Shadow education secretary celebrates National Apprenticeship Week with ‘top class’ virtual tour

Shadow education secretary Kate Green has made her first visit, virtually, to an independent training provider to celebrate National Apprenticeship Week.

The Labour MP was this afternoon joined by shadow apprenticeships minister Toby Perkins to meet midlands-based Remit Training which trains thousands of apprentices in automotive, IT, business, retail, food manufacturing, hospitality, care and management every year.

Remit demonstrated training areas featuring full-sized cars

They spoke with Remit’s chief executive Sue Pittock, senior account manager Andrew Murdoch, an apprentice, and were also treated to a virtual tour of two automotive training areas.

After the visit started at around 12pm, Green and Perkins saw over video, firstly, the provider’s car-focused areas, including its spray paint booth.

At another of the provider’s centres, the two were shown the area used to train apprentices on heavy goods vehicles – which featured its very own inspection pit and two lorries.

Remit’s heavy goods vehicle training area

Speaking during the tour, Green said: “We know that apprenticeships offer a great start for a young person, building a career. They give them a hands-on learning opportunity, the chance to earn and learn.

“So the top class companies like Remit that support apprentices through their learning journey are going to be so important to our Covid recovery.”

Remit backs Labour wage subsidy

Coinciding with National Apprenticeship Week, Green and Perkins used the visit to discuss their proposal to subsidise 85,000 apprentices’ wages in a year, as previously reported by FE Week.

This would be funded through the £330 million apprenticeship levy underspend the Department for Education handed back to the Treasury in 2019.

National Apprenticeship Week
Sue Pittock

Pittock warmly welcomed the proposal, calling it an “ideal answer,” because: “If somebody in government looks at it and says, ‘what would I want for my own son or daughter or any other member of my family’, you want them on an apprenticeship programme, you’d want the employer to have that subsidy, so they can say, ‘no, I’m not just going to put them on a Kickstart programme that might only last six months and then they might not have a job’.”

Perkins said they were “really grateful” for her support, and said they can “collectively” continue pushing education secretary Gavin Williamson and apprenticeships minister Gillian Keegan “to think seriously about having a wage subsidy at this moment in time, when we know it is difficult to encourage businesses to take up, take on those apprentices”.

Speaking to FE Week following the visit, Pittock said she thought it was “fantastic” that Green and Perkins had taken the tour, and they had a “great” debate around the wage subsidy.

NAW 2021 | FE White paper & the next phase of apprenticeship reform (recording)

Yesterday afternoon a group of sector leaders and policymakers took part in an FE Week roundtable to mark National Apprenticeship Week.

The roundtable, in partnership with NCFE, was an opportunity to debate and explore the impact of the FE white paper published last month on apprenticeships.

Watch now

Roundtable Title: Quantity AND quality: FE White paper & the next phase of apprenticeship reform

Panel: Nick Linford, FE Week (Chair), David Gallagher, CEO, NCFE, Jennifer Coupland, CEO, IfATE, Jeff Uden, Head of Talent & L&D, Iceland Group, Paul Joyce HMI, Ofsted, Tim Smith, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, Multiverse, Lucy Hunte, National Programme Manager, Health Education England, Jo Maher, Principal, Loughborough College,
Crawford Knott, CEO, Hawk Training

Williamson ‘strongly encourages’ colleges to embrace lifetime skills guarantee level 3 offer

The education secretary has urged colleges to embrace the new level 3 offer under the lifetime skills guarantee as the £95 million scheme edges closer to its launch.

Delivering a keynote speech at today’s Association of Colleges conference, Gavin Williamson said colleges will be “absolutely key” to the programme’s success and “strongly encouraged” delegates to get involved if they hadn’t already.

FE Week recently highlighted the plight of the fully funded level 3 offer for 24-year-old and above learners for independent training providers, who are being given just a four-month window to start and complete the substantial courses.

The issue stems from the scheme being funded by the new national skills fund but routed through adult education budget allocations, the contracts of which run out for private providers in July.

Colleges are funded differently through “grants” and will continue to receive funding for the level 3 offer in the next academic year.

The government has set aside £95 million to fund the “entitlement” during the next financial year from April 2021 to March 2022.

Williamson said: “The lifetime skills guarantee will include our new level 3 offer for adults, which is backed by new money from the national skills fund and will enable tens of thousands of adults to benefit from hundreds of free qualifications from April.

“Colleges will be absolutely key in delivering this new offer and ensuring adults across the country can develop the skills they need to get ahead in the labour market. I want to thank you for all the hard work you’ve already put in to scale up this offer ahead of April.

“I strongly encourage you to take up this level 3 entitlement offer and thank those who’ve already embraced it.”

 

‘The future is further education’

The education secretary also used his AoC conference speech to urge colleges to “think local” as the sector moves through its next set of reforms.

He insisted that “the future is further education” but that employers must be “central” to the system as outlined in last month’s FE white paper.

Williamson said: “I want the white paper to reshape the whole system of learning and acquiring skills in this country.

“And it is going to do this by putting employers firmly at the centre of a local skills systems, firmly at the heart of our colleges, working together with you, our colleges, and other local partners to shape technical skills provision, so that local economies thrive and local businesses benefit.

“We know that education and training must develop hand-in-hand with business partners if we are ever going to beat our chronic skills shortages.

“So we need to think local. We need local solutions for local skills needs. We need you to work with local businesses and employers so that the courses you offer are those that are likely to lead to jobs.”

A key new proposal in the white paper is “local skills improvement plans” led by businesses in chambers of commerce, which will be piloted and backed with a new £65 million strategic development fund in 2021/22. The cash will also support the development of new “college business centres”.

Williamson said there will be more information “coming soon” on the year-long strategic development fund pilot.

 

Association of Colleges Beacon Award 2021 winners announced

Eleven colleges that showcase “the best and most innovative practice” in the sector have been honoured at the Association of Colleges Beacon Awards 2021.

This year’s winners and highly commended were celebrated during the membership organisation’s annual conference today, which is taking place virtually amid the coronavirus pandemic.

AoC chief executive David Hughes highlighted how those rewarded have gone “above and beyond in providing high-quality technical and professional education”.

“The awards showcase exactly why colleges are so important to every community and why people value them,” he said.

“They recognise the very best collaboration, support and education and training that is delivered by expert teaching staff.”

Full details about each entry can be read here. The categories and winners are as follows:

 

British Council International Award

Winner: DN Colleges Group  

 

Careers and Enterprise Company Award for Innovation in Careers and Enterprise

Winner: West Suffolk College

 

Edge Award for Excellence in the Practical Delivery of Technical and Professional Learning

Winner: Strode College

Highly commended: Lancaster & Morecambe College 

 

Pears #iwill Award for Social Action and Student Engagement

Wnner: East Durham College

 

NOCN Group Mental Health and Wellbeing Award

Winner: Bridgend College

 

Jisc Award for effective use of Digital Technology in further education

Winner: TEC Partnership

Highly commended: Petroc College 

 

City and Guilds Award for College Engagement with Employers

Winner: Bridgwater & Taunton College

 

RCU Support for Students Award

Abingdon & Witney College

 

Inclusive Learning Leadership Award, supported by The National Centre for Diversity

Winner: Weston College

ESFA finally launches £73m adult education budget tender

The long-awaited national adult education budget tender has been launched by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

Bids for a slice of the £73 million initially up for grabs in 2021/22 are being invited over the next six weeks, with a final deadline of 22 March.

The procurement includes caps depending on the type of provider applying for the funding to “mitigate significant oversubscription and speculative bidding”. A minimum contract value has been set at £150,000 and a maximum of £3 million.

The ESFA had originally planned to launch the tender in July 2020 but it has faced a number of setbacks. It is a “re-procurement” exercise, and follows roughly the same scope as the controversial AEB tender that caused havoc in 2017 – the contracts for which expire this year.

Priority courses for this tender includes the new first full level 3 qualification offer for those aged 24 and over as per the prime minister’s lifetime skills guarantee, as well as sector-based work academy programmes (SWAPs) – both of which were key features in the chancellor’s Plan for Jobs.

Each provider that bids will have their financial health assessed to ensure “its ability to meet ongoing financial commitments”.

adult education budget
READ MORE: AEB procurement at a time of reform – what we now know

For “new” providers, they will have bids capped at £1 million, subcontractors will be capped at £2 million, and “existing” providers will be capped at £3 million.

As previously reported by FE Week, traineeships are excluded from this procurement. Only providers with an AEB grant allocation (such as colleges) and those part of the current traineeship tender exercise will have access to traineeship funding in 2021/22.

The total AEB procurement could potentially reach £157 million if extensions are granted in future years, but these are not guaranteed.

Outcomes are set to be communicated to bidders by 24 June and the service start date will be 1 August 2021.

This tender is just be for the national budget, not for devolved combined authorities which run their own procurements.

Procurement proposals could shake up how colleges go to tender

There are many more freedoms – but also more scrutiny – in the government’s new procurement proposals that would affect how colleges go to tender, write Ben McGirr and Toshif Vally

You’d be forgiven for not noticing that in December, the Cabinet Office published a green paper called Transforming Public Procurement. The three-month open consultation is part of an attempt to move public procurement away from its EU roots and towards a more UK-driven national law.   

Under it, colleges could get more freedom and control about how they contract for cleaning, catering, building and other services, thereby helping your bottom line. But it could come with more transparency strings attached too, so do watch out. 

Under the proposed changes, first of all there will be more flexibility on running tenders. At the moment, there are multiple ways you can go to tender, and most colleges will only ever encounter one, which is a normal ‘open’ tender. 

The second most common route is designed for handling a very large anticipated number of bids and involves shortlisting. All other routes tend to involve lawyers for complex negotiations, or relate to very complicated requirements.

Three new tender routes

Instead of all these different prescribed routes to tender, there would be just three streamlined ways. 

The first way would just be a normal open tender, as now. This is a standard tender which currently stays out for a minimum of 30 days and you must take the bid at face value, with whoever scores highest in the tender getting the contract. Strictly speaking, colleges can’t negotiate the price set out by bidders. 

The second way would be a new competitive, flexible route, which increases a college’s ability to negotiate. Essentially the government is suggesting you can set your own rules on what the tender looks like. They will establish some minimum requirements, but they haven’t gone into more detail on what these might be yet.  

Under these suggestions, a college could set its own timeline for how long or short the tender is out, meaning that for a smaller purchase you could close the tender after a couple of weeks, rather than having to keep it open for a longer period. 

The third route would, under limited circumstances, allow colleges to avoid a full tender, an option which has emerged from the Covid crisis. If you can justify a need to purchase ASAP, such as the urgent need to buy PPE, then you wouldn’t necessarily need to tender.

But be warned that if you went down this route, your college would have to be very transparent about why you did so. We expect there to more detailed guidance on when this would apply.

‘Social values’ and new database

Aside from these three routes, the government is also suggesting that buyers such as colleges can consider social value – and not necessarily have to award to the lowest bid. So a scored question on the tender might ask how social values can be achieved. The bidders might say they’ll offer some apprenticeships or environmental work. 

This move would make it easier for colleges to spot the really poor performers.  

Government guidance will probably set out which sectors are obligated and which are encouraged to take this social consideration.  

Interestingly, the green paper also suggests a national database that would display bidders’ poor performance in previous contracts. At the moment, you are very limited in whether you can discount bidders based on poor performance in the past, to protect against biases. But this move would make it easier for colleges to spot the really poor performers.  

Other suggestions include buyers being allowed to reopen bids at set dates under pre-existing agreements, which are known as frameworks, if they wish to.

New procurement transparency demands

But the biggest thing colleges should take note of is the new transparency proposal. There would be an enhanced obligation for buyers to publish evaluation reports for every tender, showing all their scores and notes.  

At the moment, a lot of colleges probably don’t go into sufficient detail on this. It will mean a higher workload for those not accustomed to this careful evaluation method.  

The consultation period will end on March 10, 2021 and changes would arrive in the next 12 to 18 months. So those in FE looking to buy should keep their eyes peeled.

More employers want technical skills delivered via FE, not university

Businesses are tired of graduates not having the right technical skills – but the FE white paper and other changes allow colleges to step in, writes Mark Smith

The word ‘university’ is derived from the Latin word universus, meaning ‘whole, entire’. In a strictly academic sense, it is the shortening of the Latin phrase universitas magistrorum et scholarium meaning ‘community of masters and scholars’. 

In this word, working closely with employers, facilitating teachers and engaging learners for the modern, digital economy is not mentioned. And yet this is what modern British society has come to expect universities to do.

Technology, however, is finally putting paid to these unrealistic expectations.  

‘Wasted years and fees’

Advanced technical skills meld academic and vocational learning, and these skills require an andragogy (the education of adults ̶ as opposed to pedagogy, the education of children) that is both academically stretching and practically rigorous.

But universities are ill-equipped to deliver this kind of education. 

Having led Ada, the National College for Digital Skills, for the past seven years, I have had countless conversations with large tech employers and small- and medium-enterprise partnerships.

Many rue the wasted years and fees that aspirational technical talent has spent studying an outdated computer science course at university, in the mistaken belief it will get them a good entry-level job in the tech sector upon graduation.  

This means most junior tech hires are recruited on potential and measured through in-house assessment centres by employers who are confident they can “re-educate” junior hires to become useful within three to six months.

Alternative routes for technical skills emerging

This approach is so embedded that employers have almost forgotten to complain about it. But now alternative talent sources are starting to emerge. 

Higher level and degree apprenticeships, ‘bootcamps’ and retraining initiatives are hitting the mainstream consciousness.

This approach is so embedded that employers have almost forgotten to complain about it

As such, on-the-ball employers are rapidly updating their talent attraction processes. For example, Deloitte now hires a mix of technical apprentices, graduates and a few bootcamp completers each year.

Techies care little for formal qualifications. The quality of your github account or technical portfolio counts far more than the letters after your name, and this plays into what the FE sector has been quietly excelling at for many years: preparing people effectively for the world of work.  

Colleges face capacity issues

But the tech sector demands skills that are continuously evolving, which means course leaders, awarding bodies and employers must work symbiotically for their mutual benefit.  

This is an issue. College teachers are hugely squeezed for time.

As a volunteering manager for a large tech company said to me, “It recently dawned on me that when college staff say they are ‘at capacity’, this has an entirely different meaning to ‘at capacity’ in the business world: their entire weeks are literally timetabled almost to the minute!” 

Finding a common language and understanding between college staff and employer volunteers (who donate their time and expertise to supporting learners) is challenging but crucial.

Many teachers feel they simply don’t have capacity and most volunteers start out irrationally scared of making fools of themselves and being heckled.  

At Ada, we’ve found that by having high expectations of our staff, students and apprentices, the tech sector has responded by volunteering their time, expertise and energy. Teachers have also felt more fulfilled.

‘Unique opportunity’ for FE

As with any other industry sector, employee volunteers want to work with staff and students who are engaged and curious about their working world. 

But the more than 40 companies we partner with complain that these skillsets are in desperately short supply in the UK, forcing them to pay inflated salaries for people who are not particularly talented.  

The welcome announcements in the white paper (albeit with further details needed) are now coupled with increased remote volunteering experience due to Covid and the decline of Eastern European technical talent due to Brexit.  

So these circumstances present a unique opportunity for FE colleges and employers to lead the way in the design and delivery of higher technical skills in England.  

This will deliver value-for-money for learners and help redefine what being a “community” of learning really looks like.

Delayed traineeships are unacceptable in the face of our youth unemployment crisis

There is an urgent youth unemployment crisis that needs addressing with comprehensive traineeships fast, writes Stephen Evans

Young people are facing the double whammy of a disrupted education and a weakened labour market. Youth unemployment has doubled since March 2020. A period out of work when young can have serious long-term impacts, so this represents a national crisis demanding urgent action.

It was great, therefore, to see the chancellor’s July 2020 Plan for Jobs announce an extra £111 million to expand traineeships in England and £2.1 billion to create Kickstart, which covers the wages of young people at risk of long-term unemployment if employers create jobs for them for six months.

But, while the ambition is great and we have many of the right building blocks, there are problems with speed, design and coherence.

DfE is way behind DWP

On speed, it’s more than six months since the Plan for Jobs but we’re yet to see a single young person start one of the new traineeships, despite the fact this was about expanding an existing programme.

In fact, the Department for Education has only just decided which providers to allocate extra the traineeship money to. That simply doesn’t match the urgency of the crisis we face.

Meanwhile over at the Department for Work and Pensions, Kickstart was not only designed from scratch, but the first young people were in jobs funded by Kickstart by November. The chancellor was even sporting a Kickstart hoodie. 

A lack of proper support

Speed isn’t everything ̶ the design of programmes also needs to be right. As FE Week reported, the government will now allow employers to apply direct to DWP for Kickstart funding, whereas previously, employers wanting to take on fewer than 30 young people had to apply via a gateway organisation.

But this risks many young people not getting the support that gateways were intended to ensure, particularly in small firms.

This training and support was central to the success of the Future Jobs Fund, a similar scheme introduced in 2009. The result could be lower take-up (as employers find it too complex to claim funding) and limited impact (as young people are less likely to find work at the end). Kickstart may have started swiftly, but we may be losing sight of what would make it a success.

We should emphasise that employers can still work through gateways if they wish to.

Access to the system is patchy

However the biggest problem of all is the overall coherence of the response.

Too often it feels as though we have a series of individual policies and that what young people are offered will depend on which bit of the system they access, rather than what they actually need.

For example, young people who arrive for help at the Jobcentre are far more likely to be offered a Kickstart job than a traineeship. And there seems little focus on getting young people out of work into an apprenticeship.

Better instead to have a “Youth Guarantee”, which ensures every young person is offered a job, apprenticeship or training place based on their aspirations. That would ensure young people are offered the full range of employment and skills support regardless of which part of the system they access. 

A ‘youth guarantee’ for those outside system

Finally, who’s going to find and engage those young people who aren’t accessing any of this?

Only 33 per cent of 16- to 17-year-olds not in full-time education are in work

Only 33 per cent of 16- to 17-year-olds not in full-time education are in work. Most are not eligible for Universal Credit and so will miss out on Jobcentre Plus support and Kickstart. Who’s going to find them? What will we offer them? 

That’s why Learning and Work Institute’s Youth Commission argued 16- to 24-year-olds should get an adviser who agrees a plan with them to find work, build a career and improve their skills up to level 3. This would focus on building skills as well as finding a job, and be open to 16- to 17-year-olds who are not eligible for Universal Credit at the moment.

If we’re to avoid a lost generation, we need to combine urgency, good design and coherence. A clear Youth Guarantee would be a great start.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 342

Your weekly guide to who’s new and who’s leaving.

Sarah Stewart, Chair, Gateshead College

Start date: December 2020

Previous job: Chief executive, Newcastle Gateshead Initiative

Interesting fact: She has been the High Sheriff of Tyne and Wear for the past year

Gillian May, Chief executive and group principal, The Windsor Forest Colleges Group

Start date: April 2021

Previous job: Principal, Berkshire College of Agriculture

Interesting fact: Prior to her career in education and skills, she was the general manager for logistics for Walkers Crisps

Lesley Davies, Chair, Hull College Group

Start date: January 2021

Previous job: Principal, Trafford College Group

Interesting fact: She is “a bit of a twitcher” and always takes her binoculars and bird book on walks and travels