Latest news from FE Week | FE Week

The DfE must realise the arts are key to the future of engineering

Many of the skills and behaviours in creative digital qualifications are transferrable to the STEM sector, writes Ann Marie Spry

An estimated 11 million adults in the UK are now eligible to obtain a new qualification for free to help them gain in-demand skills. But it’s more urgent than ever that we address the creative digital skills gap through specifically designed digital courses.

I recently attended a webinar hosted by the Prince’s Trust that looked at the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on young people. It is quite clear that there continues to be a missed opportunity to extend the lifetime guarantee list.

My definition of young people takes us beyond the typical 24-year-old boundary and extends to individuals who are well into their 30s, with the working age increasing over time.

Both industry and the government understand that only a large-scale skills programme can safeguard jobs as we recover economically. Free qualifications for adults are an excellent way to enhance career prospects and enable people to secure rewarding careers.

Nonetheless, education always has more impact when it really engages the learner because it is something they care about and enjoy.

Meanwhile, employers cite behaviour traits and transferable skills as vital to long-term sustainable employment – not a specific qualification.

‘Many skills are the same as in computing qualifications’

With under-25s accounting for three in five jobs lost, youth unemployment is due to climb considerably, even as the economy recovers. Now, more than ever, it is paramount that people gain access to life-changing education, particularly in areas that are not covered by the list.

I believe that including a broader range of qualifications would address both the needs and interests of potential students and the transferable skills element for employers.

Through digital creative provision, we can adapt to the new economic landscape we now face in the coming months and years.

Many of these skills acquired are exactly the same as those in computing qualifications, with the added bonus of creativity, collaboration and innovation, developed by design. Music and film production, and editing, are other great examples.

Strong policy reform, not only focusing on displaced workers but also looking at youth employment, will be key to ensuring opportunities for all. Central to this will also be small businesses as they will primarily be the key link to job creation.

Furthermore, employers need to work closely with the FE sector to understand and address gaps in the market. A more focused and agile approach to the curriculum will help ensure that workforce development is driven by creating opportunities to upskill.

The government’s own press release for the lifetime skills guarantee references The Squiggly Career by bestselling author and business leader Helen Tupper.

The premise here is that the old way of looking at the linear “training to career” path is outdated and being replaced by more flexible, organic and responsive journeys to success.

‘We need to be future-proofing learners’

The ability to adapt, innovate and self-organise are key characteristics of creative students. When you add the greater self-confidence, self-understanding and enhanced communication skills that come with an arts education, you are future-proofing adults to enter this new landscape of employment.

A report called “10 reasons why arts and culture make a difference to young people’s lives” by the Arts Council identifies that arts and culture promote economic growth. The arts teach entrepreneurial abilities that are key to the future of engineering and the economy.

As a result, businesses that deploy STEM and art skills (STEAM) experience faster sales growth than STEM firms.

The increase in automation means that the jobs of the future are likely to require skills only humans can bring, such as empathy, creativity and enterprise.

There is strong evidence that involvement in arts and creativity increases cognitive abilities, critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, communication and social competency. It also creates a higher chance of sustaining employment into later life.

We need the government to review the list to encourage organisations and awarding bodies to make more qualifications accessible, and designed to take into account employer needs, with more choice for learners that address skills gaps.

I therefore urge the Department for Education and devolved authorities to build a much broader offer.

AAC | Deep Dive Debates: Levy, Green Skills, EPAO, Standards and Learning Technology

During this year’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference, sector leaders and experts came together for a daily roundtable discussion about an area of apprenticeship policy.

AAC’s Deep Dive Debates were held in partnership with key conference partners and made available to view for free (see below).

Across the Conference week five debates were staged:

Is the levy fit for our future? Could the levy be better used to support economic recovery post Covid19 and beyond?
Developing standards: more or less?
Maintaining and Exceeding the Quality of End Point Assessment.
Delivering training: online or face to face or a blend of the two?
The future is green – How do we use apprenticeships to meet the burgeoning green skills needs of tomorrow?

You can find recordings of these Deep Dive Debates on our YouTube Channel or see below.

Is the levy fit for our future? Could the levy be better used to support economic recovery post Covid19 and beyond?

Developing standards: more or less?

Maintaining and Exceeding the Quality of End Point Assessment

Delivering training: online or face to face or a blend of the two?

The future is green – How do we use apprenticeships to meet the burgeoning green skills needs of tomorrow?

Northern College faces ‘perfect storm’ and shock battle to survive

An adult residential college is facing a financial crisis that threatens its survival following a funding audit and government review.

Northern College, rated grade one by Ofsted with ‘outstanding’ financial health, is locked in a legal dispute with the Education and Skills Funding Agency following claims it has made “errors” worth £1.2 million across 2018/19 and 2019/20.

The alleged errors relate to claimed residential uplift support for learners who were not resident, but the college is contesting the agency’s interpretation of the rules which have been in place for more than a decade.

The ESFA is, however, still demanding repayment of the funding and is extending its audit to cover a further two years, which could increase the clawback.

At the same time, the Barnsley-based college faces having to pay back an additional £660,000 following a significant shortfall in enrolments this year owing to Covid-19, which means they won’t hit the ESFA’s controversial 90 per cent tolerance level.

On top of this, the government is conducting a national review of adult residential funding which could remove an uplift which multiplies funding for residential courses by nearly five times as much as the normal rate.

All of these factors are contributing to a “perfect storm” which puts the long-term sustainability of the college at risk.

The FE Commissioner has been asked by the ESFA to conduct a diagnostic assessment and structure and prospect appraisal, which could result in the college being forced to merge.

Supporters of the college have strongly condemned the government for causing its financial woes after years of strong performance.

Writing for FE Week (click here for full opinion article), former DfE director of FE funding Sue Pember, who is now the policy director of adult education network HOLEX, said: “Northern College is not at risk because of anything it could have foreseen but because of the unintended consequences of administrative action DfE may or may not choose to do.”

She described the situation as a “triple whammy” that “could be diverted with joined-up administration and impact assessment”.

MPs are also lobbying to help the college, which was founded in 1977 to train disadvantaged and disengaged adults and operates out of Wentworth Castle, a grade 1 listed building owned by Barnsley Council.

Dan Jarvis, Labour MP for Barnsley Central and mayor of the Sheffield City Region, raised the issue this week with skills minister Gillian Keegan during education questions in the House of Commons.

He later told FE Week that any loss of service from the college would be “devastating” and he will do “everything I can to protect this iconic South Yorkshire institution”.

Miriam Cates, MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, said she is also working “very closely” with the college to try to secure its future.

There are four residential adult education colleges in England and they were all notified of the government’s funding review in January 2020.

In its subsequent audit, the ESFA told Northern College that it had been applying the 4.7 multiplier uplift for residential funding incorrectly to each course they offer rather than the learner.

FE Week understands the college is claiming that this interpretation of the rule was never clear and is challenging the government for allegedly changing the goalposts retrospectively.

The college’s accounts for 2019/20 are currently being held up by the dispute, which could end up in court.

Northern College is also expecting to deliver 73 per cent of its £3.8 million adult education budget allocation this year after being forced to close for long periods due to the pandemic.

The agency has decided that where colleges deliver less than 90 per cent of their allocation in 2020/21, they will recover the difference between their actual delivery and 90 per cent.

Northern College said it usually meets its enrolment targets year-on-year and claimed that residential provision had been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 as the disadvantaged adults they train struggled with the move to online learning.

The college has £5 million cash reserves. Another issue facing it is a pension liability which currently stands at more than £6 million.

Commenting on the potential crisis, principal Yultan Mellor said: “The college’s residential adult education programme and wrap-around support have never been so vital to adults.

“We remain committed to continuing to work with our partners to support the economy to recover and grow following the impact of Covid-19, enabling the delivery of our regional jobs-based recovery programmes.”

A spokesperson for the ESFA said the agency “does expect Northern College to repay the funds identified as being at risk following the audit of provision”.

And responding to claims that the college was audited against the wrong set of funding rules, the spokesperson added: “The audit was conducted against the funding rules and ILR specification in place for the years covered by the audit and these formed part of the terms and conditions of the funding agreement with the college.”

The outcome of the national residential funding review will be published “in due course”.

WATCH: Debate on why diversity and inclusion is critical for the future success of UK businesses

This morning on the last day of FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference a panel debated the “inclusion revolution” and why diversity and inclusion is critical for the future success of UK businesses.

Watch the session, which featured comedian and ‘the guilty feminist’ podcaster Deobrah Frances-White, below.

Debate title: The inclusion revolution | Why diversity and inclusion are critical for the future success of UK businesses

Chaired by Kirstie Donnelly, CEO, City & Guilds Group.
Panel: Deborah Frances-White, The Guilty Feminist, Lucy Hunte, National Programme Manager, Apprenticeships, Health EducationEngland, Damien McKnight, Dovecoat Park, Lia Nici MP, Chair of Apprenticeship Diversity Champions Network, Lauren Roberts, Youth Engagement Executive – City & Guilds Foundation, Jeff Greenidge, Director for Diversity, AoC and ETF.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 351

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

Lisa Wilson, Group director of apprenticeships and employer services, Nottingham College

Start date: March 2021

Previous job: Director of apprenticeships, RNN Group

Interesting fact: She has run the Manchester half marathon and taken part in a number of ‘Tough Mudders’

Chris Malish, Principal, Hull College

Start date: May 2021

Previous job: Deputy chief executive, Bradford College

Interesting fact: He achieved the qualification to become a lifeguard at age 14, though never ended up being one.

John Mothersole, Chair, The Sheffield College

Start date: April 2021

Previous job: Chief executive, Sheffield City Council

Interesting fact: He has a banjo, guitar, clarinet and saxophone, and dabbles with them all but has mastered none – although he has conquered the piano

Damian Hinds, Chair, T Levels All Party Parliamentary Group

Start date: April 2021

Concurrent job: MP for East Hampshire

Interesting fact: Before he was elected to Parliament, he worked for almost 20 years in the hospitality business, including in hotels and pubs.

Does Labour employ any apprentices?

The shadow education secretary has refused to reveal if the Labour Party employs even one apprentice.

At FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference shadow education secretary Kate Green was quizzed on how many apprentices work for the political party, which often criticises central government for not employing enough of the learners.

But while admitting it was a “legitimate question to ask any politician”, she said they “don’t share information about our workforce”.

Her own constituency office does not employ an apprentice, she says, because it is a “very, very small” team, so they would not be able to provide the necessary “intensive support”.

But they have made a “huge priority” of taking on young people with learning disabilities “to give them their first work
experience.

“So I think it’s horses for courses, isn’t it?”

During the question-and-answer session, FE Week editor Nick Linford asked the shadow education secretary again whether the Labour Party had any apprentices at all.

But Green would not be moved, saying “we just don’t disclose the source data of our workflow”.

“I’m guessing the answer is probably ‘none’,” Linford replied, but Green advised him not to make that inference.

Yet when pushed again to give an answer, she said: “We don’t disclose that data.”

Approached for further comment after the session, the Labour Party told FE Week it had “nothing to add” to Green’s remarks.

Shadow apprenticeships and lifelong learning minister Toby Perkins has told FE Week one of his constituency workers is on a level 3 digital marketing apprenticeship.

All public sector bodies with 250 or more staff in England have been bound to a target to employ an average of at least 2.3 per cent of their staff as new apprentice starts over the period of April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2021.

Latest official data shows that from April 2017 up to the end of March 2020, 1.7 per cent of the civil service’s headcount were new apprentices.

That target has since been restated for an extra year to cover 2021-22.

Also speaking at the conference on Thursday was Commons education select committee chair Robert Halfon, who attacked the 2.3 per cent target as “unambitious” and “sending all the wrong signals”.

He said the public sector “should be leading the way”, and wherever possible, all new recruits to the public sector should be offered an apprenticeship.

Additionally, the number of apprentices a company employs should feature in the criteria for awarding public sector contracts, Halfon added.

Revealed: Thousands of level 5 management apprentices dropped-out last year

Thousands of apprentices on a new level 5 management programme have already dropped out of the course, official figures have revealed.

The operations or departmental manager standard had a retention rate of just 53.5 per cent last year for 4,250 “leavers”.

That means 1,980 apprentices – 47 per cent – who were due to finish between August 2019 and July 2020 did not complete their course.

The management standard has been one of the top 10 most popular apprenticeships at all levels and sectors in England for the past two and a half years, with 5,542 starts in the first six months of 2020/21 alone.

In 2019/20, it secured 10,052 starts, making it the fifth most popular apprenticeship that year; and in 2018/19, it saw 10,466 starts, and placed seventh.

The maximum funding band for the course was cut from £9,000 to £7,000 for starts from March 4, 2019.

The Department for Education does not publish funding values, but it is likely that around £10 million was spent on these nearly 2,000 apprentices who did not finish the course.

The achievement rate on the standard that year was also only 52.9 per cent.

Retention rates on all level 5 apprenticeships overall have been dropping year after year: in 2017/18, the level recorded a 64.8 per cent rate; then in 2018/19, the rate was 61.1; and in 2019/20, it was 57.5 per cent.

Government repeatedly warned about management apprenticeships

The findings come just days after skills minister Gillian Keegan told delegates at FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference she had ordered an investigation into the “astonishing” drop-out rate for apprenticeship standards.

Official government data published last month showed that just 60.2 per cent of apprentices training on new-style standards stayed on their programme until the end in 2019/20, compared to 48.3 per cent the year before.

The retention rate on the old-style frameworks has stayed consistent at 69 per cent.

The DfE has made a policy not to share provider-level data for last year, publicly, or even with Ofsted, citing as its reason the disruption caused by Covid-19 to the apprenticeship delivery.

FE Week has long warned that management apprenticeships would come to dominate the sector following the introduction of the levy and other reforms since 2017.

Even before the reforms, this newspaper published an investigation into “The unstoppable rise of management apprenticeships” in 2016, after it became the third most popular apprenticeship subject.

Since then, a number of prominent sector figures have expressed their own concerns about the rise in management training as apprenticeships.

Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman warned in 2018 graduate schemes were “in essence being rebadged as apprenticeships”.

In 2019, the National Audit Office reported levy-payers “are replacing their professional development programmes – for example, graduate training schemes in accountancy or advanced courses in management – with apprenticeships”.

The move to publicly funding management courses has been defended by Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education chief executive Jennifer Coupland, who said in January 2020 that the practice was “perfectly legitimate”.

Let’s not undermine a much-needed and loved institution

The triple whammy facing the much-loved Northern College can be avoided, writes Sue Pember, a former DfE director who now leads adult education membership body HOLEX

Northern College has been a beacon in the world of adult education and a forerunner in what we know is a fantastic way to kickstart career change – one of the most important parts has been the residential element. Residential courses should not just be for HE students or those who go to private schools but should be for all students and adults. That is why we need adult residential centres in every region.

Residential activity is recognised as an integral funded element in the national citizen service programme which has been developed for young people; and therefore, we should have similar a residential experience for all adults.

So it’s unfortunate when we are talking about skills bootcamps and intense provision that Northern College, which provides residential education for adults, seems to be at risk. It’s not at risk because of anything it could have foreseen but because of the unintended consequences of administrative action that the DfE may or may not choose to do.

Three issues have come together to create a perfect administrative storm: when the DfE undertook a review of residential funding, the scope was wide, and it was always felt that adult residential was only added as an afterthought. The focus of the consultation was about finding solutions that worked for the 16-to-19 sector, such as elite sport and land-based activity.

In hindsight, the funding review should have been split and adult residential activity viewed through a different lens, where the pros and cons could have been properly aired. As it stands, we don’t know whether the DfE is going to take the action it proposed or not.

The second issue is about funding rules that have been in existence since before 2007. It doesn’t seem right to start changing those rules retrospectively without looking at the impact and modelling of those changes and offering tapered support.

READ MORE: Northern College faces ‘perfect storm’ and battle to survive

And lastly we have the issue of the pandemic and the DfE announcement about retrospective clawback, and the department’s inability to recognise that they created the issues by insisting that providers stayed open, then closed, then went online and so on, and not meeting the consequent increased costs of delivery.

Each one of these issues stacked on top of the other puts the institution at risk, a triple whammy that could be diverted with joined-up administration and impact assessment.

What is needed is a debate on what type of adult skills offer we want, then a discussion about funding. Let’s not allow the unintended consequences of proposed policy changes to undermine a much-needed and loved learning institution, and let’s not jump to the FE Commissioner’s sole solution to any problem – merger.

If funding can be adjusted to allow for other small unique establishments, such as Institutes of Technology and University Technical Colleges to operate, then the DfE should be able to do the same for adult residential colleges.

Plans to limit apprenticeship providers by sectors move forward

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has moved a step closer to limiting apprenticeship providers’ delivery to the sectors they have experience in.

Under new conditions published last week for the refreshed register of apprenticeship training providers, providers must prove their “experience of managing and delivering training to learners and are established within the sectors in which you intend to deliver”.

And if in the future the provider wants to move into sectors they did not mention in their initial application, they must for the first time inform the agency “within one calendar month”, a spokesperson told FE Week.

Failure to do so will now determine the provider as “high risk” under the intervention regime.

However, the process for informing the ESFA of any delivery changes is still being worked on.

The agency’s director for apprenticeships Peter Mucklow told FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference this week that those details will be set out in “due course”.

He said it is “clearly a warning sign” if a provider changes the sectors they deliver in at “very short notice” and “as regulator, we ought to know about that and be at least able to raise questions”.

But he insisted it is not the ESFA’s intention to “prevent good providers from moving into new areas”.

Plans to limit providers by apprenticeship standards and sectors were first revealed by Mucklow’s predecessor Keith Smith at last year’s AAC.

FE Week understands that since then, the proposal, as well as another to introduce earning limits on providers, has been drawn up but the agency is holding out for extra funding from the Treasury to increase its oversight capacity, which is not yet forthcoming.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Jane Hickie said it “seems reasonable” for providers to prove their sector-subject expertise, but her organisation is “watching carefully the ESFA’s approach, which may further evolve moving forward”.

“Informing the ESFA is very different to seeking approval, but we are clearly moving towards a more regulated marketplace for apprenticeship training through another RoATP refresh and the ESFA making moves to gather more granular information on sectors and standards,” she added.

“Apprenticeships are driven by employer-led demand, so a balance of risk and oversight needs to be struck.”

The move to potentially limiting providers by sectors would align the provider register to the one for end-point assessment organisations, which can only assess apprenticeship standards they are experts in and approved for via application.

Tom Bewick, chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, said that if the ESFA had “managed the provider register, setting the bar high enough in the first place”, the agency “would not now find itself in this remedial position”.

“Too often over the last few years we’ve seen officials encourage new market entrants to the detriment of system-wide quality.”

But, he added, one “problem with the ESFA now micro-managing the provider base is that, over time, it may end up stifling innovation and discouraging business investment”.

This will be the third version of the register of apprenticeship training providers since its launch in March 2017. The most recent “refresh” was in January 2019.

Controversially, all existing providers on the register will need to reapply yet again.

Mucklow said that process will get under way “imminently”.