Setting a self-imposed deadline (x2) & missing it is not good, this message isn’t particularly helpful either @ESFAgov – providers are desperate to know the AEB outcome. How can providers plan? How can providers deliver provision from August? Do they need staff & premises or not? pic.twitter.com/MH6TQ4OGky
However, when that day came, the announcement was put off to an undetermined time.
Now it seems the agency cannot even give a deadline for when the results will be issued.
The AELP’s chief policy officer Simon Ashworth, who tweeted the ESFA’s latest message, also wrote: “Setting a self-imposed deadline (x2) and missing it is not good, this message isn’t particularly helpful either.
“Providers are desperate to know the AEB outcome. How can they plan? How can they deliver provision from August? Do they need staff and premises or not?”
Bids for a slice of the £73 million AEB funding initially up for grabs in 2021/22 opened in February and closed in March.
An emergency services volunteer and a carer who juggled looking after her disabled sister with studying are two of this year’s BTEC Awards winners.
The eleventh annual awards were held today, virtually for the second year running, and recognised 19 winners across the swathe of BTEC subjects and centres.
Awarding body Pearson’s senior vice president for BTEC and apprenticeships Cindy Rampersaud said it had been “another extraordinary year for learners, tutors, teachers, colleges and schools.
“The hard work and commitment demonstrated by our award winners, all of whom have achieved great things during a time of unprecedented disruption, is extraordinary and I am proud we are able to celebrate their achievements.”
The ceremony was co-hosted by sports presenter Gemma Care, and presenter of the United View, YouTube influencer and BTEC ambassador Flex.
Young learner ‘shone through’
The winner of the young learner and business and enterprise learner awards is Lily Carcaterra from Newcastle & Stafford Colleges Group, who has been juggling caring for her disabled sister with studying for a level 3 extended diploma in business.
Caracterra
Pearson says she “shone through as a person of great strength,” who advocates for her classmates and even found time for work experience.
“Powered by the determination to build a bright future through sheer hard work and academic achievement, she is independent, empathic, high-achieving, resilient and remarkable,” the awarding body said.
Another of the honourees today is Jamie Smith (name changed for confidentiality reasons) from East Surrey College.
He has won adult learner of the year after standing out to the judges with his dedication to become a public servant, exemplified through his work as an emergency service volunteer and his work on the student-led donation drive at a local food bank.
His teachers call him “outstandingly calm,” with a “compassionate disposition too”.
BTECs ‘are a game changer’
A number of winners were from BTEC centres around the world, including creative media learner of the year Tiago Bastos from Portugal and performing arts learner of the year Wilbert Kapinga from Tanzania.
Department for International Trade skills specialist Jonathan Ledger paid a “huge congratulations” to the winners, adding that: “For me, BTEC qualifications are a game changer. They change lives and they help people improve and contribute to business and society in a big way.”
In addition to the award winners, the ceremony also included the 2021 Showstopper Challenge, a chance for students to showcase their performing talents.
Performances this year came from Bishop Challoner Catholic College, Jackie Palmer Academy, Clevedon School, and D16 Performing Arts College.
Clevedon School won an audience vote on their performances.
There was also an honorary award for Pearson’s outgoing president for global online learning and the UK Rod Bristow for his support for BTECs.
The judges of the awards included Rampersaud and her Pearson colleagues Jane Baker, vice president, higher education qualifications; Derek Richardson, vice president and senior responsible officer for quality services and governance; Claire Riddle at vice president, marketing, BTEC and apprenticeships; as well as Shane Mann, managing director of FE Week publisher LSECT, and Kasim Choudhry, Thinkfest national director.
The full list of BTEC winners
BTEC Art and Design Learner of the Year – Lily Robinson from Kirklees College
BTEC Business and Enterprise Learner of the Year and Young Learner of the Year – Lily Carcaterra from Newcastle & Stafford Colleges Group
BTEC Child, Health and Social Care Learner of the Year – Aliyah Black from South West College
BTEC Construction Learner of the Year – Joseph Kizhakechethipuzha from Dudley College of Technology
BTEC Creative Media Learner of the Year – Tiago Bastos Nunes from ETIC, Portugal
BTEC Engineering Learner of the Year – Dean Hargreaves from Blackpool and The Fylde College
BTEC Hospitality, Travel and Tourism Learner of the Year – Caitlin Tohill and Caoimhe Tohill from St. Patrick’s College
BTEC IT and Computing Learner of the Year – Rey Poh from Sandbach High School and Sixth Form College
BTEC Land-Based Learner of the Year – Kira Newey from NPTC Group
BTEC Music Learner of the Year – Rowan Scourfield from The Priory School
BTEC Performing Arts Learner of the Year – Wilbert Kapinga from Braeburn International School Arusha, Tanzania
BTEC Public Service Learner of the Year and Adult Learner of the Year – James Smith from East Surrey College
BTEC Science Learner of the Year – Jacob Cook from Bristol Free School and Sixth Form
BTEC Sport Learner of the Year – Megan Piechowiak from Jumeirah English Speaking School, UAE
BTEC College of the Year – Abingdon and Witney College
BTEC International Centre of the Year – IVS Alliance, Netherlands
BTEC School of the Year – The Bourne Academy
BTEC Teacher of the Year – Eren Büktel from TED Atakent High School, Turkey
BTEC Tutor of the Year – Nathan Smith from Chichester College Group
Shane Chowen has been appointed as the new editor of FE Week.
He will take the reins in August from Nick Linford, who is returning to writing FE funding and data blogs, publishing technical guides and expanding his workshops and webinars.
Chowen is currently the East and West Midlands area director at the Association of Colleges. He previously worked as head of policy and public affairs at the Learning and Work Institute and as a policy officer at the Institute for Learning.
He is also a former vice president for FE at the National Union of Students and was a governor at Capital City College Group until May 2021.
Chowen will take over as editor of FE Week ten years after its launch in 2011.
He said: “It’s an enormous privilege to be leading FE Week in to its second decade and I’m really excited about joining the team at such a critical moment for our sector.
“I’ve been a passionate champion for FE throughout my career and FE Week’s role in bringing the sector breaking news, expert analysis and inspiring features has never been more important.”
Linford said: “FE Week launched ten years ago and after more than 350 editions, I will be handing over the editorial reigns to a well-known figure in the sector.
Nick Linford
“My focus will return to writing FE funding and data blogs, publishing technical guides and expanding the workshop and webinar offer that I have been running since 2007, when a Director at Lewisham College.
“I’m very confident FE Week under new leadership will continue to go from strength to strength. I wish Shane the best of luck.”
And Shane Mann, managing director of FE Week’s publisher Lsect, added: “FE Week will celebrate its 10th Birthday in September. Nick has been instrumental in FE Week’s success over the past ten years. His energy and tenacity have helped FE Week become the leading news provider in the FE & Skills sector.
“Shane will have the opportunity to help shape and grow FE Week as it enters its next decade. I have known Shane for almost 15 years. I’ve always been struck by his passion for the further education sector. I can’t wait to see what Shane does with FE Week. It’s going to be another exciting decade for FE Week.
“I look forward to working with Nick as we continue to invest in and grow our broader organisation.”
Degree-level learners are over four times more likely to access further training throughout their life than those with no qualifications, a new report has found.
‘Learning at work: Employer investment in skills,’ published today by the Learning and Work Institute, found almost one-third of graduates undertook training in quarter three of 2020, compared to one in 13 workers with no qualifications.
People in the lowest-paid occupations were also being left out of training. Just 11 per cent of workers in “elementary occupations” and “process and plant operative” jobs participated in training in quarter three of 2020, compared with 34 per cent of people in “professional occupations”.
Learning and Work Institute chief executive Stephen Evans believes the economy is being “held back” because “the lowest paid and those with the fewest qualifications are most likely to miss out” on training.
‘Sharp growth’ in degree-level training collides with drop in level 2 apprenticeships
The report, sponsored by NOCN, found an extra 1.2 million people would receive training every year if those with low qualifications participated in training like learners qualified to degree-level.
It also found that declines in employer training over the past decade mean workers get 20 million fewer training days each year than if training had stayed at 2011 levels, with the report saying these days are now “lost”.
The average employer’s investment in skills is also just half what it is in the EU, at £1,530 per worker, and it would take £6.5 billion a year for employers to make up the difference.
The report partly lays the blame on government apprenticeship reforms and adult education cuts. It states that the levy system, introduced in 2017, increased higher-level apprenticeships for older workers while felling opportunities for lower-level courses for younger workers.
There was a 5.4 per cent rise in apprentices aged over 25 between 2017/18 and 2019/20, coinciding with 4.8 per cent drop in apprentices aged under 19.
This is linked to a “sharp growth,” albeit from a low level, in degree-level training and steep declines in level 2 apprenticeships.
Spending on adult education has also been cut by 50 per cent in real terms, since 2009/10. Work-based learning for adults has seen an 18 per cent fall in real-terms overall spending since then.
This has meant “fewer opportunities for people to learn at lower levels,” leading to a 40 per cent drop in participation in adult basic skills provision in the last five years.
While the government has launched its lifetime skills guarantee and a new level 3 entitlement, the report says: “Growing level 3 and above learning is a good aim, but if it comes at the expense of basic skills and level 2 then it risks limiting opportunity.”
The Learning and Work Institute has said it will set out recommendations for increasing employer investment in skills and addressing inequalities in access to workplace learning in its next report.
Covid impacts young peoples’ training the harshest
Coronavirus is blamed for some more recent falls in employer training, with the report finding young people have been impacted by large drops in training during the pandemic, particularly if they work in the private sector.
Rates of participation in job-related training dropped the most for those aged 16 to 24 of any age group, slightly more than those aged 50 to 64. Participation by private sector workers fell for 16- to 24-year-olds far more than any other age group.
Hasting-Evans
NOCN chief executive Graham Hasting-Evans has said the new report “highlights not only how the pandemic has affected investment in training but also identifies pre-pandemic issues of inequality and declining employer investment for skills.
“Skills investment from employers and the government is critical to ‘building back better’ from the pandemic and reducing inequalities in access to workplace learning.”
Report could raise fears about ‘middle class’ grab on apprenticeships
The findings on graduates accessing training far more easily than workers at lower levels are likely to heighten fears within government of a “middle class grab” on the apprenticeship programme.
Skills minister Gillian Keegan told the Commons education select committee in May the government was “fearful” degree apprenticeships were being chosen by people “who would have gone to university anyway,” which was “squeezing out” disadvantaged groups.
Her comments paralleled those of her predecessor Anne Milton, who told a House of Lords inquiry in 2018 “fears of a middle-class grab on apprenticeships” were “valid”.
Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes said, in response to a report by think tank EDSK on the rise in degree apprenticeships, that their growth “has been at the expense of chances for younger people looking for their first opportunity in the workplace”.
A Department for Education spokesperson said they had “put reforming skills at the heart of our plans to recover from the pandemic”.
They highlighted the increase in apprentice incentives to £3,000 per learner and the £2.5 billion being put into the National Skills Fund “which will help adults to train and gain the valuable skills they need to improve their job prospects”.
The new level 3 entitlement, the spokesperson added, will affect an estimated 11 million adults in England, who will have “the potential to boost their career prospects and wages, while supporting the economy and building back better”.
A private provider has been suspended from taking on new learners after Ofsted found a “few cases” of apprentices who did not know they were enrolled on an apprenticeship.
Inspectors also claimed that a “minority” of employers who work with NextStep Training Limited are not aware that apprentices should have time in work for off-the-job training.
The provider, based in east London, had been a subcontractor before winning its own direct contract to deliver apprenticeships in February 2020. It has 50 apprentices across various subjects including ICT, business, administration and law and health, public services and care.
A spokesperson for the provider confirmed they have now been temporarily banned from recruiting new apprentices until their grade improves, in line with Education and Skills Funding Agency rules.
NextStep Training did not contest Ofsted’s findings, but said they are not as straightforward as the report states.
The provider’s spokesperson said the instance of apprentices not knowing they are on an apprenticeship “happened with one of the adult care learners who had grievance with her employers and responded [to inspectors] that she did not know what was happening”.
And in response to the concerns about off-the-job training, the spokesperson said: “Employers are aware of the time off work for the study. Health and social care employers do not release apprentices for the whole day. They rather release them on a flexible basis.”
Apprentices’ work is of the minimum standard required
Ofsted’s report also said the experience of apprentices on different programmes and with different employers is “markedly varied”.
“This reflects the extent to which leaders and managers have not been able to establish effectiveness across all programmes in their oversight of the apprenticeships,” it said. “They have been more successful with apprenticeships in business administration and ICT, than in care sector apprenticeships.”
Inspectors also found “too many” apprentices do not have a “clear plan of when they will complete their coursework” and apprentices who are nearing the end of their programme are “unprepared and do not know when they will achieve” their English and maths component.
Some apprentices have job roles which are “inappropriate for their level of study” and “too often tutors do not take into consideration well enough what apprentices already know and can do at the start of the programme”.
In “most cases”, apprentices’ work is of the “minimum standard required and does not reflect sufficiently the level of knowledge, understanding and writing skills appropriate to their programme”. Staff also “do not prepare apprentices effectively enough for their final assessments”.
Ofsted did praise the provider for employing “experienced and qualified assessors and tutors” and for putting in place effective safeguarding arrangements.
The provider’s spokesperson said: “We have deployed a range of measures with an action plan and hired an external quality assurance person to check and monitor the progress.
“We are hopeful the next visit will be an example of excellent progress.”
The government plans to remove bubbles and social distancing rules in FE providers from July 19, the education secretary confirmed today.
Gavin Williamson told the House of Commons that most Covid-19 restrictions in education settings will be eased under step 4 of lockdown.
Department for Education guidance for colleges and FE providers has also been published outlining the changes.
Here is what Williamson said can be expected.
‘Bubbles’ recommendation to be removed
Under current guidance, FE providers are recommended to reduce the number of contacts between students and staff by keeping groups in separate “bubbles”.
Williamson said this advice will be lifted from July 19.
“Keeping children in consistent groups was essential to control the spread of the virus when our population as less vaccinated, we recognise the system of bubbles and isolation is causing disruption to many children’s education.
“That is why we will be ending bubbles.”
He added that the DfE will also be transferring contact tracing to the NHS test and trace system.
Only Covid-positive children to self-isolate from August 16
Williamson said his department is setting out new rules that mean from August 16, “children will only need to isolate if they have tested positive for Covid-19”.
It is not clear at this stage if this will also apply to adult students in FE providers.
The education secretary said: “In education settings, guidance on isolation of contacts will stay in place until the end of this term, in line with isolation rules for the rest of the population.
“As more adults are vaccinated settings will continue to have a role in working with health protection teams in the case of a local outbreak. Where necessary, some measures may need to be reintroduced from August 16. Those under the age of 18 years old will no longer be required to self-isolate.
“Instead, children will be contacted by test and trace informed they have been in close contact with a positive case and advised to take a PCR test. 18-year-olds will be treated in the same way as children until four months after their 18th birthday to allow them to have the opportunity to get fully vaccinated.”
No staggered start and finish times
In addition to ending bubbles, Williamson said it will “not be necessary” to stagger start and finish times.
“Schools and colleges may of course continue with these measures until the end of the summer term, if they so wish,” he added.
Face coverings and social distancing not needed
Williamson said that some protective measures including enhanced hygiene and ventilation will remain in place for the autumn term.
But from step four face coverings will no longer be advised for pupils, students, staff and visitors, either in classrooms or in communal areas.
Social distancing will also “no longer be necessary”.
Testing to continue in September
As FE Week revealed last week, schools and colleges have been told to prepare for the return of onsite Covid testing from the start of the autumn term.
Williamson confirmed today that secondary schools and colleges will be asked to provide two onsite tests to their students at the start of the new academic year with regular home testing continuing until the end of September.
Education settings still operating over the summer will “continue to test twice a week with asymptomatic test kits still available to families over summer break as well”.
Eligible students and staff encouraged to get vaccinated
Williamson said it is “incredibly important” for all staff and adult students to get vaccinated, and in particular for “all staff to get to the second dose of a vaccine as soon as they are eligible, so they secure the strongest possible protection against Covid-19”.
He added that in line with wider changes to isolation from August 16, if in close contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19, staff will be able to remain in the classroom from the autumn term.
Jo Saxton has said she would “absolutely speak out” as Ofqual boss if she felt any government decisions were going to “undermine the interests” of students after being quizzed over her independence by MPs today.
Education secretary Gavin Williamson named Saxton, his policy adviser and a former academy trust boss, as his preferred candidate for the Ofqual chief regulator role. The current interim chief regulator, Simon Lebus, leaves in September.
MP Ian Mearns asked whether she was “too close to government” to lead an independent regulatory function.
Interim Ofqual chief Simon Lebus
Saxton, a former Ofqual board member, said that “anyone that knows me knows that I am not afraid to speak my mind and act independently”, adding that she has an “entirely professional relationship” with Williamson.
She added: “I’m not a member of a political party, I was involved in the Labour party review of the national curriculum and for me, I’m interested in children, young people and learnings, I’m interested in policy, not politics.”
Committee chair Robert Halfon said the exams chaos in summer 2020 “did raise a number of questions” about DfE and Ofqual’s relationship “such as who had the ultimate authority and accountability”.
Saxton said that Ofqual “needs to use all the powers that it has to speak out about government policy if it has concerns about capacity,” adding: “I would absolutely speak out if I felt that any government decisions were going to undermine the interests of children, young people and learners”.
She added that being independent “doesn’t mean that you can’t have effective working relationships” with government.
School leader relationships is ‘what Ofqual needs now’
Saxton was previously in charge of Turner Schools, which she established in Kent in 2016. She was previously chief executive of Future Academies, the trust set up by former academies minister Lord Nash.
She told the committee that the appointment of a former school leader “who has good relationships with other school leaders is the thing that Ofqual needs now”. This will help “reassure the wider sector that it understands what school leaders need, what the young people they serve need and is open to positive relationships with them going forward,” she added.
Labour this week claimed Saxton was unqualified for the role. But she defended her CV today, saying she has management and accounting officer experience.
“I’m so fascinated by regulation that I’ve studied it at the London School of Economics in my spare time,” Saxton said. “So while I don’t have as much experience in being a regulator, I have worked in highly regulated sectors.”
Asked about the regulator’s diversity, she said “there’s some diversity on the Ofqual board, of course if could be improved”. Saxton wants to work on diversity in the senior executive.
She also wants exams in 2022 to go ahead, but “if I can caveat that with the one thing we’ve learnt about the pandemic is that it’s unpredictable”.
Saxton would also like a student panel, and will explore that with the Ofqual board.
The committee will now put together a report on whether they believe Saxton is suitable for the role. Williamson will then consider it before deciding whether to proceed with the appointment.
Jo Grady, general secretary of the UCU, swept to the leadership at a young age pledging to improve wages in FE. Here she explains why members shouldn’t wait for others to make it happen
“What would Dolly Parton do, essentially? That’s what I ask.”
The blonde country singer does not at first seem the most obvious role model for Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, formerly a lecturer in employment relations at Sheffield and Leicester universities. Grady is young for a trade union leader, having won the leadership at just 36 years old, and, like her heroine, is blonde and grins widely. But it’s taking action that won Parton to Grady’s heart.
“I know it’s going to sound like an absurd thing to say, but Dolly Parton didn’t just sit around saying, ‘Isn’t it awful children can’t read?’ She set up the Imagination Library,” says Grady, referring to the singer’s huge literacy initiative.
Rolling your sleeves up and getting stuck in was the platform on which Grady won the leadership in 2019, securing 64 per cent of the vote (almost double the runner-up’s) on a turnout of 20 per cent. It was a platform of fighting talk, sweeping in after her predecessor, also a woman, had spent 12 years at the helm.
Despite never having run an organisation before, Grady entered confidently and in particular said it was FE where the union had “made the least progress in protecting or improving our members’ wages” and that it should spend more of its “fighting fund” to support striking workers.
Grady on the picket line at Nottingham College
In the past two years, Grady appears to have put her money where her mouth is. Right now, UCU members across 11 colleges are casting ballots on whether to go on strike over pay (the pay gap with schoolteachers currently stands at £9,000) and redundancy plans. The ballots close in mid-July and strikes would take place in the autumn.
Meanwhile, 600 prison staff across almost 50 prisons and young offender institutes have walked out four times since May, with two strikes just last month. The union leader has also been found on picket lines everywhere from Nottingham College to Islington College. As at January, the union had about 38,000 FE members.
But her drive for action doesn’t mean Grady sees herself as a charismatic trade union-Dolly Parton type, leading the charge for a fairer 9 to 5. When she arrived, she says, many members had forgotten it was they – not the UCU leadership – who should be taking action.
“I get really annoyed when people say, ‘Someone should do x’ or ‘The union should do y’. And I say, ‘Why don’t you do it, you’re in the union? Stop using third-party language. Find other people, find your community.’”
Grady with a campaign banner in Wales
A more passive attitude towards union membership arose during the New Labour years, says Grady, and was the subject of her PhD at Lancaster University (she got masters funding and then stayed on). “It was on the extent to which trade unions had collaborated with a neoliberal agenda, with New Labour,” she explains.
“I think there was an internalisation following the 1980s, with the huge attacks on the trade union movement, that winning was difficult. I think there had been a loss of courage.” As a result, trade unions moved to a “service model”, rather than a collective action model, she says.
“It was an assumption that people were joining not because they were committed to progressive politics and social justice, but they just wanted stuff. They wanted representing, almost like an insurance card.”
At the same time, she says, unions had begun to accept a watered-down vision for members. She joined UCU aged 25 as a lecturer, and by age 35 had been left unimpressed. “It seemed to be about just managing the decline of terms and conditions,” she frowns. “It doesn’t mean they weren’t fighting, but there was a sense of just defending what we’d got or making the decline palatable.”
“What that does,” she continues, “is create quite a passive membership, that fosters a sense of dependency that someone else should be doing things for them. For me, it should be the opposite. That is not the union I want. It’s changing to be more member-led.” It’s a heady mix of collective action via personal responsibility.
Grady with Jeremy Corbyn outside Islington College
Grady credits her Catholic grandfather with encouraging her towards university, and, once there, regularly checking when she’d be a professor. But her meteoric career was not expected by her family: “It was seen as a bit of an unusual thing, but it was also like, ‘Oh, that’s Joanne’,” she laughs.
I comment she’s a self-made woman, but am carefully corrected. “I don’t really like that idea of a self-made person, someone who’s escaped their working-class roots,” says Grady lightly, and you can see the teacher coming through.
“It completely erases the communities that working-class people are brought up in. The success for me is fundamentally embedded in the community I came out of.” She laughs again. “I genuinely credit a lot of my skillset to working in a pub.”
Her father was a miner in west Yorkshire earning a good wage, and Grady was brought up in Wakefield on a council estate she remembers as a “triumph of social housing – beautiful, with wide roads, trees, terraces, everyone had a garden”. But pit closures meant the household, with three children under four, went without a salary for a whole year. Afterwards, her parents opened a pub and some of Grady’s earliest memories are heading through the pub tap room to the flat upstairs.
Grady doesn’t attempt to ham up a childhood of hardship, as politicians occasionally will. “We could afford books, and when I wanted to go to university, we had money to help me go. I sailed through with a lot of material comforts, but for the gift of birth, it could have been different.”
Grady recalls those differences. On non-uniform day, some children couldn’t afford the pound for charity. One particular incident stands out. “There was a girl who I think was one of seven, the rest were boys. The household got nits and they all had their heads shaved, including the girl. I remember as a child being horrified that things that didn’t cost a lot of money, like shampoo, were being denied to people.”
The environment fostered a strong sense of unfairness, and also grounded Grady. “You’d meet such an array of people in the pub,” she recalls, chuckling about a millionaire regular. “It was the social living-room of the community. It’s a really grounding experience – that no one is better than you, but you’re not better than anyone else.”
Jo Grady with former Labour MP Tony Benn
Steeped in community, Grady has been intent on building community among UCU members. Last year under the union set up a “strike school”, she says, which 800 members have been through already. It’s a deliberate inversion of the service model Grady sees as so disabling.
“It’s about, if you want to win, campaign, ballot, these are the things you need to do.” The first school was in September last year, with two classes a week over six weeks, and the second school finished this week.
It’s also a pushback against the Trade Union Act 2016. Fiercely opposed by unions, it requires industrial ballots to attract a 50 per cent turnout in order for any vote to be legally valid. But the real catch, says Grady, is that ballots cannot be electronic.
“The struggle is the paper ballot. You have to let people know it’s coming, post it to them, they have to post it back,” she says. “I would argue the government did it to make it as difficult as possible to take part in action.”
Another key barrier to creating effective pressure is the lack of coverage of FE in mainstream media. Grady thinks the prison strikes – held over Covid concerns for staff, as well as the “barbaric” lack of education resources for prisoners, she says – were well covered “because they get what prisons are, even though they’re part of FE”. But there was a “silent avalanche” of Covid in colleges that failed to get proper attention.
“I don’t know why the media is intent on erasing FE from copy. I’ve been constantly pointing out colleges must be treated differently to schools. They are adult spaces, there’s a huge range of people – stop talking about them like they’re for children.”
For September, Grady says “if the government fails to offer young people vaccines before the start of term then appropriate steps need to be taken to protect students and staff”, with colleges needing to “have plans in place for remote learning in case of further Covid outbreaks”.*
I ask why UCU has argued for remote teaching when schoolteachers were giving face-to-face lessons.
I don’t know why the media is intent on erasing FE from copy
“The argument for schools was more about the mental wellbeing and educational development of children, and the fact parents would have to stay at home,” she replies. “The complexities and concerns were not transferrable to the HE and FE sector.” Given the mental health crisis engulfing FE and university students, it seems odd to assume these issues were not massive for these students too. Many college staff I speak to say their students can’t take any more time online.
But Grady is fighting for her members – or rather, helping them fight for themselves. She says she ran as general secretary in large part because as a lecturer she was burning out, and was either going to “change the sector or walk away”. And she’s not finished yet.
“There would be nothing stopping me running again if I felt the job wasn’t done, and there would be nothing stopping me going back to teaching. Time will tell.”
As Dolly says, she’s holding out for When Life is Good Again.
*This article was updated on 6 July 2021 to make clear Grady is calling for young people to be vaccinated before the start of term
The training providers and colleges chosen to deliver the remaining national skills bootcamp programmes have finally been named.
FE Week can today reveal that 24 organisations have won funding in the government’s £18 million tender.
Among them are 13 independent providers, six colleges, four mayoral combined authorities or local enterprise partnerships, and one university.
FE Week analysis shows that ten of the providers appear out of scope of Ofsted inspections, while four have never had a full inspection. Two of the winners are rated ‘requires improvement’, six are ‘good’ and two are ‘outstanding’.
The winners announced today bid for lot 1 of the tender that totalled £36 million. Winners of lot 2 were announced in May. Contracts were supposed to start at the end of March but have suffered delays.
No reason for the delays has been forthcoming from the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
The lot 1 tender is currently in a ten-day standstill period, in case any of the unsuccessful applicants to the tender wish to challenge the results.
Lot 1 providers will be delivering 12- to 16-week digital skills courses to adults aged 19 and over across the nine geographical regions in England.
Lot 2 winners will be covering additional sectors such as electrotechnical, nuclear and green energy, at a local or national level.
The ESFA anticipates that at least 75 per cent of all bootcamp trainees will “move into a new job or role within six months of completing training”.
Skills bootcamps were announced by prime minister Boris Johnson in a speech at Exeter College last September. He said they were a response to the “huge number” of people who are “going to have to change jobs – to change skills – and at the moment, if you’re over 23, the state provides virtually no free training to help you”.
This year’s Skills for Jobs white paper pledged the government to run bootcamps as “a flexible way to gain high-quality skills that are relevant to employers”.
Before this tender came two waves of pilot bootcamps launched last year with £8 million of funding in areas including Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire, the south west and Leeds.
These were inspired by programmes run in Greater Manchester, and the West Midlands Combined Authority’s ‘Beat the Bot’ scheme.
Lot 1 tender winners
BCTG
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority
