For a second year the critical qualification achievement rates (QAR) for providers will not be published, but unlike last year the data will be privately shared with Ofsted.
The inspectorate will again be able to use the QAR data in their inspection judgements as well as being central to their published ‘risk-assessment-methodology’ when deciding which colleges and training providers to visit.
Announcing the decision, the DfE said this morning: “QARs, usually published for certain post-16 providers, were suspended for 2019 to 2020 due to coronavirus.
“For 2020 to 2021, QARs will not be published but will be produced and shared securely with providers, Ofsted and DfE.”
QAR data, which is used to measure providers’ performance and hold them to account, was scrapped for the 2019/20 academic year following the Covid-19 outbreak. Providers were not able to receive the data themselves and it was not shared with the inspectorate.
When asked how the inspectorate plans to use this year’s QAR data, an Ofsted spokesperson said: “Decisions on the use of achievement rate data for 2020/21 will be made in due course.”
The decision has attracted split views from the sector.
Association of Employment and Learning Providers managing director Jane Hickie said that “on balance”, giving Ofsted access to QARs “doesn’t seem unreasonable, although the authorities should bear in mind that some perfectly good providers are struggling right now in terms of achievement rates because of the covid restrictions”.
“If you are in tier 3, for example, the challenge to deliver well is harder,” she added.
“At the same time, providers won’t want to sit back thinking that ungraded inspections mean that they can switch off.
“They believe that the approach which Ofsted has taken since March has been entirely sensible and are ready to work with the inspectorate to give an accurate picture to employers and learners of the quality of their provision.”
Tony Allen, an ex-deputy director of the government’s skills funding agency and now runs his own apprenticeship consultancy firm, said that he struggled to see, from a “transparency viewpoint”, why the data “is not going to be published for year two” of the pandemic.
“Covid has impacted but isn’t that the point…everyone knows that Covid has impacted,” he added.
“Why are we denying employers access to invaluable intelligence for a second year?”
QARs calculate what proportion of learning was successfully completed in each academic year by providers.
They are produced for apprenticeships, adult education and 16 to 18 programmes.
The latest achievement rates were published in March for the 2018/19 year and showed the overall national rate for apprenticeships dropped 2.2 per cent points to just 64.7 per cent.
The ESFA minimum standard threshold sits at an achievement rate of 62 per cent.
If more than 40 percent of a provider’s provision fails to meet the minimum standard then intervention can be as severe as contract termination, in line with the ESFA’s “oversight of independent training providers” operational guidance.
FE providers should attempt to deliver the same amount of teaching and work to self-isolating students that they would receive onsite, new government guidance has said.
It states that for students who have been advised to self-isolate, but are “well enough to learn”, officials “expect FE providers to continue their education remotely as far as is reasonably possible”.
Students learning remotely “should benefit from the same amount of teaching and guided work that they would normally receive onsite”.
But there are exceptions to these rules, for instance, where a student is on a course which involves practical teaching and training, and requires specialist equipment and supervision.
The exception also applies to work experience and placements.
Providers should have systems in place to check at least weekly if a student is “persistently” missing lessons for their study programme, or if they are not engaging with remote education.
Students should be provided with clarity on arrangements for remote education, for example on timetabling, and on the expectations for them to participate in remote learning.
And it should be confirmed with them the different ways they will receive assessment and feedback while learning remotely, as well as how often that will be provided.
In comparison, primary schools have been told to deliver at least three hours of remote learning to self-isolating pupils, while secondary schools should deliver at least four.
The department said today FE providers must continue to deliver fully-planned hours for students, unless further restrictions come in force for their area, and should also put in place support for vulnerable and disadvantaged students which could include deciding whether they need support for remote delivery.
Providers will have to plan for managing safeguarding concerns as well, and must maintain regular communication with vulnerable young people to ensure that they are safe and are accessing remote provision.
The government has come under pressure to help providers with online learning, with the Association of Colleges reporting last month that as many as 100,000 students may be missing out on learning because they do not have a suitable device to learn on, or access to the internet from home.
The association’s chief executive David Hughes called for “immediate support for colleges to allow students to get the devices and access they need,” without which, he said: “We risk stunting the life chances of young people for years to come.”
Today’s guidance included how providers can use the 16-19 bursary fund to provide digital devices and connectivity support for students, based on individual circumstances.
There has also been a change to the adult education budget rules for 2020-21, the guidance reads, so providers can use learner support funds to buy IT devices for students aged 19 and over, and to help providers’ meet students’ connectivity costs.
GCSE and A-level students sitting exams next year will be given more generous grading, advance notice of some topics and “exam aids” owing to the disruption caused by Covid-19.
They will also be offered a “second chance” to sit papers if they miss any through illness or self-isolation and in “extreme cases” where a student has a “legitimate reason” to miss all their exams, a “teacher informed assessment” can be used as a last resort.
The package of measures has been announced by the Department for Education and Ofqual today in their efforts to “boost fairness” in recognition of the “unprecedented disruption” to students’ learning.
Education secretary Gavin Williamson (pictured) said he hopes these “exceptional steps” will give young people the “clarity and confidence they need to achieve every success”.
On top of the three-week delay to GCSE and A-level exams previously announced by government, more generous grading will be provided “in line with national outcomes from 2020, so students this year are not disadvantaged”.
Under this system, every subject will “receive the same level of generosity so that the approach doesn’t advantage some students over others depending on their subject choice”.
“Exam aids”, such as formula or vocabulary sheets, will also be provided for use in “some exams” – but it is not expected students will be allowed to bring passages of text into the exam.
It is not clear at this stage which aids will be permitted for each subject or what FE-based courses will be included.
Students will also be able to focus their revision with advance notice of certain topics which will be covered in GCSEs, AS and A-levels; and additional exam papers are being scheduled for if a student misses exams or assessments due to illness or the need to self-isolate.
If a student misses all their assessments in a subject, they will have the opportunity to sit a “contingency paper” held shortly after the main exams.
In the “extreme case” where a student has a “legitimate reason to miss all their papers”, then a “validated teacher informed assessment can be used, only once all chances to sit an exam have passed”.
Vocational and technical assessments will also be adapted, depending on the qualification. Ofqual had already announced in September that awarding bodies would be given the freedom to adapt their assessment arrangements to mitigate any impact of the pandemic.
The range of adaptations announced today will help make things fairer
The government has said it will set out the detail on this process, and on adaptations, in the new year.
Ofqual also said it is not planning to add a footnote of some sort to students’ certificates who achieve next year to say they benefitted from these exceptional measures.
While the government will still publish data from the 2021 tests, exams and assessments for schools and post-16 providers, they will not publish the normal ranked performance tables with school and college-level data, based on tests and exams
An expert advisory group will also be assembled to “monitor the variation in the impact of the pandemic on students across the country”.
Chief executive of the Association of Colleges, David Hughes, said there is “no simple solution which the government could implement to ensure that exams are fair for everyone in 2021, but the range of adaptations announced today will help make things fairer”.
He added that there is an “urgency on this” because over 50,000 students will sit BTEC and other technical exams in January and “all students want certainty about how assessments and grades will be carried out as soon as possible”.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the solutions put forward by the DfE are “not perfect” but “will make them as fair as they can be in the circumstances”.
“Nothing can be given the fact that learning has been so disrupted by coronavirus and that pupils have been affected to vastly different extents,” he added.
Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, added that today’s plans introduce “some welcome flexibilities” but he remains “concerned about the differential impact that Covid has had on young people in different parts of the country”.
A “radical” shake-up of the “overly complicated” high needs FE system is required, following a quadrupling in the number of learners with special educational needs and disabilities, new research has found.
The Association of Colleges, specialist providers’ organisation Natspec, and the Local Government Association (LGA) have today released a joint report into the planning, commissioning, funding and support of provision for post-16 high needs learners.
It found a litany of problems with the system, including Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) which are “not sufficiently up to date”; statutory deadlines being missed; arrangements for transitioning learners from school to further education being delayed, and possibly not taking place at all.
High needs learners are jointly funded by the Education and Skills Funding Agency and local authorities. Under the current system, the ESFA pays £5,200 for every student, regardless of whether they are high needs. The agency then pays an additional £6,000 per place for each high needs student to their college or specialist provider, but claims this against the local authority’s budget. The local authority then pays any costs to the provider for delivering to a high needs student above an £11,200 threshold.
In the report, the £5,200 funding for every student is higher than the £4,188 base rate for 16 to 18-year-olds which the government introduced this academic year, because the authors say the former figure includes adjustments for student retention, programme cost weightings, and disadvantage funding.
Chair of the LGA’s children and young people board, Judith Blake, said an “overhaul and streamlining” was needed for processes to improve the system for local authorities and colleges.
She continued: “This has become more urgent due to the huge increase in size and complexity of the task faced by councils and providers in supporting young people with SEND, with funding not keeping up with the rising demand for support.”
The report’s authors say the number of 16 to 25-year-olds with an EHCP, or a SEND statement, has quadrupled between 2015 and 2020, from 25,548 to 108,308.
The rise has been caused by a number of factors, including the Children and Families Act 2014 extending EHCP eligibility up to 25 years of age, which brought more people into the system.
At the same time as this increase in demand, the AoC and Natspec say their members are facing financial pressures due to a “squeeze” on local authority budgets and real terms cuts to FE funding over the past ten years.
So a “more radical re-working of the whole system” of high needs post-16 system is required, as the report’s authors found demand for places is likely to be outstripping supply in many local authorities, and providers are having to invest in creating extra capacity without the promise of a return.
Although £700 million in high needs post-16 funding was announced for 2020-21 at the Spending Round in 2019, the report cites LGA research which found councils face a high-needs deficit of at least £889 million for that period, owing to the rising demand.
The AoC’s SEND policy officer Liz Maudslay said that while they welcome the 2014 reforms, for them to be “effective, there is a need for significant changes to implementation processes”.
The report recommends greater planning of provision, after it had seen “little evidence that longer term planning of post-16 High Needs provision is currently taking place”.
Planning could be aided by having “block agreements”, where providers and local authorities agree funding for provision as a block rather than at an individual learner level.
This, the report reads, could “guarantee a fixed level of income in respect of a target number of 16+ young people with high needs, simplify the costing of provision, and thereby facilitate the planning process”.
Another theme of the report is greater collaboration: between providers, and between them and their local authorities.
Authorities should involve all post-16 providers in regular strategic planning discussions about provision for learners who are leaving school provision, the report argues.
Furthermore, post-16 providers should be given access to pre-16 learners earlier, as it would make it “more likely the young person’s post-16 needs and aspirations will be known in good time,” and planning their transition to the post-16 provider will be “more effective”.
Natspec chief executive Clare Howard welcomed this recommendation in particular, as she says: “The detrimental effects of the system on all young people are amplified for the small number with the most complex needs, who require more specialist provision.”
Another recommendation is for the “currency and content” of EHCPs needs to be improved to be fit for post-16 purposes, with the report saying plans are often not updated, “too many” reports display “little or no knowledge of the further education sector,” and providers feeling there is little point securing EHCPs as students could be with them for just two years, and additional SEND funding is “limited”.
Natspec, the AoC and the LGA commissioned acl consulting to carry out this research. The authors interviewed 25 local authority staff at 10 authorities, and 50 staff from 28 providers – 14 GFECs and 14 specialist post-16 institutions – as well as several stakeholders, representatives of the study sponsors, and other interested parties.
Full graded Ofsted inspections will not return until the summer term, the government has announced.
But monitoring visits, including to those with grade three and four ratings and new apprenticeship providers, will resume in January.
Ofsted said FE providers that do not receive a monitoring visit “may receive support and assurance visits”, which will result in a report but no grade, similar to the “interim visits” being run this autumn.
The watchdog will also continue to have the power to inspect an education provider if they have serious concerns about safeguarding.
Under a raft of measures announced today for holding exams in 2021, education secretary Gavin Williamson said that Ofsted’s full return has been pushed back again until the summer term. Full inspections have been paused since the outbreak of Covid-19 in March.
The inspectorate described the plans as a “phased return” to normal activity.
Chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, said: “The usual level of scrutiny within the education and care system has been absent since last March, so it’s important that it returns next year as we all hope for a greater level of normality.
“But we understand the pressure that everyone in education is working under and we want to return to our usual work in a measured, sensitive and practical way.”
She added: “Our role is to offer the greatest assurance we can to parents and the public about the quality of education and care arrangements for children and learners. These plans will help us support the providers who are facing the greatest challenges during these difficult times.
“They will ensure that inspection is fair, safe and valuable, while remaining true to our core purpose and principles.”
FE Week asked Ofsted if the return of monitoring visits will include a progress judgement, as they did pre-pandemic, but did not receive a response at the time of going to press.
During Tuesday’s launch of Ofsted’s annual report, the inspectorate said it was keen to restart monitoring visits of new providers in particular after finding big concerns with the quality of apprenticeship delivery last year.
Chief executive of the Association of Colleges, David Hughes, said he was “pleased to see the common sense decision that full Ofsted inspections will not commence until summer term” as they would be “impossible to carry out fairly and safely in these conditions”.
He added that he would urge the DfE “not to continue barring colleges with legacy ‘requires improvement’ grades from being able to deliver T Levels, Institutes of Technology and other programmes where they have good sustained progress on quality”.
Ofsted is not expecting to resume graded inspections in January, the chief inspector has said.
Speaking at the launch of the watchdog’s latest annual report, Amanda Spielman said Ofsted needed to “take account of the national situation, and we’ve always said that the timing and form of our return was under review”.
I’m not expecting us to be doing graded inspections from January
Routine inspections were halted in March following the announcement that education providers would close to all but the most vulnerable pupils and the children of key workers.
Ofsted launched a programme of ungraded visits of schools and FE providers this term, which moved online following the announcement of a second national lockdown.
Inspections were supposed to resume in January, but the government has come under increasing pressure to postpone their reintroduction further.
“I’m not expecting us to be doing graded inspections from January,” Spielman said this morning.
“We need to take account of the national situation, and we’ve always said that the timing and form of our return was under review. We do understand what teachers are going through.”
Spielman also said that when inspectors do return they will “not be looking at the challenges of the lockdown and we will not be expecting people to have performed miracles, but rather to have done their best in the circumstances”.
Asked what form Ofsted’s work would take from January, Chris Russell, the watchdog’s acting national director of education said Ofsted had “a range of other inspection tools that we could use to meet the circumstances”.
“There are many things that we could do short of full graded inspections. And clearly all of those we will be ensuring that we can operate safely within the context of Covid,” he said.
Russell also confirmed that Ofsted felt its current education inspection framework was the “right vehicle” to use once full inspections resume, but said the watchdog would make “any slight modifications” needed as a result of the Covid pandemic.
Spielman also confirmed today that as the national lockdown ends this week, inspectors will resume in-person visits to schools and FE providers.
“With the reduction in restrictions, we will be going back in for the remainder of the autumn visits.”
Apprenticeships are the “weakest” area of provision in FE providers, with one in ten judged ‘inadequate’ last year, Ofsted has said.
In its annual stocktake of education, the inspectorate reported that of the 120 inspections to include an apprenticeships grade in 2019/20, 3 per cent achieved ‘outstanding’, 50 per cent were ‘good’, and 38 per cent were ‘requires improvement’.
A total of 10 per cent were ‘inadequate’, which the report says is “clearly too large a number”.
Meanwhile, today’s report also warns of declining quality in independent learning providers with the proportion judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ falling for the fourth consecutive year – dropping from a high of 83 per cent in 2016 to 74 per cent in 2020.
However, it should be noted that Ofsted has included employer providers in with the data for private providers.
In 2019/20, the watchdog said it saw in some independent providers that governance was “not in place or was not sufficiently challenging in holding senior leaders to account to identify the aspects of the provision that needed to be improved”.
“We also saw leaders, managers and the governance function not moving swiftly enough to implement the recommendations made at a new provider monitoring visit,” the report added.
“Independent learning providers did not focus enough on working closely with employers to develop a meaningful and well-thought-out curriculum to meet the training requirements of apprentices and employers.”
Nearly a quarter (24 per cent) of providers that received new provider monitoring visits this year had at least one insufficient progress judgement.
Ofsted said that in “many cases”, this was down to “weak leadership and a lack of co-development of the curriculum with employers”.
Association of Employment and Learning Providers managing director Jane Hickie told FE Week that the pressures on private providers have been “enormous”.
“Even before the pandemic struck, the Commons education committee warned that good quality apprenticeships can’t be delivered on the cheap and while the [Ofsted] report doesn’t cover the first lockdown period when inspections stopped, the lack of provider relief for levy apprenticeships and the crash in starts have added to the scale of the challenges even though the minister and others have recognised what a fantastic job providers did in keeping so many programmes going remotely,” she said.
“We hope that the current review of funding rates by IfATE leads to a realistic outcome of recognising the costs involved in delivering a good apprenticeship programme.”
In comparison to private providers, community learning providers have seen the proportion judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ increase for the fourth year and sat at 92 per cent in 2020, while colleges have seen their proportion shift downwards from 78 per cent last year to 75 per cent.
During an Ofsted press conference on the annual report, Christopher Russell, acting national director for education, said that the inspectorate will be “focussing sharply” on apprenticeships quality over the coming months.
“We have some concern over quality in some cases. Of our new provider monitoring visits over the year, in a quarter we found progress to be insufficient and that does give us a worry.
“We will continue to look very closely within those visits and follow-up, what the quality is/ Quite often we are finding that the leadership isn’t sharp enough, that the curriculum isn’t well thought out enough.
“And when we return we are finding sometimes that the actions that we have pointed out that are needed haven’t been taken quickly enough. This is a weaker area, apprenticeships, and we will be focussing sharply therefore on that as we do our work over the coming months.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are pleased the vast majority of apprenticeships providers have continued to deliver high quality training. However, we recognise that there is more work to do to make sure that every apprentice can access the best possible training.
“We will continue to work with employers and training providers, and with the Institute and the Quality Alliance to help boost apprenticeship quality and make sure more people get the skills they need to get ahead.”
Click here to read FE Week’s speed read of Ofsted’s 2019/20 annual report.
FE Week has the key findings for the FE and skills sector.
Inspections of newly-merged colleges found a third ‘required improvement’
Ofsted inspected 26 of the 46 colleges formed from new mergers since 2015 and found that while 65 per cent, or 17, were either ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, the others were all judged as ‘requires improvement’.
“Currently, this grade profile is lower than the original profile before the mergers,” the report reads, after nearly 100 colleges have been through mergers following the FE Commissioner’s series of area reviews in 2015.
“But nearly half of the merged colleges are yet to be inspected,” it reasoned.
FE Week reported in October that inspection results for the college sector at the end of 2019/20 fell for the first time in three years after a substantial number of merged colleges received a grade three.
Ofsted’s report today reinforces that finding, reporting the proportion of general further education colleges judged good or outstanding has slipped from 78 to 75 from 2019 to this year.
Growing concerns over sustainability
Ofsted has shone a light on the “serious financial implications” Covid-19 has for the further education and skills sector.
The report reads: “The pandemic has led to growing concerns over sustainability in parts of the FE and skills sector,” because most colleges are at least partly-dependent on apprenticeship levy funding, which is not a guaranteed source of revenue.
“Hundreds” of independent providers are dependent on funding from the Education and Skills Funding Agency and other schemes to provide them with cashflow and continuation, Ofsted has said.
So, their viability depends on businesses paying for training services, however some of those customers have gone or will be going out of business, or reduce their training.
Although government funding for capital expenditure and the National Skills Fund, due to launch next April, “should help colleges to re-balance their finances to an extent,” the watchdog has warned “the full impact” of the decrease in apprenticeship revenue “remains to be seen, but some providers have already ceased training”.
Ofsted has said it will monitor developments in the market “because sufficiency of provision is central to ensuring children and young people receive the education and care they need”.
The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee heard last week from the Education and Skills Funding Agency that 64 colleges were at risk of running out of cash, and the government was on course to spend £70 million on emergency funding for them this year.
Quality of apprenticeships biggest ‘weakness’
The quality of the apprenticeships is the biggest warning from Ofsted in today’s report, with it being named as the “weakest” provision in the further education and skills sector.
One in ten apprenticeship grades are currently judged ‘inadequate’, a number the watchdog calls “clearly too large”.
Nearly a quarter of providers which received early monitoring visits in 2019-20 had at least one ‘insufficient progress’ judgement, which in many cases was due to weak leadership and a lack of co-development with employers.
However, some apprentices have seen their provision “disappear entirely,” whether that’s on- or off-the-job, the report reads, as 36 per cent of them have been furloughed, while eight per cent were made redundant and 17 per cent had off-the-job training suspended.
Apprentices on standards received a “more tailored and broader curriculum” than those studying frameworks, the report continues.
Online education only a ‘partial’ solution
The inspectorate conducted a review of online education in FE providers during Covid-19 lockdown and found that this can “only ever be a partial solution to ensuring a good quality of education and training where education cannot happen face to face”.
Ofsted warned that online education needs to be “well integrated” into the provider’s curriculum offer “as a whole and adapted to the learning needs of learners” in order to work effectively, with “suitably trained teachers”.
Some providers say their learners’ engagement is good “simply because learners have logged on to online sessions” but the “reality may be that the learners have logged on but are doing other things, and so are not fully engaged in the learning”.
Some learners “admitted to being frequently distracted”. Overall, Ofsted found that learners “miss the face-to-face contact of the classroom, not only for social interaction but also for the instant feedback and opportunity to ask questions that it provides”.
The inspectorate raised the issue of digital poverty after a recent Association of Colleges survey found up to 100,000 FE learners do not have a suitable device or internet connection to learn from home.
To avoid these learners falling behind, the Department for Education “need to invest in this as well as in a suitable virtual learning environment and staff training”, Ofsted said.
Community learning named ‘best-performing’ provider type
While private providers have been shown as the worst-performing provider type, with 74 per cent rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, community learning has been proven to be the best.
A total of 92 per cent of community learning and skills providers were judged either grade one or two last year, moving up from 91 per cent last year.
Colleges have seen their proportion shift downwards from 78 per cent last year to 75 per cent.
Overall, the number of FE providers found to be ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted sits at 80 per cent – a decrease of one percentage point compared with last year.
The shadow minister for apprenticeships and lifelong learning explains his unconventional route to the front bench to Jess Staufenberg
Toby Perkins, shadow minister for apprenticeships and lifelong learning, comes into focus on my screen with a huge, unidentifiable flag behind him. I know the Yorkshire flag, but apparently I don’t know the Derbyshire flag, which the county, not to be outdone by its neighbour and cricketing rival, had specially designed some years back.
When Perkins also tells me, with his ruddy cheeks and a big grin, that “Derbyshire Food Day” is also a great parliamentary event, I anticipate an interview with a man strongly proud of his northern roots. But he has just the gentlest Sheffield twang, and, it turns out, is perhaps prouder of his own personal path than his geographic roots.
The Derbyshire flag
An A-levels drop-out, he has taken a road not entirely expected by his university academic parents, and as a small business owner and former recruitment consultant, is also perhaps not the usual shoe-in for the Labour Party either. If Starmer wins in 2024, and Perkins keeps his post, this will be the man pushing policy for FE.
The past decade must have been a curious ride for the Chesterfield MP before Starmer’s arrival. He supported, successively, centrist candidates David Miliband, Liz Kendall and Owen Smith in each of the leadership contests, at a time when the party was moving closer to its left wing. But Perkins clearly has a pragmatic streak and, like his colleague in the shadow education team Emma Hardy (who largely handles the higher education brief), seems mainly committed to “Team Labour” and whatever it takes to win an election. He spent only three months on the backbenches as a new MP in 2010 before serving on the front bench under Ed Miliband, and then took the defence brief under Jeremy Corbyn and later offered to serve him again in 2017 having backed his challenger. With Starmer now steering the party back towards the centre, one can imagine that Perkins’ time has maybe come.
His current further education brief came as a surprise to him, he says; but listening to him, there is a certain overlap of his story with that of many college leaders: sixth form didn’t fit, academia wasn’t necessarily his thing, and a training programme set him on the right path. His father worked as a film lecturer, first in FE at the now-closed Bulmershe College in Reading and then at Warwick University, and his mother lectured in sociology at the university too. After his parents split up, a 16-year-old Perkins and his mum moved to Sheffield. Thankfully, he doesn’t try to ham up any working-class roots. “I was expecting Sheffield to be this real inner-city experience and it really wasn’t. The school I was at was a middle-class school. After a few months of A-levels, I decided I didn’t want to do them and dropped out.”
A young Perkins in 1981
Conscious of having to “explain to my grandmother at Christmas why I wasn’t in school”, he went down to the job centre and joined Margaret Thatcher’s youth training scheme which, a bit like the current Kickstart scheme, saw 16- to 25-year-olds taken on by employers for £25 a week on a six-week job placement. He took a sales role. What did his parents think?
“I think they were a bit disappointed in one regard, but in a way, this was my way of rebelling.” Unlike his parents, he was “more of a doer and a talker, than a reader and studier”. He says he supported the Labour Party in those days like he did Sheffield United – mostly around election time, cheering for his team.
A couple of life changes caused Perkins to follow politics more closely and raise his eyes towards a parliamentary seat. First, an admired boss “got me into self-improvement” through audio tapes and the like. “Positive self-enforcement, you know ̶ I like myself, I’m a good person, that kind of thing.” This included thinking about his own childhood and “the kind of parent I wanted to be”.
Parenting was soon in full swing, with Perkins a relatively young father to his son at 27 years old, and later adopting a daughter. He and his wife had tragically previously lost twins in childbirth. Feeling the family pressure to earn, Perkins had become an area manager in recruitment, overseeing 30 people, but now turned his attention to politics. His interest was particularly piqued after watching Chesterfield fall to the Liberal Democrats in 2001, following the retirement of heavyweight left-wing incumbent Tony Benn. By 2003, Perkins had bagged a seat on the council.
Perkins addressing Hollingwood Primary School in Chesterfield
“I think at this point, I had half an idea of becoming an MP. I was someone from the private sector, who hadn’t been to university, hadn’t got a trade union background, hadn’t been a spad. So it was quite unusual to become an MP,” he says, following up, quite frankly, with: “So I partly thought being a councillor would be a route to becoming an MP. And I also wanted to make a local contribution.”
In the 2007 election, he watched Labour lose his constituency again by about 3,000 votes. Again speaking frankly, he observes: “My personal view was that I could do a better job of being the candidate.”
At this point Perkins set up his own business selling rugby kits (he’d always been into sport) in order to free up time for a political career. As new prime minister Gordon Brown “ummed and ahhed” about an election in 2007 – eventually deciding against – Perkins took the time to build up his local reputation ahead of the 2010 election. He managed to fight off the UKIP threat in the post-industrial, largely white town and won the seat. “Labour lost 80 seats that day, and I was one of the very few that turned the tide! On arriving in parliament, I came in very much thinking, ‘No one has given me this on a plate, I’ve earned it.’ I went in with confidence.”
General election announcement in 2015
His very first role was in the education team as shadow children’s minister overseeing social care and youth services under shadow education minister Andy Burnham. “I hadn’t necessarily asked for the education brief and at first it seemed like a square peg in a round hole. But I actually found I knew a lot more than I realised, especially as an adoptive parent.” When he was later moved into the business team, he found the opposite was true: “I thought I’d know a lot and found there was a huge amount I didn’t.”
Since then, Remain-supporting Perkins has witnessed the rise and fall of Corbyn, whose leadership he says he was “deeply concerned” by. But again with surprising frankness, he admits to admiring the support the left-wing leader inspired among many. “You couldn’t dismiss the fact he generated a huge amount of enthusiasm. So I thought, maybe there’s something in this that could lead the party, and I decided to be on his front bench when a lot of my colleagues chose not to.”
I decided to be on Corbyn’s front bench when a lot of my colleagues chose not to
Perhaps it is this flexible (as well as ambitious) nature that explains why Perkins is damning of his experience with Corbyn in 2017 after he’d backed Smith in the leadership challenge the year before. “There was a moment there where he could have chosen to be the bigger man […] I went to see him straight after the election and offered my services, but he didn’t take that approach. I think the approach he took was to double down on seizing control of the party. It was unnecessary.” The splits in the party continue to rumble on, with Corbyn-supporting members of Labour’s governing body staging a mass walkout of a Zoom meeting just this week. One can imagine Perkins has little time for it.
Not that Perkins has never been involved in conflict and controversy himself: just this year he apologised after his campaign materials said he was “disgusted” that traveller communities were “extorting” thousands of pounds in illegal camps. He had also previously said he wouldn’t want travellers living near him – and has since said sorry for his “inappropriate” and “careless” language.
We move on instead to what he would do in Gillian Keegan’s shoes, rattling off a list of policy priorities; focusing on massively expanding apprenticeships instead of its “poorer cousin” the Kickstart scheme; a “huge renewed investment in adult education and the value of careers guidance”; and, inspired by his old boss Burnham in Manchester, “a greater recognition of the role devolution can play”.
Playing rugby for the Gentlemen of Derbyshire XV against the House of Commons and Lords at Twickenham
Meanwhile, he supports T Levels in principle but accuses the government of being “complacent” about whether they are a path to university. “There’s a real danger here the government has got a new toy and will spend a huge amount of time on something that will have microscopic take-up. Almost certainly if T Levels are a success, they won’t look like they do now.”
There’s something about Perkins that almost reminds me of education select committee chair Robert Halfon: certain of his own mind but not overly dogmatic, committed to helping individuals, and really most comfortable in the centre of their respective parties. One could even imagine Perkins in the committee chair role, if Halfon ever relinquishes the reins.
Only at the end of our chat does Perkins return me with a sudden passion to his roots. “Perhaps unlike many in politics, having been a 17-year-old on £25 a week, I know what it’s like to be the lowest of the low in a company, and be a nobody. I know what it’s like to go to the ATM and wonder if it’s going to be able to give you any money, or run your own business and have any food tomorrow […] A lot of the people I meet in politics did great at school and got great university degrees, they were important from the moment they left university, or even important when they were at university. This is an entirely different perspective on life.”
If there was an FE flag, I’m pretty sure Perkins would have it on his wall. Perhaps he’ll have one by 2024.
