The Association of Colleges has announced Dr Shaid Mahmood as its next chair of the board.

He takes over the role with immediate effect from New City College chief executive Gerry McDonald, who has held the position in the interim since July after Julie Nerney stepped down.

Mahmood is currently a chief officer for Leeds City Council and chair of the Luminate Education Group.

“I’m honoured and humbled to be appointed as chair of the Association of Colleges,” he said. “Our members are central to our work and their support and challenge is crucial to amplifying the influence of FE on national policy and funding.

“Undoubtedly, these are challenging times for the nation. They are also exciting times with much progress already being made by the AoC with opportunities for FE to play its part in the nation’s recovery and the improved resilience of its communities.”

Mahmood is a PhD graduate and worked in the business sector for 12 years.

David Hughes, AoC’s chief executive, said he was “delighted to welcome Shaid” and looks “forward to working closely with him in his new role as chair”.

“This is a crucial time for AoC and for the FE Sector – we have the immediate and future impacts of Covid, an imminent White Paper, and the continued push for funding and reform,” he added.

“I am confident that Shaid will help steer AoC and the sector through what is going to be a challenging but exciting time.”

Marius Ardelean found himself without a job and with little prospect of finding another after Covid-19 struck. But he is now about to start a new career after retraining through a long-running skills programme that is finally getting its time in the sun.

The 34-year-old (pictured top) had quit his job at the British Museum restaurant at the beginning of the year to visit his family in Romania, with a plan to then switch careers in the UK.

However, upon his return he could not find work, despite sending out “hundreds” of CVs, and he had to resort to Universal Credit.

He spoke to his local Jobcentre Plus about finding a course to retrain and that is where he came across sector-based work academy programmes (SWAPs) which has now ultimately led to him finding a job in the care sector.

Marius is one of thousands of people the government is hoping to help back into work through SWAPs this year, following a £17 million investment by the chancellor Rishi Sunak to “triple the number” in 2020/21.

The new National Skills Fund will also be used to fund the scheme from April 2021, taking a share of £127 million announced in last week’s spending review. However, just how much is unknown, and a DfE
spokesperson said: “This is a level of detail we are not going to be getting into.”

Launched in 2011, SWAPs are jointly run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Department for Education (DfE), and are administered by Jobcentre Plus; they involve pre-employment training, a guaranteed job interview and a work placement to help prepare those receiving unemployment benefits for new jobs.

They are described by the Association of Employment and Learning Providers as a “mini adult traineeship”, which can last up to six weeks, and are funded through the adult education budget.

According to DWP statistics, 330,000 SWAP starts were recorded between August 2011 and November 2017, but the department then stopped publishing the data.

It is therefore hard to pin down precisely the recent popularity of SWAPs, and the DWP refused to say how many starts would be required this year to meet the chancellor’s target of “tripling” their number.

But colleges and training providers already involved in the programme told FE Week it has been catering for great swathes of learners in recent years, with the vast majority finding employment straight after completion.

“The evidence shows they work, so we will expand them,” Sunak told the House of Commons during his summer statement.

Funding for SWAPs is being dished out to the Education and Skills Funding Agency for nationally AEB funded providers and also to mayoral combined authorities who administer the budget for providers in their area.

The government says colleges and providers that wish to get involved in SWAPs should get in touch with their local Jobcentre Plus and the DfE as their first port of call.

AEB allocations can then be topped up to account for SWAPs, which will be based on a provider’s historic delivery to unemployed residents studying courses at level 2 and below, spanning two to five weeks in length.

A spokesperson added that FE providers are “part of the SWAP local design process and are informed when to expect referrals and how many by Jobcentre Plus”.

Marius’s two-week SWAP was with Barnet and Southgate College and was formatted to teach skills such as what to do in interviews and how the law operates with regard to the care sector, as well as having him work towards a level 1 certificate in the subject.

The course ran close to business hours, 9.30am to 4pm, and was carried out over Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

“It was good to get back on track,” he said, adding: “The main thing with the course is it has direct contact with future employers.

“So, there were three companies and we got to know them, they got to know us, so we could ask questions related to the care sector and the jobs they offer.

“In this current time, you send your CV and it gets lost or ignored. But through this course we had an opportunity to speak with the employers and after we had finished, I had interviews with two of them.”

Barnet and Southgate College’s executive director of commercial partnerships Tracey McIntosh (pictured), who oversaw the 2,000 people go through a SWAP last year, said: “Personally, I think it’s a win-win opportunity for all of us. This is a great example of partners working together with the students at the heart of it.”

Aside from the care sector, her college runs SWAPs in such areas as construction, external wall insulation and the Civil Service, with the age profile of participants stretching from 19 to 55.

Asked whether she would recommend other providers to get involved, McIntosh jokes: “No, because it’s my business!

“Of course we would recommend it, as we do pretty well.”

She added that employers “keep coming back” for SWAPs because they are part of the development of them, and it costs them nothing – as any costs associated with the work placement are met by the DWP.

Mat Chapman, managing director of independent provider The Development Fund, which runs SWAPs to help recruit and train drivers for major bus companies, says they see 80 per cent employment outcomes off the back of the programmes.

He says one of the employers he works with “was pleased with how it increased their ability to recruit. It expanded their numbers where they were struggling to get people into bus driving schools.”

He stresses the importance of tailoring the pre-employment training for the employer – which the DWP says has to be “matched to the needs of your business sector” – so, for instance, his courses cover the theoretical knowledge expected of drivers.

“If you’re recruiting to a marketplace, you want them to understand the fruit and veg they are selling,” he says.

Railway operators Southern Railway and Gatwick Express have recently completed their first SWAP with East Sussex College, where 12 learners were taught “essential” customer service skills and qualifications on a four-week course.

The operators’ managing director Angie Doll (pictured, with the SWAP learners) said they, with the college, had created what they feel is “a valuable opportunity for all learners on the programme”.

“We are continuously looking at ways to attract and retain a diverse workforce that is truly representative of the communities we serve,” she continued.

“Working in collaboration with East Sussex College and Jobcentre Plus means we have been able to offer those who aren’t in employment the opportunity to gain skills and qualifications to help them into the world of work.”

Stuart Cleworth, operations director for Wates Construction, which works with Barnet and Southgate College and independent provider Ixion Holdings on SWAPs, says supporting initiatives like this “is vital for the construction industry as it provides us with the perfect opportunity to enhance and build on the knowledge of those engaged, helping to equip them with the real skills our sector require”.

Ixion has been using virtual reality and remote activity, such as remote construction site tours, to continue delivering the work experience placement during the pandemic, and the provider’s national construction operations manager Joe Makowski said SWAPs fill “essential skills gaps”.

The government has been urged to withdraw claims made in parliament about the take-up of the courses on its new ‘skills toolkit’ after FE Week started asking questions about the figures.

Significant over-counting has already led to revised estimates, and an investigation by this publication has found “course start” and “registration” claims in official statistics will continue to include web hits.

Despite this, education secretary Gavin Williamson described the free online courses as having a “transformational impact on so many people taking furlough” during a speech in October.

This raises major questions about the government’s ability to get a grip on the jobs crisis

The course content has not been developed by the government, but more than £1 million has been spent to develop and promote the skills toolkit “platform”, which consists of a web page on the National Careers Service with short course descriptions and links to the external websites.

The government says the educational content being promoted aims to help people who are out of work to boost their digital and numeracy skills during the pandemic.

However, little is known about who is accessing the content or whether they are completing the course, as almost half of the 79 available online courses require no registration.

Skills minister Gillian Keegan has publicly claimed these are “high-quality” courses but a former director of FE funding in the DfE, Susan Pember, questioned how this can be known in the absence of learner and completion data.

Many of the courses are simply short video tutorials or PDF documents that people can stop and start with no tuition and no external quality assurance from the likes of Ofqual and Ofsted.

Pember told FE Week she would advise ministers to be “cautious” as “website hits or even signatures on enrolment forms do not equate to learning taking place”.

The department has already had to row back on claims that 136,000 people started on the courses in the toolkit’s first month of operation but there are currently other incorrect records, including answers from Keegan to parliamentary questions (PQ) tabled by shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds.

On October 5 the minister told Dodds that as of September 30, there had been 97,615 “course starts” and 16,219 “completions”.

In a separate PQ two weeks later Keegan said that as of October 4 there had been 118,011 “course starts” and 19,564 “completions”.

When FE Week asked if it was true there had been almost 20,000 additional starts on courses on the toolkit in that four-day period, the DfE admitted they could not confirm.

A spokesperson said the information was the “best data available to us at the time of response” but it has since identified “issues” with a number of courses that it was “working to resolve”. They added that the DfE will “update the answers as appropriate, once the examination has completed”.

Dodds, the Labour MP for Oxford East, told FE Week it was “really troubling” that government appears to have no idea how many people have registered for the skills toolkit courses and that it is “incumbent on them” to correct the parliamentary record.

She said she was also “deeply concerned” that the DfE has spent over £1 million on the resource “without knowing how it’s performing”, which raises “major questions about the government’s ability to get a grip on the jobs crisis that’s engulfing Britain”.

Pember, who worked as a top government skills official from 2000 to 2013 and is now the policy director of adult education network HOLEX, said that in order to “protect the reputation of FE” the courses need to go through the “same rigorous process as everyone else”, which includes audit and regulatory oversight.

She explained that after the individual learning accounts debacle in the early 2000s, it was “understood that we needed really good-quality criteria for FE courses – that is when you get your standards written, Ofqual and Ofsted involved” to ensure “good experiences for learners” and “good value for public money”.

FE Week’s analysis of the courses on the skills toolkit, offered by 14 providers which are mostly commercial businesses, shows that their duration can range from 25 minutes to 70 hours.

Just two of the 79 involve guidance from a live tutor. Almost all of them, 69, can include certification but only if the person registers for the course. Registration is, however, not required to view and use the content for 39 of them.

Examples include “Become a Sales Representative” from LinkedIn – a series of 25 short videos from a sales expert that allows you to download a certificate of completion at the end, with no testing.

Another is “Make It Click”, provided by the Good Things Foundation, which is a web page that directs visitors to other web pages, such as “A Beginners’ Guide to Excel” on YouTube.

Three of the providers that do not require registrations told FE Week they use unique URL data to capture the numbers of participants and then relay that information to the DfE to measure “starts”.

After being presented with the FE Week’s findings, the DfE said it was “in the process of developing an assured standardised system for collating data from different course providers”.

When asked how they know the courses have had a “transformational impact” and are “high quality”, as claimed by ministers Williamson and Keegan respectively, a spokesperson added: “The skills toolkit is a successful platform, delivering good value for money, which has encouraged tens of thousands of people to undertake online learning in courses that are valued by employers.

“It plays an important role in packaging up courses that are both free, high quality, and which people can access from home at this difficult time. We are reliant on providers for estimates of registrations and we continue to work with providers on improving this process further.”

Pember urged DfE to get a grip on the data: “We collect registration or enrolment data because that is the beginning of a performance pathway that allows you to monitor retention, completion and then how many people achieve.

“Without registration data you can’t do any of the rest and you can’t monitor whether that particular pathway for doing a subject is as good or better than the ones the state is already funding.”

She said the next questions DfE should be asking are how many learners have completed and been offered qualifications at the end. “Why treat those people taking the courses differently to other funded courses?

“I’m sure every provider in the land would like to be monitored just on registration – it makes it so much easier for people. So it seems there is an element of unfairness around it.

“Other providers are wondering why there are now a set of very low benchmark rules for the stuff on the skills toolkit and a very high set of benchmarks for them.”

Having herself looked through the skills toolkit courses, Pember there is content that she “quite likes” but also found some worrying examples. “Take maths, for example – one of the courses says it is for level 1 learners, but the language around it is graduate level.

“Many people with level 1 maths also usually have level 1 English, so they’re not going to get past the first screen,” she said, adding that it could “demoralise” vulnerable people who in turn would be “lost to the system”.

In terms of costs for the skills toolkit, almost £800,000 has been given to a firm that the DfE refuses to name to carry out “user research and testing, IT security testing, content and user experience design, software development and performance testing”. Just over £325,000 has also been earmarked for advertising, such as paid-for social media on Twitter and Facebook.

Pember said the advertising “worries me”.

“When the DfE puts out its own advertising for the toolkit it always talks about good quality, but under whose judgment? It may be, but how do they know?” she told FE Week.

“You’ve got other outstanding providers out there but why is the state advertising a certain set of commercial products over and above another set of commercial products? It doesn’t even say there are others available.”

Aside from the PQs, the DfE is reporting the number of skills toolkit starts in their official apprenticeship data releases and labels them as “experimental”.

“These are experimental statistics and rely on website analytics from providers and the method of processing these is subject to change,” the department said.

The UK Statistics Authority said it welcomed the inclusion of these statistics to “support transparency and clarity” as long as the DfE acknowledges the data’s “limitations”.

College staff should receive a 1 per cent pay rise this year, the Association of Colleges has recommended in a move that has outraged trade unions.

In a statement published today, the membership body said it was “disappointing and regrettable that the sector is unable to afford a better offer at this time” but that the “pandemic has changed everything”.

Trade unions had called for a “significant” pay rise for college workers this year after the government injected an additional £400 million into colleges.

But the AoC said it could only recommend a pay rise of 1 per cent or £250, whichever is the greater, because of the unforeseen and “severe financial pressure” colleges are now facing that have “forced many into deficit”.

The association did say that it would “strongly advise that those colleges who can afford to award staff more should do so”, while “we must acknowledge that some colleges may be unable to meet this recommendation”.

But the University and College Union, UNISON, the National Education Union, Unite and GMB said in a joint response that after years of campaigning for more money for staff, now is “not the time for excuses on pay but instead an investment in staff so that further education can provide the skills for a post-Covid recovery”.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “Yet again colleges have shown they cannot be trusted to spend public funds in the way they were intended. The joint campaigning was always on the understanding that staff pay would come first.

“UCU members will now find it hard to believe that AoC can be a trusted partner for joint campaigning.”

UNISON head of education Jon Richards added: “College leaders had made clear promises that staff would get a substantial pay rise this year. But they’ve simply ripped these up and raided the wage pot to foot the bill for the pandemic. Pay in the FE sector is simply too low and this offer yet again ignores the value of college staff.”

The unions have called on individual colleges to publicly commit to working towards closing the £7,000 pay gap between school and college teaching staff and introduce the foundation living wage.

The AoC cited Education and Skills Funding Agency officials at last week’s House of Commons Public Accounts Committee hearing saying 64 colleges are at risk of running out of cash.

And on top of extra costs associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, the association said colleges have “suffered a significant loss of revenue” due to a drop in commercial activity, fee income, and apprenticeships, which has only been “partially” offset by extra government funding.

The AoC also recommended a 1 per cent increase for 2019/20, but promised to accelerate a pay recommendation for the following academic year.

AoC chief executive David Hughes has today argued that every college leader wants staff paid “fairly and adequately” for the work they do, and are “committed” to campaigning for better college funding, which allow pay issues to be addressed.

But, he added, “a decade of neglect and funding cuts have devastated the financial health of the sector”.

While the AoC recommends a pay increase to its members, colleges are independent and make final decision on pay themselves. 

For a second year the critical qualification achievement rates (QAR) for providers will not be published, but unlike last year the data will be privately shared with Ofsted.

The inspectorate will again be able to use the QAR data in their inspection judgements as well as being central to their published ‘risk-assessment-methodology’ when deciding which colleges and training providers to visit.

Announcing the decision, the DfE said this morning: “QARs, usually published for certain post-16 providers, were suspended for 2019 to 2020 due to coronavirus.

“For 2020 to 2021, QARs will not be published but will be produced and shared securely with providers, Ofsted and DfE.”

QAR data, which is used to measure providers’ performance and hold them to account, was scrapped for the 2019/20 academic year following the Covid-19 outbreak. Providers were not able to receive the data themselves and it was not shared with the inspectorate.

When asked how the inspectorate plans to use this year’s QAR data, an Ofsted spokesperson said: “Decisions on the use of achievement rate data for 2020/21 will be made in due course.”

The decision has attracted split views from the sector.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers managing director Jane Hickie said that “on balance”, giving Ofsted access to QARs “doesn’t seem unreasonable, although the authorities should bear in mind that some perfectly good providers are struggling right now in terms of achievement rates because of the covid restrictions”.

“If you are in tier 3, for example, the challenge to deliver well is harder,” she added.

“At the same time, providers won’t want to sit back thinking that ungraded inspections mean that they can switch off.

“They believe that the approach which Ofsted has taken since March has been entirely sensible and are ready to work with the inspectorate to give an accurate picture to employers and learners of the quality of their provision.”

Tony Allen, an ex-deputy director of the government’s skills funding agency and now runs his own apprenticeship consultancy firm, said that he struggled to see, from a “transparency viewpoint”, why the data “is not going to be published for year two” of the pandemic.

“Covid has impacted but isn’t that the point…everyone knows that Covid has impacted,” he added.

“Why are we denying employers access to invaluable intelligence for a second year?”

QARs calculate what proportion of learning was successfully completed in each academic year by providers.

They are produced for apprenticeships, adult education and 16 to 18 programmes.

The latest achievement rates were published in March for the 2018/19 year and showed the overall national rate for apprenticeships dropped 2.2 per cent points to just 64.7 per cent.

The ESFA minimum standard threshold sits at an achievement rate of 62 per cent.

If more than 40 percent of a provider’s provision fails to meet the minimum standard then intervention can be as severe as contract termination, in line with the ESFA’s “oversight of independent training providers” operational guidance.

FE providers should attempt to deliver the same amount of teaching and work to self-isolating students that they would receive onsite, new government guidance has said.

The Department for Education has today outlined new guidelines on remote learning in further education during the coronavirus pandemic.

It states that for students who have been advised to self-isolate, but are “well enough to learn”, officials “expect FE providers to continue their education remotely as far as is reasonably possible”.

Students learning remotely “should benefit from the same amount of teaching and guided work that they would normally receive onsite”.

But there are exceptions to these rules, for instance, where a student is on a course which involves practical teaching and training, and requires specialist equipment and supervision.

The exception also applies to work experience and placements.

Providers should have systems in place to check at least weekly if a student is “persistently” missing lessons for their study programme, or if they are not engaging with remote education.

Students should be provided with clarity on arrangements for remote education, for example on timetabling, and on the expectations for them to participate in remote learning.

And it should be confirmed with them the different ways they will receive assessment and feedback while learning remotely, as well as how often that will be provided.

In comparison, primary schools have been told to deliver at least three hours of remote learning to self-isolating pupils, while secondary schools should deliver at least four.

The department said today FE providers must continue to deliver fully-planned hours for students, unless further restrictions come in force for their area, and should also put in place support for vulnerable and disadvantaged students which could include deciding whether they need support for remote delivery.

Providers will have to plan for managing safeguarding concerns as well, and must maintain regular communication with vulnerable young people to ensure that they are safe and are accessing remote provision.

The government has come under pressure to help providers with online learning, with the Association of Colleges reporting last month that as many as 100,000 students may be missing out on learning because they do not have a suitable device to learn on, or access to the internet from home.

The association’s chief executive David Hughes called for “immediate support for colleges to allow students to get the devices and access they need,” without which, he said: “We risk stunting the life chances of young people for years to come.”

Today’s guidance included how providers can use the 16-19 bursary fund to provide digital devices and connectivity support for students, based on individual circumstances.

There has also been a change to the adult education budget rules for 2020-21, the guidance reads, so providers can use learner support funds to buy IT devices for students aged 19 and over, and to help providers’ meet students’ connectivity costs.