tendering portal this week to say: “The policy aim is for 50/50 split, however we appreciate that will not always be possible. Suppliers will not be disadvantaged if they are unable to meet this target.”

When challenged on the male dominated sectors, a DfE spokesperson said: “We are seeing a demand for digital and technical skills bootcamps across many sectors and industries, including healthcare, where there are high numbers of females and we already have bootcamps that are targeted at women and BAME participants.”

FE Week is unaware of any government plans to fund bootcamps in the healthcare sector.

The DfE spokesperson continued: “We want everyone to benefit from this offer and share an ambition with employers to increase diversity. Our aim is for a 50/50 gender split and to encourage people from under-represented groups to take advantage of these fantastic opportunities.

“We expect this to be achievable by employers working with bootcamps providers to encourage a balanced take up. However, providers will not be disadvantaged if they are unable to meet this target, for example, where a bootcamp is aimed at a specific cohort where a 50/50 gender split would be unachievable.”

 

 

The chair of an influential committee of MPs has called for an investigation into the government’s Kickstart scheme after FE Week revealed how firms based outside the UK or with no trading history were selected as “gateway” providers.

Meg Hillier (pictured), who heads the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, was “shocked” to hear how firms were set up overnight to benefit from the taxpayer-funded scheme. She is now referring the case to the National Audit Office to scrutinise the spending.

The Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch is concerned that the situation has “opened up another chancer’s charter”.

Hillier told FE Week: “This should be investigated. If the DWP is not already doing so, I would be shocked. I will also write to the department to find out what is going on here.”

Since the launch of the new £2 billion wage-subsidised employment programme in September, small employers have had to use “gateway” companies – which include colleges, chambers of commerce and hundreds of private companies – where they have fewer than 30 vacancies, according to Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) policy.

Gateway providers “must” have “experience of managing partnership agreements with third parties” and “robust financial and governance processes to manage the application”, the policy adds.

The DWP has issued more than 600 approved firms a per-job placement fee of £300, plus up to £1,500 for every 16 to 24-year-old on Universal Credit who they put through the scheme if they continue to help with job support and training.

But the DWP is understood to be so concerned about the quality of gateway providers that it has now stopped taking applications and scrapped the requirement for small employers to use them from 3 February.

Examples of gateway firms found by FE Week include Kickstart Jobs Ltd which, according to Companies House, was incorporated just three months ago.

Another, KA001 Limited, lists a Gmail contact email address on the gov.uk Kickstart website. Its first set of accounts filed in November 2020 shows “total assets less liabilities” of £100.

FE Week also found the example of Casual Speakers Ltd, a DWP-authorised Kickstart gateway firm which Companies House lists as being based in Tel-Aviv, Israel, and therefore has not filed accounts in the UK.

After hearing of our findings, Hiller said there was “a real issue here”.

She added: “Over the whole of the Covid pandemic we have seen the government letting out contracts fast, but for this one they seem to have contracted to companies that only set up in order to get the money. If that is not a chancer’s charter, I’m not sure what is.”

To become a gateway provider, the DWP said firms first go through automated due diligence checks via a “Cabinet Office spotlight tool” which only takes “seconds” to complete. They can then also be subject to human checks.

FE Week also found many companies advertising themselves as being a Kickstart gateway with no history of job matching.

Firms advertising their Kickstart gateway services include Banana Scoops Ltd, an ice cream supplier to Ocado which claimed on Twitter to have 70 placements already approved with the DWP. Another encouraging applications from small employers is Rollerworld Ltd, a company with an ice rink in Essex.

Asked whether the DWP had launched its own investigation into the matter, a DWP spokesperson said: “Kickstart gateways have been subject to stringent checks to ensure we are careful with taxpayers’ money. All companies who applied to become a gateway were required to be registered with Companies House.”

Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, Jonny Reynolds, said: “Billions of pounds of public money is being poured into Kickstart and we must ensure it is being spent well to create meaningful job opportunities for young people.

“Young people and businesses can’t afford any more incompetence from this government.”

 

Registrations for courses on the government’s “skills toolkit” that have been celebrated by ministers could be coming from anywhere in the world, the Department for Education has admitted.

More than £1 million of public money has been spent on developing and advertising the “platform”, which directs visitors to free online content provided by the likes of Amazon, the Open University, Microsoft and LinkedIn.

Ministers across government have hailed the success of the toolkit since it launched in April 2020. Education secretary Gavin Williamson declared that it had had a “transformational” impact on the digital and numeracy skills for England’s out-of-work people during the pandemic.

But little is known about who is accessing the content as most do not require registrations. And, as FE Week previously revealed, significant overcounting has already led to revised estimates of “course start” claims in official statistics which continue to include web hits.

FE Week has now discovered that the DfE is also unable to identify from which countries the registrations are coming. The department said the data is held and reported by the relevant providers who “do not provide country data, so DfE cannot confirm the country related to course registrations”.

A number of providers with courses on the skills toolkit have confirmed that they do not filter for registrations that are England-based only.

Toby Perkins, Labour’s shadow apprenticeships and lifelong learning minister, criticised the DfE for “failing to enact themselves the kind of data collection they would routinely insist on from other providers”.

He added: “The government is very happy to make statistically questionable claims about the skills toolkit, yet it’s clear that it has no idea who is accessing the website and to what extent those people are utilising it.

“No one wants to make this small and potentially valuable initiative unduly bureaucratic, but it is important that they are aware of who is using it, who it is reaching and failing to reach, and that information should be both collected and published.

“We all want to celebrate successful initiatives but, without this data, I don’t think it’s possible to be sure how successful the skills toolkit is in improving the skills and opportunities of British workers and learners.”

When asked if the DfE was concerned that it had no grasp on what countries course registrations were coming from, a spokesperson said: “We are committed to ensuring that the skills toolkit is accessible and of value to people across the country.”

They added that the department was “able to identify England-based website visits in line with GDPR” through the toolkit.

This latest revelation comes as FE Week continues to challenge the DfE to release the names of firms that were given almost £800,000 to develop the platform. The department has kept the names a secret so far, refusing a freedom of information request.

Through the same FOI request the DfE did release a breakdown of the 118,980 course registrations by each provider on the skills toolkit as of 1 November 2020, which has caused further concern at the official figures being reported.

A course provided by Corndel called “organisational financial management: an introduction”, for example, is reported as having had 8,090 starts. However, the provider says that it does not track the usage of the materials and no “registration” data has been provided to the DfE.

The DfE has also come under fire for claiming the courses on the skills toolkit are of “high quality”, considering they receive no quality assurance from the likes of Ofsted or Ofqual and many of the courses simply involve short video tutorials or PDF documents.

Sue Pember, a former director of FE funding in the DfE, previously said: “When the DfE puts out its own advertising for the toolkit, it always talks about good quality. But under whose judgment? It may be, but how do they know?”

She added that the DfE should be “cautious” as “website hits or even signatures on enrolment forms do not equate to learning taking place”.

Latest official data published by the DfE claims that, as of 27 December 2020, there have been an estimated 138,000 course registrations. The department does accept that these are “experimental statistics” and says it is working to collect “more robust estimates of registrations”.

Regional mayors are preparing to plead for courses to be added to the government’s lifetime skills guarantee offer after ministers controversially excluded critical economic sectors from the list.

However, most remain tight-lipped about which industries they want to target.

Almost 400 level 3 qualifications covering sectors including engineering, construction, public services and IT will be fully funded for adults without a full qualification at level 3 – equivalent to two full A-levels – from April 2021 under the £95 million scheme.

But industries such as hospitality, tourism and the media have been left off the government list because they are deemed to be a low priority with low wages.

Mayoral combined authorities (MCAs) will be allocated a share of the funds to give to their area’s providers to deliver courses through their devolved adult education budgets.  However they have been told that they can only submit requests for additional courses if they are “economically relevant to the local economy”.

The Greater London Authority told FE Week that it was “looking at this issue in detail and expects to submit a request in due course”. The Liverpool City Region is engaging in “detailed discussions” with its colleges and providers to decide which additions to ask for.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority is “in the process of submitting a list of qualifications to the EFSA, which will focus on Local Industrial Strategy growth sectors”, and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority is “working proactively with colleges, providers and local businesses to identify any gaps in the course list, with a view to making a request to the DfE for additional courses if required”.

The only mayoral authority that has so far submitted a formal request is in the West Midlands. A spokesperson said that it had asked for “one specific rail engineering qualification to be added to the list to date, as rail is a growing employment sector for us”.

The Department for Education confirmed to FE Week that, if a course is added at the request of a mayoral authority, then it will be made available to everyone in the country through the offer.

Under the department’s rules, there is a “strict condition that funding is used for its intended purpose” by MCAs. Otherwise they face having to hand the funding back to central government.

Funding allocations for each combined authority have not yet been communicated to the relevant mayors despite the approach of the April 2021 start date.

The DfE unveiled the list of level 3 courses under the lifetime skills guarantee offer in December. At the time the department said it had chosen qualifications that were “valued by employers”.

But Tom Bewick, chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, hit out at this “top-down driven list cooked up in Whitehall”. He said it showed that the DfE had gone for a “convoluted way of trying to ration limited public funds from the get-go, while dressing the whole policy up as being an absolute free learning entitlement, like access to the NHS”.

The new offer builds on a policy in place since 2013. It allows adults up to the age of 23 to be fully funded for their first full level 3 qualification from the adult education budget. Those aged 24 and over have since had to take out an advanced learner loan to pay for the course.

The current entitlement for those aged 23 and below covers nearly 1,200 qualifications, almost four times as many as those made available under the lifetime skills guarantee.

The DfE has said that any qualifications included in this new level 3 adult offer which are not included in the existing entitlement will be made available for 19 to 23-year-old learners.

An apprentice who hosted STEM career events at schools, and a provider giving back to the LGBTQ+ community have been recognised at the WorldSkills UK Diversity and Inclusion Heroes awards.

This is the second year of the awards, following the inaugural event at WorldSkills UK LIVE in 2019, run in partnership with Coca-Cola European Partners.

Seven awards were up for grabs this year and the winners were celebrated at a virtual event on Thursday, hosted by BAME Apprenticeship Awards apprentice of the year Kimmy Kimani. One of them, Rolls-Royce management accountancy apprentice Haider Ali (pictured top), said it was a “complete shock” when he found out he had won the rising star award.

Having joined the manufacturing giant as a higher apprentice, WorldSkills UK said Ali was “determined” to make a difference by getting involved with initiatives to support an inclusive workforce. He has hosted events on STEM career opportunities for pupils at local schools.

WorldSkills said he, along with Derby City Council, had “worked hard to raise the aspirations of primary school children in some of Derby’s most deprived areas”.

Ali said: “From my own personal experiences, I think it is really important that young people have access to role models, so they know – whatever space they want to enter – there is room for them.

“I want to help make a difference by sharing my own experiences and inspire more young people from all backgrounds to take up an apprenticeship.”

Gareth Fallows, managing director of Stoke-based Acorn Training, won the UK’s role model of the year award. WorldSkills UK said he found “safety and security” within his LGBTQ+ community and further education when he was a teenager.

After graduating from Manchester Metropolitan University as a teacher, Fallows founded Acorn because he was “determined to give back to the LGBTQ+ community”, WorldSkills said.

Acorn has created a “safe and inclusive space for all communities” and, in the past year,  has supported 1,350 unemployed people, with 68 per cent achieving sustained employment.

That work also earned Acorn another award – the network of the year prize for small-to-medium employers.

Fallows said he was really proud to accept the awards as they recognised the hard work his staff put in “to ensure everyone we work with gets the best life chances”.

The panel of judges included: Ben Blackledge, WorldSkills UK deputy chief executive; Sharon Blyfield, Coca-Cola European Partners’ senior manager for people and culture (GB), early careers and apprenticeships; and Dawn Baker, awarding body NCFE’s director of innovation and investments.

WorldSkills UK chief executive Neil Bentley-Gockmann said they had been “completely blown away by the number and quality of the inspiring entries”. He added: “These awards give us the opportunity to celebrate success with our partners, who are making progress and achieving real impact, and to showcase best practice so we can all learn from each other.”

Apprenticeship starts appear to be recovering after new data showed a less dramatic percentage drop amid the pandemic.

Figures published this morning by the Department for Education show there were 91,100 starts recorded from August to October 2020, compared to 125,800 reported for the same period pre-Covid-19 in 2019/20 – a 28 per cent fall. 

It is an improved picture on the previous quarter of the pandemic, when 43,600 starts were achieved between May and July 2020, compared to 75,500 starts for the same period in 2019 – a 42 per cent fall.

The DfE points out that the 2020/21 data “covers a period affected by varying Covid-19 restrictions, which will have impacted on apprenticeship and traineeship learning and also provider reporting behaviour via the Individualised Learner Record”, adding that “extra care should be taken in comparing and interpreting data presented in this release”. 

For the data recorded in the first quarter of 2020/21, those aged under 19 accounted for the biggest fall, with starts for this age group dropping 42 per cent from 40,700 last year to 23,800. 

Starts for level 2 apprenticeships similarly dropped by 43 per cent – from 41,000 to 23,300 – while the only increase in starts in quarter one of 2020/21 was seen among higher apprenticeships, which rose by 1 per cent from 29,800 to 30,100. 

Today’s statistics also provide an update for take-up of the chancellor’s apprenticeship incentive scheme, which hands employers a “bonus” of up to £2,000 to take on a new apprentice between 1 August 2020 and 31 March 2021. 

As at 8 January 2021, a total of 18,670 starts were planned under the scheme. The Treasury had budgeted for up to 100,000 incentive payments for new apprentice hires.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Jane Hickie said her organisation had previously warned that the incentives for apprenticeships “weren’t enough to make a significant difference”, as today’s data suggests.

“The chancellor recognises that young people are being hurt most by this recession, as today’s figures show, but his March statement has to do a lot more to reverse these falls,” she added.

Responding to today’s figures, skills minister Gillian Keegan said: “Apprenticeships form a vital part of our new Skills for Jobs White Paper which will transform post-16 education and training, helping to deliver the skills individuals, businesses and the economy need to build back better from the pandemic.

“As of January 8th 2021 almost 19,000 applications had been submitted from employers for our offer of a cash boost of up to £2000 to hire new apprentices, showing the value they know apprenticeships can bring to their business.  This offer is available until March 2021, so businesses can create even more opportunities and give more people the life changing chance to kick start or upskill their career.”

She added: “I know the pandemic is continuing to impact businesses across the country and some apprentices have lost their job, or are facing redundancy. Our Redundancy Support Service continues to offer free advice to apprentices and help to find them alternative options.”