Government is taking more control but the Skills Bill will only be a success if young people are kept at the heart of it, writes Angela Donkin
The new Skills Bill has been published with a legal requirement for employers and colleges to work together to fill local skills gaps.
The DfE’s press release does a good sell – it cites a skills shortage and research illustrating that 26 year olds with level 4 or 5 technical qualifications can earn more than those with a degree.
Nevertheless, this is an interesting development. It has long been my view that too much emphasis is placed on the A-Level, degree route.
Indeed, I walk the walk. One of my children has been studying a range of BTECs and GCSEs since she was 14 in a university technical college.
That choice was made precisely because the curriculum is linked with the needs of the creative industries in which she is interested in working.
This Bill should make it easier for other young people like my daughter to take that pragmatic step where it suits them.
However, as with any piece of legislation, the devil is in the detail. Let’s look at carrots and sticks.
The incentives include an £83 million fund to build facilities in areas where there are shortages of places given the demographics. There’s also a flexible grant to allow people to afford to be trained.
This makes sense – we need the buildings, and the demand for the courses.
There appear to be more incentives for level 3 or higher qualifications, so we must ensure the Bill does not hinder the availability of alternative level 2 routes where needed.
How will this be achieved?
Firstly, a power to sanction FE colleges for not delivering a local skills plan and, secondly, a power to intervene when colleges are failing to deliver good outcomes for the communities they serve.
These are interesting new powers as they point to a quite radical loss of autonomy for FE colleges.
While the importance of training young people with necessary skills is obvious, it’s vital that young people are at the heart of this, and that they have choice.
For this bill to tackle issues such as social mobility it still requires one vital legal requirement.
While colleges will have sanctions for not delivering, what about employers?
And if sanctions aren’t possible or realistic, what about meaningful and relevant incentives?
There is nothing in the bill regarding sanctioning employers should they fail to offer purposeful opportunities for young people.
As it stands, in local areas with many low paid workers, we could get to a position where we are sanctioning colleges for failing to train young adults to join the 4 million who are in work but also in poverty.
No one wants that to happen.
We know that opportunities for young adults are not evenly distributed across the country
So that takes us to the issues of local jobs. We know that opportunities for young adults are not evenly distributed across the country.
This means that in areas with poor prospects, we first need to improve the quality of work available.
Second, we must ensure there is a wider range of courses at different levels to accommodate everyone’s different career ambitions. These might not be linked to skills needed in local areas where there are poor prospects.
Third, we must ensure students can afford to travel further away for opportunities to study or work if needed.
I’m hoping that this is a really important step change in skills education. However, we must ensure that young people are kept at the heart of this and that colleges and employers work together for that reason.
We know there are issues around existing apprenticeships, particularly at level 3 and above, currently favouring large employers with subsidised higher level training courses.
Meanwhile lower level apprenticeships have reduced significantly in number. This has had a disproportionate impact on young adults from more disadvantaged areas and on small employers.
So we must ensure we look carefully at the detail and avoid stumbling into a situation where we have inadvertently exacerbated inequity.
WorldSkills UK is signing up to a host of partnerships with overseas counterparts which will mean greater sharing of skills expertise and more pressure testing for our competitors.
Today will see the UK formally sign its first partnership with Chinese Taipei, which will lead to representatives from Taipei speaking at the WorldSkills UK International Skills Summits, the latest of which was held this week, as well as other events.
There will also be more opportunities for pressure testing the UK’s competitors; such as when Isaac George represented the UK against 23 competitors from 15 other nations at an IT test this month.
The UK’s experts, who train our competitors, will also receive professional development as a result of the international partnership with Chinese Taipei which will feed into the WorldSkills UK Centres of Excellence programme.
WorldSkills UK chief executive Neil Bentley-Gockmann said the new partnerships “harness our global network and sharing international best practice, and will enable us to build on our work to boost standards in higher technical education, supporting young people to develop the high-quality skills needed by employers and investors in key sectors”.
WorldSkills UK is set to sign more partnerships in the coming weeks with countries including South Korea, Japan, Russia, India and France.
It is expected a total of 11 partnerships with WorldSkills members will be agreed by the end of the year.
WorldSkills Chinese Taipei’s official delegate Chen-Yang Shih called the partnership a “win-win situation,” adding: “The agreement symbolizes a great step towards closer collaboration and stronger partnership.
“It provides a fantastic opportunity to work closely to mainstream innovation and excellence in skills development to help the youth build and strengthen their capacity and explore their potential.”
WorldSkills UK says the partnerships will have a “key role” in shaping the work of its new, independent Skills Taskforce for Global Britain, announced earlier this week.
John Cridland
Chaired by former Confederation of British Industry director-general John Cridland, and supported by accountancy firm EY, the taskforce will put together a ‘Roadmap to 2030’ to drive the use of skills in “levelling up” and attracting investment to the UK economy.
It will be answering questions such as how our skills compare with competitor countries, what are international investors looking for in terms of skills in the UK, and are all parts of the UK able to attract inward investment.
In the absence of international skills competitions, owing to the pandemic, WorldSkills UK has launched the pressure tests with other nations – several of which have ran already – and its International Skills Summits.
This week’s summit featured a keynote speech by Labour’s shadow education secretary Kate Green, while the previous one in November heard from Commons Education Select Committee chair Robert Halfon and former skills minister Anne Milton.
The UK will next compete in person at WorldSkills Shanghai next year.
Pictured: Neil Bentley-Gockmann and Chen-Yang Shih signing the partnership documents.
A cross-party group of MPs has called on the education secretary to reverse his adult education budget clawback plans to give colleges “financial security” amid the pandemic.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on FE has also urged ministers to give students leaving college a fully funded extra year of study and introduce a new fund to support disadvantaged 16 to 19-year-olds to help make up for lost learning.
The members state that these shorter-term decisions are crucial to support the government’s overarching goals on skills reform as outlined in the Skills Bill this week.
Led by chair and Conservative MP Peter Aldous, the group has penned a letter to education secretary Gavin Williamson with the demands and urging him to announce his Covid catch-up plan.
The MPs’ letter states that colleges are currently facing “a number of challenges” in delivering the catch-up support needed, which is “in no small part due to the fact that college finances have been hit hard as a consequence of the significant disruption caused by the pandemic, and compounded by the recent decision by the EFSA to clawback adult skills funding from colleges”.
Announced in March and forced by the Treasury, the clawback decision means that any college that delivers less than 90 per cent of their national adult education allocation must repay the difference between that threshold and their actual delivery.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency has also ruled out a business case process whereby colleges could put forward reasons as to why they should cling on to the money if they did not reach the threshold.
Research by the Association of Colleges suggests that this decision will be in effect nearly a £60 million cut to adult funding, announced eight months into the academic year it applies to, giving colleges little time to reduce costs.
The APPG is calling on Williamson to revise the approach for the ESFA to take a business case approach.
Last month, colleges called on the prime minister to intervene in the “devastating” clawback plans, warning that they risk courses being scrapped and redundancies.
To go with this, the APPG has said a new “simple, flexible” fund should be introduced to give students a free extra year of college. The fund would allow colleges to “design programmes lasting between six months to one year to meet needs and outcomes, with a bursary to support some of the most disadvantaged learners to participate”.
A school and college leavers scheme was introduced last year by government, which gives 18 and 19 year olds who are struggling to find work due to Covid-19 the opportunity to study “targeted” level 2 and 3 courses for a third year free of charge. The fund was only available for the 2020/21 academic year.
Lastly, the APPG wants Williamson to provide colleges with “targeted support for the most disadvantaged learners through a 16 to 19 student premium”, just like the pupil premium in schools.
“We ask that the student premium be paid to 16-, 17-and 18-year-olds to reflect the government’s commitment to supporting the needs of young people, the skills agenda, and the wider governments social mobility goals.”
This student premium would cost around £100 million using the secondary school eligibility criteria and funding level, the group added.
The letter is undersigned by Peter Aldous MP other members of the group including Lord Blunkett, Baroness Garden of Frognal, Stephen Farry MP, and Emma Hardy MP.
The first draft of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill has officially been laid before parliament.
It outlines the legislation behind the government’s planned reforms for FE, including local skills improvements plans, strengthened intervention powers for the education secretary, and a flexible lifelong loans system.
There are also new regulations for independent training providers, FE teacher training, and an expanded role for the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education.
FE Week has the pulled out the key things you need to know.
‘Duty’ to have ‘regard’ for local skills improvement plans
A statutory underpinning has been placed on local skills improvement plans, introducing a power for the Secretary of State for Education to designate employer representative bodies to lead the development of the plans.
A “duty” has been placed on all colleges and training providers to co-operate in the development of and then “have regard” to the plans.
There will also be a duty introduced for all FE providers to review how well the education or training they provider meets local needs, and assess what action the institution might take to ensure it is best placed to meet local needs.
Each college and provider will be required to publish their review on their website.
New powers to force mergers
Government plans to extend the statutory intervention powers currently applicable to colleges under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992.
This measure will enable the Secretary of State for Education to intervene where there has been a failure to “meet local needs”, and to direct structural change such as mergers in order to secure improvement.
It is not clear at this stage how the government will determine when a college is not meeting local needs.
New list of private providers which can restrict subcontracting
A new list of independent training providers will be launched to “indicate which providers have met conditions that are considered to prevent or mitigate risks associated with the disorderly exit of a provider”.
It will be separate from the register of apprenticeship training providers and require ITPs to register.
Any provider not on the list will not be granted funding agreements or be allowed to subcontract with another provider who is on the list.
Conditions to get on the list may relate to whether a provider has a student support plan; insurance cover; willingness to give access to information about the owners; and those relating to the relevant provider taking action specified in directions given by the Secretary of State.
The government said there were 64 unplanned provider exits in the academic year 2019/20, and there are delays in the current system finding a new provider which affects learner experiences.
This legislation is hoped to address gaps in these requirements.
Additional functions for IfATE
A new job is being given to the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to define and approve new categories of technical qualifications that relate to employer-led standards and occupations in different ways.
The quango will be required to cooperate with Ofqual to create a “single approval gateway” for technical qualifications.
The institute’s new powers will allow it to charge a fee as part of the qualification approval process and introduce a moratorium on the approval of further qualifications where there is evidence of proliferation.
It will also have a requirement to review approved qualifications, withdrawing their approval where they are no longer performing as expected.
Introduce a ‘lifelong loan entitlement’
The government plans to introduce a new loans system that allows people to study more flexibly and space out their studies across their lifetime.
Named the “lifelong loan entitlement”, learners will be given four years’ worth of loan funding and be able to transfer credits between FE and HE providers. The goal is to encourage more modular provision and part-time study.
A full consulation on this new entitlement is expected to run this year.
Regulations to improve FE teacher training
The government describes the quality of initial teacher training (ITT) as an essential ingredient in the FE sector.
An “enabling clause” to bring about required changes and improvements to the current system if they cannot be achieved through non-legislative means has been handed to the education secretary in the Bill.
Regulations may include making provision for accrediting an institution as a provider of specified ITT of FE courses; accrediting specified courses; prohibiting the provision of specified ITT FE courses by an institution.
It lists off 12 measures included in the Bill, which are predicted to cost around £112 million over the next decade.
In terms of intervention, the impact assessment explains that the education secretary can currently issue a direction to a college’s governing body and remove or appoint members of the governing body in certain circumstances.
But those powers “cannot be exercised in circumstances where there has been a failure to meet local needs, and cannot be used to direct structural change including mergers”.
Government proposes to “extend the existing intervention powers, enabling the Secretary of State to: exercise their statutory intervention powers in circumstances where there has been a failure by a college to adequately meet local needs; and direct structural changes (such as mergers) where use of the powers has been triggered under any of the thresholds in the legislation”.
The legislation will also “exempt any structural changes directed by the Secretary of State from the statutory merger control regime provided for in the Enterprise Act 2002”.
The impact assessment also reveals plans for a new “list of post-16 education or training providers who meet certain conditions”, as well as “the power for the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to charge fees to awarding organisations for qualification approval”.
And for the insolvency regime, the Bill says it will give “power for the Secretary of State to amend legislation to expressly provide for Company Voluntary Arrangements to be available in education administration”.
The breakdown of the £112 million cost is as follows: “Cost of producing local skills improvement plans to employer-representative bodies (£25 million), FE providers (£11 million), and local stakeholders (£1 million). Cost to FE providers of having due regard to local skills improvement plans (£0.5 million).
“Statutory FE colleges to comply with duty to review provision in line with local needs (£5 million). Cost to employers of familiarising with new qualifications (£17 million). Awarding Organisations of new Institute qualification approval fee (£5 million) and additional qualification development to meet approval criteria (£46 million). Cost to employers of familiarisation with a new student finance system and the processing of new loans under the lifelong loan entitlement (£5 million).”
List of Skills Bill measures in the report’s own words:
The wider set of powers in the Bill and their relevant measure are as follows:
The Lifelong Loan Entitlement: Modifying existing regulation-making powers in primary legislation to make specific provision for student finance in respect of modules of courses.
Statutory Further Education intervention: Powers for the Secretary of State to intervene in the statutory FE sector in circumstances where there is failure to meet local needs, and for the Secretary of State to direct structural change (such as mergers) where use of statutory powers has been triggered.
Technical Education qualification regulation: The power for the Institute to charge fees to Awarding Organisations (AOs) for qualification approval is an enabling power for regulations to be made by the Secretary of State.
Insolvency regime: The power for the Secretary of State to amend legislation to expressly provide for Company Voluntary Arrangements (CVAs) to be available in education administration.
Teacher training quality: The enabling clause will allow the Secretary of State to make secondary legislation to regulate initial teacher training courses in the FE sector as deemed necessary.
List of post-16 education or training providers: The power for Secretary of State to make regulations to set up a list of providers who meet certain conditions.
However, there are some changes that will be directly introduced by the passing of the Bill. These include the following parts of the listed measures:
Local skills improvement plans: The duty on providers to co-operate with ERBs, and the duty placed on providers to have due regard to local skills improvement plans when making decisions about the provision of post-16 technical education and training.
The duty placed on colleges and designated institutions to keep provision under review and consider what actions they might take to align provision with local needs.
Measure improving the FE insolvency regime brings minimal direct change to the process of education administration, cementing existing policy on transfer schemes into legislation for those providers which enter education administration.
The Institute and new categories of technical qualification: The Institute will be given the power to define new qualification categories, approve qualifications in these categories, review the efficacy of approved qualifications and where appropriate withdraw their approval.
Institute and Ofqual: This measure will require these two bodies to cooperate with one another when exercising their functions with respect to technical qualifications and will create a single approval gateway for technical qualifications.
OfS quality assessments: The clarification of the OfS’s methods of assessing quality as part of its regulation of higher education providers in England.
A team of education and business leaders have been assembled to drive the use of skills in “levelling up” and attracting investment to the UK economy.
The Skills Taskforce for Global Britain, commissioned and supported by but independent of WorldSkills UK and accountancy firm EY, is being launched at the former organisation’s virtual International Skills Summit today.
Chaired by former Confederation of British Industry director general John Cridland, the 11-strong taskforce will also include EY’s lead partner for learning and skills in the UK Josie Cluer, DfE non-executive director Ruby MacGregor-Smith, and skills sector leader Ann Limb. WorldSkills UK chief executive Neil Bentley-Gockmann will oversee the committee. (The full list of members is below.)
Taskforce will highlight ‘crucial role’ of high-quality skills
At the summit, hosted by Dudley College of Technology and sponsored by NCFE, Bentley-Gockmann is expected to say the taskforce will “highlight the crucial role of high-quality skills for employers in internationally traded sectors to attract inward investment to all parts of the UK – and help level up our economy.
Neil Bentley-Gockmann
“Bolstering our ability to attract international investment will bring huge benefits in terms of jobs, technology and innovation – not just in big multi-national firms, but in clusters of smaller firms and supply chains across the towns, cities, regions and nations.”
The taskforce will be preparing a ‘Roadmap to 2030’ which will set out how, by the end of this decade, the skills of the UK’s young people will be recognised as attracting investment in the UK.
Questions the roadmap will seek to answer include how our skills compares with competitor countries, what are international investors looking for in terms of skills in the UK, and are all parts of the UK able to attract inward investment.
Cridland said the taskforce “has much work to do,” as: “With global competition for inward investment getting fiercer every year, the UK must be able to add world-class skills to its international calling card.”
The taskforce will build on the work of the WorldSkills UK Centre of Excellence, a three-year pilot project using WorldSkills UK skills coaches to train up teaching staff. Applications for the centre’s second wave opened on Monday.
What’s happening at the International Skills Summit?
Today’s summit will also feature speeches by shadow education secretary Kate Green, director of The Social Market Foundation James Kirkup, and Dudley College’s principal Neil Thomas.
Baroness Ruby MacGregor-Smith CBE (President British Chambers of Commerce, non-exec Board Member Department of Education)
Neil Rami (Chief Executive West Midlands Growth Company)
Chris Sutton (Welsh Government’s Ministerial Advisory Board for the Economy, former Chair CBI Wales)
Linda Urquhart OBE (Non-executive Director Coutts and Edinburgh Airport)
Stephen Burgin (Board Director, Offshore Wind Growth Partnership, Chair of Governors, South Staffordshire College, Former Vice President GE Power Europe, Pro Chancellor Staffordshire University)
Andrew Hodgson OBE (Former Chair of North East Local Enterprise Partnership, Airbus and BAE Systems)
Dr Ann Limb CBE (Independent Business Chair of the UK Innovation Corridor
Marie-Therese McGivern (Strategic Investment Board Northern Ireland, Skills Advisory Board Belfast Region City Deal, Chair Belfast Maritime Board)
Dr Adam Marshall (Adviser, CMI and Flint Global, former DG British Chambers of Commerce)
Fears that university-goers will choose to do apprenticeships instead and “squeeze out” those from disadvantaged backgrounds are still rife in Whitehall, the skills minister has said.
Gillian Keegan told the House of Commons education select committee this displacement is a particular worry when it comes to degree apprenticeships.
Her concern comes three years after her predecessor Anne Milton admitted that fears of a “middle-class grab” on apprenticeships are “valid” following a steep rise in starts at degree levels while the lower levels dropped off.
After being asked how she plans to boost degree apprenticeships, Keegan told MPs today: “There is a growth in degree apprenticeships, but the very important point is how we make them more accessible to more disadvantaged groups.
“What we are fearful of is that a lot of people will suddenly see that degree apprenticeships are a very good option and people who would have gone to university anyway would just choose that route and squeeze out people like me, sat in a comprehensive school at 16, with nowhere to go thinking ‘how do I get on in life?’.”
Degree apprenticeships were first launched in September 2015 and have soared in popularity.
FE Week analysis of official Department for Education data shows starts at level 4 and above have increased threefold and gone from 4 per cent to 26 per cent of all starts since then.
At the same time level 2 has shrunk from accounting for 60 per cent of all starts in 2014/15 to just 31 per cent in 2019/20.
‘You often get unintended consequences when government intervenes’
Education select committee chair Robert Halfon pressed Keegan on what her department could do to increase the take-up of degree apprenticeships even further, but the skills minister warned of “unintended consequences” that could come with any tinkering.
“Many employers are switching from graduate programmes to degree apprenticeships because they have seen they get better results. You quite often get unintended consequences when the government intervenes in various bits of this system,” Keegan said.
“This is about getting a system that transforms technical education in this country, that makes sure it is accessible to everybody no matter where they are in the country, no matter their background, no matter their ethnicity and whatever their journey is.”
The three key measures being introduced in today’s Bill will involve: local skills improvement plans; greater intervention powers for the education secretary; and a new lifelong loan entitlement.
FE Week was first to reveal government plans to take greater control over colleges after the white paper was announced in early 2020. But the extent of these powers has so far remained unknown.
Ahead of today’s Bill, the Department for Education said the new powers will enable the education secretary to “intervene when colleges are failing to deliver good outcomes for the communities they serve, and to direct structural change where needed to ensure colleges improve”.
In a blog leading up to the Bill, Association of Colleges deputy chief executive Julian Gravatt said he will be reading these clauses “with interest” but expects there “may be a new duty on colleges to obey directions from the education secretary or a power to ask the chair of governors to resign”.
But he did question what other intervention mechanisms could be introduced considering it is only four years since parliament approved the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 and gave DfE powers to trigger a college insolvency.
Gravatt said he has also advised officials to “be careful about trampling over employment law” when it comes to action against principals of colleges in trouble.
Elsewhere, the Bill will put employer ownership over new local skills improvement plans on a statutory footing.
The DfE said they will make it a “legal requirement that employers and colleges collaborate to develop skills plans so that the training on offer meets the need of local areas, and so people no longer have to leave their home-towns to find great jobs”.
And the lifelong loan entitlement, which is still yet to be consulted on, will “transform the current student loans system” by giving “every adult access to a flexible loan for higher-level education and training at university or college, useable at any point in their lives”.
‘The Bill marks a significant milestone in our journey to transform the skills’
Education secretary Gavin Williamson said: “Talent is everywhere in our country and the Skills and post-16 Education Bill marks a significant milestone in our journey to transform the skills, training and post-16 education landscape and level up opportunities across the country.
“This legislation will be vital so we can make sure everyone can gain the skills they need to get a great job locally and businesses have access to the qualified employees they need to thrive.”
The Bill is expected to be available from around 12.30pm today.
Debates will be scheduled for the Bill in the Houses of Commons and Lords in the coming months which could prompt amendments.
The Bill is not expected to gain Royal Assent for another six months.
As Northern College fights for survival, FE Week asks – is the government overlooking a big opportunity to ‘level up’?
Lee Hughes was 29 years old when he signed up to Northern College, one of just a few adult residential providers in the country, hidden away in expansive grounds in Barnsley. “It’s a bit of a story,” he begins. “It were quite rough at my school and I thought, if I just play the fool, I’ll get by, which I did. But I left school with no qualifications whatsoever.”
Aged 16, Hughes was living alone. “I got a job in a warehouse, and that was it, I was just drifting. I got into drugs. One of my hang-ups was that I’d not tried my best – that I’d let an opportunity slip through my fingers.” He’d done electrical engineering for a year at the nearby general further education institution, Barnsley College, but left. “I was just doing it because everyone else was.”
He then got a job in a call centre, but he “kept getting disciplinaries for reading books, history books. I was on my final warning at work, and my manager said, ‘You’re wasted in this work. Go and do something with yourself.’ It was a really key moment in my life.”
Hughes turned up at Barnsley College once again. “But as soon as I walked in the door, it was just kids. Some of them weren’t much older than my son.” He’d also been recently made homeless and so the receptionist, hearing his circumstances, told him about Northern College. Like 95 per cent of learners there, Hughes qualified for a means-tested free place.
Lee Hughes, former Northern College student
The Ofsted grade 1 college offers two- or three-day short courses, an adult educator training route, maths and English GCSEs and functional and digital skills courses.
It also offers two main access routes into higher education: a humanities and social sciences route, and a computing route. A criminal investigations route, leading into police work, is launching this year and a healthcare access route is in development.
Hughes took the humanities route.
“I did well, really, really well, I were absolutely flying,” he smiles.
Hughes became the student union president at the college, got a distinction in his course, and was accepted on to a history BA at Sheffield Hallam University.
He went on to a research masters, and is now applying to PhD positions, aged 36. “If I hadn’t had the opportunity to move into Northern College, I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you right now.”
Adult education is already under huge pressure due to government cuts. Funding has nearly halved since 2009 and adult education participation rates have fallen by 49 per cent since 2004. An estimated £1.3 billion will be needed to reverse the cuts of the past decade.
Hidden within this straining sector is adult education residential provision, which has relatively tiny numbers compared to higher education residential provision. Northern College has about 4,000 enrolments each year, of which about 70 learners are on access to HE routes, and 35 of those are on residential placements. Meanwhile, about 80 per cent of learners on short courses are residential. There are 75 bedrooms on site.
There used to be more such provision, explains Alan Tuckett, who formerly led the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education and is now emeritus professor of education at Wolverhampton University.
After the Second World War, residential education was encouraged and both long- and short-term-stay colleges sprang up. By the 1960s the long-term adult education residential providers included Fircroft College in Birmingham, Ruskin College in Oxford and Hillcroft College in London.
In 1973 a government inquiry into adult education recommended “the establishment of one further college in the northern half of England”, and Northern College opened in 1978 on the site of an old teacher training college. All four were intended for vulnerable and working-class adults and have historically close links to community groups and trade unions.
Together, the four are known as the residential Institutes of Adult Learning.
When incorporation arrived in 1992, they were registered as “specialist designated institutions”, because they differed from other FE colleges in being independent charities, regulated by their own trust deeds, while publicly funded.
All four institutions retain that category on government websites. But experts warn only two truly remain in their original form.
“Now there’s really only two left, Northern College and Fircroft College, that still have their own distinct centres,” says Tuckett. “The failure to distinguish the needs of these institutions has crippled them. The argument is, they’d be better off amalgamated with a general FE college. No – we will lose what is special about their offer.”
Now the two providers are locked into a legal battle with the Department for Education. Last year the DfE told the four “specialist designated institutions” it was carrying out a review of their residential funding.
A bedroom at Northern College
Since then, Northern College has been told it made “errors” worth £1.2 million over the past two years by applying an agreed uplift for residential funding to each course rather than to each learner. Like other adult education providers, Northern College is also facing a clawback on the adult education budget after under-recruiting because of the pandemic.
But changes to the uplift is the more serious worry.
Worth 4.7 times the base funding rate, the uplift was set in the late 1990s by education secretary David Blunkett, says Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive at the Association of Colleges. It does not apply outside of the four specialist designated institutions, such as for adult residencies in land-based or high-needs specialist colleges, which are funded according to different calculations.
Yultan Mellor, chief executive, Northern College
The latest accounts for Fircroft College show a similar story. They reveal the ESFA is seeking between £309,000-£350,000 back from the uplift funding, but “no evidence has been provided that the ESFA’s position is legally valid”, say the accounts.
Fircroft College, like Northern College, has engaged lawyers.
The situation is a “triple whammy”, says Sue Pember, chief executive of adult education membership body HOLEX.
“Nobody has properly understood the learner operating model for these institutions and how to fund them. They are really adult institutions, and they should have been considered alongside higher education, with the residential element treated in the same way,” she says.
The 4.7 uplift is “not as much as it sounds”, since it “recognises the cost of upkeep of an old building and the wraparound support these learners need, like childcare and extra tuition for English and maths”.
“Key to what we do is the residential work, for those adults who haven’t got homes, or have really chaotic home lives,” says Yultan Mellor, chief executive at Northern College. “We can take them out of that life. We call it an immersive learning experience.”
Bryn Middleton and Abe Crabb on site at Northern College
The college is open 48 weeks of the year, 24 hours a day, with the library open until 10pm, and counselling and pastoral services on site.
“If the uplift disappeared, we couldn’t offer the residential provision,” continues Mellor. “What I keep trying to explain to funders is many of our learners would end up being publicly funded by the state in other ways. Actually, this is such a positive way to help them.”
The children’s centre at the college has already had to close this year.
Natalie Gorton, a former student now on a PhD at Huddersfield University, says she “could never have re-educated myself without that children’s centre”.
She adds: “There’s so many mums in Barnsley who would never be able to do it otherwise. It’s like a family in there. If they remove the residential bit, I would find that incredibly upsetting. It would be devastating for Barnsley.”
Natalie Gorton, former Northern College student
Bryn Middleton, aged 19, and Abraham Crabb, aged 21, are equally emphatic. Both are on the computing access course, and have places at Aberdeen University and Manchester University.
“If I was at home, I wouldn’t have a study space,” says Crabb. “When you’re making a big change in life, you need your environment to change with you.”
Middleton adds: “I’d be quite upset if the residential part goes. If I didn’t have this option, I’d still be working in a café. I’d never had my independence before, never looked after myself, so I was worried about going to university. This way I’ve prepared myself.”
There is clearly a case for a wide-ranging, constructive review with open consultation on residential adult education, say Gravatt, Tuckett and Pember. The different rates for residential placements in different kinds of colleges could be considered and fitted into an ambitious future plan knitting together bootcamps, Institutes of Technology and the level 3 skills drive.
A DfE spokesperson gives little away. “The secretary of state requested a review of adult residential funding. Should there be any changes, these will not take effect until August 2022.”
“It is reasonable and sensible for DfE to periodically review all parts of FE funding […] but I’m not sure these have been clearly set out,” warns Gravatt.
Gorton puts it more bluntly. “You know when Boris talks about levelling up? This is how to do it.”
Spoken from the heart of its new “red wall” region, the government may wish to think again – and possibly ponder an adult education residential provider for every region.
