Talks are under way to replace functional skills exams with “portfolio evidence grading” for apprentices who are unable to sit the tests due to Covid-19 restrictions, FE Week can reveal.

Around 30,000 work-based learners, mostly in the health and care sectors, are currently estimated to be stuck in limbo and unable to complete the English and maths programme because their employer will not release them to attend test centres or allow onsite visitors in an attempt to limit the spread of the virus.

Many awarding bodies have struggled to create remote invigilation and testing solutions, while Ofqual and the government has ruled out a return to centre-assessed grades, despite pleas from the sector.

Following a crunch meeting with awarding bodies, Ofqual and the Association of Employment and Learning Providers last week, skills minister Gillian Keegan has said she is “more committed than ever to finding a solution”.

AELP has now been given the green light to explore with Ofqual a “portfolio of evidence” solution to allow apprentices to progress. Discussions began this week.

Under the proposal, students and their training provider would submit evidence, such as initial and on-programme assessments, marked mock documentation, evidence of teaching and learning through a learning platform, workshop or group sessions, and any one-to-one sessions with trainers.

A “professional discussion” would follow. Awarding organisations would then carry out a “remote sample check to ensure that consistent and fair assessment judgments are being made by centres”.

Ofqual said it was now reviewing the proposal but could not say when it would make a decision on whether or not to sign it off.

A Department for Education spokesperson added: “We continue to work closely with Ofqual, awarding organisations and sector representatives to monitor the situation and agree how we can, together, identify and support apprentices that are unable to take their functional skills exam.”

AELP managing director Jane Hickie said she hopes “for the sakes of the apprentices and their frustrated employers” that agreement on a way forward can be reached as soon as possible, warning that the “logjam” of apprentices unable to complete their programmes is “growing bigger”. 

Jill Whittaker, managing director of independent provider HIT Training, has hundreds of such apprentices and told FE Week she has seen a “huge increase” in reported “mental health concerns in our learners” as the uncertainty around their programmes is “adding to the strain on them”, particularly in care settings.

She said that she “fully supports” the AELP proposal of introducing portfolio evidenced grading for functional skills learners until normal testing is available again for all.

“It would be unthinkable to delay GCSE, A-level and degree students’ grades for months and months, with no end in sight, until a solution for testing could be found. It should be equally unthinkable for apprentices and other FE and work-based learners,” Whittaker told FE Week.

Hickie said the government’s initial response to the functional skills issue was “disappointingly slow”, and while DfE and Ofqual have tinkered with the system to ease the situation, Whittaker says the solutions put forward by officials have been “insufficient”.

In October, the ESFA extended the end dates for legacy functional skills qualifications, set to end on December 31, 2020, through to July 2021. The agency also temporarily suspended the requirement within the apprenticeship funding rules for level 2 apprentices to attempt level 2 functional skills assessments.

And earlier this month, the ESFA expanded its “examination support service” to allow apprenticeship providers to book Covid-secure exam space, and invigilators, and to claim additional funding where this exceeds their normal delivery costs.

Hickie said that while the AELP welcomes the “effort to move things forward”, the authorities have “acknowledged our concerns about employers not releasing apprentices from the workplace to attend test centres and so this doesn’t really represent a step change in their approach”.

England’s biggest awarding bodies are continuing their developments of remote functional skills tests to help the affected learners, but it could still be months before they’re made available.

Pearson is currently working on an online proctoring solution, while City & Guilds is running trials for remote invigilation solutions and they plan to launch “further scalable solutions over the next few months”.

Whittaker said HIT Training is part of a pilot for an online testing solution put forward by NCFE, but this is “only just starting and is not yet ready”.

Some awarding bodies have, however, been successful in rolling out “at-home” functional skills tests. These include Open Awards and Highfield, which involve remotely invigilated online assessments using technology such as screen share, webcams, digital audio and a tethered smart device (like a mobile phone).

Applications to the government’s register of apprenticeship training providers will not reopen until at least April 2021.

And when it does restart, there will be a “new service” for firms to apply through.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency closed the register to new bids on April 15 to “review our future approach”.

Officials have since remained tight-lipped about when it would reopen but tweeted out a digital apprenticeship service “road map” on Thursday which revealed their current timeline.

Under a column for April to June 2021, the road map says there will be a “new service for providers to apply to join the register online”.

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers told FE Week that they receive an “enquiry every other week” about when the register will reopen so it is a “significant issue”.

“The register has been shut since April and so we are now looking at it being closed for a year, which is way too long, bearing in mind that these days all subcontractors need to be registered as well,” AELP chief policy officer Simon Ashworth said.

Before the ESFA closed the register, applications were made through the agency’s e-tendering portal Bravo, which was shut earlier this year. The agency did not respond to requests for comment about the “new service” at the time of going to press.

The ESFA’s review of the register is likely to include plans to require providers to be “accredited” for the apprenticeship standards they offer, as former apprenticeships director Keith Smith told FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference in March.

Any restrictions would form the second phase of the ESFA’s attempts to strengthen its register of apprenticeship training providers, which was relaunched in 2019 following a host of problems with the original application process.

One-man bands with no delivery experience were, for example, being given access to millions of pounds of apprenticeships funding.

The much-anticipated FE white paper might not appear until next year, the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s chief executive has revealed. 

Eileen Milner, taking questions from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee this morning, was quizzed by chair Meg Hillier on when the white paper would be published. 

“You have talked about how important the FE sector is, but the white paper is pretty critical,” said Hillier, so would it be published “this year, this financial year, this calendar year, next six months?” 

“We would certainly hope this financial year,” Milner answered. 

The Department for Education, including education secretary Gavin Williamson, have long said the “revolutionary” white paper would be published in the autumn of 2020. 

Asked yesterday whether it was still the plan to publish the paper in 2020, the Department for Education said it was working to publish “this year”. FE Week has asked them to clarify whether this is calendar or financial. 

The department’s permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood, also speaking at the hearing, implied the sector would not look dramatically different after the white paper, saying there would be a “continuum” of  what the department is doing already, “rather than a moment where for the first time ever we’re doing something strategic on the FE sector.”

She said it had been difficult for education secretary Gavin Williamson to set out how he would make FE a focus of his department, through such measures as the FE white paper, until the spending review this week.

“It was working towards making sure we had the right things in the spending review, then setting out the strategy that followed on from that.”

New-look apprenticeship and traineeship statistics were published by the Education and Skills Funding Agency today and captured final year-end data for 2019/20.

Here are seven things we learned.

 

1. 8,000 claims worth over £15m for new employer incentives by mid-November

Under an incentive scheme, running from August to March 2021, any firm that hires a new apprentice aged 16 to 24 will be paid £2,000 – on top of the existing £1,000 incentive for 16 to 18s – while those that hire new apprentices aged 25 and over will receive £1,500.

The cash is paid in two instalments if the apprentice stays for a least a year, and is limited to 10 apprentices per employer per region in England.

As of 12th November 2020, the number incentive claims totalled 8,000.

Of these, 33 per cent were for level 2 apprentices, 44 per cent for level 3, and 23 per cent for level 4 or higher.

The vast majority, 6,450 (81 per cent), of claims were for 16 to 24-year-olds.

 

2. Total apprenticeship starts down 18%

The number of apprenticeship starts for the whole of 2018/19 totalled 393,400, but this dropped to 322,500 in 2019/20.

Of those starts in 2019/20, 47 per cent were from apprentices aged over 25, while 25 per cent were for higher apprenticeships.

Starts for both level 2 apprenticeships and under 19 apprentices dropped.

 

3. Traineeship starts also down 18%

Starts on traineeships took another dip in 2019/20, falling to just 12,100 from 14,900 the year before.

Take up of the pre-employment programme, introduced in 2013, hit a high of 24,100 in 2015/16 but have been dropping since.

The government hopes to triple traineeship starts to over 40,000 for this academic year, with a higher funding rate for 19 to 24-year-olds, employer incentives and a tender to find extra providers among new measures.

 

4. Progress to public sector apprenticeship target is at 1.7%

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

Figures for the first three years of the target show an average of 1.7 per cent of employees started an apprenticeship.

The armed forces were by far the largest employer of apprentices with an average of 7.9 per cent of employees starting an apprenticeship since April 2017, while the police has the lowest rate of apprenticeship recruitment averaging at 0.7 per cent over that same period.

 

5. 7,670 transfers of apprenticeship funds

Since April 2018, levy-paying employers have been able to transfer up to 10 per cent of the annual value of their funds to other organisations via the apprenticeship service. This increased to 25 per cent from April 2019.

As of 16 November 2020, there have been just 7,670 transfers approved.

Of those, 34.1 per cent (2,610) were transfers to levy-paying organisations and 65.9 per cent (5,060) were transfers to small and medium-sized businesses that do not pay the levy.

 

 

6. 1,190 redundancies since August

The ESFA added a new function to its digital apprenticeship service at the end of July to record any apprentice who has been made redundant.

From August until 12 November 2020, the number of apprenticeship redundancies reported so far was 1,190.

Of these, 22 per cent were under 19s, 35 per cent were aged 19 to 24, while 43 per cent were for 25s and over.

However, the ESFA says this data currently does not capture all apprenticeships as not all non-levy employers will be using the apprenticeship service until 1 April 2021.

 

 

7. Apprenticeship vacancies significantly fall

Latest apprenticeship vacancy data, from the government’s Find An Apprenticeship website, has also been released and shows a considerable drop.

Vacancies in August, September and October 2020 were 6,920, 8,150, and 8,170 respectively.

For the same months in 2019, vacancies sat at 10,490 for August, 9,760 for September, and 9,900 for October.

And for the same months in 2018, vacancies sat at 14,060 for August, 12,050 for September, and 14,260 for October.

The Department for Education has revealed £6 million was spent on administrators’ fees alone for the two college insolvencies, an amount its most senior civil servant has called “gut-wrenching”. 

At a hearing of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee today, the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s director of provider market oversight Matthew Atkinson told MPs the cost of putting Hadlow College and West Kent and Ashford College through administration “will probably run to over £60 million”. 

Of that, he said, £6 million has been spent on the hourly rates of administrators from BDO. 

The £6 million figure stunned MPs, with committee chair Meg Hillier commenting: “I can just imagine principals around the country gasping as we are.” 

The department’s permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood replied: “I agree with you, if I’m completely honest, it is a gut-wrenching amount of money.” 

Speaking after the hearing, Richard Holden MP, committee member and former special advisor to education secretary Gavin Williamson, called it “mind-boggling that £6 million has already been sprayed on insolvency accountants for one FE group”.

He said the senior leaders which got the colleges into the mess “clearly have very serious questions to answer”.

“While the government is clearly now heading in the right direction on FE, unbelievable failures like Hadlow show that the government’s white paper needs to have management, but mostly, clear oversight and accountability of the FE sector at its core”.

However, Acland-Hood and Atkinson told the committee that using the insolvency regime, which so far just Hadlow and WKAC have been through, saved the taxpayer more than £20 million. 

The National Audit Office reported in September the administrations had cost taxpayers £26.6 million, spent on keeping the doors open and “facilitating a long-term solution,” the report read. 

Acland-Hood continued: “Having an insolvency regime in place, and I think the NAO has recognised this, is quite an important component in doing exactly what you say, which is to try and make sure we can intervene earlier and more effectively.” 

The two colleges, which were jointly managed but with separate boards, collapsed after falling into what FE Commissioner Richard Atkins described as an “extremely serious financial situation,” owing millions of pounds to creditors. 

The principal of both, Paul Hannan, and his deputy, Mark Lumsdon-Taylor, both resigned after the colleges’ problems came to light, as did both chairs and several governors. 

Hadlow and WKAC were placed in administration in May and August of last year, respectively. 

Atkinson said a “large amount” of the £60 million was related to capital costs: “Because of the leadership and management and governance, at Hadlow in particular but also at certain sites at West Kent, the estate was in a very poor condition 

“So a large part of that expense is to bring that estate brought up to reasonable standards, so not technically a cost of us doing any merger but a condition of us providing that support.” 

Hadlow and WKAC’s provision has now been split up between Capel Manor College, North Kent College and EKC Group (formerly East Kent College). 

“These colleges were losing money day by day,” Atkinson said, adding that Hadlow College had 52 “pressing” creditors. 

“That’s how badly it had been run”. 

Committee member Richard Holden raised FE Week’s story from last week about Lumsdon-Taylor returning to work at auditor MacIntyre Hudson, and asked if the government was looking at taking any action against him. 

Atkinson highlighted the administrators’ investigation into the conduct of the directors prior to their appointment, and, while adding he did not want to prejudice that investigation, said: “If there is sufficient evidence of wrongdoing, we will seek whatever sanction is available to us.” 

Sixty-four colleges are at risk of running out of cash, a top ESFA director has said, admitting the number of colleges needing emergency funding was “more than we thought”. 

Speaking at a House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee hearing this morning, the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s director of provider market oversight Matthew Atkinson said they had been monitoring colleges’ cash days to identify more quickly which were at risk during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Through this, the government had identified 64 colleges who had issues with cash days, so the ESFA has been “devoting most of our time towards those, because they would seem to me to have the most imminent issues and those are the dialogue we are having”. 

The government has set aside a pot of emergency funding to bail out colleges, of which Atkinson said: “We will spend around £70m this year.” 

“That is more than we thought,” he told the committee, adding: “Some of these issues are definitely Covid-related.  

“If you’re a college more exposed to apprenticeships or commercial income, so say over the summer holidays you haven’t been able to generate commercial income, you’re more exposed to Covid.  

“Some of the cases we see were already problems and that has been accelerated because of Covid.” 

However, he did add that colleges have been “very good at mitigating when things go wrong, they’re highly adaptable businesses”. 

ESFA chief executive Eileen Milner told the committee they had asked colleges in July to give an early indication of the impact of Covid, and will be re-running the exercise this month, and hope to get the data next week. 

As well as cash days, Atkinson said they had asked colleges in July to provide an indicative financial health grade, which was not moderated. 

The largest movement in those grades had been from ‘outstanding’ to ‘good’, he said, rather than at the lower levels of the scale. 

Skills minister Gillian Keegan revealed in September that the Department for Education had tasked a team of officials to work with every college which had needed financial support. 

At that time, the team was working with 40 colleges, and five had needed “financial assistance”. 

The number of enrolments onto adult education courses in the months following lockdown dropped by half compared to the same period last year.

Figures published this morning by the Department for Education shows there were 208,790 starts on adult programmes between 23 March and 31 July 2020 compared to 420,910 in that period in 2018/19 – a 50.4 per cent fall.

Stats for the whole of 2019/20 shows there were 1,042,000 adult education budget enrolments – a 20 per cent drop on the 1,302,700 achieved the previous year.

Under performance against AEB contracts will be of concern to individual colleges and training providers following an Education and Skills Funding Agency warning that they will clawback funds if less than 68 per cent of their allocation has been delivered in 2019/20 despite the pandemic.

The agency first told the sector in March that they would not force repayment of AEB funds this year owing to Covid-19 but has since changed its mind.

Speaking at a Public Accounts Committee hearing this morning on the financial sustainability of colleges, ESFA chief executive Eileen Milner revealed that when the agency proposed to not take clawback they had “quite a lot of correspondence from colleges who felt it was unfair and a disincentive in fact to not take money back for underperformance”.

“We are walking a tight line between understanding the particular circumstances and at the same time being able to fulfil that reasonable test of spending public money,” she said.

Milner told the committee that the agency is currently looking “carefully” at a “very small number of colleges” that have so far flagged they want to put a business case in to keep their full allocation despite underperformance, and it is “only then that we will consider taking money back”.

She added that the agency is doing this through “conversation and opportunity, not by bureaucratic approach to seizing money from people”.

After the agency announced in March it would not clawback unspent AEB funds for the last academic year, it changed its mind in July and announced that providers would retain their full 2019/20 allocation only if they attempted to continue delivering during lockdown and they delivered 80 per cent of activity in the whole year.

Following a sector backlash, the ESFA withdrew these plans one week later. But then, in September, the agency backtracked again and said it would “consider reconciling any under delivery up to 68 per cent” unless the provider can justify why they shouldn’t by submitting a business case.

It means that, for example, if a provider’s performance was 60 per cent then the agency will consider recovering 8 per cent of the allocation.

“Outstanding” employers and individuals have been recognised at this year’s National Apprenticeship Awards – including a Great Ormond Street Hospital apprentice who has been on the frontline in the battle against Covid-19.

The ten winners and 18 highly commended finalists (see table below) were named at the awards, which are in their 17th year and took place this evening as an online ceremony, hosted by BBC Breakfast presenter Dan Walker. 

Education secretary Gavin Williamson gave his congratulations to the winners, saying: “The National Apprenticeships Awards are a brilliant opportunity to showcase the power of apprenticeships to transform lives and businesses, while helping people of all ages and backgrounds to get ahead. 

“It’s fantastic to see so many excellent examples of employers of all sizes continuing to embrace the benefits apprenticeships have to offer, and all the apprentices who have gone above and beyond.” 

The awards are organised by the government and decided upon by a panel of judges, which this year included Health Education England’s national programme manager for apprenticeships Lucy Hunte and BAME apprenticeships advocate Isa Mutlib.

The winners of the individual awards, which cover the different levels of programme such as intermediate or higher, include apprentices from the Ministry of Defence, a local council, leading technology company IBM, and pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. 

While the winners of the employer awards, which cover different sizes of employers such as small-to-medium enterprises and large employers, include operators of the new Crossrail network MTR Elizabeth Line, defence company BAE Systems, and County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service. 

The fire and rescue service’s head of people and organisational development Katherine Metcalfe said they were “absolutely delighted” to have been recognised “for our commitment to apprenticeships across our organisations”. 

They were the first fire and rescue service in the country to offer firefighter apprenticeships, and are about to start their fourth cohort of apprentices. 

Katherine added: “To see our programme be successful make us feel extremely proud.” 

In addition to the individual and employer awards, the efforts of apprentices to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic were also recognised with a special recognition award, which was run in association with the armed forces.  

Employers could submit nominations for the award, which eventually went to Great Ormond Street Hospital apprentice healthcare support worker Amber James, who the Department for Education said had worked on the frontline as a clinical support worker at London’s Nightingale Hospital at the city’s Excel centre. 

She is now due to start a degree apprenticeship in registered nursing. 

The Education and Skills Funding Agency’s director of apprenticeships Peter Mucklow called her “a wonderful example of how apprentices have contributed during the pandemic and she thoroughly deserves her special recognition award”.  

He continued: “The number and quality of entries this year was outstanding, demonstrating the importance of apprenticeships for employers and individuals alike.” 

Mucklow thanked all of the over 1,100 entrants for “taking time to share their apprenticeship journey”. 

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said: “With such strong competition in businesses right across the country, the winners of this year’s National Apprenticeship Awards should hold their heads up high.” 

Employer categories

The BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, Award for SME Employer of the Year	Winner	Troup Bywaters + Anders
	Highly Commended	Snow-Camp Charity
		&
		Crimson Limited
The British Army Award for Large Employer of the Year	Winner	WEC Group Ltd
	Highly Commended	MTR Elizabeth Line
		&
		Home Group Ltd
The QA Award for Macro Employer of the Year	Winner	BAE Systems plc
	Highly Commended	Royal Air Force
		&
		United Utilities
The Accenture Award for Recruitment Excellence	Winner	County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service
	Highly Commended	Mitchells & Butlers
		&
		MTR Elizabeth Line

 

Individual categories

The AstraZeneca Award for Intermediate Apprentice of the Year	Winner	Maisey Hammond	Stroud District Council
	Highly Commended	Aron Marshall	COOP
		Joshua Foord	Sunbelt Rentals
The BT Award for Advanced Apprentice of the Year	Winner	Chris Jones	J.C. Bamford Excavators Limited
	Highly Commended	Scott Murton	Ministry of Defence – Submarine Delivery Agency
		Emma Sisman	Niftylift
The Royal Navy Award for Higher or Degree Apprentice of the Year	Winner	Laurie Weatherall	GlaxoSmithKline
	Highly Commended	Harriet Willsher	IBM UK Ltd
		Manoj Vadher	Royal Mail
The Lloyds Banking Group Award for Rising Star of the Year	Winner	Howard Jackson	IBM UK Ltd
	Highly Commended	Nihal Dhillon	J C Bamford Excavators Limited
		Jordan Brosnan	Coca-Cola European Partners
The Royal Air Force Award for Apprentice Champion of the Year	Winner	Jenny Taylor	IBM UK Ltd
	Highly Commended	Paula McMahon	Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd
		Alison Galvin	Invotra

• Special recognition award – Amber James, Great Ormond Street Hospital