FE staff should get Covid vaccine priority, say college leaders

FE staff should be moved up the priority list for Covid-19 vaccines so that providers can reopen to all students safely, college principals have said.

Ministers have been under pressure to vaccinate teachers, with a petition being debated in parliament this evening and education secretary Gavin Williamson saying he “hopes” those working in education get priority.

Earlier today the government published its “vaccine delivery plan”, which explains how doses will be provided to those most at risk before deciding on how “phase 2” will be delivered.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has asked the Department of Health and Social Care to consider occupational vaccination in the next phase of vaccine rollout, in collaboration with other government departments including the Department for Education.

While most of the talk has been about school staff being given priority in phase 2, Ali Hadawi, principal of Central Bedfordshire College, said FE “needs to be part of” the discussion.

“I am not saying our staff should be prioritised above NHS staff or the police, but we can’t just be run-of-the-mill depending on our age,” he told FE Week.

“We have got a sector that needs to be fully operational. College staff need to be part of this priority so that we have a chance to reopen them safely.”

He added that it would be a “massive insult” if school but not FE staff were given vaccine priority.

“We have had examples of where we have had to send a whole site home after three members of staff tested positive,” Hadawi continued.

“If we can get over the issue of vaccination where people feel confident that they could come in because they have had the vaccine, then we can facilitate a much closer to normal college operation than we are now.”

Mike Hopkins, principal of South and City College, echoed Hadawi’s view.

“Like schools, college staff need to be a priority for vaccination to ensure that they can maintain staffing and remain open,” he said.

“Vaccination will remove the serious difficulties that there are currently with contact, infection, and requirements for self-isolation, all of which are shared with schools.”

Yiannis Koursis, principal of Barnsley College, said getting students physically back in class is “hugely important” and treating staff as a priority group would “speed up the process”, while NCG chief executive Liz Bromley added it is “only fair that FE is treated with parity and added to the priority vaccine list alongside schools”.

Independent training providers with onsite staff are also calling for their workforce to be given vaccine priority.

Sue Pittock, chief executive of Remit Trianing, which operates two automotive academies for apprentices in Derby, told FE Week: “The tutors in our academies are key workers and need vaccine and testing priority so that we can reopen our academies safely.

“This should not just be about teachers in schools, but about protecting teaching colleagues and those they teach in any place of learning where teaching takes place face to face.”

Last Wednesday, health secretary Matthew Hancock said teachers had a “very strong case” for priority after clinically vulnerable groups.

As reported by FE Week’s sister title FE Week, this could mean that teachers who did not fall under existing priority categories could be moved up the queue above the last five groups set out by the JCVI for the first phase (see table below).

Under the priority groups for the first phase of vaccine rollout, those over 50 years of age, and all those 16 years of age and over in a risk group, would be eligible for vaccination.

The government plans to deliver “at least” two million vaccinations per week with over 2,700 vaccine sites across the UK.

Priority Risk group

    1. Residents in a care home for older adults and staff working in care homes for older adults

    2. All those 80 years of age and over and frontline health and social care workers

    3. All those 75 years of age and over

    4. All those 70 years of age and over and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals  (not including pregnant women and those under 16 years of age)

    5. All those 65 years of age and over

    6. Adults aged 16 to 65 years in an at-risk group (see below)

    7. All those 60 years of age and over

    8. All those 55 years of age and over

    9. All those 50 years of age and over

    10. Rest of the population (to be determined)

Employers should pay for laptops so apprentices can be remote educated, says Keegan

Employers should pay for apprentices’ digital devices to continue training remotely, Gillian Keegan said today as she confirmed learners at independent providers will not be offered them for free by government.

Speaking on an FE Week webcast this afternoon, the skills minister claimed that independent providers would not be included in government initiatives to hand out devices to 16 to 19-year-olds during lockdown as most of their learners will be employed and not taking full-time courses.

She said it was ultimately up to employers to give their apprentices the devices.

“First of all, apprentices are employees, so their employers are responsible for their technology,” the minister said.

“I was an apprentice myself, and if I was an apprentice today, I’m sure I would be expecting to get that support from my employer. It seems to me that’s where you would get your technology from, you know.

“It isn’t the government and the state’s job, obviously, to give everybody across the country, a PC. I mean it just isn’t.”

This is despite the fact the Department for Education, in December, announced their programme to deliver free digital devices to education providers to order would be expanded to 16 to 19-year-olds studying at both schools and colleges.

Keegan continued: “That can be looked at and kept under review but to be honest, many of the people in FE colleges are doing full time courses and a lot of people that are in independent training providers will quite often be employed and quite often their employer will be responsible for making sure that they’ve got the right equipment to be able to work from home to study from home.

“But if there are any specific instances where that’s not the case, then you know we always keep things under review, but I haven’t heard, specifically about that issue, within the sector.

After Keegan made her remarks, FE data expert Steve Hewitt highlighted how in 2020-21, there will be 36,213, mainly full time, 16 to 19-year-olds placed with an independent training provider.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers managing director Jane Hickie said they recognised government had to prioritise, but said to “simply pass the buck to the employer is not the answer.

Jane Hickie

“In a normal year, three quarters of a million apprentices are on a programme spread across all parts of the country, half of them work for small, now many struggling, businesses and many of them come from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

“How the minister expects firms to be driving down to their local PC World to bulk buy laptops is quite beyond our understanding. Where is the levelling up agenda in all this?”

The webcast was run in partnership with Pearson, was hosted by TV presenter Steph McGovern, and also featured Pearson’s senior vice president for BTEC and apprenticeships Cindy Rampersaud, Learning and Work Institute chief executive Stephen Evans, Barking and Dagenham College principal Yvonne Kelly, WorldSkills UK gold medallist Haydn Jakes, and BTEC adult learner Feven Zeray.

Here is a 7-point checklist to make sure the impending FE White Paper doesn’t fail

If the long-anticipated White Paper doesn’t recognise the needs of 2021, then it will fail like so many initiatives before it, write Mark Dawe and Tim Blackman

We have both spent our careers working in education and training – from primary schools to PhD researchers – and there is no doubt that the Covid crisis is the biggest shock to education we have ever seen.  

Both our organisations are also leading providers of high-quality courses that use technology to enable flexibility for learners.

Because of Covid, never has this flexibility been more important.

So with the FE White Paper due any day, we have agreed a seven-point checklist to measure its suitability for the 21st century world. 

1. A joined-up tertiary education system

We are in an age of converging technologies, rapid change and increasingly hybrid job roles. 

It is an age when everyone needs to keep learning but often on a climbing frame rather than a ladder, mixing knowledge, skills and levels. 

The old world of separate further and higher education sectors is for the last century, not this one. 

We need to create a whole system of seamless tertiary education that supports lifelong learning, with common qualification frameworks, standards and funding.

2. Empower the learner

We are more and more used to shopping online and using data to inform our purchasing decisions. 

Now is the opportunity to put the system in the hands of the informed learner, whether choosing an apprenticeship, a degree, a technical qualification or short courses. 

Selection should be fair and transparent, and for many courses we need far less selection. Many entry requirements are narrow, traditional and ignore the capability of students especially when not demonstrated by formal qualifications. 

A lifelong funding or credit entitlement would revolutionise the funding and support system, introducing flexible fee and maintenance support over a working lifetime. 

Public policy priorities such as digital literacy should be designed into the system using funding conditions and incentives.

3. Unbundle qualifications

Full qualifications are important when necessary for occupational competency or to demonstrate academic achievement, but how someone gets there and the flexibility of options should not be rigid and time-bound. 

That is not how society and the economy work any more. 

Instead, learners should be able to build a collection of units over time, each recognised in their own right but contributing towards to an overarching “fully qualified” status, in which constant change means that “fully qualified” will be seen as a moving end-point. 

Every year there will be new units, as technology changes the way roles are defined and the skills that are needed. Rather than once-and-for-all training and education, the norm should be to top-up, receive formal recognition and then progress.

4. Progression and articulation

Along with unitisation we need clear progression pathways through levels of learning, which allow learners to fluidly mix levels and skills. 

Occupational standards are helpful frameworks but cannot become straightjackets, artificially creating silos of learning that are detached from the reality of how job content changes and new types of job continually emerge. 

It must be possible to mix and match units relevant to what a learner or job needs. 

5. Hard skills

We are in the human age, when human skills – what cannot be done by a machine – are more important than ever. 

It is time to rename soft skills as hard skills: these are the ability to work in a diverse team, to communicate empathetically, to solve complex problems and above all learnability, which is the ability to find out, evaluate, innovate and improve. 

Time and again these skills are sacrificed in the pursuit of exhaustive definitions of industry-specific technical content packaged in a qualification that quickly dates. 

We’ve got this the wrong way around: human skills should be the core units of every programme at every level. They are what make people employable and mobile in a dynamic labour market.

6. Diversity as a resource

Everyone is different and a team full of difference is a highly functioning team. Diversity prevents narrow framing of problems, puts more possible solutions on the table, and avoids groupthink. 

Education can support diversity by enabling learners to study different topics that create opportunities for innovation and learn how to work with other specialisms towards a common goal. 

7. Online and upwards

Mainstream education and training are no longer just about buildings, classrooms, lecture theatres or workshops. 

Any policy that favours these over digital technology risks making the publicly-funded system a dinosaur in a digital world. 

Of course, there are challenges such as digital poverty to overcome, and blended approaches will always be in the mix.We are not advocating every piece of learning going fully online. But the OU is already using augmented and virtual reality to make practical learning “real” and enabling its students to undertake lab experiments operating equipment remotely. 

This transformation will be dramatic, far beyond current virtual learning environments.

 

If the White Paper can demonstrate that it sets us on this path, we welcome it wholeheartedly. 

If it does not, then it will join the failed promise of so many other education and training policy papers.

This is not about being brave or taking risks. It is about how our world is changing and how education and training need to smell the coffee. 

Tender launched for national rollout of skills ‘boot camps’

The tender for the nationwide rollout of the government’s technical skills “boot camps” has been launched, with £36 million from the National Skills Fund on offer.

The Department for Education has invited suppliers to bid for two lots, both worth £18 million: the first for digital skills boot camps in the nine geographical regions of England to “meet the skills shortage vacancy needs of local areas”, starting this April.

The second will award “a number” of contracts for boot camps in sectors such as electrotechnical, nuclear or green energy, but also for digital skills, at a local or national level, based on “evidenced demand”.

Both will last for one year, with the possibility of a one-year extension for lot one and two one-year extensions for lot two, and start this April, when the National Skills Fund is due to be rolled-out.

It comes after two waves of boot camp pilot schemes, both worth £4 million, were commissioned in areas such as the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire, and the south-west last year; featuring training for digital skills as well as industries including welding, engineering and construction.

People aged 19 and over seeking work, looking to change careers, or already in work looking to retrain are again set to benefit from the up to 16-week-long boot camps, which the tender says will “meet the needs of employers and to address the skills shortages vacancies in different regions of England,” and will include a guaranteed job interview for those seeking employment.

The DfE said it anticipates that at least 75 per cent of all trainees will “move into a new job or role within six months of completing training”.

The department is looking for suppliers with a track record of engaging with employers and delivering training which meets their needs, who can recruit trainees, can flex delivery to meet their needs, can track trainees’ destinations, manage the guaranteed job interviews, and report outcomes for evaluation purposes.

According to the tender, the DfE “strongly encourage local area bodies, employers and providers to come together in consortia” to bid.

These consortiums, which must bid as a single legal entity, should include a lead supplier such as a local authority, local enterprise partnership, or mayoral combined authority, and a guarantor to alleviate the department’s concerns about “the economic and financial standing of such single legal entity, or in relation to the technical and professional ability of the same”.

The lead supplier will have to state which employers are involved with the bid and show how they have helped design and approved the training.

Payment to providers will be on an agreed rate for each learner, and 30 per cent will be earned for a start on the boot camp, for example, if a learner completes their first, full week, or after a set number of guided learning hours.

Sixty per cent will be earned if a learner achieves the boot camp’s required standard, which will be defined by the provider at the bidding stage, including evidence of how learners will be assessed, what quality assurance is in place and whether training is externally validated.

And the final ten per cent will be earned by a learner progressing into a new job within six months, or if there is a change in role for learners who are already employed, or if self-employed learners can find new opportunities.

FE Week has previously reported the national roll-out would be worth £43 million, and as this tender is worth £36 million overall, the Department for Education has said details about the remaining £7 million will be announced “in due course”.

Potential suppliers have until 12 February to submit tenders for both lots.

We must steady the ship after the government’s half U-turn

After a week at sea like no other, the next big challenge is teacher-assessed grades, writes David Hughes

This week we’ve seen another lockdown, confusion, dismay and anxieties raised – and that’s just in education.

The prime minister’s third lockdown announcement on Monday night incorporated the surprising decision to go ahead with the January series of vocational and technical exams while cancelling the summer exams.

For colleges that meant 135,000 students sitting in exam halls at the peak of the pandemic.

Our immediate public call for those exams to be cancelled was based on a simple assessment that too many students would be nervous about sitting exams – for their health and because of the risk of transmitting the virus to their own families.

That anxiety is not conducive to good performance in any exam and we believed it should have been enough to convince government to cancel. On top of that, the challenge of finding staff to invigilate and steward the exams felt like the clincher.

The response from Department for Education was to make half a U-turn, giving the responsibility to each college and school to decide whether to cancel or not. Many cancelled immediately, others did so after low turnout on the first day of exams, while others still are going ahead.

On Wednesday, education secretary Gavin Williamson confirmed that Ofqual will consult next week on how teacher-assessed grades can be used to replace exams.

The work to pull together that consultation is burning up the midnight oil of lots of officials this week, to hit tight deadlines.

One of the big challenges now is how to take into account the disruptions in learning that students have already experienced. This differs across different institutions, areas and qualification types – but it is also impacted by digital poverty, with around 100,000 16- to 19-year olds in colleges alone lacking digital devices and broadband. And of course, it differs because some students have been ill, had to self-isolate or shield, while others have not. 

This is not easy to assess, but those who already faced the biggest barriers to success will be the most affected. The pandemic has widened and deepened the educational disadvantage gaps. How will the promised moderation account for this?

We are working hard to ensure that the consultation offers a coherent, consistent and fair approach to all qualifications for all ages, types of learning and students. The complexity of vocational and technical qualifications will make this harder than for A-levels and GCSEs which are relatively straightforward.

Half a million 16- to 18-year-old students across 239 colleges are taking vocational and technical qualifications.

Meanwhile, 155,000 16 to 18-year-olds are taking A-levels or programmes that combine vocational qualifications and A-levels.

Then there are 200,000 16-to-18-year-olds taking GCSEs in English and or maths and 130,000 taking Functional Skills.

This is in addition to one million adult learners and 250,000 apprentices.

We owe it to all these students to ensure that they know as soon as possible how their hard work over the past year or two will be recognised. Being “fair” to students requires making judgments about what knowledge and skills they have acquired, as well as their achievements in relation to national benchmarks and other students.

For those on licence to practice courses, there will have to be face-to-face assessments of competency before it is safe for students to go into the workplace. For other qualifications there will be banked assessments already.

So fairness is not about the same approach for everyone, it is a consistent approach designed for the specific circumstances – tricky to get right and even harder to communicate.

The prime minister said that by the middle of February and with “a fair wind in our sails” the progress of the vaccination programme would hopefully mean restrictions could begin to be lifted.

But we need to steady the ship now, with rapid, clear and transparent decisions based on trust in those who know students best.

Ofqual warns this summer’s grading solution is unlikely to be consistent

Ofqual’s new interim chief has warned that the solution to replacing this summer’s exams “won’t be the same for all” qualifications.

Simon Lebus, the former Cambridge Assessment group chief executive, offered a message to students to continue to engage “as fully as you can” in education on Wednesday morning ahead of the education secretary’s speech that outlined his plans for grades this summer.

Gavin Williamson announced that it was his desire for teacher-assessed grades to replace GCSE and A-level exams again in 2021, but questions remain about whether the same approach will be adopted for vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs).

Lebus, who only took over from his predecessor Dame Glenys Stacey on Friday, suggested the approaches will differ: “The way ahead is not straightforward: exams and standardised assessments are the fairest way of determining what a student knows and can do,” he said.

“We need to consider a wide range of qualifications – from A-levels and GCSEs to many different vocational and technical qualifications – and the solution won’t be the same for all.”

Centre-assessed grades were introduced for some VTQ learners last year to replace exams, while others were allowed to have their assessments adapted by, for example, using online tests, and the rest had their assessments delayed.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief policy offer Simon Ashworth has urged Ofqual not to create a two-tier grading system again.

“Instead of the government and Ofqual talking about different types of solutions for different forms of qualifications, we need a fair and consistent approach between academic and vocational pathways,” he told FE Week.

“Otherwise there’s a danger of reopening a big divide and undoing all the work to bring better parity between the two as part of the levelling up agenda.”

Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes echoed Ashworth’s view: “It is vital that the proposed way forward is consistent and fair to every student because of the worry and confusion that abounds currently, particularly following the mixed message that January exams are going ahead while this summer’s exams are cancelled.”

He added: “As well as young people, there are around 250,000 apprentices and one million adult students studying for qualifications in colleges. Decisions for all qualification types need to be made and communicated as soon as possible, so we welcome the speed at which the government has committed to work on this.

“Not only do the plans need to be fair, comprehensive, inclusive and robust; they also need to be agreed quickly, communicated clearly and be flexible enough to work in practice.”

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 338

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

Arv Kaushal, Equality, diversity and inclusion manager, Milton Keynes College

Start date: January 2021

Concurrent job: Trustee and steering committee member, BAMEed Network

Interesting fact: He is a “massive foodie,” and writes a blog on traditional Indian vegetarian recipes

Ian Pryce, Chair, UTC Silverstone

Start date: December 2020

Concurrent job: Chief executive, The Bedford College Group

Interesting fact: His first job out of university was ensuring Liverpool remained solvent, as part of his work on the city council’s finance team in the 1980s

Ian Bauckham, Interim chair, Ofqual

Start date: January 2021

Concurrent job: Chair, Oak National Academy

Interesting fact: He enjoys visiting medieval churches

Simon Lebus, Interim chief regulator, Ofqual

Start date: January 2021

Concurrent job: Visiting fellow, University of Cambridge Judge Business School

Interesting fact: He is a great enthusiast for Chinese food, the spicier the better

Tripling traineeships: £65m tender deadline ‘slightly delayed’

The outcomes for the government’s traineeships tender have been delayed, the Education and Skills Funding Agency announced today.

In a message to bidders at 3pm this afternoon, the agency said the “high volume of tenders received” has “necessitated having to inform you that notifications of award will be delayed slightly”.

The ESFA had planned to notify bidders of outcomes on 11 January, but it will now aim to publish a revised timetable next week.

FE Week has asked the agency if this means the planned contract award date of 1 February will also be delayed. We had not received a response at the time of going to press.

As FE Week revealed in November, the procurement, which is for 19 to 24 traineeships only, received 370 bids.

It is being run on an “accelerated” timetable, with a slice of £65 million up for grabs initially to be spent between February and July 31, 2021. The total pot will be split across nine regions in England – ranging from £20.8 million for London providers to just £2.6 million for the south-west.

The £65 million tender is hoped to fund around 20,000 starts in the latter half of 2020/21, while a further £315 million was made available to support continued delivery through to July 2023.

The tender is one way the government plans to triple the number of traineeships starts this year – as pledged by chancellor Rishi Sunak over the summer as part of his plan to combat youth unemployment amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Employer cash incentives of £1,000 have also been made available, as has growth funding for providers to deliver 16-to-19 traineeships.

National lockdown 3 FE guidance: What you need to know

The Department for Education has finally updated its main Covid-19 guidance document to include details of how FE leaders should handle this year’s partial college and training provider closures.

Many of the instructions on how to keep providers Covid-secure are similar to or the same as they were before, but there are some new instructions.

Here’s what we learned.

 

Students who have difficulty accessing remote education can attend onsite

Colleges and training providers should only stay open to vulnerable learners and children with at least one parent who is a critical worker during the new national lockdown.

The definition of vulnerable students has now been updated to include those who “may have difficulty engaging with remote education at home”, for example due to a “lack of devices, connectivity or quiet space to study”.

The government has removed a previous rule that students who need access to specialist equipment can still attend.

Providers must now make alternative arrangements for students studying courses that require specialist equipment or facilities.

 

Remote education expectations

The DfE does not provide set hours for how much remote education needs to be provided like in schools, but rather asks FE providers to “use your best endeavours to deliver as much of students’ planned hours as possible”.

The department “recognises for some students this may not be possible for example where a student is undertaking a course involving practical teaching and training which necessitates the use of specialist equipment and supervision or with respect to work experience and placements”.

Providers are expected to have systems in place to check, at least weekly, for “persistent non-attendance or lack of engagement with remote education and to quickly agree ways in which attendance and participation can be improved”.

They are also told to identify a “named senior leader” with “overarching responsibility for the quality and delivery of remote education”, as well as publish details of their remote education offer on their website by 18 January, as previously announced.

Providers are told to “as far as possible” provide students live online teaching in lieu of face-to-face delivery.

 

Apprentice assessment can continue face-to-face

The DfE says that “where possible”, apprenticeship training and assessment should be delivered remotely.

But where this is not possible face-to-face end-point assessment and functional skills assessments “can continue in colleges, training providers’ premises, assessment venues and workplaces, where providers and end-point assessment organisations judge it right to do so”.

The guidance also confirms that providers can continue with the BTEC and other vocational exams that are due to take place in January, where they “judge it right to do so”.

Specific guidance for delivering apprenticeships can be found here.

 

Face coverings in communal spaces

Under national lockdown, face coverings should be worn by adults and students when “moving around the premises, outside of classrooms, such as in corridors and communal areas where social distancing cannot easily be maintained”.

 

New advice for clinically vulnerable staff

According to the DfE, clinically extremely vulnerable FE staff and students are “advised that they should not attend the workplace”. These individuals will be identified “through a letter from the NHS or a specialist doctor”.

Clinically vulnerable staff can continue to attend work, but should follow sector-specific measures to “minimise the risks of transmission”.

Pregnant staff are considered clinically vulnerable, but if they cannot work from home, they and their employers should follow the government’s advice for pregnant employees.

 

Special settings should continue as normal

The DfE says that special post-16 settings should “continue to welcome and encourage students to attend full-time (or as per their usual timetable) where the student wishes to attend”.

 

Unclear if Ofsted’s planned monitoring visits will go ahead from this month

Ofsted had announced in December that monitoring visits, including to those with grade three and four ratings and new apprenticeship providers, would resume in January.

Inspectors were also planning ‘support and assurance’ visits to colleges, which would result in a report, but no grade, similar to the interim visits which took place last term.

But the DfE said today that for FE and skills providers inspection activity “remains under review and more guidance will be published in due course,” the DfE said.

However, Ofsted will “continue to have the power to inspect in response to any significant concerns, such as safeguarding”.

 

Support for remote education

The DfE reiterated that the 16 to 19 Bursary Fund provides financial support to help students access devices and connectivity support.

The department also announced in December that their ‘Get Help with Technology’ scheme will be extended to provide support with devices and connectivity for 16 to 19 year olds. Schools with sixth forms, colleges and other FE institutions will be “invited to order laptops and tablets during the spring term to further support disadvantaged learners to access remote education”.

For adults aged 19 and over “we introduced a change to the ESFA adult education budget funding rules for the 2020/21 academic year to enable you to use learner support funds to purchase IT devices and/or internet access for disadvantaged students to help them meet technology costs, where these costs are a barrier to accessing or continuing in their training,” the DfE added.