Ofsted has today published further details about how their phased return to normal inspection activity of FE providers will work from January.

As announced last week, graded full and short inspections will remain suspended until the summer.

But monitoring visits will return from the New Year and the watchdog will introduce ‘support and assurance’ visits to colleges and providers that educate 16 to 19-year-olds.

Ofsted’s ‘interim visits’, which have been taking place this autumn term and resulted in a published letter but no judgements, will conclude at the end of December.

Here is what FE providers need to know from today’s guidance…

1. One-day ‘support and assurance visits’ will not result in a published letter

From January 2021, Ofsted says it will carry out “regionally-based support and assurance visits” to those colleges and providers that offer education to 16 to 19 year olds and were judged to be ‘good’ for their overall effectiveness at their previous inspection.

Before the visits, inspectors may request copies of “relevant quality improvement and/or self-assessment documents used by the provider”, but they will not require new documents to be produced for their visit.

During visits, inspectors will “discuss with providers the progress they have made in dealing with weaknesses and/or next steps identified at their most recent inspection”.

They will also discuss with leaders the steps they have taken to “ensure that learners continue to receive a full curriculum”.

Each visit will normally last one working day but this “may vary according to circumstances and provider type. It may be necessary to carry out some meetings, discussions or aspects of the visits remotely”.

After the visits, inspectors will write to the provider’s principal or chief executive outlining their findings and set out the “next steps the provider needs to take to ensure continued improvements in provision”.

The letter will not be published but “may be shared with relevant funding bodies”.

2. The return of new provider monitoring visits

During the pause in routine inspections, Ofsted had also put a temporary stop to monitoring visits to new providers, including to those with funding to deliver apprenticeship.

Instead, it conducted monitoring visits to apprenticeship providers which had made ‘insufficient progress’ at their first visit.

New provider monitoring visits are set to return from January, and will be carried out the same way as before routine inspections were halted. For example, with judgements on individual themes based on three progress bars: insufficient, reasonable, significant.

The watchdog has reminded providers it does share its findings with regulators, such as the FE Commissioner, the Education and Skills Funding Agency, and combined authorities.

Last week, Ofsted’s deputy director for FE and skills Paul Joyce told FE Week new provider visits had been suspended for the autumn due to them having to “prioritise our resources” where it was “best suited,” meaning the interim visits Ofsted has undertaken this term.

However, he added, a “number of providers” had been allowed into the apprenticeship market, “so it therefore became very crowded with untried, untested providers”.

3. Monitoring visits to ‘inadequate’ and ‘requires improvement’ providers to also resume

Also, from January, inspectors will return to carrying out monitoring visits to providers found to ‘require improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ at a full inspection.

Progress judgements will be made on the main areas for improvement found at the last inspection.

Inspections for ‘inadequate’ providers will depend on whether they are still funded, and whether they still deliver training covered by the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers.

Following monitoring visits of grade three providers, they will receive another full inspection within 18 months of the visit’s report being published.

For monitoring visits to grade four providers, Ofsted will carry out another within six months, if the provider is still being funded.

Announcing its plans to resume inspection last week, Ofsted said it will continue to have the power to inspect an education provider if they have serious concerns about safeguarding.

In this latest guidance, it says if it has “significant” causes for concern, such as about safeguarding, inspectors will carry out a monitoring visit “at any reasonable time,” which will normally result in a progress judgement against each theme and a brief published report.

“Concerns arising from monitoring visits may lead to an early full inspection,” the guidance cautions.

4. Survey visits for thematic review of T Levels

Ofsted announced on Friday it would be carrying out survey visits to colleges and providers as part of a thematic survey of the first T Levels and the T Level transition programme, under orders from the Department for Education.

The survey will take place over two years – 2020/21 and 2021/22 – and the visits will “apply the education inspection framework methodology to assess educational effectiveness and the quality of education” for T Levels, Joyce said on Friday.

Ofsted has said an interim report of their findings will be published in September 2021, with a full report published in September 2022.

Ofsted published its annual report for 2019/20 last week, and while chief inspector Amanda Spielman chose not to use any of her speech to talk about the sector, deputy director for FE and skills Paul Joyce was on hand to catch us up on developments.

Here are four key points from FE Week’s interview with him…

1. No monitoring visits of new providers this autumn owing to resource issues

The education watchdog paused all routine inspection activity in March, and has only this week revealed it will resume monitoring visits to new providers come January, with full graded inspections to come in the summer.

Joyce said that in March, many providers were “not operating, so we could not go and see their provision to make the judgments”.

However, he said that in the autumn term, they had “prioritised our resources” where it was “best suited”, so made “interim visits” and second apprenticeship monitoring visits where the provider had received an ‘insufficient progress’ rating at their first visit – rather than carrying out first-time monitoring visits to new providers.

Apprenticeship provision was identified as the “weakest” area of FE and skills provision in Ofsted’s report for 2019/20 and Joyce admitted: “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.”

Nearly a quarter (24 per cent) of providers that received new provider monitoring visits last year had at least one ‘insufficient progress’ judgment.

2. College mergers research on the cards after poor performance

One finding from the annual report was that of the 26 newly merged colleges Ofsted had inspected since 2015, one-third were graded as ‘requires improvement’.

This is a lower rating than the “original grade profile before the mergers” for the colleges involved, the report reads.

Joyce said that “unfortunately, because of the suspension of routine inspections” the watchdog hasn’t been to inspect a number of other merged colleges that had been scheduled a visit as enough time had now elapsed since their merger had taken place.

“We will return to those as soon as we’re able to return to full inspections, and once we’ve inspected more, we will be able to do some research and evaluation into the effectiveness of mergers – what worked well and hasn’t worked so well.”

He also promised Ofsted would return to look at the possibility of campus-level inspections for college groups, and will continue work with the Department for Education, Association of Colleges and other bodies “about what we can do to improve reporting and possibly grading of campuses”.

3. Ofsted can’t say if apprenticeship quality is better now than before the 2017 reforms

Ofsted’s annual report quite starkly highlights how ten per cent of apprenticeship grades at inspection were ‘inadequate’ – which the report says is “clearly too large a number”.

However, Joyce refused to be drawn on whether quality has improved or worsened on average since the widescale reforms to the apprenticeships programme in 2017.

“It’s too early for me to definitively say whether standards-based apprenticeships are a better product than legacy frameworks,” he told FE Week.

“There are still frameworks and standards being delivered in providers. So, until frameworks go completely and we’re looking at only standards, it’s really difficult to make that comparison.”

He did say it was “unfortunate many new apprenticeship providers had been allowed to enter the apprenticeship market without the necessary oversight.

“A lot of brand-new providers without any experience are coming into the market, and through our monitoring visits we have demonstrated the quality is poor.”

Pressed on whether his criticisms on oversight were directed at the Education and Skills Funding Agency, he said: “With hindsight, there were a number of providers let into the market, so it therefore became very crowded with untried, untested providers.”

4. Would not be drawn on achievement rate data decisions

Joyce refused repeated requests for his view on the decision by the DfE not to publish and share with Ofsted qualification achievement rate (QAR) data for providers in 2019/20.

“We will deal with whatever situation we have,” he said. “We will use whatever data is available to us from the DfE, and we will use whatever data is available to the provider.

“I won’t want to use any data the provider does not see themselves, because that’s not open and transparent.

“If we’ve got it, we’ve got it; if we haven’t, we haven’t,” he summarised.

Since the interview, the DfE has announced that, although qualification achievement rate data will not be published for 2020/21, it will be shared privately with Ofsted, as well as providers and the department.

QAR data is used to inform inspection judgments as well as being central to Ofsted’s published “risk assessment methodology” when deciding which colleges and training providers to visit.

The Association of Colleges has announced Dr Shaid Mahmood as its next chair of the board.

He takes over the role with immediate effect from New City College chief executive Gerry McDonald, who has held the position in the interim since July after Julie Nerney stepped down.

Mahmood is currently a chief officer for Leeds City Council and chair of the Luminate Education Group.

“I’m honoured and humbled to be appointed as chair of the Association of Colleges,” he said. “Our members are central to our work and their support and challenge is crucial to amplifying the influence of FE on national policy and funding.

“Undoubtedly, these are challenging times for the nation. They are also exciting times with much progress already being made by the AoC with opportunities for FE to play its part in the nation’s recovery and the improved resilience of its communities.”

Mahmood is a PhD graduate and worked in the business sector for 12 years.

David Hughes, AoC’s chief executive, said he was “delighted to welcome Shaid” and looks “forward to working closely with him in his new role as chair”.

“This is a crucial time for AoC and for the FE Sector – we have the immediate and future impacts of Covid, an imminent White Paper, and the continued push for funding and reform,” he added.

“I am confident that Shaid will help steer AoC and the sector through what is going to be a challenging but exciting time.”

Marius Ardelean found himself without a job and with little prospect of finding another after Covid-19 struck. But he is now about to start a new career after retraining through a long-running skills programme that is finally getting its time in the sun.

The 34-year-old (pictured top) had quit his job at the British Museum restaurant at the beginning of the year to visit his family in Romania, with a plan to then switch careers in the UK.

However, upon his return he could not find work, despite sending out “hundreds” of CVs, and he had to resort to Universal Credit.

He spoke to his local Jobcentre Plus about finding a course to retrain and that is where he came across sector-based work academy programmes (SWAPs) which has now ultimately led to him finding a job in the care sector.

Marius is one of thousands of people the government is hoping to help back into work through SWAPs this year, following a £17 million investment by the chancellor Rishi Sunak to “triple the number” in 2020/21.

The new National Skills Fund will also be used to fund the scheme from April 2021, taking a share of £127 million announced in last week’s spending review. However, just how much is unknown, and a DfE
spokesperson said: “This is a level of detail we are not going to be getting into.”

Launched in 2011, SWAPs are jointly run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Department for Education (DfE), and are administered by Jobcentre Plus; they involve pre-employment training, a guaranteed job interview and a work placement to help prepare those receiving unemployment benefits for new jobs.

They are described by the Association of Employment and Learning Providers as a “mini adult traineeship”, which can last up to six weeks, and are funded through the adult education budget.

According to DWP statistics, 330,000 SWAP starts were recorded between August 2011 and November 2017, but the department then stopped publishing the data.

It is therefore hard to pin down precisely the recent popularity of SWAPs, and the DWP refused to say how many starts would be required this year to meet the chancellor’s target of “tripling” their number.

But colleges and training providers already involved in the programme told FE Week it has been catering for great swathes of learners in recent years, with the vast majority finding employment straight after completion.

“The evidence shows they work, so we will expand them,” Sunak told the House of Commons during his summer statement.

Funding for SWAPs is being dished out to the Education and Skills Funding Agency for nationally AEB funded providers and also to mayoral combined authorities who administer the budget for providers in their area.

The government says colleges and providers that wish to get involved in SWAPs should get in touch with their local Jobcentre Plus and the DfE as their first port of call.

AEB allocations can then be topped up to account for SWAPs, which will be based on a provider’s historic delivery to unemployed residents studying courses at level 2 and below, spanning two to five weeks in length.

A spokesperson added that FE providers are “part of the SWAP local design process and are informed when to expect referrals and how many by Jobcentre Plus”.

Marius’s two-week SWAP was with Barnet and Southgate College and was formatted to teach skills such as what to do in interviews and how the law operates with regard to the care sector, as well as having him work towards a level 1 certificate in the subject.

The course ran close to business hours, 9.30am to 4pm, and was carried out over Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

“It was good to get back on track,” he said, adding: “The main thing with the course is it has direct contact with future employers.

“So, there were three companies and we got to know them, they got to know us, so we could ask questions related to the care sector and the jobs they offer.

“In this current time, you send your CV and it gets lost or ignored. But through this course we had an opportunity to speak with the employers and after we had finished, I had interviews with two of them.”

Barnet and Southgate College’s executive director of commercial partnerships Tracey McIntosh (pictured), who oversaw the 2,000 people go through a SWAP last year, said: “Personally, I think it’s a win-win opportunity for all of us. This is a great example of partners working together with the students at the heart of it.”

Aside from the care sector, her college runs SWAPs in such areas as construction, external wall insulation and the Civil Service, with the age profile of participants stretching from 19 to 55.

Asked whether she would recommend other providers to get involved, McIntosh jokes: “No, because it’s my business!

“Of course we would recommend it, as we do pretty well.”

She added that employers “keep coming back” for SWAPs because they are part of the development of them, and it costs them nothing – as any costs associated with the work placement are met by the DWP.

Mat Chapman, managing director of independent provider The Development Fund, which runs SWAPs to help recruit and train drivers for major bus companies, says they see 80 per cent employment outcomes off the back of the programmes.

He says one of the employers he works with “was pleased with how it increased their ability to recruit. It expanded their numbers where they were struggling to get people into bus driving schools.”

He stresses the importance of tailoring the pre-employment training for the employer – which the DWP says has to be “matched to the needs of your business sector” – so, for instance, his courses cover the theoretical knowledge expected of drivers.

“If you’re recruiting to a marketplace, you want them to understand the fruit and veg they are selling,” he says.

Railway operators Southern Railway and Gatwick Express have recently completed their first SWAP with East Sussex College, where 12 learners were taught “essential” customer service skills and qualifications on a four-week course.

The operators’ managing director Angie Doll (pictured, with the SWAP learners) said they, with the college, had created what they feel is “a valuable opportunity for all learners on the programme”.

“We are continuously looking at ways to attract and retain a diverse workforce that is truly representative of the communities we serve,” she continued.

“Working in collaboration with East Sussex College and Jobcentre Plus means we have been able to offer those who aren’t in employment the opportunity to gain skills and qualifications to help them into the world of work.”

Stuart Cleworth, operations director for Wates Construction, which works with Barnet and Southgate College and independent provider Ixion Holdings on SWAPs, says supporting initiatives like this “is vital for the construction industry as it provides us with the perfect opportunity to enhance and build on the knowledge of those engaged, helping to equip them with the real skills our sector require”.

Ixion has been using virtual reality and remote activity, such as remote construction site tours, to continue delivering the work experience placement during the pandemic, and the provider’s national construction operations manager Joe Makowski said SWAPs fill “essential skills gaps”.

The government has been urged to withdraw claims made in parliament about the take-up of the courses on its new ‘skills toolkit’ after FE Week started asking questions about the figures.

Significant over-counting has already led to revised estimates, and an investigation by this publication has found “course start” and “registration” claims in official statistics will continue to include web hits.

Despite this, education secretary Gavin Williamson described the free online courses as having a “transformational impact on so many people taking furlough” during a speech in October.

This raises major questions about the government’s ability to get a grip on the jobs crisis

The course content has not been developed by the government, but more than £1 million has been spent to develop and promote the skills toolkit “platform”, which consists of a web page on the National Careers Service with short course descriptions and links to the external websites.

The government says the educational content being promoted aims to help people who are out of work to boost their digital and numeracy skills during the pandemic.

However, little is known about who is accessing the content or whether they are completing the course, as almost half of the 79 available online courses require no registration.

Skills minister Gillian Keegan has publicly claimed these are “high-quality” courses but a former director of FE funding in the DfE, Susan Pember, questioned how this can be known in the absence of learner and completion data.

Many of the courses are simply short video tutorials or PDF documents that people can stop and start with no tuition and no external quality assurance from the likes of Ofqual and Ofsted.

Pember told FE Week she would advise ministers to be “cautious” as “website hits or even signatures on enrolment forms do not equate to learning taking place”.

The department has already had to row back on claims that 136,000 people started on the courses in the toolkit’s first month of operation but there are currently other incorrect records, including answers from Keegan to parliamentary questions (PQ) tabled by shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds.

On October 5 the minister told Dodds that as of September 30, there had been 97,615 “course starts” and 16,219 “completions”.

In a separate PQ two weeks later Keegan said that as of October 4 there had been 118,011 “course starts” and 19,564 “completions”.

When FE Week asked if it was true there had been almost 20,000 additional starts on courses on the toolkit in that four-day period, the DfE admitted they could not confirm.

A spokesperson said the information was the “best data available to us at the time of response” but it has since identified “issues” with a number of courses that it was “working to resolve”. They added that the DfE will “update the answers as appropriate, once the examination has completed”.

Dodds, the Labour MP for Oxford East, told FE Week it was “really troubling” that government appears to have no idea how many people have registered for the skills toolkit courses and that it is “incumbent on them” to correct the parliamentary record.

She said she was also “deeply concerned” that the DfE has spent over £1 million on the resource “without knowing how it’s performing”, which raises “major questions about the government’s ability to get a grip on the jobs crisis that’s engulfing Britain”.

Pember, who worked as a top government skills official from 2000 to 2013 and is now the policy director of adult education network HOLEX, said that in order to “protect the reputation of FE” the courses need to go through the “same rigorous process as everyone else”, which includes audit and regulatory oversight.

She explained that after the individual learning accounts debacle in the early 2000s, it was “understood that we needed really good-quality criteria for FE courses – that is when you get your standards written, Ofqual and Ofsted involved” to ensure “good experiences for learners” and “good value for public money”.

FE Week’s analysis of the courses on the skills toolkit, offered by 14 providers which are mostly commercial businesses, shows that their duration can range from 25 minutes to 70 hours.

Just two of the 79 involve guidance from a live tutor. Almost all of them, 69, can include certification but only if the person registers for the course. Registration is, however, not required to view and use the content for 39 of them.

Examples include “Become a Sales Representative” from LinkedIn – a series of 25 short videos from a sales expert that allows you to download a certificate of completion at the end, with no testing.

Another is “Make It Click”, provided by the Good Things Foundation, which is a web page that directs visitors to other web pages, such as “A Beginners’ Guide to Excel” on YouTube.

Three of the providers that do not require registrations told FE Week they use unique URL data to capture the numbers of participants and then relay that information to the DfE to measure “starts”.

After being presented with the FE Week’s findings, the DfE said it was “in the process of developing an assured standardised system for collating data from different course providers”.

When asked how they know the courses have had a “transformational impact” and are “high quality”, as claimed by ministers Williamson and Keegan respectively, a spokesperson added: “The skills toolkit is a successful platform, delivering good value for money, which has encouraged tens of thousands of people to undertake online learning in courses that are valued by employers.

“It plays an important role in packaging up courses that are both free, high quality, and which people can access from home at this difficult time. We are reliant on providers for estimates of registrations and we continue to work with providers on improving this process further.”

Pember urged DfE to get a grip on the data: “We collect registration or enrolment data because that is the beginning of a performance pathway that allows you to monitor retention, completion and then how many people achieve.

“Without registration data you can’t do any of the rest and you can’t monitor whether that particular pathway for doing a subject is as good or better than the ones the state is already funding.”

She said the next questions DfE should be asking are how many learners have completed and been offered qualifications at the end. “Why treat those people taking the courses differently to other funded courses?

“I’m sure every provider in the land would like to be monitored just on registration – it makes it so much easier for people. So it seems there is an element of unfairness around it.

“Other providers are wondering why there are now a set of very low benchmark rules for the stuff on the skills toolkit and a very high set of benchmarks for them.”

Having herself looked through the skills toolkit courses, Pember there is content that she “quite likes” but also found some worrying examples. “Take maths, for example – one of the courses says it is for level 1 learners, but the language around it is graduate level.

“Many people with level 1 maths also usually have level 1 English, so they’re not going to get past the first screen,” she said, adding that it could “demoralise” vulnerable people who in turn would be “lost to the system”.

In terms of costs for the skills toolkit, almost £800,000 has been given to a firm that the DfE refuses to name to carry out “user research and testing, IT security testing, content and user experience design, software development and performance testing”. Just over £325,000 has also been earmarked for advertising, such as paid-for social media on Twitter and Facebook.

Pember said the advertising “worries me”.

“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 told FE Week.

“You’ve got other outstanding providers out there but why is the state advertising a certain set of commercial products over and above another set of commercial products? It doesn’t even say there are others available.”

Aside from the PQs, the DfE is reporting the number of skills toolkit starts in their official apprenticeship data releases and labels them as “experimental”.

“These are experimental statistics and rely on website analytics from providers and the method of processing these is subject to change,” the department said.

The UK Statistics Authority said it welcomed the inclusion of these statistics to “support transparency and clarity” as long as the DfE acknowledges the data’s “limitations”.

College staff should receive a 1 per cent pay rise this year, the Association of Colleges has recommended in a move that has outraged trade unions.

In a statement published today, the membership body said it was “disappointing and regrettable that the sector is unable to afford a better offer at this time” but that the “pandemic has changed everything”.

Trade unions had called for a “significant” pay rise for college workers this year after the government injected an additional £400 million into colleges.

But the AoC said it could only recommend a pay rise of 1 per cent or £250, whichever is the greater, because of the unforeseen and “severe financial pressure” colleges are now facing that have “forced many into deficit”.

The association did say that it would “strongly advise that those colleges who can afford to award staff more should do so”, while “we must acknowledge that some colleges may be unable to meet this recommendation”.

But the University and College Union, UNISON, the National Education Union, Unite and GMB said in a joint response that after years of campaigning for more money for staff, now is “not the time for excuses on pay but instead an investment in staff so that further education can provide the skills for a post-Covid recovery”.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “Yet again colleges have shown they cannot be trusted to spend public funds in the way they were intended. The joint campaigning was always on the understanding that staff pay would come first.

“UCU members will now find it hard to believe that AoC can be a trusted partner for joint campaigning.”

UNISON head of education Jon Richards added: “College leaders had made clear promises that staff would get a substantial pay rise this year. But they’ve simply ripped these up and raided the wage pot to foot the bill for the pandemic. Pay in the FE sector is simply too low and this offer yet again ignores the value of college staff.”

The unions have called on individual colleges to publicly commit to working towards closing the £7,000 pay gap between school and college teaching staff and introduce the foundation living wage.

The AoC cited Education and Skills Funding Agency officials at last week’s House of Commons Public Accounts Committee hearing saying 64 colleges are at risk of running out of cash.

And on top of extra costs associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, the association said colleges have “suffered a significant loss of revenue” due to a drop in commercial activity, fee income, and apprenticeships, which has only been “partially” offset by extra government funding.

The AoC also recommended a 1 per cent increase for 2019/20, but promised to accelerate a pay recommendation for the following academic year.

AoC chief executive David Hughes has today argued that every college leader wants staff paid “fairly and adequately” for the work they do, and are “committed” to campaigning for better college funding, which allow pay issues to be addressed.

But, he added, “a decade of neglect and funding cuts have devastated the financial health of the sector”.

While the AoC recommends a pay increase to its members, colleges are independent and make final decision on pay themselves.