The government is considering making “adaptations” to exams in 2022 similar to those proposed for this summer’s assessments before they were cancelled, the head of regulator Ofqual has said.
Simon Lebus (pictured), the interim chief regulator, told MPs this morning that the “thinking at the moment is about adaptations along the line that had been originally contemplated for this year when exams were still to go ahead”.
The government proposed last year that grading for exams in 2021 would be as generous as it was in 2020, and that students would get advance notice of topics in certain subjects and be allowed to use exam aids.
Those plans were abandoned in January when exams were cancelled following partial school and college closures.
But Lebus suggested this morning that some of them may be resurrected next year in recognition that future exam students will also have been impacted by the pandemic.
“So far as 2022 is concerned, the thinking at the moment is about adaptations along the line that had been originally contemplated for this year when exams were still to go ahead,” he told the education select committee.
“And that’s based on the reality of the cohort taking exams next year will have suffered considerable disruption to their learning, though we would hope not on the scale and at the level that has been suffered by this year’s cohort, so that it would be a reasonable thing to carry out some form of public exams but that they would be adapted to reflect the learning disruption that’s taken place.”
Different approach may be needed for future exams
His comments come after MPs raised concerns about grade inflation being “baked in” to the system for years to come. Grades will be issued on the basis of teacher assessments this year.
Lebus said this morning said the process of recovering lost learning would take “several years”, adding there would “have to be policy initiatives in place to deal with that over a period of time”.
In terms of what happens after 2022, Lebus said there needed to be “reflection on what we do longer-term to the exam system to take account of the disruption that’s occurred over the last three years and the disjunct before and after”.
“And so you inevitably end up asking the question, do we in post-Covid times approach things slightly differently?
“And all sorts of issues have been raised about coursework, teacher judgment, there’s always been a dialogue going on about the weight you give teacher judgment as opposed to summative exams, though all those have been issues that have been surfaced by this and they will form part of the policy mix that is determined in order to address lost learning over the coming years.”
Dame Glenys Stacey
It comes after Dame Glenys Stacey, who served as interim chief regulator at Ofqual between September and December last year before Lebus took over, warned there would be a “long backwash to this pandemic in education”. She said the need for a “good and considered and open discussion about what the right thing to do would be”.
Stacey also previously warned that going “straight back” to standards seen pre-pandemic in 2022 “wouldn’t be fair”.
“We need to see how the pandemic washes through so we can have the broad discussion about where standards are set for 2022,” she told MPs last year.
Schools minister Nick Gibb also accepted in December that the government would need to “look again, as the pandemic proceeds, to see what happens about what we do in 2022, because again, the 2022 cohort will have suffered some disruption to their education as well”.
Progress monitoring visits of grade three and four FE providers will end from March 15 as inspections of new providers finally restart, Ofsted has announced today.
The watchdog has been carrying out remote progress monitoring visits to poorly graded colleges and providers since January in place of routine in-person inspections, which have been suspended during the pandemic.
But the inspectorate updated its operational guidance this morning to state it will “discontinue” the check-ups from next week other than in “exceptional cases”.
This could happen when, for example, “it has already been necessary to engage additional planning and resources for a visit and we believe that to be the most appropriate means of monitoring progress at this time”.
Ofsted said the decision was taken after reviewing its face-to-face inspection activity following the government’s announcement about the return to onsite education from March 8.
Full and short inspections will remain suspended for the time being.
But, as reported by FE Week on Friday, the watchdog will begin carrying out “new provider monitoring visits (NPMVs) to new providers that have not yet received a monitoring visit” again from March 15.
Ofsted said it considers this group to be the “highest priority for face-to-face inspection activity”.
FE Week understands the Education and Skills Funding Agency has grown increasingly concerned with new apprenticeship providers operating for prolonged periods without oversight from the watchdog.
Ofsted confirmed today that the ESFA will take into account the outcome of these NPMVs when making intervention decisions as usual, such as about apprenticeships starts and registration.
They will be carried out in the same way as before the suspension of routine inspection activity but the impact of Covid-19 will be taken into account in the findings and progress judgements.
Ofsted said it will not carry out an NPMV to any provider that has level 6 and/or 7 apprenticeships provision before 1 April 2021, from which date the inspectorate takes on responsibility for overseeing this provision form the Office of Students.
The inspectorate said it will give up to two working days’ notice of an NPMV and each visit will normally last for two days.
Providers can request to defer the inspection in “exceptional circumstances” and each case will be judged “separately on its own merit”.
Ofsted added today that it will continue to carry out emergency monitoring visits or inspections “if we have a significant cause for concern, such as about safeguarding or a breakdown in leadership and management”. These will be carried out onsite, “wherever possible”.
The Department for Education knew its flagship skills bootcamps could be flooded with male learners but has a raft of plans to tackle the issue, FE Week has learned.
An equalities impact assessment of the programme received by this newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act makes a series of recommendations to bring in more female and ethnic minority learners.
These include a targeted marketing campaign “to attract a diverse cohort” of learners to the programmes.
Also, to run monthly workshops with local authorities to “discuss the cohort the courses are attracting and share best practice on how to improve this,” the document reads.
The assessment warns the bootcamps – level 3 and above engineering, manufacturing and digital skills courses being launched with the National Skills Fund in April – “may require prior knowledge or experience in male-dominated career areas”.
FE Week published exclusive analysis in January which found the DfE is seeking a very narrow range of digital, engineering and construction-related courses, mostly studied by men, for bootcamps. For example, less than 20 per cent of level 3 IT courses were studied by women last year.
This was echoed in the DfE’s equalities impact assessment, in which data from the Office for National Statistics was quoted
showing just 16.5 per cent of employees in the IT sector are women.
The assessment admits that this “may result in a disproportionate number of men being able to access the courses”.
A number of them have reported a high amount of uptake among female learners, yet quite poor take-up by black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) learners in some areas.
The DfE published in January two tenders worth a total of £36 million for skills bootcamps to start in April: one for digital skills courses in nine areas, and another for a number in areas such as digital skills, electrotechnical, nuclear or green energy at a local or national level.
The bootcamps’ “service requirement” tender said the DfE wanted suppliers to have a minimum of 50 per cent female learners.
But Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes warned “it is very unlikely” the bootcamps will meet that target.
To ensure it does, the DfE’s assessment includes a string of actions, including collecting data on learners “to ensure the bootcamps are attracting a diverse cohort”.
For the bootcamp pilots, a DfE spokesperson said they are “collating data on both applicants to the bootcamps and participants on the bootcamps through monthly provider returns,” which include participants’ gender, disability or long-term health condition and ethnicity.
As the bootcamps are not using individualised learner records, the DfE has a spreadsheet that providers fill in. They do not plan to change this for the first phase of bootcamps, they said.
The assessment also calls for bootcamp advertising to use positive role models and feature a “diverse range” of people, including women, disabled people and those from different ethnic backgrounds.
Ensuring recruitment practices take account of unconscious bias and processes for learners who complain of unfair practices or treatment is also recommended to providers.
The DfE spokesperson said they want “everyone” to benefit from the bootcamps and the government “shares an ambition with employers to increase diversity”.
Big female uptake on pilots, but poor BAME results
When it comes to encouraging female learners, the pilot programmes have seen some promising results.
West Midlands Combined Authority has seen 1,500 starts on its bootcamp pilots, which started in the first wave and include dedicated digital skills training for women and other groups who are underrepresented in technology.
Of the pilot’s learners, 51 per cent have been female while 53 per cent have been non-white.
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, which has been running courses in digital marketing, cyber security and data engineering as part of the second wave of pilots, currently has 310 learners on programme and 48 per cent are female.
D2N2 local enterprise partnership, another second wave pilot provider, has seen 408 starts on programmes in network routers and switches, digital sales, and coding and software development – 51 per cent of which were female.
But just 11 per cent of Liverpool’s learners are from a BAME background, while multi-ethnic, Asian, black and other ethnic groups make up just ten per cent of D2N2’s learners.
The combined authority said that although this is “not a KPI for our pilot, we are actively promoting across a diverse range of platforms and stakeholders as we want as many people from all backgrounds to be able to access the opportunity the project offers”.
The Turing scheme will open for applications this month. We spoke to sector professionals to compare the newcomer with its predecessor, Erasmus, and to ponder the likely outcomes for students and staff
For those colleges that made use of the Erasmus+ scheme during its 25-year lifespan in the UK, Brexit in January last year started the clock on a nerve-shredding countdown.
Would the government keep us in the European Union’s £13-billion-pound support programme? Would they replace it with something else? Partner colleges across the continent fired off emails to their colleagues in England, who were unable to give an answer.
Just like the Brexit deal itself, the outcome was unclear until the last. In January last year education secretary Gavin Williamson voted against continued membership of Erasmus in any Brexit deal, but then Boris Johnson said there was “no threat”. However not long afterwards, Williamson said the Department for Education would develop its own “alternative arrangements” to Erasmus+, just in case.
By the date of the Brexit deal on December 24, the UK had lost membership of the Erasmus+ scheme, with Johnson saying it was a “tough decision” but the financial cost of remaining was too high.
On the same day, the Turing scheme was announced. Named after the famed computing pioneer, Johnson said the global replacement for Erasmus+ would involve “the best universities” all over the world, immediately prompting queries about whether vocational placements would also be funded as they are under Erasmus+. (The EU once called its vocational programme the Leonardo da Vinci scheme, after that other great inventor, but it was rolled into the rebranded Erasmus+ scheme in 2014.)
To clear things up, the government published its updated “International Education Strategy” last month – part of its plan to “strengthen the UK’s global leadership” – which said the Turing scheme is for learners “in universities, colleges and schools”. About £105 million would fund 35,000 placements anywhere in the world, ranging from two weeks to 12 months, for a year from September 2021.
FE Week has revealed the separate funding pots for the first time: £35 million for further education, £60 million for universities and £10 million for schools, according to Ecorys, the co-delivery partner with the British Council for the Turing scheme.
This roughly equates to about 10,000 further education placements, 20,000 higher education placements and 5,000 school placements, says Jane Racz, director of the scheme at the British Council. And on Wednesday, the Turing Scheme website published a “programme guide” with a few more details. So is the programme good? How can colleges get involved?
‘Colleges impressed with Erasmus’
First off, the Turing scheme has big boots to fill.
Unlike some headlines claiming Erasmus+ is “elitist” or “middle-class”, the colleges sector, when asked, had only good news to report. A 2019 survey of 31 colleges carried out by the Association of Colleges found three-quarters gave the programme a full 5 out of 5 score for its benefits to the institution, with only three per cent giving it a 3 and no scores below that.
Erasmus students from Dudley College
It may be to do with the sizeable proportion of poorer learners on the scheme – one-fifth of vocational placements have gone to disadvantaged students, according to Ecorys. The perception of the programme as only for higher education students is “misleading and exclusionary”, one witness told the House of Lords European Union committee two years ago.
And the positive view among colleges is seen in the numbers, too. In 2020, 57 colleges were awarded funding to send staff and students abroad on placements, up from 28 six years before.
Colleges won €25.6 million for those placements, again a huge increase from just €5.2 million in 2014.
And that’s just how much colleges successfully pitched for, not how much was available in total. Overall, €39.8 million was available to the UK in 2020 for vocational education placements – close to the Turing scheme’s own £35 million of funding for FE.
‘Staff left out in the cold’
“But that doesn’t include staff,” points out Richard Stratford, head of projects and partnerships at South Devon College.
Whereas colleges can apply for Erasmus+ placement funding for staff as well as students, the Turing scheme is for students only, with some extra funding to cover staff “accompanying learners abroad for safeguarding purposes”, according to the programme guide.
The college usually sends about 40 lecturers on staff placements a year to their partner institutions in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland or France. “They come back buzzing with ideas, absolutely buzzing. That will be a huge loss,” says Stratford.
Jodie Davis, a performing arts lecturer at Dudley College of Technology in the West Midlands, spent one week each in Cyprus, Sweden, Greece and Portugal observing dancing lessons, including in professional dance schools.
“We learnt a lot about their different cultural approaches to it, especially the technical training.” Back at home, she trained her students in alternative styles so they could adapt to an international dance company in future.
The experience also “invigorated” her,” she says. “I pushed myself out of my comfort zone again, as a practitioner too.” Since FE lecturers are intended to be industry experts as well as teachers, such placements fit with the ethos of the sector.
As Emma Meredith, international director at the AoC, says, “clearly, Erasmus was being used”. Eighty-five per cent of surveyed colleges were using Erasmus+ for learner placements – but 76 per cent were also using it for staff development.
Last year, 1,152 UK staff from further education went on these placements, according to Ecorys. It’s not a huge figure – but for an individual college, the insight potential is not insignificant.
Erasmus student and staff from Lancaster & Morecambe College learning to cook fish in Italy
Mathew Hayes, international projects lead at Lancaster & Morecambe College, says his principal was hoping to visit top-level apprenticeship provision in both Germany and Denmark, “where apprenticeships are treated on par with degrees”, he says. But such staff trips will no longer be funded.
FE Week interviewed a European Commission official for education policy about the shift.
UK further education colleges “could really lose resources to help them thrive,” he said. “Finland, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, the Basque country, these all have really top-notch further education and vocational training, and that’s now more difficult for UK institutions to learn from.”
‘No collaborative projects’
It’s worsened by the fact the second “strand” of Erasmus+ funding for partnerships and collaborative projects is also not replicated under the Turing scheme.
Colleges can currently partner with at least two other institutions across Europe to discuss and pilot new ideas around the curriculum or training, in order to create and disseminate new resources.
Lancaster & Morecambe College currently has 11 collaborative projects on the go – one former research project with Cyprus, Poland, Italy, Lithuania and Spain on careers advice produced new resources the college “uses to this day”.
Staff have also been involved in Erasmus+ “skills sector partnerships”, set up to identify and tackle emerging skills gaps across Europe, particularly digital skills.
Last year, UK colleges won bids worth €2.4 million for this second projects strand.
Crucially, this pot helps pay for Hayes’ salary, he says – which in turn allows him to do all the preparation, risk assessments and partnership building for the student placements.
I’m not sure there will be enough money under Turing to pay for my wage and for this office
“I’m not sure there will be enough money under Turing to pay for my wage and for this office to continue to exist. The role would have to go to a teacher, but they’re already stretched as it is. If you haven’t done it before, you can’t understand how much paperwork there is.”
He points out the Turing Scheme’s global offer is likely to involve even more paperwork, since the placements will be further away and potentially riskier; partnerships will need to be built from scratch; and the lack of reciprocal funding for students to return to the UK, as on offer under Erasmus+, might make it less appealing. “It doesn’t look good, in terms of friendship, does it?”
Returning students will also need to hurdle the UK’s new visa system.
Paul Harrison, an external evaluator for Erasmus+, says, “I predict some of these existing partnerships will die, because colleges in other countries won’t be able to find the funding to reciprocate.”
To top it all, the EU Commission has confirmed it is soon going to be expanding its vocational education placements to countries around the world – just like Turing, but with staff placements and project work thrown in too.
‘Some exciting opportunities’
It all seems quite galling, but colleges remain determined to see what the Turing Scheme can offer them.
Meredith at the AoC makes the good point that the two experienced partners for the UK Erasmus+ programme (the British Council and Ecorys) will be in charge of the new Turing scheme, thereby allowing “continuity of expertise” in the roll-out of the new programme – no randomly contracted, inexperienced private provider at the helm here.
Racz at the British Council says that although her organisation cannot “facilitate” new partnerships overseas, colleges unsure where to start can approach the British Council, which has offices all over the world, to “broker conversations”.
And there are exciting opportunities. South Devon College is situated in a global geopark, an area of special natural interest, says Stratford. “We’ve already got some great links with 147 other geoparks in other countries, such as Tanzania, so we’re exploring doing something exciting with those through Turing,” he says.
We’ve got great links with 147 geoparks abroad – we’re exploring doing something exciting with those through Turing
Similarly, the college will also now be able to fund its A-level learners to go abroad – Erasmus+ is just for vocational placements.
Another piece of encouraging news is that colleges will still have access to ECVET, the European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training. This is a benchmarking system that allows learners to have their hours on work placements abroad count towards apprenticeships and qualifications.
However, work still needs to be done about how to make work placement hours count all over the world. Madeleine Rose, director of programme management at Ecorys, says this “isn’t in train yet” but “is important and something we need to consider once the scheme is open”.
‘Get your applications in’
The Turing Scheme will open for applications this month. According to the programme guide, further education institutions will get £315 per participant in “organisational support” for the first 100 participants, and £180 for groups bigger than that.
For travel costs, colleges will receive a fixed amount depending how far away the destination is.
So it’s £165 for sending learners anywhere between 100km to 499 km away – while visiting Tanzania, for instance, at 11,000 km, would qualify for £905. Learners will also get £135 each to access language resources if they are going away to a non-English-speaking country for more than 19 days.
Thereafter, daily funds will depend on whether the learner (and accompanying staff member) is in a group 1, 2 or 3 destination country, which is ranked according to local living costs.
Learners in group 1 countries get £109 a day for two weeks, and £76 a day after that. Those in group 2 countries get £94 a day then £66 a day, and those in group 3 countries get £80 a day and £56 a day after that.
Erasmus was such a valuable scheme for staff too. That is a real shame
Meanwhile, colleges need to identify the “anticipated points of expenditure” when they will require the funds, and will be paid 80 per cent of costs at these points, with the final 20 per cent once a special report is completed showing all went to plan.
College will also need to undergo “financial capacity checks” before their application is accepted.
“I’m open to what the Turing scheme offers as an alternative,” concludes Davis, the dance tutor. “I think it will be interesting to see how we can do something a little bit different.
“But Erasmus was such a valuable scheme for staff too. That is a real shame.”
We can ask why Covid testing is delayed for those on work-based learning routes – but there is no good explanation, writes Jane Hickie
I guess we should be used to it by now.
Ever since the pandemic began, hundreds of thousands of apprentices and learners with independent training providers (ITPs) have been at the very back of the queue in terms of receiving government support.
The chancellor has without doubt proved to be an honourable exception on this front but it feels like a constant case of one step forward, and two steps back.
Just when you are hoping that ITPs can go back and do what they do best – that is, look after themselves – a new variant of the virus comes through an airport arrivals hall and you fear the worst. At least the rollout of vaccinations should make a big difference.
But in the meantime, my members have another hurdle to jump.
The education secretary wants learners aged 16 to 19 to return to their education settings on Monday. So the government is ensuring that students at schools and colleges will be given lateral flow tests for Covid twice a week if required.
Apprentices and the many young people on traineeships or study programmes in the same age group with ITPs will not, however, have access to testing in their place of learning until April at the earliest.
Why? We have asked the question many times but to no avail ̶ there is no explanation.
‘Plan for April testing still unclear’
After FE Week reported this latest example of unequal treatment, the opposition raised the matter at question time in the House of Lords on Monday. But the minister could only direct these learners to local community testing centres for the next three weeks.
The flaw in the response is that it doesn’t recognise the high levels of vulnerable and disadvantaged young people that ITPs support. Many are more susceptible to catching the virus, but will not have easy transport links to take them to test centres.
Before Christmas, ITP learners were not even in the Department for Education’s plans for lateral flow or home testing kits, and AELP had to lobby hard for a change.
However, it was then difficult to comprehend why the DfE didn’t simply use the same system for schools and colleges by sending kits to the ITP’s training centres or somewhere appropriate nearby.
In fact, we are still waiting to hear how the distribution will be managed from April.
In the meantime, the government’s guidance from March 8 requires that most of a learner’s programme hours should take place on site. This is nigh on impossible to do safely if there are no tests available.
‘Traineeships being delayed’
It is especially frustrating when the Chancellor is using the Budget to inject a further £126 million into traineeships on top of last July’s £110 million.
Providers are desperate to start young people as soon as possible on the new traineeships but are now having to delay until April.
April was meant to be the time of relief for providers after months and months of lobbying and debate.
They could finally unblock the logjam of learners who have not been able to take their functional skills tests or undergo their end-point assessment which may involve a practical element.
The onus on the provider and employer is to arrange an FSQ test at the workplace and this is another major reason why we need lateral flow tests as a matter of urgency.
Alongside the almost blatant disregard for the wellbeing of ITP learners, we must not forget the safety of provider staff and independent invigilators in all this.
While providers will put other safety measures in place again, the fear of Covid variants spreading will be a serious concern until everyone has been vaccinated.
Ultimately it is totally wrong for the government to be discriminating against the most disadvantaged young people who have chosen the work-based learning route.
In the first study of its kind, the scale of the attainment gap for disadvantaged post-16 learners has been laid bare, writes David Robinson
In comparison to other education age phases, little attention has been given to the role of the 16-to-19 phase in delivering greater social mobility.
One reason for this is that it is very difficult for policymakers to measure the outcomes of disadvantaged students at college and sixth-form level, with students taking such a wide range of qualifications across different ages.
But in a new study – the first of its kind – the Education Policy Institute, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, provides new evidence to fill this space. The results from our exploratory research are deeply concerning.
‘Lower school performance carried to college’
We find that across all qualifications, disadvantaged college and sixth-form students are the equivalent of three A-level grades behind better-off students, on average.
In some parts of the country, this gap is as wide as five grades.
Much of this very large attainment gap can be explained by disadvantaged students’ lower performance at secondary school, which is then carried with them into college and sixth form.
We also see that the type of qualifications and the ability of students’ peers play a role in the gap.
But it also appears that on top of this, coming from a low socio-economic background itself may be contributing to the 16-to-19 gap.
If we look at poorer students and more affluent students who performed the same at GCSE, we see that disadvantaged students then face a further attainment penalty during college and sixth form – losing out by an extra half a grade.
‘Impact of pandemic on vocational grades’
And of course, the pandemic may be widening this gulf.
Learning loss resulting from the pandemic is felt most keenly by disadvantaged young people, as they tend to have poorer access to laptops or a quiet working space, and may be less likely to be doing online face-to-face teaching.
The impact of the pandemic on disadvantaged students’ attainment may also go beyond the effects of lost learning.
As disadvantaged students are more likely to take vocational qualifications, they stand to fall further behind as a result of the grading in 2020.
And while the government has moved to avoid these mistakes for 2021, it’s not yet clear that this will entirely address this new disparity.
Last week, the government did reveal it would extend the 16- to 19- tuition fund for an extra year.
This is to be targeted towards supporting students to catch up in English, maths and other vocational and academic subjects.
As soon as these details were released, there were immediate debates as to whether this amount will be enough to make up for the lost learning and to close the inequalities that emerged during the pandemic.
‘Budget plans are not enough’
To add to these concerns, the offer from the Budget has been mixed at best. The greater rollout of traineeships is something we’ve called for previously.
But proposals for greater increases in subsidies for adult apprentices seem at odds with the evidence ̶ it is apprenticeships and other employment opportunities for young people that have been disappearing the fastest.
One thing is clear: neither the catch-up plan nor the Budget proposals will do much to close the huge inequalities in 16-to-19 attainment that existed prior to the pandemic.
Taken together with our new findings, it’s imperative that urgent action be taken by government. We must go significantly beyond the current catch-up plans.
Before anything else, the government should introduce a student premium for the 16-to-19 phase, as part of its upcoming review of funding.
Given that average funding rates are low in historic terms, the premium should not be at the expense of other students in this phase and should represent a real-terms increase for sixth forms and colleges.
If the government is to realise the potential of the 16-19 phase for improving social mobility, it must get started on closing the attainment gap here at once.
New provider monitoring visits will resume from March 15 – and they will be conducted face-to-face, Ofsted has confirmed.
The inspectorate had hoped to restart the visits from January remotely but later announced they would be delayed indefinitely in light of the third national lockdown.
A spokesperson for the watchdog told FE Week today they have now agreed to recommence the inspections a week after learners return for face-to-face teaching from March 8.
They said the visits will require inspectors to be onsite to “provide the level of assurance they need to make progress judgements”.
“We consider new further education and skills providers who have not yet had a monitoring visit to be the highest priority for our return to face-to-face inspection activity,” the spokesperson added.
The watchdog has said a revised operational note for these changes will be published early next week.
Currently, Ofsted’s inspection policy states that providers can request to defer an inspection, and each case will be judged “separately and on its own merits”.
But “it is only in exceptional circumstances that we would consider granting a deferral”.
What about other inspections?
While new provider monitoring visits will be going ahead onsite form March 15, the rest of Ofsted’s current inspection activity – such as monitoring check-ups on grade three and four providers – will be conducted remotely.
On its rolling update page on Thursday, Ofsted wrote: “For the rest of the term, we will continue to carry out our monitoring inspections remotely by default (with the exception of new provider monitoring visits to further education providers, which require site visits).”
With coronavirus cases falling and providers due to reopen on Monday, the visits have been deemed safe to go ahead.
Watchdog ‘prioritising’ new provider visits
FE Week understands the Education and Skills Funding Agency has grown increasingly concerned with new apprenticeship providers operating for prolonged periods without oversight from Ofsted.
The watchdog has also admitted its worries about the quality of new providers’ training.
Its 2019/20 annual report, published in December, called apprenticeship training the sector’s “weakest” provision.
Ofsted’s deputy director for FE and skills Paul Joyce told FE Week after the report’s publication: “We remain concerned there are a number of new providers that have not yet had a visit.
“We will prioritise those providers, as soon as we’re able to do so.”
New provider monitoring visits will continue to result in a published report and Ofsted will judge three categories and say whether the provider is making ‘significant’, ‘reasonable’, or ‘insufficient’ progress.
If the provider scores ‘insufficient progress’ in one or more themes, they face having their starts suspended and being kicked off the register of apprenticeship training providers.
Interesting fact: She developed her passion for vocational training at the age of 18 when she left college before her exams to start her own floristry business.
Wayne Wright
Deputy principal for quality and excellence, Lambeth College
Several industries where project-based employment is the norm have struggled more than most to comply with the 12-month minimum apprenticeships rule, but their fortunes could be about to change.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announced in the Budget on Wednesday a £7 million fund to run so-called “portable” or “flexi-job” apprenticeships in sectors such as creative and construction.
This “new approach” will involve organisations applying for money to start new agencies which employ apprentices and place them with multiple employers.
It is targeted at those industries that cannot offer a long-enough placement with a single employer for apprentices to meet the government’s minimum 12-month duration requirement. In the TV and film sector, for example, most roles are freelance and usually only run for two to three months.
The flexi-job model was lauded by prime minister Boris Johnson during a speech on adult skills last year, after a meeting between ministers and his influential skills advisor Professor Alison Wolf decided the government should press ahead with its
introduction. It also featured briefly in this year’s FE white paper.
The scheme will become the third agency-type model for apprenticeships, following Apprenticeship Training Agencies (ATAs) and Group Training Associations (GTAs), which have been established for many years but have arguably become neglected by policymakers.
The Department for Education, which is responsible for the scheme, has promised a consultation on the proposals.
Levy problems ‘particularly stark’ for creative industries
Flexi-job apprenticeships are being specifically targeted at industries where work is often patchy. Workers in the creative sector, for example, who are finishing off one high-end television show will often wait weeks before starting on a big-budget blockbuster, for instance.
As Mark Heholt, head of policy for representative body ScreenSkills, told FE Week, the problems the creative sector faces are “not unique, but it is particularly stark”.
About 50 per cent of screen sector workers – in film, TV, visual special effects, animation, games – are freelancers, and it is only “if you’re lucky that your jobs will join up, whereas when you’re an apprentice, you have to have a minimum 12-month contract with one employer. So, you can’t move around.
“If you were training to be a set builder, after you’ve built it you’d then have nothing to do until it’s time to take it back down again.”
This issue has led to the creative sector seriously underspending its apprenticeship levy. The Creative Industries Council (CIC), a representative body chaired by the culture and business secretaries and BBC director-general Tim Davie, estimates that out of a £70 million levy pot for the creative industries every year, about 20 per cent is used.
Both ScreenSkills and CIC are working closely with the government on the development of flexi-job apprenticeships.
Ian Woodcroft, policy and government relations manager for the construction training organisation CITB, told FE Week
his organisation had not been “directly involved” with discussions around the flexi-job scheme, but is “keen to understand more of the detail” around it, as they look to tackle similar problems. CITB runs its own shared apprenticeship scheme which has supported 300 apprentices so far.
To their credit, the government has recognised the problem and is acting to help these sectors utilise apprenticeships more easily.
The Skills for Jobs white paper, published in January, acknowledged that creative and construction face “barriers in making full use of apprenticeships,” due to their “varied and flexible employment patterns”.
It added that “sectoral apprenticeship agencies may offer one solution, giving constant employment to an individual during the life of their apprenticeship which allows them to move between work placements and continue their training”.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is also running a £100,000 pilot programme with ScreenSkills, Netflix and Warner Bros, which was launched in 2019.
The programme was halted by Covid-19 and is waiting for productions to start up again before resuming, but will involve training apprentices as broadcast production assistants and production accountants with placements at those two companies, which are match funding with their levy money.
Boris Johnson
Prime minister Boris Johnson, in his landmark speech on adult skills at Exeter College last September, said the government wanted to make more apprenticeships portable “so you can take them from company to company”.
FE Week understands, shortly before Johnson’s speech, Alison Wolf met with skills minister Gillian Keegan and DCMS’ digital skills minister Caroline Dinenage and decided that flexi-jobs – rather than other options, such as bulk transferring levy funds, or modular apprenticeships – would be the course of action.
Shortly afterwards, the spending review in November confirmed that during 2021-22, the government would “test approaches to supporting apprenticeships in industries with more flexible working patterns”.
How flexi-job apprenticeships will help
Although the Treasury has said employers will be expected to come forward and bid to set up the flexi-job agencies, Heholt expects it will be organisations like sector bodies and training providers instead.
ScreenSkills is itself planning to apply, and Heholt says it will be “critical the agency which employs the apprentices has a background and ability and the skill to look after them, to provide them with all the pastoral care, and all the rest of it.
Mark Heholt
“It also needs to have very good relationships and contacts with industry, so that it can arrange these multiple placements.”
The number of employers involved in each agency will “depend,” he says, on the role for which the apprentice is training.
If it is a set builder role, they may need five or six; if it’s a production accountant, with larger chunks of work, it may be only two.
The new agencies, he said, “will need to make sure they understand the kinds of roles, the typical duration of those roles. And therefore, how many placements the apprentice needs over the duration of the apprenticeship.”
Neil Hatton, chair of the CIC’s apprenticeship working group, believes there will be a rotating cast of employers: “You could easily get 20 or 30 employers and that may be a rotating 20 or 30.”
As well as scrapping the single employer precedent, the flexi-job apprentices will not be offered a job at the end of the programme, according to ScreenSkills and CIC – again due to the freelance nature of creative workers.
Hatton said, though: “If people come out at the end of the course and they’ve done well, they are going to be in demand.”
Ditching so many tenets of the reformed apprenticeship programme are likely to have implications for how providers report their delivery to the DfE.
When asked what the new scheme will mean for training providers, the department would only say it would consult on how “agency models can better support apprentices to complete their apprenticeships through a series of placements with employers”.
Reporting could be easier for providers under this model, reckons Heholt, as they will be dealing with one agency rather than any number of employers.
What about apprenticeship training agencies?
So far, much of what has been announced about these new flexi-job apprenticeships and their agencies sounds markedly similar to the pre-existing ATA and GTA models.
ATAs, which launched in 2009, employ apprentices and place them with a host employer, so the firms do not have to recruit an apprentice themselves.
GTAs, which started in the 1960s, are set up and governed by local employers who may not have enough resources on their own to train apprentices; so they club together to set up what Jon Graham, chief executive of group training association JTL, calls an “in-house training business”.
Why not use the structure that exists?
“The apprentice will be employed by the employer, but they send them to the GTA, and the employer will have some strategic direction as to what the training organisation does, and how they operate.”
The new flexi-jobs apprenticeship agencies model has provoked some bemusement from the GTA and ATA sectors. The DfE has even described the DCMS-ScreenSkills pilot as an “apprenticeship training agency model”.
Speaking to FE Week, Iain Elliott, who operates both an ATA and a GTA in Humber, asked: “Why not use the structure that exists?” He warned the government to not “reinvent the wheel”.
The Department for Education has said it “values the role good-quality ATAs and GTAs play in helping apprentices and employers access apprenticeships” and “wants to build on the success of existing models”.
But the creative sector has its own reasons why ATAs and GTAs have not been directly adopted.
Mark Heholt said ScreenSkills looked into the ATA model for the pilot, but found “there are none, which I’m aware of, which arrange multiple placements, over the course of the apprenticeship, which is where the all the cost and the complexity comes from”.
This is backed up by Elliott and Graham, with the latter saying they have occasionally used multiple employers informally where an apprentice’s “range of work might change” so they are suddenly working on one task such as cabling “and also need to do a bit of x, y, and z”.
Hatton has also said the creative sector does not have many ATAs, so there is not that existing infrastructure to work from, and he was unsure how ATAs could cope with the periods of little to no work in his sector.
The first flexi-job apprenticeships are expected to start in January 2022, with bids to the £7 million fund opening in July 2021.
